I appreciate the comments from cheaters at the end. I run an online game, and the last one sounds like the majority of emails I get when I ban someone, although the people I ban are less articulate.
Banning paying players is the worst. I wish there was a nice happy solution to the problem of cheaters, but I don't know of one.
We're talking about being banned from connecting to servers to play a modification for a computer game here, it's a situation that just is simpler than "real life", it is nothing to do with providing a deterrent, if they are banned from connecting they cant cheat in a way that matters.
That already happens in games like CoD4, where you have plenty of servers with Punkbuster turned off, but they still cheat on the other servers.
The problem is that cheating is more fun when you're the only in the server, since (from my experience) cheaters are looking for attention - either by annoying others or by getting top score.
So a "cheating allowed zone" is by definition a boring place for cheaters.
> I wish there was a nice happy solution to the problem of cheaters, but I don't know of one.
In DOTA2 and Starcraft 2 cheaters (and in DOTA, griefers/feeders[1]) are put into their own secret matchmaking queue to be matched up only with other cheaters.
I thought that was a rather clever solution.
[1] someone who, possibly out of frustration, intentionally dies to the enemy team, giving them gold
That would work well... if you can guarantee no misclassification at all. Once it starts to rely on opinions, it's completely flawed. How do you judge if someone dies intentionally or not? There's always going to be a grey area.
Now imagine you have a false positive and start matching someone who paid for their online gaming with cheaters all the time.
Not sure about DOTA, but in League of Legends, players can be reported, and a team reviews the complaints for any given player, including watching the games.
Sometimes it's hard to tell - I've had bad days where I'm just dying all the time because I just levelled up and am playing against harder people AND having a bad day, so I keep dying - but usually, it's really, really blatant.
It's come up on my most recent project, a 'bad kids' playground, don't even tell them they are being sent there, just silently transfer them, if they still misbehave, then into a world of AI players for them to abuse...
Sorry to be "that guy" but do you have a source for StarCraft II putting cheaters in a special queue? I was pretty sure they were just banned from the service...
It's not a videogame, but SomethingAwful's solution to banning paying members is to let them re-register with a new-account fee, so they can in effect stay if they pay a $10 fine. Particularly egregious or persistent troublemakers can get "permabanned", though.
I think I'm more sympathetic to people trying out hacks out of curiosity, especially if they're not trying to cheat their way to tournament money or something like that; but I can see that it causes an overall problem if it becomes widespread.
One question that sometimes comes up is whether it makes sense for game companies to be zero-tolerance about cheating tools, analogously to how possessing burglary tools is illegal in some jurisdictions. What if you really do use them in a "legit" fashion, such as only on servers where the server admin allows them? If it's explicitly a have-fun-with-hacks-here-all-you-want playground, or a server set up to allow bots to play against each other as part of AI research, then it's not really "cheating", is it? Yet people have gotten centrally banned for that sort of thing due to cheat-detection code inserted into the server by the game's creator.
In my experience, games with anti-cheating code allow the server admin to turn it on and off at will. Games using PunkBuster or VAC often have a column in the server browser showing whether cheat prevention is enabled. Of course that's not a solution for games that only support peer-to-peer matches.
>What if you really do use them in a "legit" fashion, such as only on servers where the server admin allows them?
That would depend on the type of game. The above would be OK in a game like CounterStrike where nothing persists between servers. The above should be bannable in games like TF2 where using cheats in an "all cheats" sever could allow a person to get items or achievements that could then be used in games eithout cheats.
Context is key. My biggest surprise is why games have never tried an "official" cheat mode that could be used exactly like you describe.
> “Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”
How dare you take away my ability to make everybody else's life miserable!
I don't know, I'm not really into gaming so I'm not familiar with the context, but most of the "mod" answers seem to be unnecessarily arrogant and condescending, not exactly professional. Are they Microsoft employees or community moderators? If the former, this is no way to treat customers (even if they're cheaters), if the latter, maybe they should enforce higher standards for moderator communications.
In three pages I only saw one reply which could be construed as "unprofessional", where the moderator said "this is my favourite..."
They all seem quite straight, to the point, and courteous. Well, as courteous as one can be when telling somebody they're not welcome in your community.
About 3 years ago I used to host about 140 GMod servers. At the time, I believed that I was the single largest hoster of GMod servers since there were only about 400-470~ servers up at anyone point. No idea what is happening now since I've gotten out of game hosting entirely... anyway...
My perspective on why this is fantastic from being a game hosting company is that GMod servers were a bitch to maintain. They definitely took up 80% of my time in maintaince despite only being a small portion of all the games I hosted. The reason was to do with all of the cheaters who would nuke the server by spawning a ridiculous amount of resources and overwhelming the server with assets which the physics environment just could not handle.
The owners of the server would be angry at the cheaters and would also be angry at my company due to the quality of service. Often, these hackers would play on empty servers as well, which you might think is a victimless crime... but it could actually have a knock on effect to other servers on the same box.
Banning hackers in Gmod is a fantastic means to maintaining the quality and enjoyment of the game for other people. I would have loved to have seen this 3 years ago.
(Also if someone knows, how many active GMod servers are there currently running? Professional curiosity).
How did you manage to support yourself while hosting that many servers? I had thought about buying some servers but wondered how I could make enough to break even.
Reminds me of Garry's way to stop piracy. If you used a pirated copy, it would bring up an error message where the error code was your Steam ID. That way, he could ban people who did it when they posted the error on the forums.
If I remember correctly, the error was "Unable to shade polygon normals".
It was clever. Except that it yielded false positives, which are a hassle to sort out, because people would be shamed on forums for asking about that error message.
Hooray! A few years ago I ran a small (5 server) gMod community. Up until now the only way to prevent cheaters has been to write your own Lua-based anti-hack, glad to see Garry has come up with a solution.
32 comments
[ 5.6 ms ] story [ 77.6 ms ] threadBanning paying players is the worst. I wish there was a nice happy solution to the problem of cheaters, but I don't know of one.
as long as they are clearly notified "you have been banned for 3 months, cheat again it will be 9" it'd do the same job surely?
[1] Judge says: "If you commit another crime or are found in violation of your parole you will go to prison for X months longer".
It's a simple analogy that ignores a lot of extrinsic issues, but punishment isn't always a sufficient deterrent.
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/The_Corn_Field I recall bad avatars back in Second Life were once sent to a virtual corn field for a few weeks to reflect on their actions!
The problem is that cheating is more fun when you're the only in the server, since (from my experience) cheaters are looking for attention - either by annoying others or by getting top score.
So a "cheating allowed zone" is by definition a boring place for cheaters.
In DOTA2 and Starcraft 2 cheaters (and in DOTA, griefers/feeders[1]) are put into their own secret matchmaking queue to be matched up only with other cheaters.
I thought that was a rather clever solution.
[1] someone who, possibly out of frustration, intentionally dies to the enemy team, giving them gold
Now imagine you have a false positive and start matching someone who paid for their online gaming with cheaters all the time.
Sometimes it's hard to tell - I've had bad days where I'm just dying all the time because I just levelled up and am playing against harder people AND having a bad day, so I keep dying - but usually, it's really, really blatant.
I think I'm more sympathetic to people trying out hacks out of curiosity, especially if they're not trying to cheat their way to tournament money or something like that; but I can see that it causes an overall problem if it becomes widespread.
One question that sometimes comes up is whether it makes sense for game companies to be zero-tolerance about cheating tools, analogously to how possessing burglary tools is illegal in some jurisdictions. What if you really do use them in a "legit" fashion, such as only on servers where the server admin allows them? If it's explicitly a have-fun-with-hacks-here-all-you-want playground, or a server set up to allow bots to play against each other as part of AI research, then it's not really "cheating", is it? Yet people have gotten centrally banned for that sort of thing due to cheat-detection code inserted into the server by the game's creator.
I've been reading this book lately, so the idea of how cheating is defined, and who gets to define it (e.g. game creator vs. server owner vs. community norms) is on my mind a bit: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0262513285/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...
That would depend on the type of game. The above would be OK in a game like CounterStrike where nothing persists between servers. The above should be bannable in games like TF2 where using cheats in an "all cheats" sever could allow a person to get items or achievements that could then be used in games eithout cheats.
Context is key. My biggest surprise is why games have never tried an "official" cheat mode that could be used exactly like you describe.
> “Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”
How dare you take away my ability to make everybody else's life miserable!
Policing online services is hard.
But I can't stop being bothered every time I see a ban for hacking the avatar to make it a weird color. Why is this so offensive to them?
I don't know why people change colors on their avatars, either. It seems such a pointless thing to risk an account ban for.
I can't speak for the arrogance. You can imagine dealing with customers who have, um, a flexible relationship with the concept of being honest.
In three pages I only saw one reply which could be construed as "unprofessional", where the moderator said "this is my favourite..."
They all seem quite straight, to the point, and courteous. Well, as courteous as one can be when telling somebody they're not welcome in your community.
My perspective on why this is fantastic from being a game hosting company is that GMod servers were a bitch to maintain. They definitely took up 80% of my time in maintaince despite only being a small portion of all the games I hosted. The reason was to do with all of the cheaters who would nuke the server by spawning a ridiculous amount of resources and overwhelming the server with assets which the physics environment just could not handle.
The owners of the server would be angry at the cheaters and would also be angry at my company due to the quality of service. Often, these hackers would play on empty servers as well, which you might think is a victimless crime... but it could actually have a knock on effect to other servers on the same box.
Banning hackers in Gmod is a fantastic means to maintaining the quality and enjoyment of the game for other people. I would have loved to have seen this 3 years ago.
(Also if someone knows, how many active GMod servers are there currently running? Professional curiosity).
If I remember correctly, the error was "Unable to shade polygon normals".
EDIT: Corrected error message.
Also, are these guys being banned from using GMod in any capacity, on creative servers, or on servers with specific game modes?
Once you’re detected and you’re on the list then you’re banned from all servers (unless they remove the cheaters.cfg - which is up to them).