> Ultimately, it is inevitable that you will encounter a cheater eventually, but we will just keep banning them all over and over again until they finally work up the courage to run the uninstaller.
What a great message to send to your fans. "We know we installed Ring 0 anticheat on your PC and banned Linux/Steam Deck players, but look at how useless it is!"
If CV cheats are good enough that people are using them (and then getting banned), and other people are willing to pay >$1000 for "undetected" cheats (that still get them banned)... wouldn't making custom hardware that is just a capture card and USB keyboard+mouse running one of those CV models that sends the inputs back over a "real" keyboard work?
Has there been much analysis on why cheating happens so much more in some regions than others?
I’ve had a Brazilian friend say it was largely due to culture but I’ve got to imagine with all the data companies have, there’s been more rigorous studies.
> The reason they need “a method” to move the mouse is because Vanguard already outright rejects input from your non-primary peripheral device, and the reason I’m not disclosing that method here is because this is not a tutorial on fastest ways to get banned.
I know this isn't the lowest hanging fruit but for literally a few USD you could get the necessary hardware (i.e. any microcontroller, like a Raspberry Pi Pico) to emulate an input device with perfect fidelity. What do you do when a device pops up that has the same VID/PID as a real physical mouse and looks identical from the perspective of the HID reports? This is not theoretical FWIW.
I think the gameplan for anti-cheat developers is to just pretend they can't hear this, and to keep ramping up the amount of end-user surveillance for as long as possible. Good luck guys, looking forward to when the cheaters discover Arduino.
edit: Also, while I'm here saying unpopular things, this smarmy blog post gets a lot wrong about cheaters, probably on purpose just to piss them off. For example, something you'll notice with many cheating scandals is that routinely, extremely skilled players choose to cheat to try to get more of an edge, and they're better at it than unskilled players most of the time, too. I think the real reason why most cheaters suck is because the distribution of cheaters is probably mostly because most players suck and some portion of players are prone to cheating. If you need any evidence that cheating can easily become widespread at higher skill levels, check any speedrunning community with a sufficiently bad cheating problem, like Trackmania.
> KR (Korea) requires national identity numbers for gaming, which opens up a convenient opportunity to ban cheaters at the “soul” level. It is remarkably effective at keeping them out of game for longer periods of time—cheaters have to buy whole new identities to keep playing, so the bans really stick.
I detest "real name" policies and believe pseudonymous/anonymous discourse is helpful, perhaps even vital. But I am starting to believe that tying accounts to a "soul" or more expensive to forge identity is going to be the only way we get out of the Commentdämmerung we have today on social media. Whether it's posting invective, hateful diatribes on a platform or cheating in online games, it has to be more expensive than an email address to participate, but somehow also effectively free for most average people.
Maybe that takes the form of Worldcoin, or maybe some clever zk-snark proof of uniqueness-without-disclosing-identity from state or national ID programs, I don't know. But the current situation of a minority of people making vast swathes of the internet unpleasant is really quite untenable.
Of course the second hard part is figuring out how to do that without fully giving into the people who would want to spy on us all.
> but modern science has actually determined that cheaters do not have any discernable skill (otherwise they’d use it).
This is flippant, but incorrect in a general sense. Those who cheat are often near the top of their chosen game, and are looking for that edge to be "the best".
Isn't the best action against cheaters not banning but degrading accuracy? Then they are left blaming their cheats for not working. Making it inconsistent would make it highly effective and hard to detect.
> If a game is good, it’s going to attract cheaters.
I have started to consider that games should be inherently cheat-resistant, not protected by anti-cheats.
Chess and Go are less affected by cheats by their design. It's not nearly as frustrating to lose to a cheater when they're working with the same information you are, and when they perform actions that a human could reasonably perform.
I find that rulesets enforced by nature or by the design of the system are, to me, more interesting than rulesets enforced by agreement and punishment, even if the "agreement" is not to hack the game. It forces more creativity and makes games offer more relevant experiences instead of copying the same formula.
As for identity systems etc. to permaban cheaters, I think that if it takes increasingly strict levels of monitoring and crackdown and reliance on "trusted authorities" to keep these beloved games playable, it might be better to move on and find new games. Few (if any) individual games or genres of games matter enough to warrant this attention.
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[ 0.19 ms ] story [ 38.8 ms ] threadWhat a great message to send to your fans. "We know we installed Ring 0 anticheat on your PC and banned Linux/Steam Deck players, but look at how useless it is!"
I’ve had a Brazilian friend say it was largely due to culture but I’ve got to imagine with all the data companies have, there’s been more rigorous studies.
I know this isn't the lowest hanging fruit but for literally a few USD you could get the necessary hardware (i.e. any microcontroller, like a Raspberry Pi Pico) to emulate an input device with perfect fidelity. What do you do when a device pops up that has the same VID/PID as a real physical mouse and looks identical from the perspective of the HID reports? This is not theoretical FWIW.
I think the gameplan for anti-cheat developers is to just pretend they can't hear this, and to keep ramping up the amount of end-user surveillance for as long as possible. Good luck guys, looking forward to when the cheaters discover Arduino.
edit: Also, while I'm here saying unpopular things, this smarmy blog post gets a lot wrong about cheaters, probably on purpose just to piss them off. For example, something you'll notice with many cheating scandals is that routinely, extremely skilled players choose to cheat to try to get more of an edge, and they're better at it than unskilled players most of the time, too. I think the real reason why most cheaters suck is because the distribution of cheaters is probably mostly because most players suck and some portion of players are prone to cheating. If you need any evidence that cheating can easily become widespread at higher skill levels, check any speedrunning community with a sufficiently bad cheating problem, like Trackmania.
I detest "real name" policies and believe pseudonymous/anonymous discourse is helpful, perhaps even vital. But I am starting to believe that tying accounts to a "soul" or more expensive to forge identity is going to be the only way we get out of the Commentdämmerung we have today on social media. Whether it's posting invective, hateful diatribes on a platform or cheating in online games, it has to be more expensive than an email address to participate, but somehow also effectively free for most average people.
Maybe that takes the form of Worldcoin, or maybe some clever zk-snark proof of uniqueness-without-disclosing-identity from state or national ID programs, I don't know. But the current situation of a minority of people making vast swathes of the internet unpleasant is really quite untenable.
Of course the second hard part is figuring out how to do that without fully giving into the people who would want to spy on us all.
What about criminal charges (e.g., CFAA)?
This is flippant, but incorrect in a general sense. Those who cheat are often near the top of their chosen game, and are looking for that edge to be "the best".
I have started to consider that games should be inherently cheat-resistant, not protected by anti-cheats.
Chess and Go are less affected by cheats by their design. It's not nearly as frustrating to lose to a cheater when they're working with the same information you are, and when they perform actions that a human could reasonably perform.
I find that rulesets enforced by nature or by the design of the system are, to me, more interesting than rulesets enforced by agreement and punishment, even if the "agreement" is not to hack the game. It forces more creativity and makes games offer more relevant experiences instead of copying the same formula.
As for identity systems etc. to permaban cheaters, I think that if it takes increasingly strict levels of monitoring and crackdown and reliance on "trusted authorities" to keep these beloved games playable, it might be better to move on and find new games. Few (if any) individual games or genres of games matter enough to warrant this attention.
Are you sure you don't want to reconsider this position?