Cheaters in online video games

The BBQ Pit
1

I want a new program, something like Punkbuster, that finds cheaters, drags them out of their house naked in the middle of the night, sticks the barrel of a shotgun in their mouth, and blows their brains out the back of their head. The details are negotiable. For example, I’m all for using a different weapon to shoot them in the mouth with.

I play Battlefield 2 online, and I’ve been noticing cheaters more and more. It’s not pandemic, yet, but it’s definitely more prevalent than it used to be. Invuln cheats seem to be the most popular. Of course, that may just be because they’re the most blatant. Some of the other cheats, like wallhacking, aimbotting, and shooting through terrain, are more difficult to properly diagnose. But not invuln cheats. When I see a grenade go off at a guy’s feet, and all it does it bounce him up into the air, while he’s still shooting accurately at his opponents, that kinda tells me he’s cheating. When I sneak up on a guy, lie down right next to him, put the barrel of my machine gun up to his head and get through 30 rounds before he notices me and turns around and shoots me, dead in one shot, I’m tempted to think he’s cheatin’. I know the ballistics in the game vary a lot, but not that much.

One of the problems that this causes is doubt. I know that this cheat exists. I’ve seen it. I know that other cheats exist. I think I’ve seen them. I saw a guy kill three opponents in quick succession with one shot each, using a sub-machine gun. Impossible? Well, no. Likely? Hell, no. Is he a cheater, or just good? Is that guy who just jumped around a corner and killed me in one shot cheating, or just good? My new view of the sky doesn’t show enemy UAV, so how did he know I was there? Is that guy who blew my tank up with one shot cheating, or just good? I’ve heard that there’s a weak point on the treads in the front of the tank, but I’ve yet to be able to prove this. When there’s one cheater around, everyone might be cheating, you just don’t know.

And it makes me kinda sad. But mostly really angry. Because this kind of thing can ruin a game. I used to play AvP2. I loved that game. Played it online for hours on end. But then the cheaters came, and ruined it. There was always that one guy who somehow always won, who always seemed to have more life, more ammo, and more information than everyone else. Then it was two guys. Then it was teams of them. I can’t play it online anymore because the cheaters have destroyed it. I really don’t want to see that happen to BF2. I don’t want to see it happen to any games.

It really pisses me off that some little dipshit is too afraid to actually play the game that he has to cheat at it to make him feel good about himself. If your self worth is actually connected to how many kills you have, you need help. It’s a game. Part of the game is the risk. The risk that you might get shot and have to wait 15 seconds to go again, the risk that you might not be a perfect shot, the risk that you might not be the best in the world. It’s supposed to be about fun, not dick size. What the hell am I lecturing you for? You don’t care. You don’t cheat, nope not ever. ‘It was someone else, not me.’, I’ve heard. ‘You must have missed.’, I’ve heard. You’re not even man enough to own up when caught outright. Guess what, you’re cheating. You are ruining my game, get the fuck off and go play with other cheaters. You can throw infinite grenades at other invulnerable retards just like yourself. Asshole. :mad:

2

There’s some blame that I think deserves to be dumped on the developers of the game though.

It is possible to build a fairly secure server/client architecture where, unless the server admin is in on the cheating, most cheats become impossible to pull off. Specially with today’s processing power and next gen hardware, this should be doable.

I do hate the cheaters though. It takes a special kind of sad, pathetic person to want to cheat at an online game.

3

The best part is the people they’re playing against know they’re cheating, so nobody even marvels at their madd skillz. I used to play Scrabble online, and certain players had some serious anagram-bots going on that were just plain laughable. So… you cheat so people can think you’re better than you really are… except nobody really thinks that because it’s obvious that you’re cheating… but you get a high rating… a high rating that nobody cares about other than people who are playing, and anyone who you play against knows that you’re cheating, so… Makes perfect sense?

4

Not always. There are a lot of practical effects done client-side because trying to link everyone together online is difficult. You can be pretty secure, but cheaters are always trying to find some edge, and they have the initiative in this arms race. There are solutions, but not total ones, and even the most secure games have some cheating going on.

5

I’m full on with this rant.

The only workable defense at this point is to find a well moderated server and start enjoying yourself again. I play CoD4 and have a nice collection of favorites built up where cheaters seldom make it through an entire match without getting themselves banned.

Occasionally we’ll get a new player in who’s not familiar with the ROE for the server so we’ll educate them to see if they’re willing to fit in. Some of them take a kick before they’ll believe that the mods are serious about the rules. But someone running a hack gets the door locked behind them with little or no warning.

My fantasy has been to run a cheat that plants a hack on their computer where whatever damage they deal to someone else bounces back on them instead. And it’ll be permanent so that even when they go to another server they’re still screwed.

6

Maybe it’s just me, but are on-line console games unhackable, to an extent?

That is, I’ve played some Call of Duty online on the PS3 and if anybody was cheating/hacking I couldn’t tell. I’ve played Battlefield 2 online on the PC and found the same dealio as the OP.

7

I only play COD online, and only on the PS3. I was wondering if it is possible that people can cheat on the PS3.

When I was playing COD4, my performance was consistent over time. With COD5, there are times when I do well, and other times where I suck. I don’t think it’s just me though, because I see way more lopsided team games than I recall from COD4.

It’s so bad that I really don’t play that much anymore. Unfortunately, my dog destroyed my COD4 disk, so I can’t go back to that, either.

ETA: if it wasn’t for Nazi zombies, I’d have taken it to Game Stop already.

8

Unfortunately, that’s not the case anymore. With hard drives coming pretty standard now, it’s starting to crop up. A bit easier to keep tabs on things and stamp it out, however. Unfortunately, mouse control is a big reason why people want computer control, and that can radically improve gameplay.

9

I’m no expert but I’m pretty sure that this would require doing the rendering server-side. That’s not happening. Most players probably don’t even have the bandwidth to make that happen.

10

Rampage!
Actually, I mainly poke about in HL2 – I don’t think I’ve seen cheating like the above there, but that could be because I suck. Also, I mainly connect/shoot at my brother.

But the concept is just … just … well, off. I could see doing that to the bro’ for a short spell, because it would by hysterical – but only really funny after he found out what was going on.

11

Why would it require rendering on the server side?

Instead limit the amount of information going to the clients as per the SERVER dictates, and put checks on the type and quality of information coming back to the server.

So take the ability to see through walls: Simply don’t send player location information to the client unless there is a direct line of sight… And here I go proving myself wrong and you right. It might indeed not be possible to do this without rendering the current frame first. Sucks to be legit.

12

i had that happen too , but it wasnt cheating , it was lag. Now if you keep seeing it on a recurring basis, then ya I would look at contacting the system admin regarding it.

Declan

13

Well, the rest of the game was going on just fine (calls over team channel, UAV, etc), he picked off a shot or two during the whole thing at whoever he was firing at, I saw the little grey puffs of smoke that normally indicate a hit, and my ammo counter did indeed read 30 rounds down (something that wouldn’t have happened if I lagged and he killed me before I got off all my shots). I don’t think it was lag.

14

There are definitely glitches on the 360 COD games. It’s usually something weird like an ability to get under the map and shoot people who can’t see you or shoot you back. Or something where they are way up in the sky shooting people who don’t know they’re up there so they don’t even know where to look.

Generally, these get fixed through different patches that get released. They’re irritating, though. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sniped someone out of the sky on COD: World at War.

15

This is precisely right. Cheats work because networks are laggy enough the server has to send data out to clients speculatively, giving them more information about the state of the world than the game allows the player access to. That is, until the cheat software writers rummage around in the computer’s memory and figure out how the game is storing that extra data and use that knowledge to create wallhacks.

I don’t think this is needed to make aimbots, which only work with what the gamer can legitimately see at that instant, but work with it so well as to give the cheater an unfair advantage. (In fact, it’s possible to confuse a really good player with an aimbot detuned to look somewhat realistic. Them’s the breaks in quick-twitch games.)

(All of this has obvious implications regarding DRM and any other scenario where the term “trusted client” is uttered. There are no trusted clients!)

16

I used to play Total Annihilation on (game company) Cavedog’s network. TA was a fairly sophisticated tanks n’ robots RTS for its day. The game creator could set game parameters, one of which disabled all the cheat codes.

A certain percentage of players would enter a new game I had made, say hello, get started, and within seconds I would SEE cheat codes typed into plain chat – codes for extra resources and for controlling the game’s speed. The game had a LOT of automatable processes, and a popular cheat was to set up a bunch of repeating processes and then hammer the game speed all the way up, catching your opponent by surprise as everything came flying at him.

But these codes did nothing in the games I set up, except expose their users as worthless cheaters and waste their all-important time and attention as they tried to figure out why it wouldn’t work.

Those were such sweet victories.

17

I had an experience with the original Diablo back in the day, (It must have been '96 or so), that completely turned me off to online gaming at the time. Since then I’ve tried out some MMO’s, (COH’s and WOW mostly), and had a good time, but the direct online competition aspect still leaves me wary. Every story about rampant cheating still leaves me with the impression that I made the right choice.

I’m pretty sure I’m not the only gamer that has had this experience.

18

In WoW? I was about to post how one of the things I loved about WoW was that Blizzard is pretty vigilant about preventing hacks and banning the very few who do manage to hack it.

Now there are a few other ways to “cheat” besides hacking though, and that may be what you heard about. Namely, people who use bots to farm experience/gold, or sit in battlegrounds AFK soaking up honor (something they took some steps to correct before I left the game, but was still a significant problem). There was also the issue of playing the arena system for unearned points by getting friends into matches together and intentionally throwing games. All these were slimy behaviors, but as far as what I would consider outright cheating, i.e. hacking the game - it doesn’t really happen.

19

There is no rampant cheating in online gaming. You’ve missed out on some good times because of your paranoia.

20

there seems to be a large group of people who get off on the act of griefing and since the vast majority of them suck they end up rampant cheaters. I have seen it more times than I can count and as much as I love pvp games it takes all the fun out when you have to deal with that crap.