3 ms·

Full disclosure: I play a lot of online video games and am biased against cheat makers. This seems frivolous and a waste of time but I think people here undere

Full disclosure: I play a lot of online video games and am biased against cheat makers. This seems frivolous and a waste of time but I think people here underestimate the effect online cheats can have on a company's bottom line, and just how PROLIFIC online cheating is. Imagine you spent $300,000,000 developing an online video game. And then some company in Australia hires a number of full-time workers to develop a way to ruin the experience for other players, or to work around your monetization strategies and get stuff they should have to earn for free. These companies are parasites that make money off of game developers. They make money off of making other people's products worse for the majority of players. People underestimate the number of online cheaters. It's seriously an epidemic and ruins games for people. People buy the cheats and then play at internet cafes who will refresh their game library regularly so there are no consequences for cheating. For example, PUBG has banned over 13 million users since June 2017. With an estimated 350 million player count, that is a large portion of their player base. And that is for a middlingly-popular game that was mostly a flash in the pan. Games like Fortnight, and League of Legends, and DOTA 2 probably have similar numbers. Most companies do not release their ban-numbers and I suspect there is a good reason for that, because the numbers would be shocking.

bmurphy1976 8y ago
> For example, PUBG has banned over 13 million users since June 2017. With an estimated 350 million player count, that is a large portion of their player base. I don't find this stat particularly useful. What I'd be more curious to see are statistics like % and rate of game matches significantly impacted by cheating. I don't care if there's 1 cheater or 100 million, but I do care if 5 of 10 game matches I play are ruined by cheating.
bliblah 8y ago
And these bans are just people who use actual software to hack the code. How about people who abuse mouse/keyboard macros to perform super human feats in game. It can be pretty frustrating because it's not so obvious unless you look at replay footage carefully. The worst offenders are definitely in China since a lot of these cheaters simply do it for status and can jump from cafe to cafe with different accounts.

bmurphy1976 8y ago

> For example, PUBG has banned over 13 million users since June 2017. With an estimated 350 million player count, that is a large portion of their player base. I don't find this stat particularly useful. What I'd be more curious to see are statistics like % and rate of game matches significantly impacted by cheating. I don't care if there's 1 cheater or 100 million, but I do care if 5 of 10 game matches I play are ruined by cheating.

bliblah 8y ago

And these bans are just people who use actual software to hack the code. How about people who abuse mouse/keyboard macros to perform super human feats in game. It can be pretty frustrating because it's not so obvious unless you look at replay footage carefully. The worst offenders are definitely in China since a lot of these cheaters simply do it for status and can jump from cafe to cafe with different accounts.