7 ms·

Anti-cheat is not exactly consumer-friendly. They should design their games such that the client is not trusted, and then the only possible cheats would be UI/

by Siira 5y ago

Anti-cheat is not exactly consumer-friendly. They should design their games such that the client is not trusted, and then the only possible cheats would be UI/AI assistants to the human players, which is not really cheating.

episteme 5y ago
How would you apply those rules to say, chess? Games should be computers against computers or they are badly designed? That's quite a lot the biggest games of all time that you consider badly designed.
majormajor 5y ago
An "assistant" that generates input to move your player in a sports game, or aims for you in a shooter, is absolutely cheating. You can't make the client untrusted to the point of "I don't trust that the human really pushed the button" or you don't have a useful multiplayer mode anymore. Cheaters are truly ruining everything, here.
- mulmen 5y ago
  You are right of course. Like so many seemingly intractable moderation problems maybe this is why we shouldn't scale to infinity. YouTube is literally too big to moderate. Maybe this is a feature of humanity. What's wrong with more, smaller communities that have a dang to keep everyone in line? Other than the unfortunate lack of dangs in the world. Back in my day CS servers were mostly privately run. If you were caught cheating you got banned. If you appeared to be cheating (you were too good) you also got banned. From the perspective of the players on the server those are the same thing. Communities formed on servers with similar skill levels and recognized players. Cheating in that kind of environment becomes extremely risky from a social perspective. You could piss off your actual friends. There wasn't a need for rank-based matchmaking or anti-cheat or anything like that, you just eventually found a place you fit in and could have fun. Valve tried to replace that with algorithms but maybe they should "crowd source" so to speak, like we did 20 years ago. This is all a lot of words to say that there is a "right size" for a community to form and enable everyone to have a good time. When you get to the point that "technology can't help us" I think that's an indicator that your community is too big.
  - hyperhopper 5y ago
    This system is not good either, according to that model, highly skilled players would have no choice but to end up relegated to communities where cheaters run free.
    - mulmen 5y ago
      This is not true, as they can also ban cheaters. Also, anti-cheat software can still be used with private servers.
  - throwaways885 5y ago
    > There wasn't a need for rank-based matchmaking or anti-cheat or anything like that, you just eventually found a place you fit in and could have fun. Valve tried to replace that with algorithms but maybe they should "crowd source" so to speak, like we did 20 years ago. They're doing that too. https://blog.counter-strike.net/index.php/overwatch/ https://blog.counter-strike.net/index.php/overwatch/
    - mulmen 5y ago
      Overwatch is not "how we did it 20 yeas ago". It just happens to also be crowd sourced.
      - throwaways885 5y ago
        True, but I guess it's worth mentioning that OW is the primary method of cheater controls nowadays. In-game report button, VAC, VACNet, Prime MM, Trust Factor, etc... are the other systems they use, but replacing the community with algorithms didn't really happen.
- amalcon 5y ago
  There is a legit phenomenon in chess of "assistants" that are literally just Stockfish telling you which moves to play. People still want to play chess against untrusted opponents. Real-life chess tournaments generally make people surrender their electronics at the door for this very reason. Fortunately, most cheaters don't know how or are not trying that hard to hide, and are identified by pattern recognition. It's not that big a problem in practice. It's still universally considered cheating.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
caymanjim 5y ago
It'd be great if clients could be completely untrusted, but the reality is that it's impractical--if not impossible--to have the server dictate what's visible. Games rely on client-side rendering to determine if you can see something. In milliseconds-matter FPS games, there's no way that the server can calculate whether you can see someone poke their head around the corner or whether you're using wall hack to see them in advance. Human reaction time is way too fast, and even great networking is too slow for that to be effective, even if there were enough computing power server-side to run all the numbers. I can't even think of a way that things like aimbots could be prevented server-side; it's hard enough just to detect them.
- Sebb767 5y ago
  > but the reality is that it's impractical--if not impossible--to have the server dictate what's visible. Gamestreaming (Stadia etc) shows that this absolutely is possible. It might not be feasible due to players on bad connections and hardware cost (in fact, the reason that games do so few checks serverside is hardware cost), but it's not something impossible anymore. > I can't even think of a way that things like aimbots could be prevented server-side; it's hard enough just to detect them. Pattern detection can, things like following enemy movements through walls or extreme precision. I agree that it's easier to check for running software on the client, but this is error prone as well and can also be defeated by a sophisticated enough hacker.
  - caymanjim 5y ago
    > Gamestreaming (Stadia etc) shows that this absolutely is possible. It might not be feasible due to players on bad connections and hardware cost (in fact, the reason that games do so few checks serverside is hardware cost), but it's not something impossible anymore. That's a fair point, and maybe we're closer than I think, but I don't think that fully-streamed games demonstrate that we're there yet. At the risk of sounding too elitist, those games aren't "hardcore". The things that streamed game players expect and will put up with are a far cry from the things that hardcore gamers expect. A serious Counter-Strike player wants things to operate as close to the limits of human reaction time as possible. People can typically react (as in press a button) in response to visual stimuli in something like 150ms, and to audio stimuli in something like 50ms (I don't have good links for these, so don't hold me to the numbers; there are studies out there). While this may seem like it's slow enough that processing and network delays don't matter too much, when you add those in, you're well into the territory of perceptable delays. Advanced/pro gamers (especially younger ones) are even faster. I don't know that it's possible for fully server-side systems to compensate for this. Anecdotally, I can't tell the difference between 20ms and 70ms latency while gaming (at least not now that I'm old), but I can tell the difference between 20ms and 120ms. If everything had to happen server side, I think it'd be noticeable.

by Siira 5y ago

episteme 5y ago

How would you apply those rules to say, chess? Games should be computers against computers or they are badly designed? That's quite a lot the biggest games of all time that you consider badly designed.

majormajor 5y ago

An "assistant" that generates input to move your player in a sports game, or aims for you in a shooter, is absolutely cheating. You can't make the client untrusted to the point of "I don't trust that the human really pushed the button" or you don't have a useful multiplayer mode anymore. Cheaters are truly ruining everything, here.

mulmen 5y ago
You are right of course. Like so many seemingly intractable moderation problems maybe this is why we shouldn't scale to infinity. YouTube is literally too big to moderate. Maybe this is a feature of humanity. What's wrong with more, smaller communities that have a dang to keep everyone in line? Other than the unfortunate lack of dangs in the world. Back in my day CS servers were mostly privately run. If you were caught cheating you got banned. If you appeared to be cheating (you were too good) you also got banned. From the perspective of the players on the server those are the same thing. Communities formed on servers with similar skill levels and recognized players. Cheating in that kind of environment becomes extremely risky from a social perspective. You could piss off your actual friends. There wasn't a need for rank-based matchmaking or anti-cheat or anything like that, you just eventually found a place you fit in and could have fun. Valve tried to replace that with algorithms but maybe they should "crowd source" so to speak, like we did 20 years ago. This is all a lot of words to say that there is a "right size" for a community to form and enable everyone to have a good time. When you get to the point that "technology can't help us" I think that's an indicator that your community is too big.
- hyperhopper 5y ago
  This system is not good either, according to that model, highly skilled players would have no choice but to end up relegated to communities where cheaters run free.
  - mulmen 5y ago
    This is not true, as they can also ban cheaters. Also, anti-cheat software can still be used with private servers.
- throwaways885 5y ago
  > There wasn't a need for rank-based matchmaking or anti-cheat or anything like that, you just eventually found a place you fit in and could have fun. Valve tried to replace that with algorithms but maybe they should "crowd source" so to speak, like we did 20 years ago. They're doing that too. https://blog.counter-strike.net/index.php/overwatch/ https://blog.counter-strike.net/index.php/overwatch/
  - mulmen 5y ago
    Overwatch is not "how we did it 20 yeas ago". It just happens to also be crowd sourced.
    - throwaways885 5y ago
      True, but I guess it's worth mentioning that OW is the primary method of cheater controls nowadays. In-game report button, VAC, VACNet, Prime MM, Trust Factor, etc... are the other systems they use, but replacing the community with algorithms didn't really happen.
amalcon 5y ago
There is a legit phenomenon in chess of "assistants" that are literally just Stockfish telling you which moves to play. People still want to play chess against untrusted opponents. Real-life chess tournaments generally make people surrender their electronics at the door for this very reason. Fortunately, most cheaters don't know how or are not trying that hard to hide, and are identified by pattern recognition. It's not that big a problem in practice. It's still universally considered cheating.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

caymanjim 5y ago

It'd be great if clients could be completely untrusted, but the reality is that it's impractical--if not impossible--to have the server dictate what's visible. Games rely on client-side rendering to determine if you can see something. In milliseconds-matter FPS games, there's no way that the server can calculate whether you can see someone poke their head around the corner or whether you're using wall hack to see them in advance. Human reaction time is way too fast, and even great networking is too slow for that to be effective, even if there were enough computing power server-side to run all the numbers. I can't even think of a way that things like aimbots could be prevented server-side; it's hard enough just to detect them.

Sebb767 5y ago
> but the reality is that it's impractical--if not impossible--to have the server dictate what's visible. Gamestreaming (Stadia etc) shows that this absolutely is possible. It might not be feasible due to players on bad connections and hardware cost (in fact, the reason that games do so few checks serverside is hardware cost), but it's not something impossible anymore. > I can't even think of a way that things like aimbots could be prevented server-side; it's hard enough just to detect them. Pattern detection can, things like following enemy movements through walls or extreme precision. I agree that it's easier to check for running software on the client, but this is error prone as well and can also be defeated by a sophisticated enough hacker.
- caymanjim 5y ago
  > Gamestreaming (Stadia etc) shows that this absolutely is possible. It might not be feasible due to players on bad connections and hardware cost (in fact, the reason that games do so few checks serverside is hardware cost), but it's not something impossible anymore. That's a fair point, and maybe we're closer than I think, but I don't think that fully-streamed games demonstrate that we're there yet. At the risk of sounding too elitist, those games aren't "hardcore". The things that streamed game players expect and will put up with are a far cry from the things that hardcore gamers expect. A serious Counter-Strike player wants things to operate as close to the limits of human reaction time as possible. People can typically react (as in press a button) in response to visual stimuli in something like 150ms, and to audio stimuli in something like 50ms (I don't have good links for these, so don't hold me to the numbers; there are studies out there). While this may seem like it's slow enough that processing and network delays don't matter too much, when you add those in, you're well into the territory of perceptable delays. Advanced/pro gamers (especially younger ones) are even faster. I don't know that it's possible for fully server-side systems to compensate for this. Anecdotally, I can't tell the difference between 20ms and 70ms latency while gaming (at least not now that I'm old), but I can tell the difference between 20ms and 120ms. If everything had to happen server side, I think it'd be noticeable.