6 ms·

I wish there was some well respected third party reputation service that I could prove my identity to (government id, utility statements, etc) and then all game

• beebmam 5y ago
  This is probably the best solution I've seen around anti-cheat solutions. I also think this is the best approach to prevent abuse on social media. I can't be the only one sick of what a sewer the internet, like multiplayer gaming and especially social media, has become.
  • neoromantique 5y ago
    So, like that black mirror episode?
    • VRay 5y ago
      yeah, no shit You guys can just move to South Korea or China if you want to live with that authoritarian BS
      • oehtXRwMkIs 5y ago
        China I understand, but what's up with pairing it with South Korea?
        • deleted 5y ago
          [deleted]
        • sudosysgen 5y ago
          Because SK also does it?
        • Danieru 5y ago
          South Korea has government ids linked to game accounts and cheating is illegal in the go to jail sense.
  • fletchowns 5y ago
    Being able to play Call of Duty without people screaming the N word into my ears regularly would be amazing. Intolerance to hate speech could be something enforced by this hypothetical service as well. Sure I can turn off the death mic, but there's been some really amazing interactions though it as well. For those not aware, the death mic in CoD is a feature where the instant you frag somebody in game, it turns their mic on, so you can hear their very candid reaction. Lots of times it's things like "no way what a shot how'd that guy get me!". Such a fun feature, if it wasn't for people that just utter the most offensive things imaginable on it.
    • a1369209993 5y ago
      > it turns their mic on, Well that's horrifying. I'm glad I don't use Windows, and I'm glad my computer physically does not have a microphone for malware to enable.
      • Kaze404 5y ago
        I'm not sure how the system works, but I think it's safe to assume that the user needs to have enabled their microphone first for this to work.
      • fletchowns 5y ago
        You can disable it if you'd like, but nearly everybody leaves it on because it's a pretty fun feature most of the time :)
    • VRay 5y ago
      Have you ever glanced at the Facebook comments under a news article? It did nothing at all to stop online toxicity when they tied your online persona to your identity, photograph, the identity of all your friends and family, etc. Plenty of pictures of smiling grandfathers holding babies next to N-word-laden rants out there
      • fletchowns 5y ago
        It's not just the tying of ones online identity to their real life identity that would mitigate this issue though. It's the fact that if a punishment is doled out (voice comms restricted for hate speech, or a ban issued for cheating), then you could be certain that the person isn't just going to register a new account and keep doing it, because the barrier of registering a new account would be so much higher (having to prove your identity to my theoretical reputation service).
• iratewizard 5y ago
  It would also be nice if people were able to use cheats in a game against other people with cheats. It would be very enjoyable to watch battle of the bots in games and have people pit their programming skills against each other like this.
  • fletchowns 5y ago
    I seem to recall a certain game that had a shadowban system that just put all the cheaters in the same lobbies together. Might be misremembering that though.
    • mgdlbp 5y ago
      I recall rumour that the relatively recent Fall Guys had such a system. A quick search seemingly shows confirmation from an official Twitter account.
    • Tom4hawk 5y ago
      Titanfall: https://www.forbes.com/sites/danielnyegriffiths/2014/03/27/titanfalls-anti-cheat-system-activates-is-beautiful-and-hilarious/?sh=5cecc5c635eb https://www.forbes.com/sites/danielnyegriffiths/2014/03/27/t...
  • sudosysgen 5y ago
    Those exist. They're called HvH. You can search it on youtube, and for some games there are HvH servers you can spectate :)
  • MMS21 5y ago
    CSGO cheaters actually do this it’s called HvH (hack vs hack)
• jbman223 5y ago
  Sending away all of your PII to be verified in games isn’t much better (in terms of intrusiveness) than running anti-cheat software in the first place. Additionally, will it be any harder to get around a system like this than a traditional anti-cheat system? Theoretically - for the average player at least, it might make cheating worse - assuming the cheater runs their cheats in a realistic way, in your world, there is now no detection software pinpointing the cheaters!
  • fletchowns 5y ago
    > Sending away all of your PII to be verified in games isn’t much better (in terms of intrusiveness) than running anti-cheat software in the first place. In my mind it's much better than running N number of different anti-cheat software on my machine, assuming that this reputation management entity is very well respected. Again, it'd be very hard to get a system like this right, but I think it is certainly possible.
• dpedu 5y ago
  > Getting caught cheating in one game then impacts your reputation in _all_ games. This sounds pretty similar to Steam's VAC (Valve Anti Cheat) system aside from how widespread you want the system to be. IIRC, owners of Source-based game servers can set a flag to allow/deny users with a VAC ban. I don't think this is available to non-source games, which would be needed for your idea. > How do VAC bans relate to phone numbers? > VAC bans are applied to all accounts sharing a phone number at the time of the infraction. > Can I move my items and games to a different Steam account? > No. https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/647C-5CC1-7EA9-3C29 https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/647C-5CC1-7EA9-3C...
• f0e4c2f7 5y ago
  It doesn't work across multiple games but Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has a system where you enter your phone number to verify your account and then can queue only with other verified players.
  • fletchowns 5y ago
    The phone number is not much of a barrier. I'm a verified player and only queue with other verified players, and I encounter cheaters regularly in CSGO.
  • MMS21 5y ago
    Cheaters already purchase verified accounts.
• dfxm12 5y ago
  You want to open up yourself to risk for your identity being stolen and normalize handing out personally identifiable information just to maybe make it harder for cheaters to get in on some of your games? I don't think the idea has merit. See how long it is taking the Real ID act to become enforced. People barely trust the government with this info, with the ability to get on a plane (among other things) at stake.
  • bqmjjx0kac 5y ago
    Thanks to the magic of cryptography, it's possible to prove your identity to someone else without enabling them to impersonate you. For instance, the third party gives you a nonce, you sign it with your private key, and they verify it with your public key.
    • yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
      Then I can make one key per game.
      • AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
        Self-defeating, since part of the point is that your reputation is based on multiple games, so by only playing one game your account already looks suspicious.
        • JetSpiegel 5y ago
          What's suspicious about only playing one online game?
          • AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
            Nothing really, unless people are already suspicious that you're cheating, then having no other games on your account looks extra suspect. The system isn't meant for objective measurement, so if people think you're cheating and you don't have a reputation score to back up your claim that you aren't then you'll probably get banned pretty quickly.
• armchairhacker 5y ago
  As a casual player another way to alleviate cheating is good matchmaking, so cheaters all rank up to other cheaters. This doesn’t help higher-level players though. Some cheats run outside the OS and are basically indistinguishable from regular players. So anti-cheat won’t work. Good matchmaking + still catching cheats for impossible stuff + real tournaments requiring in-person attendance or heavy monitoring, should still work pretty well.
  • fletchowns 5y ago
    In a world of free to play games, cheaters just keep making new accounts. I don't think it can be solved simply by matchmaking.
• max46 5y ago
  this type of solution sounds good until you get hit by a false positive in a game. happened to me on pugb and the only way I could get my account back was with a paypal charge back. It's very typical that game companies refuse to tell users what triggered it or how to avoid it in the future. For all I know, it could have been a scam from the devs. I can live with a 40 - 60$ loss on a game, but losing the ability to play all games on protected servers forever would be really bad
  • fletchowns 5y ago
    Yup it's a valid point, that's why I made sure to call out in my original comment. So many little details that would need to be done right in order to make it work. It's an impossible task for every game studio to get all those details right, that's why I think it needs to be centralized. That way game studios can just worry about making cool games, and not having to waste resources on this endless arms race of cheating.
• Kaze404 5y ago
  I had someone invade the League of Legends account I used for almost a decade after me not using it for a year or so and cheat to their hearts content. That caused the account to get permanently banned with absolutely zero help from Riot Games' support on how to get it revised. In your system I'd never be able to play an online game again, only because a single account of mine used an email / password combination that leaked god knows where. Needless to say I'm not a fan.
  • fletchowns 5y ago
    Yes this is a very real issue that would need to be solved by the service I proposed, I specifically called out the appeals process and account hijacking resolution in my original comment due to their importance. It needs to be centralized because it's an impossible task to ask every game studio to get all these things right.
• phone8675309 5y ago
  That sounds like a great way to get lots of non-cheating players to give up online gaming once it becomes mandatory for the majority of online play (which it would if it took off).
  • esyir 5y ago
    I'm not sure if you actually believe that. If the population I've observed is any way representative, we'd be more than happy to give full root level access if it means the cheaters actually vanish. You might be severely underestimating how much comp gamers hate cheaters.
    • phone8675309 5y ago
      > I'm not sure if you actually believe that. First of all, fuck you for assuming bad faith. > we'd be more than happy to give full root level access if it means the cheaters actually vanish Except it won’t - cheaters will move on to using other methods. There already exist external, undetectable methods for cheating that involve running the cheat software on other machines. Requiring this level of access is just pouring fuel on the fire of the arms race here, and the potential harm it will cause to non-cheaters is worse than whatever harm getting pwned by skriptkiddies in your bang bang shooty shoot live service Skinner box simulator can cause. This is an attempt at a technical solution to a social problem - you can’t patch meat and brain. > You might be severely underestimating how much comp gamers hate cheaters. Actually, I’m not. I’ve been on streams where competitive gamers meltdown and threaten to kill their opponents. But just like murdering people who beat you is morally wrong so is forcing everyone who wants to play a game to effectively give over control of their machines to the game makers through intrusive, kernel level anti-cheat.