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Activision’s faulty anti-cheat software

• mdswanson 4y ago
  Trying to spread the word on Activision's faulty anti-cheat software and how they're permanently banning players with no explanation or recourse.
  • zebracanevra 4y ago
    This scenario is the same for nearly every multiplayer video game. Here's a recent example in the Russian game Escape from Tarkov[1]. A player kills a developer and gets banned moments after for cheating. Luckily he manages to catch it on video, and posts it to reddit. He's subsequently unbanned. Why was he banned? "false alarm triggered". When asked for more details, BSG responds "Sorry, can’t tell you cause it’s part of anti cheat system, hope you understand". Which is ridiculous. BSG is in Russia and therefore untouchable, but I don't have much hope for these other companies like ATVI who are doing the sort of abuse. [1]. https://www.reddit.com/r/EscapefromTarkov/comments/zawwc5/i_killed_an_admin_and_he_banned_me_midgame/ https://www.reddit.com/r/EscapefromTarkov/comments/zawwc5/i_...
    • Gigachad 4y ago
      > "Sorry, can’t tell you cause it’s part of anti cheat system, hope you understand". Which is ridiculous. This is how all fraud detection works. Outside of gaming as well. That doesn't mean the previous action was right, but the fact they can't tell you why means nothing at all. The whole industry is built on secrecy and having a few hidden tricks in the bag.
      • Arrath 4y ago
        The cynic inside me thinks that the reason gaming companies fall back on this excuse is to help keep the costumer facing/dispute resolution staff as thinly manned as possible.
      • Macha 4y ago
        If your local GameStop posted a security guard outside the store to confiscate games from suspected shoplifters, and only had an error rate of 0.01%, I doubt people would be happy for GameStop to tell the 1 in 10,000 people who's newly purchased games have just been stolen that they can't discuss why and to just deal with it or GameStop will send someone else around to their house to steal all their other games.
    • hsuduebc2 4y ago
      Not sure if russian custom of abusing power above weaker is same as Activision absolute incompetence to develop functional software.
    • dubcee349 4y ago
      Don't spend money on products or services out of russia. We should all be avoiding that at this point.
      • ripper1138 4y ago
        The game is 5 years old.
        • mrguyorama 4y ago
          Russia invaded crimea in 2014
      • hsuduebc2 4y ago
        You mean which come from russia right?
    • charcircuit 4y ago
      It's not ridiculous. If he said the exact thing which triggered the flag a cheat author could tune their cheat to always stay under what gets flagged.
    • Hikikomori 4y ago
      Could also be a coincidence, actual devs have not commented yet afaik. The banned guy can contact battleye and try to get unbanned if it was false, has happened before (usually a group of players with something in common are banned, last time it was s specific motherboard or a driver for it).
    • GaryNumanVevo 4y ago
      EFT is also very different in that they rely on a large grey market to drive sales. Real Money Trading is a huge problem, people will buy a cheat, use them to obtain lots of in game money, and then sell this in-game money to people for FIAT. If EFT bans a cheater, they're effectively getting another sale, because the cheater will come back and make money off the grey market once more. The result is that you have tons of cheaters, and EFT only needs to make broad strokes efforts at curbing them to keep existing players happy.
• blibble 4y ago
  if it's a recent purchase and you've done nothing wrong: hit them where it hurts and issue a chargeback at least that way they're not profiting from their scummy behaviour
  • snoopy_telex 4y ago
    This sadly is a bad idea, as it’ll get your entire store account banned (Steam, battle.net, etc). Chargebacks work great until the whole account matters.
    • blibble 4y ago
      steam don't and honestly who cares these days if their battle.net account is lost (as long as you get some of your money back)
      • fbdab103 4y ago
        I have actually been thinking if I should start a new Steam account or several. The blast radius of losing the current one for some reason would be devastating. Also wondering if it would be at all effective (not too hard to see the same credit card used between two accounts).
        • pcblues 4y ago
          Steam could alleviate the new account requirement by having a "cheat" counter. If you do more than, say, five actions that look like a cheat, then a real person on their side looks at the problem. Or, have a cheat counter that waits until twenty or fifty cheating actions before auto-banning, if they want to make it cheaper for them.
    • DaiPlusPlus 4y ago
      > it’ll get your entire store account banned Surely, taking escalatory retribution like that is illegal, somewhere...I hope...? ----- Non-escalatory retribution would be banning you from the game you filed a chargeback for - I can't get mad over that. But an online store doing unilateral revocation of access and licenses for a consumer's entire library (without refunding it 100%) in response to a single chargeback is just begging for countries' consumer protection agencies to come knocking, and even if that's a term in the store's EULA I can't see how they could be upheld by a court as an conscionable (and therefore legally enforcible) contract clause - especially given the dim-view to which online and click-through EULAs/TOS are viewed by most countries courts' today anyway. Speaking as someone with too much time on my hands (thanks to a cushy job, I'm pleased to say, rather than funemployment) I secretely want to be dicked-over by a megacorp like this so I can get amusement (and a worthwhile life experience) by availing myself of the court system to hold these companies to account. Now I just need to find a similar way to make Microsoft undo the crappy shell in Windows 11.
• Matheus28 4y ago
  In this case, it really looks like Activision's Anti-Cheat is broken and banning people unfairly (if we can trust OP, which I have no reason not to). A related problem though is that game developers have a really hard time trusting anyone who says they've been banned unfairly. Almost everyone who gets banned for valid reasons will claim they did nothing wrong, etc. This is especially true for delayed bans, as the person doesn't even realize that their account got flagged to be banned weeks before the actual ban took place. Given that problem, when a developer gets reports of users being banned unfairly, it's very easy to ignore them as salty cheaters. Ideally there is a way for them to know exactly what tripped the anti-cheat, but sometimes it's hard as the client has to covertly tell the server to ban itself.
  • snoopy_telex 4y ago
    The console bans should be investigated cause that’s a strong signal that the software is just wrong.
    • AmericanChopper 4y ago
      Not as strong As you might think. The Cronus is a very strong cheating device for consoles, and it’s ubiquitous enough to be sold in some big-box retail stores.
      • SkyPuncher 4y ago
        I don't think it's reasonable to group Cronus in with software based cheats. Cronus certainly makes many things easier, but it does not give you magic. You still have to be decent at the game for a Cronus to be of any help.
        • AmericanChopper 4y ago
          Cronus gives a strong advantage to the cheater, basically turning recoil off. Sure there are more powerful cheats, but cheating is cheating and if you’re going to ban cheaters then Cronus users should rightfully be included in that. “This particular cheat only helps people that are already good at the game” is also an ancient trope as far as rationalizing cheating goes, so hope you’re enjoying your Cronus lol.
• revolvingocelot 4y ago
  This is a feature! You and the other cheaters, whether you're actually baby or bathwater, will simply have to buy it again!! IMO the only winning move is not to play. I loved calladoody back in university, but you've got to move with the times, yeah? OTOH, I'm not the one who really changed; I'm still all about dedicated servers, but they haven't been seen since Modern Warfare 1. The winning move for the anticheat dev is shortly going to be not to play, either. It's one thing to implement increasingly invasive rootkits to find out who's watching your game's memory, but I've heard tell of devices that sit between the PC and monitor, using specialized ML to click M1 and fire when an enemy is detected in one's crosshairs. How can you check for something like that?
  • Gigachad 4y ago
    >How can you check for something like that? I've heard of work around using machine learning to analyze players and compare them to the actions of cheaters. It's not flawless but it can give some kind of probability of cheating so you can match make cheaters with other suspected cheaters.
    • 0x0000000 4y ago
      CSGO does this very well to my understanding.
      • mrguyorama 4y ago
        Ah yes, vacnet, which couldn't even reliably ban spin-botters for YEARS. Vacnet is an abysmal failure and should be seen as such. The game is still brimming with cheaters, and you still basically cannot play a game on valve's official servers with high ratings unless you are willing to get matched with a cheater 1 out of 3 times and waste hours on unwinnable games that you get punished for abandoning.
    • revolvingocelot 4y ago
      Then we still end up here: someone who's naturally skilled gets some lucky kills, and the Computer Says No, so now he's out a game license. Appealing modern anticheat decisions is hard enough, but once it's less "the computer noticed your memory-editing" and more "the computer decided you need to be banned", it'll be impossible. TFA seems to suggest that future is Real Soon, if not now. So go play games with dedicated servers, and local admins who can only locally ban anyone suspect. If players don't like it they can leave for another dedicated server.
• counttheforks 4y ago
  These bans also block the single player mode?! That is absolutely absurd. False bans for multiplayer aren't anything new (unfortunately), but also blocking the singleplayer mode, making the purchased product 100% unusable seems criminal.
  • meibo 4y ago
    This is what happens if you "buy" Activision/Blizzard software - they're driving the service model to the max and will exploit it as much and as deeply as possible. They're the worst of the worst and anyone familiar with their games will tell you the same. In the end, there's nothing you can do but to put your money into games that respect you as a customer, which is very rare in AAA. These companies hate you. No one will listen to you and nothing will change, as it's extremely profitable. No one will regulate it. In 3 weeks, a dev there will notice that some updater code can break game files which flags people's accounts or something like that, it'll be quietly patched and everybody will forget about it.
    • TAForObvReasons 4y ago
      Google is the worst of the worst. At least you can easily choose not to play Activison games. It's much harder to choose not to participate in the Google ecosystem, and actions in one service or account can have deep repercussions to other services and "associated" accounts. Appealing to an actual Google support human being is seemingly impossible
    • blue039 4y ago
      its not just Activision/Blizzard. Single player bans are in a lot of AAAs. > In the end, there's nothing you can do but to put your money into games that respect Could always pick up a copy of IDA... > In 3 weeks, a dev there will notice that some updater code can break game files which flags people's accounts or something like that, it'll be quietly patched and everybody will forget about it. As a side note if you want some fun you should fire up wireshark when you're playing a game and watch how much "metadata" is sent from your PC to the game company. They know more about you than your doctor in some cases. EasyAntiCheat and Denuvo seem to be the worst offenders.
• SkyPuncher 4y ago
  > And moderators of popular forums like r/ModernWarfareII refuse to allow posts that try to increase awareness of the issue, again, likely assuming we’re all a bunch of whining cheaters. I don’t think they’re aware of the disservice they’re doing to their community by actively suppressing these reports (or conspiratorially, they’re influenced by Activision itself). I don't think this is very conspiratorially. It's very clear that the mods are coordinating with Activision on releases and information. I've had several posts taken down over the years because they don't tow-the-line.
  • bfgoodrich 4y ago
    Game community subs, especially for FPS games, often ban posts about cheaters, bugs or things like the submission. Not because they're conspiring with the maker, nefariously hiding negative info, but because if they don't the sub turns into a grievance filled "help forum". People who had never visited the forum before, and likely never will again, drop in because they're mad and want a complaint venue where they can gripe. When a game has hundreds of thousands or millions of players, that sort of thing starts to swamp the sub and soon there is no community or sustained conversation and instead it's all 360 no scope drive by complaint drops. I absolutely commiserate with the OP, and it 100% legitimately sounds like they got caught up in a flawed anti-cheat (maybe exacerbated by a storage system issue on their end, making it think they were trying to modify the system files). But on the other hand, and they recognize this, all the actual cheaters also do the I didn't do nothing routine. When a game is rife with cheaters (PubG, MW, Squad, etc), pretty soon you have a really skeptical approach to those appeals.
• jakogut 4y ago
  This has been going on since the release of MW2019. I myself was banned after trying to launch and play the single player campaign on Linux through Wine/Proton. I was unable to even launch the game to play the campaign again on Windows after that, and I no longer use Windows at all. https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/nfeupc/modern_warfare_2019_account_permanently_banned https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/nfeupc/modern... I emailed Activision support back and forth more than a dozen times explaining the issue, finally resulting in them saying they were escalating to another team. I sent them another four emails over three months, asking if there was any update, before asking if there was even anybody left alive at the company that my emails were reaching, with no response. I really enjoyed the MW2019 campaign, but I won't be buying another game from Activision.
  • noasaservice 4y ago
    You should have charge backed for defective/sabotaged goods.
    • jakogut 4y ago
      Unfortunately, this ban happened close to a year after the original purchase, and my intent and goal was to play the single player campaign of the game I purchased, not get my money back. Not a good look for Activision, in my opinion.
    • Thaxll 4y ago
      The game is sold for Windows.
  • amatecha 4y ago
    Good timing, I was just today considering playing Diablo III on my Steam Deck (or trying to)... based on your experience, I guess that might be a bad idea to even try.
    • emkoemko 4y ago
      no Diablo III and D2R work fine on wine, they don't have anti cheat like their shooters do
• hsuduebc2 4y ago
  Ban frequently comes with ban reason "Caserma rhino" which looks like that they must know what happened given this weird specific string as you can see on picture below. https://imageup.me/i96 https://imageup.me/i96 I as a player can say that game frequently crashes, shares a lot of bugs with previous version of call of duty and overall is just a copy od mw1 with worse UI and technical state.
• nperez 4y ago
  I started the wiki linked in the article (codconsumer.org). Long time HN lurker and was pleasantly surprised to see this here! I was only banned for a week, but I'm absolutely certain that there was nothing sketchy happening on my side. It's pretty annoying when they're charging money for time-limited events like Battle Passes, then you lose some of that time. Of course, it's a much bigger problem for the many who have been permabanned and don't know why. And it's still happening to others. I would really like for this to end quietly with some better policies on account reviews, and more transparency on the findings of those reviews. I don't think that's too much to ask after being locked out of a $70 purchase. So far they have been completely silent on the matter. So the wiki stays up and we hope to someday get a word out of them.
  • dylan604 4y ago
    if there's a thing called permabanned and they still take the money from the banned person, that should be criminal
    • amatecha 4y ago
      Paying a few bucks doesn't give you a free pass to, say, spam racist epithets over and over in chat, or sabotage every multiplayer game you join by running into the enemy team every single match. That said, yeah, "being blocked from a $70 game for no actual discernible reason" should be prevented by some form of consumer rights that can't be waived by agreeing to a EULA.
      • nperez 4y ago
        The frustrating thing about this is that it's still extremely common for people to spam the n-word over voice chat, that's been a problem for years, and I haven't noticed any significant progress in reducing their numbers.
        • kevingadd 4y ago
          Riot Games recently started testing an AI based system for detecting slurs and other abuse in voice chat, we'll see if they announce results
• bearjaws 4y ago
  This happened to me for a different reason, but it was the same level of frustrating. After months of playing MW and Black Ops, one day I queue up with friends and after waiting 5+ minutes no server would be found. We try over and over finally we realize its me. Googling around shows that I am "Shadow Banned" and everyone is like "go away cheater" online. I've been playing online games with an in game name that contains the word "Erotica" for a while now (4+ years) and have had zero issues. Turns out the word "Erotica" is BANNED by Activision, and they synced their identity management with Blizzard it got flagged. I found ONE random thread on Reddit where a guy ran into the same problem and gave a link to directly log into their system. Once logged in I got "Your username contains adult content and must be changed". After changing it, and waiting 3 days, it 'synced' and my account was unbanned. The whole thing was absolutely stupid, I had paid $60 and could not play any of their games. It pretty much ruined the game for me, I haven't given them a dollar since.
  • robswc 4y ago
    That is insane. Had similar issues but not really banned... just "error-less" issues coming up that would lead you to believe the problem is something else entirely.
  • ryndshn 4y ago
    wow, amazing you were able to figure that out... most people would have given up
  • newZWhoDis 4y ago
  • nomilk 4y ago
    It usually doesn't take a lot of work for engineers to do some brainstorming around who will be affected and send a direct email letting users know what's up. That would have saved you days of fumbling around and frustration. I have a growing enthusiasm for companies that consistently care for users, and conversely a callous distain for companies that don't.
    • 4y ago
• SkyPuncher 4y ago
  This author sounds like me minus a ban. I really enjoy Call of Duty. Got extremely good at it in high school, along with my group of friends. Since then, I've had to move away and CoD has kept us connected multiple times per week. It's been a very enjoyable game for well over a decade. In the past few years, it's become extremely clear to me that something is seriously wrong with CoD - and perhaps Activision as a whole. I'm willing to explain much of it away as "it's hard to run a big game at scale", but some the bugs are just inexcusable. Activision offers little to no insight or recourse when things break. I have 700 hours in MW2/WZ1. I can't even stand to play the new game. It's just too broken.
  • ahmedalsudani 4y ago
    If you can convince your crew to try something new, there are some great FPS games nowadays. I've enjoyed those, though I haven't been able to put in anywhere near your number of hours. - Squad - Escape from Tarkov - Rising Storm 2: Vietnam
    • doodlesdev 4y ago
      Squad is extremelly buggy and badly optimized though. Still my favorite game. Ever.
    • lmedinas 4y ago
      BTW... sometime ago there were people on Forums convinced they got banned on EFT due to WSL and Virtualbox, as there were hacks using VMs. Worth take a look first. EFT requires a huge amount of free time, it feels like a day job. I would consider that before putting time on that game. Its nothing like COD.
      • dncornholio 4y ago
        Never do multiplayer on Linux/WINE or on a VM.
    • capableweb 4y ago
      Beauty with CoD is that you can turn it on, play for 10 minutes and then move on to other stuff in your life. None of those games (except maybe Rising Storm 2: Vietnam, I'm not familiar with that one) look like you'll be able to do so. CoD is essentially a arcade FPS, while the ones you listed are more on the "realistic" side of things.
• Ungelled 4y ago
  I purchased the game and was met with casmera-rhino before even playing a match or seeing a screen to chose what to play I payed $70+ for the game Ive been playing cod for years and years and my stats arent crazy im a casual player and not even a second look at my account after I appealed my ban on activisions website my fate was sealed permanently banned account with over $300+ worth of microtransactions and games and im unable to appeal and Im not sure what to do Im researching class action lawyers and getting advice and how to get my account or my money back from the company if anyone has any advice or is currently talking to a lawyer or some type of representative id really appreciate some info, thank you.
  • Firmwarrior 4y ago
    You can do a chargeback or take them to small claims court, but either way you're going to be blacklisted from them forever So it's time to find a new game to play, I guess..
  • GaryNumanVevo 4y ago
    Did you recently buy a refurbished piece of hardware like an SSD or something? Activision has hardware based bans, I was reading some reports of people buying a used SSD or even mixed-new-used stock SSD's that people had cheated on and then returned.
• EMIRELADERO 4y ago
  This seems like it could result in actual lawsuits. While the license for the game exists, a court wouldn't look too kindly on this situation. Courts have the power to void contracts if they're against "public policy", so that should be something everyone should keep in mind.
• WirelessGigabit 4y ago
  I'm thinking to create a new account per game. This allows me to * issue a chargeback without worries * sell the account when I'm done with the game Just the same with Google devices. NEVER buy a Google Pixel on your own account, as issuing a chargeback will cause them to block your whole account.
  • Thaxll 4y ago
    Chargeback should be last resort, compagny pay for it and will basically close everything related to that account / credit card.
    • lmm 4y ago
      Chargeback should be a last resort but it should also be something you can reliably fall back on if the company fails to handle your complaint adequately. And the likes of Google seem to do that 100% of the time.
  • nixgeek 4y ago
    This essentially doesn’t work now either, unfortunately. A lot of the latest AAA games will only allow you to play multiplayer if your account ALSO has a verified phone number attached, and they only let you attach each number to a single account, plus they filter out phones which are not postpaid (so no using services like Twilio).
    • aussieshibe 4y ago
      How do they differentiate prepaid and postpaid phone numbers? Is there some way they can check with the provider for a given number? Seems less than ideal from a privacy perspective.
      • thn-gap 4y ago
        When they launched Overwatch 2, you couldn't play if you tried to verify your account with a prepaid phone. This was problematic since they closed Overwatch 1 servers (it's a paid, online only game) for Overwatch 2, a free to play game. Some people found themselves that they could no longer play the Overwatch franchise after having bought the $40 original game because of this. This was later rolled back and they allowed prepaid phones. So they can definitely distinguish them.
• deleted 4y ago
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• buildbuildbuild 4y ago
  This is a consumer rights issue across our industry. Algorithmic customer support “decisions” should always be appealable to a human audience. My Google account was banned years ago, “computer says no” - all of my attempts to appeal failed. I at no point broke their terms. Nobody cares, I lost all of my data. I hope that a class action prevails against Activision. And I hope that across our industry consumers receive more robust rights. Not being able to reach a human at your company quickly escalates from a being cost optimization, to outright fraud.
  • charcircuit 4y ago
    He was able to appeal.
    • LadyCailin 4y ago
      Yes, and it was denied, with no explanation, no ability to defend against claims, etc. If there is monetary loss, then a proper appeals process should be put in place. If they refunded the money, then that’s one thing, but they kept the money, and so this is theft.
    • nperez 4y ago
      Their stated policy on appeals is that your ban will only be overturned if it was the result of a compromised account
  • Firmwarrior 4y ago
    Yeah.. you can do a chargeback or take them to small claims court, but then you'll be blacklisted as a customer for life. There needs to be a better process
• Thaxll 4y ago
  Anti cheat is hard, very hard, and you will always those kind of false positive. What I can say is that a lot of people say they don't cheat but they actually cheat.
  • hakube 4y ago
    You can find actual cheaters streaming on Twitch and they can go for months and months without getting banned
  • xeyownt 4y ago
    Nice theory until you are treated as a cheater. Only acceptable anti-cheat is the one with ZERO false positive.
    • Thaxll 4y ago
      Which is impossible so you prefer to have games with cheaters then?
• dogben 4y ago
  Again, pirates get the better product.
• robloxbanned 4y ago
  On the topic of unfair bans, Roblox bans kid accounts for having malicious scripts hidden in models in Roblox Studio. They can detect it in the kid’s game, but allow it in their toolbox. Accounts with premium membership are not refunded for the remaining time left. https://www.reddit.com/r/ROBLOXBans/comments/vqw1sj/my_6_year_old_roblox_account_got_banned_18_days/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ROBLOXBans/comments/vqw1sj/my_6_yea... I created a Tell HN thread at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33861309 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33861309
  • aussieshibe 4y ago
    On the topic of Roblox, it sounds pretty awful generally. Microtransactions don't (IMHO) have any place in a game for young kids. In a previous job I dealt with a police request for information after a pre-teenager child sent an email to their school principal saying there was a bomb in the school that would explode and kill everyome unless they were given some number of Robux so they could buy a hat or something for their character.
  • dncornholio 4y ago
    What's unfair about banning malicious scripts exactly?
    • robloxbanned 4y ago
      > My 6 year old roblox account got banned 18 days ago because I made a game and a free model in the game had a script hidden from the owner that showed hentai on the screen. Roblox Studio has a toolbox of free community models. Malicious scripts are hidden in models. Kids import free models in their games and get banned for malicious scripts.
• nitwit005 4y ago
  It's worth keeping in mind that this is a company hit by government lawsuits alleging sexual harassment, discrimination and retaliation, plus a staff walkout for similar reasons. You should expect them to behave poorly, as they have a history of doing so. It's unfortunate, but you just have to give up on buying their games.
• ngneer 4y ago
  SGX is probably not the right answer, but there have been suggestions to that effect, https://lifeasageek.github.io/papers/seonghyun-blackmirror.pdf https://lifeasageek.github.io/papers/seonghyun-blackmirror.p... https://web.cse.ohio-state.edu/~lin.3021/file/SYSTEX16.pdf https://web.cse.ohio-state.edu/~lin.3021/file/SYSTEX16.pdf
• blue039 4y ago
  Unfortunately we gave up our right to own software when we let companies own the servers. Back in the day you could get banned from a server and go find somewhere else to play. Now you'll get banned for life, and in some cases, even banned from the single player mode. Sorry, no refunds! There's a reason pirate crews are hailed as heroes...and it's not the free software. Games legitimately work better when they are cracked almost 100% of the time.
  • fastball 4y ago
    How would we have "not let them"?
    • blue039 4y ago
      Stop buying the games. It's really that simple. I can't understand the people who say "well, I'll try this game out but I hope they fix it next time". That's not how business works.
      • fastball 4y ago
        Only a handful of games in the history of gaming have had open source / openly available multiplayer servers. Nobody is playing multiplayer games if users vote with their wallets like you want them to. And the reason for this is because multiplayer games are hard to maintain and without a profit motive it becomes long-term unviable. I used to play a lot of a game called BZFlag, which was fully open-source etc, but it always struggled to keep up with any amount of advancement in the gaming world because it was entirely built by volunteers with limited time on their hands.
        • amatecha 4y ago
          Well, for some time, the biggest titles in the industry had openly available multiplayer servers (Quake, UT, basically everything on QuakeSpy/GameSpy). I ran a Quake 3 server on my VPS for years on end (I forgot it was even running at one point) for a grand total of $15/year. Effectively zero maintenance and it was set up during a single afternoon of config. Friends and I played on it and it just.. worked... Eventually "players actually getting to do what they want with the software they paid for" somehow became a thing of the past, though I don't really know why. I mean, I can think of reasons, but most of those reasons suck.
• deleted 4y ago
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• notyourwork 4y ago
  > Anyone who’s played (at least the PC version of) Modern Warfare II is fully aware of the instability and bugginess of the release I’ve casually played this game quite a few times since release and not had any issue. Perhaps I’m too casual but I login, hope into a random quick match, shoot, die, repeat and turn off the console when I’m satisfied.
  • JamesSwift 4y ago
    I think console vs PC is definitely one part of the problem. My buddy on console (xbox) definitely experiences much fewer game breaking bugs and crashes than the rest of us in the squad who are on PC.
• Always42 4y ago
  TLDR: Activision has been criticized for its faulty anti-cheat software, which has resulted in permanent and unappealable account bans for players of its game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II. Affected players are unable to access the single-player game, even though they paid $70 or more for it. The bans come with no explanation or ability to communicate with Activision. The issue has been met with "shut up and go away, cheater" responses on social media, and attempts to raise awareness are being suppressed on forums. Players are organizing to file reports with the Better Business Bureau and the Federal Trade Commission.
• deleted 4y ago
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• carlisle_ 4y ago
  >I don’t think they’re aware of the disservice they’re doing to their community by actively suppressing these reports (or conspiratorially, they’re influenced by Activision itself). I think you underestimate the deluge of posts that are made by cheaters pleading their case in a public forum. It's so common that it's basically a meme. I don't blame the moderation policies that prohibit these posts. These posts are typically provocative and often try to riles users up against the developer. Nobody wants to read these posts, you can never be sure they're real and there's nothing a regular user can do except upvote it and subsequently ignore it. There's no good conversation or comments to be found, it's all bad stuff. This is not to say the issue at hand isn't a very real problem. Anecdotally it feels like these kinds of situations are increasing with frequency as developers tire of the inevitable losing fight against cheating and are desperate to show their customers they're taking the problem seriously.
  • voxic11 4y ago
    I think you still do a disservice to players by dismissing all these reports as low quality and impossible to verify. Here is a good counterexample https://www.reddit.com/r/EscapefromTarkov/comments/zawwc5/i_killed_an_admin_and_he_banned_me_midgame/ https://www.reddit.com/r/EscapefromTarkov/comments/zawwc5/i_...
    • carlisle_ 4y ago
      It’s amusing you picked this as an example because the EFT subreddit is notoriously moderated. This one works because it has overwhelming evidence. The author of this post only has a few screenshots and assurances. I imagine these players would have the same experience as the author otherwise.
• aeturnum 4y ago
  Activation is a feted hulk and I hope they collapse under the weight of their misdeeds. Certainly everyone who owns the game has bought the right to play offline. That said, the question of what "owners" are allowed to do in a multi-user product seems genuinely hard. Cheaters (and people who seek 'parasitic' experiences of all kinds) disrupt how the game is intended to be played. Consumer protections were developed for products that don't have that kind of entangled quality.
• ddtaylor 4y ago
  Activision did a similar thing with the completely botched release of Warcraft 3 both the modern Battle.net re-release and the Reforged remake. The TLDR is that if you tried to play most any custom map - even privately - you would reconnect shortly later and find your account permanently banned. In some cases even if you ever actually got to start the custom map, just simply from trying to host a lobby. In my case it was a private lobby with two other friends for the old-school map "Enfos". I filed an appeal/ticket with Blizzard and they gave me an almost identical canned response as from the article and I simply gave up and vowed to never buy another Blizzard game. About 6 months later on a whim I tried to play the game again and it worked, but the entire experience left such a bad taste in my mouth that I have no motivation to participate in this exercise in frustration. The problem is that the mapping community had created some very inventive use of out-of-bounds memory access as a way to use the internal game APIs to accomplish things the game engine supports but isn't exposed to mappers. If you take a close look at almost every "big" map eventually you'll find some level of use of these techniques. The community created a "safe list" of known patterns of OOB memory access so that maps could be "verified" as not doing anything naughty while still also having access to these extra modding features. The worst part? Blizzard was so aware of this situation that they actually re-implemented the OOB memory access in a safe way using known memory offsets. So, they fixed the actual OOB memory access so it shouldn't be possible to use an OOB memory access to crash your game or steal your "cdkey" or similar, but they have whitelisted many useful memory offsets so it's still possible to interact with the game engine in more complex ways. That's the strangest part for me is that they put in a LOT of effort to remain that level of backwards compatibility and then banned players automatically when they tried to use it. Of course absolutely none of this was communicated to regular players in game and of course the forums are a complete shit show. REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
• Sophistifunk 4y ago
  STOP GIVING THEM MONEY
• olliej 4y ago
  It seems like a "you cheated and can no longer play the game" should be mandatorily accompanied by a full refund of the game and any in game purchases - in cash, not coupons, in game currency (because duh), etc. It would sure as heck deal with the "you can't play the game you paid for" nonsense, and if they start putting all "cheaters" in a single set of servers any over-aggressive "you're a cheater" rules will cause people to stop playing the online modes that encourage in game transactions.
  • doodlesdev 4y ago
    The problem with that is it allows the cheater to buy the game again and rinse and repeat. Unfortunatelly monetary loss is the best way to deal with cheaters. Generally the cheaper a game is the more cheaters it has simply because the barrier to entry gets reduced.
    • olliej 4y ago
      The problem is theft of a product that has been purchased. For example, say Tesla were to say we’ll just take back the car without permission if someone complains about it online, that’s a crime: theft. The reason for the crime is irrelevant, if someone has paid for a product you don’t get to retroactively say “nah we’re taking back the thing you paid for, and we aren’t going to return your money”. If you’re offering a contractual service you can halt, but generally have to return at least the prorated amount you have received for services you are no longer offering. A game company can always just block the credit card details (not just the number) from buying the game again, there’s a limit to the number of CCs that a person is going to be able to use. Of course the reality is, cheaters are paying to buy the game again when they get caught, so there’s no actual incentive for activision to actually stop cheaters, just to make them pay again. Which is why they ban the single player mode as well - it’s in their interests to encourage repurchasing.
      • maccard 4y ago
        Revoking access to digital services is as much theft as piracy is - it's not. > Of course the reality is, cheaters are paying to buy the game again when they get caught, so there’s no actual incentive for activision to actually stop cheaters, just to make them pay again. Which is why they ban the single player mode as well - it’s in their interests to encourage repurchasing You've gone off the deep end into conspiracy theory land here i think.
• Sparkyte 4y ago
  Best anti-cheat is to separate your cheaters from your general gamers, if some behavior is detected that indicates they are a cheater temporarily remove them from the same queue as normal players and treat all players they party or queue with the same. In this queue they only get paired against other questionable players. When they themselves or other in this cheater queue report a person enough times temporary ban the user from playing for one week, two weeks, four weeks. Depending on the strikes, but never perma ban.
  • throwaway2037 4y ago
    I like this idea. Another way: The game company adds all the cheats themselves, as features. Then you can buy the "cheat pack" (more revenue). Each feature that you enable, appears next to your character name. Cheaters with same features enabled, are allowed to match each other online. Of course, then cheaters will try to write software to hide this status... but that is a different issue. :) After you owned a game for along time, sometimes it is fun to cheat. That is another revenue source for game companies.
    • Sparkyte 4y ago
      Well people will do things they are not supposed to do, providing them an avenue to do so while not awknowledging this keeps games fair. If you ban outright then you know who's cheating.
  • xeyownt 4y ago
    Best anti-cheat is the one that has never any false positive.
    • Sparkyte 4y ago
      You also don't want players knowing they are detected. Keeps things from getting complicated.
• nextlevelwizard 4y ago
  Isn’t this industry norm? I remember getting banned from Overwatch during Season 1 with no explanation given and when I sent support ticket I just got back “we can’t tell you the reason”
  • wsc981 4y ago
    I had a similar question in relation to Twitter bans recently [0]. One person thought in case of Twitter perhaps Twitter Support doesn't want to tell, to make it more difficult to script bots that can prevent getting banned. Perhaps for games it's kind of the same. Perhaps knowing why you got banned can aid bot devs to prevent their bots getting banned. --- [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33738470 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33738470
    • nextlevelwizard 4y ago
      I am more cynical and I think it was because I wasn’t playing the META and other players reported me enough
      • mrguyorama 4y ago
        Overwatch had a free weekend five years into it's life, and I decided to try it out for the first time. The matchmaking put together a clearly brand new set of players for a game, including me and my friends. It was payload, and I picked bastion (neat robot) and lead our team on basically all merits, including defense, but the other team was clearly better and we lost massively. A teammate told everyone to report me for feeding. Fuck overwatch, they get what they deserve.
  • weberer 4y ago
    No, its the same company.
• danielscrubs 4y ago
  Is there any games where they bucket customers into probability of cheating and let them play with each other? Have it been tried?
• AustinDev 4y ago
  Good luck bro... I cheated at games especially MMO's from 2000 to 2005. Since then, with all new emails and account ID's I've seen more false positive bans than I saw positive bans in that previous period. I once left wire shark open and got battle eye and VAC banned. I was not attaching either to active network traffic or processes at the time. Just last week I got banned for having Charles proxy running by accident on my 5th DayZ account. I guess I should segregate my dev and play boxes... the problem is I make games.
  • gmjosack 4y ago
    I use CheatEngine and other memory debugging tools as part of reversing/modding single player games for fun. Recently I had a browser tab open to a CheatEngine doc page, not even the executable open, and Fortnite wouldn't let me launch, said I had cheating tools open.
    • AustinDev 4y ago
      There was a battleye ban for this that got a bunch of uproar once. I think it was for the domain 'unknowncheat.me'if you had visited that you got banned from whatever game you were playing the BattleEye iirc.
  • Goz3rr 4y ago
    I'm pretty sure I've played VAC secured games with Wireshark open in the background many times without issue. In my experience VAC is pretty lenient on what you do outside of the game to begin with. I did get shadowbanned from Modern Warfare (2019) for two weeks though. At first I couldn't figure out why my game suddenly would keep crashing on the main menu every time I started it. After a reboot of my PC it stopped crashing, but now the game was taking forever to find a match and when it finally did I got put in a lobby with high ping players from across the world, half of which were obviously cheating. I managed to figure out that I had HxD (a hex editor) open in the background before I rebooted because I was messing around with the save files of another game. Simply having a process running called "hxd.exe" will cause the game to "crash" and shadowban you for a while. I verified this by renaming notepad to hxd.exe and observing the same thing.
• RubberShoes 4y ago
  Have not hit this issue...yet. However, on my Xbox someone else's ActivisionID has inadvertently been tied to mine. Got in touch with the owner and when they go to unlink their account from my Xbox Live Activision's website just reloads. No errors, no codes or any confirmation or denial. Phone support is nonexistent, followed all other possible channels and cannot find or do anything. I spent $70 for a game I can't play on my own account. I can't play with my friends, I can't level my own stuff, and there is nothing I can do. It's completely broken and I can't get a refund in any way. Anyone had success in disputing these purchases with their credit card companies?
  • throwaway2037 4y ago
    I think it is worth a try to do credit card chargeback. Call your credit card company and explain _high level_: "I bought a video game. I cannot register online. It is required to play. There is not support line to help me. I am stuck. This game does not work for me. I want to do a charge back." I assume you bought from an online store. Also, try to find a support line. Provide this information (high level!) to your credit card company.
  • mrguyorama 4y ago
    I once had my EA account hacked. I tried to find a way to contact support and get things sorted out. The EA website had a page to start the support process, but it just..... didn't work. The button that said "put me in the queue" caused and error and loaded a broken page. This was the case for MONTHS. God, imagine if your business could ignore customers for months and still be stupidly successful.
• CrendKing 4y ago
  This kind of absurdity could happen to anybody. I was a Destiny player since Destiny 1, had absolutely no problem campaign or multiplayer. Around the time of Destiny 2 Forsaken DLC, I got bored of it and stopped playing for about a year. One day, I decided to pick it up and replay the Forsaken single player campaign "Last Call". 10 minutes in, while I was enjoying it, suddenly the game froze, and I was kicked back to the menu screen. When tried to login, it told me my account is perma banned. Shocked, my first instinct was that this is some kind of mistake on Bungie side. However, after going through the fruitless appealing process, which Bungie denied without disclosing any specificity, I believe I'm one of those falsely banned. This is the only time I got perma banned in any game in my life. The only possible reason I can think of is that I always use some AutoHotkey scripts I wrote myself as shortcuts for Windows control, and has nothing to do with Destiny. I don't really care much about not able to play Destiny again, but because Destiny 2 had moved to Steam, even today there is still a VAC ban record in my Steam profile, which I do care about.
• can16358p 4y ago
  If this is true you should all gather and file a class action lawsuit immediately against Activision. This is extremely user-hostile... even more than Apple-level-user-hostility.
• hooby 4y ago
  For roughly 25 years now - as long as modern DRM methods exist - there's constantly been reports of false positives, bugs, crashes, performance issues and security holes caused by DRM. How anyone can believe that their DRM is infallible and not be prepared to deal with the issues it will inevitably cause, is beyond me. Anyone with two brain cells to rub together should be aware, that they need to have a way to accept reports of false positives and investigate those. Even if "screw the customers" is company policy - you still need those reports to analyze and fix the flaws in your software. Not doing that is basically like making it impossible to report bugs and suppress any talk about bugs anywhere - and then claiming your software is bug free, because there haven't been any bug reports. Highly dysfunctional.
• riversflow 4y ago
  Probably going to be an unpopular opinion in this thread, but I am involved in a couple of medium sized (100-200 active members) gaming communities which have to deal with cheaters sometimes, one of which is fairly expert—many members are Global Elite (top Competitive rank) in CSGO, with many of the top players being ex minor league esports people(they all LAN fairly regularly so I can say confidently they aren’t cheaters), and I have never heard (as in someone knows someone) of anyone in over a decade in both communities getting unfairly banned from a AAA title or any title for that matter. And if they did it would definitely be the talk of the Discord/forums, getting called a cheater is pretty much the norm for these folks, so getting a ban would be something between hilarious and a slap in the face. So this is likely exceedingly rare, and many of these people are cheating, and consider their cheats benign and are just in denial that their macros are actually getting detected and earning them bans. Perhaps not OP, and perhaps not the sibling comments, but in my experience cheaters are typically pathological about not cheating. Cheating of that type is so easy and common in many multiplayer games, and it really sucks the fun out of multiplayer when someone isn’t following the rules.
  • formerly_proven 4y ago
    False bans do happen. Even VAC, which isn't known for banning willy-nilly, will sometimes remove bans because they do make mistakes. Many other anti-cheats have had more or less prominent issues with false bans, for example GTA Online as well as other games had multiple incidents where they banned people using software like Afterburner/RTSS (and subsequently unbanned them). GTA even had exploits which allowed other cheaters to ban other players. The sentiment of your comment remains popular in gaming circles. But as software people on hacker news, doesn't it seem rather obvious that complex software like anti-cheats embedded in hugely complex software like games will have bugs? Add many people overclocking their computers to the brink of instability and silent corruption into the mix and you will have issues. (VAC must've kicked me dozens of times for failing game integrity checks because of this - now imagine if that's a ban, like Activision does. A checksum failure on a gaming PC hardly proves cheating beyond even a passing doubt)
    • riversflow 4y ago
• walrus01 4y ago
  > filing reports with the Better Business Bureau (BBB) good luck with that, the BBB is basically Yelp for Boomers.
• buzer 4y ago
  One thing that I have been wondering about about anti cheat systems is that wouldn't people be able to do GDPR data request on their account? I would imagine that a lot the data they use for the ban decision would count as personal data and thus they would need to include it as part of the response. And if there are mistakes they would have option to rectify it.
  • vodkapump 4y ago
    I did this with EA actually, I was banned for no reason from Apex Legends, EA support told me it was an EasyAntiCheat ban, but I wasn't banned from other EAC games which made me suspect that wasn't true. When I googled around I found screenshots showing that the ban message ingame would have the text "Banned" after the default "client banned" message. I contacted EAC who confirmed I was not EAC banned, I informed EA of this and just got the default "We cannot discuss bans blah blah" reply. I then ran a GDPR data request, and after 3 weeks I got a massive dump of all my info, which included the ban reason. The ban reason was N/A, not blanked out or censored, just N/A from the data dump. I raised this with EA and they just kept telling me they can't discuss bans etc. I managed to get it escalated eventually via a complaint which lead to my account being unbanned and I got it confirmed that it was an erroneous ban.
  • mdswanson 4y ago
    Some falsely banned players have requested their GDPR data, but it expressly doesn't include any of their anti-cheat data. I'm still waiting for them to respond to my GDPR request.
    • buzer 4y ago
      Surprisingly, there is actually some official guidelines about anti-cheat and bans: https://edpb.europa.eu/system/files/2022-01/edpb_guidelines_012022_right-of-access_0.pdf https://edpb.europa.eu/system/files/2022-01/edpb_guidelines_... > Example 3: GAMER X is registered as a user on the gaming platform of PLATFORM Y. One day, GAMER X is notified that his online account has been restricted. As he is unable to log in anymore, GAMER X asks the controller for access to all personal data relating to him. In addition, GAMER X requires access to the reasons for the account restriction. PLATFORM Y, the controller of the online gaming platform with which the request has been lodged, informs the users in its general terms and conditions available on its website, that any kind of cheating (mainly by the use of third party software) will entail a periodical or permanent ban from its platform. PLATFORM Y also informs the users in its privacy policy about the processing of personal data for the purpose of detecting gaming cheats, in accordance with the requirements set out in Art. 13 GDPR. > Upon receipt of GAMER X’s request for access, PLATFORM Y should provide GAMER X with a copy of the personal data processed about GAMER X. Regarding the reason for the account restriction, PLATFORM Y should confirm GAMER X that it decided to restrict GAMER X’s access to online games due to the use of one or repeated gaming cheats which are in violation with the general terms of use. In addition to the information provided about the processing for the purpose of gaming cheat detection, PLATFORM Y should grant GAMER X access to the information it has stored about GAMER X’s gaming cheats which led to the restriction. In particular, PLATFORM Y should provide GAMER X with the information that led to the restriction of the account (e.g. log overview, date and time of cheating, detection of third party software,...) in order for the data subject to verify that the data processing has been accurate. > However, according to Art. 15(4) and Recital 63 GDPR, PLATFORM Y is not bound to reveal any part of the technical operating of the anti-cheat software even if this information is relating to GAMER X as long as this is can be regarded as trade secrets. The necessary balancing of interests under Art. 15(4) will have the result that the trade secrets of PLATFORM Y preclude the disclosure of this personal data because knowledge of the technical operating of the anti-cheat software could also allow the user to circumvent future cheat or fraud detection > The extent of the information provided to individuals will be heavily context dependent, taking into account the nature of the data controller and the nature of the breach of the terms of service. In some cases, it may only be possible for the data controller to provide basic information in response to an access request to which Art. 15(4) applies So at least some information should be provided while some things could fall under the trade secret exception. I would imagine at least some cases need to go to DPA in order to get some clarification on what information must be provided and which things they could avoid disclosing, but that is going to take quite a while to get any resolution on.
• xpuente 4y ago
  I wonder why they don't start to use secure enclaves to fix this cheating debacle? This might solve the problem for good. Between the cheaters and the companies trying to stem the tide, is destroying FPS online gaming. I guess intel SGX chaos didn't help either.
• everdrive 4y ago
  I’m so thankful that articles such as this get written. At a minimum it his helps other customers avoid predatory businesses. At best, it helps apply pressure to companies to adopt better practices.
  • mdswanson 4y ago
    Thank you!
• TheCapn 4y ago
  250+ comments already so I fear my rant will disappear to the void, but I experienced this exact same thing with Apex Legends. I was fortunate to get my account back eventually, but the experience is the same. I don't really care that much about my crappy in-game cosmetics, but to have access to the game ripped away from you with no actual explanation to what you did is a pretty big gut punch. The result I took from the experience is that EA/Respawn are untrustworthy and will never receive another penny of my money. Their steadfast "you cheated, no appeals, now shut up" attitude seems like poor long term planning if regular players are going to be randomly harmed by whatever happened. I've pondered over the issue too, and ultimately I think the entire circus could be avoided if they were willing to discuss the specifics of banning. The notion that they don't need to tell you how you were detected as though it is some sort of protection for their anti-cheat methods is a disservice in customer relations. For me, I tried appealing a case against something I had no evidence for, so to ask a question about how I can make things right in an appeal (what logs do you need? what proof can I provide that this was a bug) ended up just flagging my account so I could no longer open tickets. I had found other users on Reddit who received the same ban (and consequentially, received unban at teh same time too, so it was a system bug). We were all treated the same. How to fix this? Have confidence in your anti-cheat to the point where you can say "we caught you doing X" so I can provide evidence to the contrary. I suspect it is because they'd need to hire more staff to work customer service. They'd also need to give those staff the necessary tools to respond to customers which I can tell they do not have at the basic CSR level. In the end, they lose a customer permanently. They also gain a vocal proponent against their services as I write similar rants every time I see a topic of it discussed. They don't really care much about me though. That's important to remember. They are willing to bulldoze the individual in hopes the larger reputation they maintain about being hard on cheaters doesn't backfire.
  • mdswanson 4y ago
    Didn't disappear. Thanks for sharing!
• whalesalad 4y ago
  Knock on wood my experience with Activision/MW/MW2 has been pretty flawless. The new game has some bugs, but in general it has been the best way for me and my buddies who live 3,000 miles away to remain in touch and hang out on the weekends.
  • JamesSwift 4y ago
    Thats honestly incredible to me. I've had like 5 _different_ game breaking bugs in multiplayer and countless crashes/quality-of-life bugs in warzone 2. Thats not even considering the broken looting that will come up almost once per game. I really enjoy the multiplayer overall (except Border Crossing) but Warzone is a buggy mess that isn't fun at the end of the day because it ends up being a looting simulator a lot of times. I much preferred the tempo of Warzone 1.
• BurningPenguin 4y ago
  It's nice to know, that Valve isn't the only company that sucks at doing anti-cheat right. Or at all, that is...
• swagmoney1606 4y ago
  I'll throw my two cents in. I'm "UNDER REVIEW" right now. That means I'm shadow banned. I'm only able to match with other people that are shadow banned. This is actually the second time I'm "UNDER REVIEW". I guess you can be under review multiple times? I had a 3 day period where I wasn't under review and everything went back to normal. As of today actually, I am now banned again. It's pretty miserable. It's actually funny, most of the regular multiplayer lobbies are decentish. Nobody seems to be obviously cheating or hacking. Maybe once or twice I felt like someone might be cheating. It takes a very long time to find a match. And when you do find a match, you'd be lucky to have a sub 60ms ping. DMZ just released. I really want to play it but I unfortunately cannot, I never find a match. Also I just gotta throw this out there since I'm trashing on the game right now. This game crashes A LOT.