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The average Dota 2 player count over the last 30 days was around 396,000[1] so am I correct in understanding that at least 10% of all Dota 2 players were cheati

The average Dota 2 player count over the last 30 days was around 396,000[1] so am I correct in understanding that at least 10% of all Dota 2 players were cheating in some way? https://steamcharts.com/app/570 https://steamcharts.com/app/570

agilob 4y ago
I don't play Dota2, but it would surprise me in TF2 and L4D2. I've been in games where 5 of 8 players were bots.
reportgunner 4y ago
Since Dota is a free to play game I would point out that it is likely that cheaters almost always have more than one account to evade bans so I don't think 1 account = 1 irl user is always true. Even for non F2P games it is usual for cheaters to use phished or hacked accounts that they buy for a few cents. There are also accounts that are tradebanned because they were used as bots for 3rd party trading websites and they are basically worthless after getting tradebanned.
- ridgered4 4y ago
  This always seems obvious to me with F2P games. They create more and more complicated measures to detect cheats, but when it cost nothing (except an SMS service now I guess) to spin up a new account you aren't getting anywhere. The old business model of just charging a lot of money up front for the game seems like it wouldn't have this problem to the same extent. You just ban their key and they're out $20-60. But that business model is less popular now I guess.
  - ferminaut 4y ago
    I've had the idea that a deposit in free to play games would be sufficient. Put some amount of money in, say $20. When you are done with the game, you get the $20 back. If you cheat, you lose the $20.
    - reportgunner 4y ago
      Nowadays money is not a problem for full time cheat developers - they sell the cheats (often in a monthly subscription model) to the cheaters or they sell a service where the cheater joins you in the game and does all the cheating for you (so called carry services, e.g. in escape from tarkov a cheater joins your game, kills all your enemies and lets you take all the loot). I have seen ads for cheats where a monthly cheat subscription costs more than a new copy of the game.
      - galangalalgol 4y ago
        Who finds any of that fun?
        monetus 4y ago
        I learned something watching a champion, a world class cheater, discuss bridge. He played the game to outcheat other cheaters. Regular players were more like bots, but the cheaters, those were the real players.
        galangalalgol 4y ago
        Oh I get the fun of finding loopholes and subverting expectations, but paying someone else to play a game for me... Where does that get fun? Edit:. I think I get it maybe. I play games to play them, and if I cheat it is to enjoy figuring out the cheat. I kind of get how having an advantage in the game would be briefly fun for the sense of power. But in single player games that wears off quick. My guess is some people enjoy winning more than playing, or the status of gear more than playing to get it. I don't understand that, but that must be it right?
        monetus 4y ago
        I think you're right. Feeling like you are the pinnacle of the game, at or near the top of the culture you're immersed in is probably a rush. I'm curious if the programmers making the cheats generally get their kicks the same way.
  - mirker 4y ago
    The common free to play guard is you need to play X number of unranked games before you can play ranked. The account is “paid” for with some proof of work.
  - reportgunner 4y ago
    > The old business model of just charging a lot of money up front for the game seems like it wouldn't have this problem to the same extent. The problem with such games exists as well but challenges are different: - cheaters still have access to phished/hacked abandoned accounts that own the game that they can buy very cheap - another way to get new accounts for cheap is to buy the games in countries where the games are cheaper i.e. argentina or turkey - there is very little motivation from developers to completely stop the cheaters or slow them down (every banned account is a potential sale of new copy of the game) the developer benefits financially from cheaters continuing to evade bans - the players hurt the most (who already bought the game and paid the developer) don't generate any new income to the developer and dont pose any risk to income generation unless they quit the game en masse (discouraging potential new players from buying the game)
    - cathdrlbizzare 4y ago
      Yep. There’s no incentive to catch every cheater because it helps sell the “need” for advantages conferred by DLC and virtual currencies.
  - JustBreath 4y ago
    It doesn't work for all games, but I was a big fan of Dark Soul's method of dealing with cheaters. If your character or account was flagged for cheating, you were put into a public multiplayer pool/jail with all the other cheaters and would only match games other cheater. It's clever because you never actually know what you did to get caught or if you have even been caught. You can only suspect when you notice nearly everyone else you play with also cheats.
    - barbariangrunge 4y ago
      Wasn’t dark souls famous for getting you flagged as a cheater because a real cheater joined your game and dropped a hacked item? There were streamers doing this to ruin the play of ordinary players all the time
      - JustBreath 4y ago
        Believe you had to pick up the item, and IIRC if you got rid of it they would let you off.
  - cathdrlbizzare 4y ago
    You can bet F2P games generally aren’t playable without buying virtual currency and DLC.
Sayrus 4y ago
396000 average concurrent users. There are many more accounts as players are not online 24/7. Monthly active users should be in the millions.
kuroguro 4y ago
Well they collected data for "the last few weeks" and banned them all at once. Total unique player count would be more accurate to calculate the %
Ekaros 4y ago
396k is the average number of players during. The peak is seemingly 680k in last 30 days. Peak is the least number of players(accounts) there was during last month. Million to two million would be my estimate of players. Still leading to 2-5% of player base. Which itself isn't small either.
favaq 4y ago
You don't know how bad it is in PC games. This is precisely the reason we need anti-cheats in the kernel.
- cathdrlbizzare 4y ago
  I fail to see an argument for this being a technical necessity. And, you don’t offer any data or evidence for this. There are thousands of businesses and million of users who don’t care about and don’t need this.
- bob1029 4y ago
  Baking anti cheats into the photomasks of our CPUs still won't fix anything. You have to fundamentally alter how you serve these experiences to customers if you really want to solve it.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
1MachineElf 4y ago
Disclaimer: I've never played Dota 2 It's also possible some of those accounts were created to be sold on on a marketplace. Online gaming marketplaces have traders with in-game items, credits, and even accounts for sale. It's especially big for online games where item duplication glitches allow some players to hoard hundreds-thousands of hot commodities. Accounts that have maxed out levels, achievements, and/or rare rewards (possibly via this cheat) can sell for hundreds of real world dollars.
cypress66 4y ago
As a very rough rule of thumb for these multiplayer games, MAU is about 100x concurrent players.

agilob 4y ago

I don't play Dota2, but it would surprise me in TF2 and L4D2. I've been in games where 5 of 8 players were bots.

reportgunner 4y ago

Since Dota is a free to play game I would point out that it is likely that cheaters almost always have more than one account to evade bans so I don't think 1 account = 1 irl user is always true. Even for non F2P games it is usual for cheaters to use phished or hacked accounts that they buy for a few cents. There are also accounts that are tradebanned because they were used as bots for 3rd party trading websites and they are basically worthless after getting tradebanned.

ridgered4 4y ago
This always seems obvious to me with F2P games. They create more and more complicated measures to detect cheats, but when it cost nothing (except an SMS service now I guess) to spin up a new account you aren't getting anywhere. The old business model of just charging a lot of money up front for the game seems like it wouldn't have this problem to the same extent. You just ban their key and they're out $20-60. But that business model is less popular now I guess.
- ferminaut 4y ago
  I've had the idea that a deposit in free to play games would be sufficient. Put some amount of money in, say $20. When you are done with the game, you get the $20 back. If you cheat, you lose the $20.
  - reportgunner 4y ago
    Nowadays money is not a problem for full time cheat developers - they sell the cheats (often in a monthly subscription model) to the cheaters or they sell a service where the cheater joins you in the game and does all the cheating for you (so called carry services, e.g. in escape from tarkov a cheater joins your game, kills all your enemies and lets you take all the loot). I have seen ads for cheats where a monthly cheat subscription costs more than a new copy of the game.
    - galangalalgol 4y ago
      Who finds any of that fun?
      - monetus 4y ago
        I learned something watching a champion, a world class cheater, discuss bridge. He played the game to outcheat other cheaters. Regular players were more like bots, but the cheaters, those were the real players.
        galangalalgol 4y ago
        Oh I get the fun of finding loopholes and subverting expectations, but paying someone else to play a game for me... Where does that get fun? Edit:. I think I get it maybe. I play games to play them, and if I cheat it is to enjoy figuring out the cheat. I kind of get how having an advantage in the game would be briefly fun for the sense of power. But in single player games that wears off quick. My guess is some people enjoy winning more than playing, or the status of gear more than playing to get it. I don't understand that, but that must be it right?
        monetus 4y ago
        I think you're right. Feeling like you are the pinnacle of the game, at or near the top of the culture you're immersed in is probably a rush. I'm curious if the programmers making the cheats generally get their kicks the same way.
- mirker 4y ago
  The common free to play guard is you need to play X number of unranked games before you can play ranked. The account is “paid” for with some proof of work.
- reportgunner 4y ago
  > The old business model of just charging a lot of money up front for the game seems like it wouldn't have this problem to the same extent. The problem with such games exists as well but challenges are different: - cheaters still have access to phished/hacked abandoned accounts that own the game that they can buy very cheap - another way to get new accounts for cheap is to buy the games in countries where the games are cheaper i.e. argentina or turkey - there is very little motivation from developers to completely stop the cheaters or slow them down (every banned account is a potential sale of new copy of the game) the developer benefits financially from cheaters continuing to evade bans - the players hurt the most (who already bought the game and paid the developer) don't generate any new income to the developer and dont pose any risk to income generation unless they quit the game en masse (discouraging potential new players from buying the game)
  - cathdrlbizzare 4y ago
    Yep. There’s no incentive to catch every cheater because it helps sell the “need” for advantages conferred by DLC and virtual currencies.
- JustBreath 4y ago
  It doesn't work for all games, but I was a big fan of Dark Soul's method of dealing with cheaters. If your character or account was flagged for cheating, you were put into a public multiplayer pool/jail with all the other cheaters and would only match games other cheater. It's clever because you never actually know what you did to get caught or if you have even been caught. You can only suspect when you notice nearly everyone else you play with also cheats.
  - barbariangrunge 4y ago
    Wasn’t dark souls famous for getting you flagged as a cheater because a real cheater joined your game and dropped a hacked item? There were streamers doing this to ruin the play of ordinary players all the time
    - JustBreath 4y ago
      Believe you had to pick up the item, and IIRC if you got rid of it they would let you off.
- cathdrlbizzare 4y ago
  You can bet F2P games generally aren’t playable without buying virtual currency and DLC.

Sayrus 4y ago

396000 average concurrent users. There are many more accounts as players are not online 24/7. Monthly active users should be in the millions.

kuroguro 4y ago

Well they collected data for "the last few weeks" and banned them all at once. Total unique player count would be more accurate to calculate the %

Ekaros 4y ago

396k is the average number of players during. The peak is seemingly 680k in last 30 days. Peak is the least number of players(accounts) there was during last month. Million to two million would be my estimate of players. Still leading to 2-5% of player base. Which itself isn't small either.

favaq 4y ago

You don't know how bad it is in PC games. This is precisely the reason we need anti-cheats in the kernel.

cathdrlbizzare 4y ago
I fail to see an argument for this being a technical necessity. And, you don’t offer any data or evidence for this. There are thousands of businesses and million of users who don’t care about and don’t need this.
bob1029 4y ago
Baking anti cheats into the photomasks of our CPUs still won't fix anything. You have to fundamentally alter how you serve these experiences to customers if you really want to solve it.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

1MachineElf 4y ago

Disclaimer: I've never played Dota 2 It's also possible some of those accounts were created to be sold on on a marketplace. Online gaming marketplaces have traders with in-game items, credits, and even accounts for sale. It's especially big for online games where item duplication glitches allow some players to hoard hundreds-thousands of hot commodities. Accounts that have maxed out levels, achievements, and/or rare rewards (possibly via this cheat) can sell for hundreds of real world dollars.

cypress66 4y ago

As a very rough rule of thumb for these multiplayer games, MAU is about 100x concurrent players.