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Do you mean the presence of anti-cheat software makes them anti-player? Because I’d disagree. It’s a lot of work and expense to combat cheats, but is very much

Do you mean the presence of anti-cheat software makes them anti-player? Because I’d disagree. It’s a lot of work and expense to combat cheats, but is very much appreciated by many players (when it works)

ekianjo 3y ago
Not every gamer wants an esport experience to have fun
- Wytwwww 3y ago
  I assumed that cheating is way more widespread amongst multiplayer gamers? There is a lot less anonymity in esports and if you get caught and blacklisted.. well you just wasted thousands or tens of thousands of hours. It's pretty hard to have fun when the server is full of cheaters.
  - diggan 3y ago
    > I assumed that cheating is way more widespread amongst multiplayer gamers? I mean, hard to call cheating in a multiplayer game the same as cheating in a singleplayer game. The former ruins the experience of others, the latter just affects your own session. Hard to be against cheating in a singleplayer context.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - Wytwwww 3y ago
      I was thinking about casual and professional online gamers (yet somehow managed to leave out a word in comment...). Of course "cheating" in single player games isn't even a real thing
  - barbariangrunge 3y ago
    Cheating in single player is sort of like modding
- aseipp 3y ago
  There's nothing "esports" about wanting to avoid wallhacks/aimbots in games like Tarkov, Rust, or Destiny, which completely ruin the entire game for every player in the lobby in an instant. It has nothing to do with "esports" and everything to do with actually being able to play the game. Do you also think it's because of "esports" when you're forbidden from cheating at a game of chess in person? When my friend plays Rust and gets upset because a flying aimbot hacker raids his base, gets banned, and comes back 1 hour later (buying a hot key off some shady 3rd party site), is he thinking "Damn, esports is really ruining this game"? No. The players are expected to fundamentally abide by the same rules. That's what a game is. Realistically these days with how expensive most of these games are to run and make, if you do not keep cheaters away it can tank the entire project, e.g. Cycle: The Frontier basically had to shut down because they couldn't keep cheaters at bay, in a system that heavily relies on player count to remain healthy and fun. Once the cheating gets bad enough, people stop playing the game, which leads to a death spiral: it starts with bad queue times, which leads to people playing other games, and that spiral further diminishes the playerbase beyond a point of no return. Cycle barely made it 12 months and the result was a multi-million dollar project getting flushed down the drain.
  - steveklabnik 3y ago
    RIP to the Cycle. It deserved better. I am glad that Bungie is going with fog of war for Marathon. And heck, given the features Marathon is getting, maybe someday Destiny can have those nice things too. We'll see...
  - earthling8118 3y ago
    A kernel level invasion of privacy is required to stop flying players? That doesn't sound right to me. Not to mention that apparently it isn't working if your friend is witnessing it. So players of those games are sacrificing privacy for no security at all by the sounds of it.
kaetemi 3y ago
Or they could just not trust the clients, instead of throwing the problem over the wall. A lot of these games with fancy anti cheat protection the cheat tools basically just tell the server "spawn me a vehicle right here" and the server just does it. Garbage.
- charcircuit 3y ago
  That is the way things are going with cloud gaming.
- dijit 3y ago
  Realistically some trust has to be in the client, otherwise your game will feel horribly sluggish and the corrections will drive you crazy. I can make a game with full server trust to show you if you like.
- doublepg23 3y ago
  Wow, it’s awesome you’ve solved the entirety of multiplayer gaming. Here I was thinking anti-cheating measures was a complex topic but it’s great you’ve elucidated me.
  - thaumasiotes 3y ago
    > Here I was thinking anti-cheating measures was a complex topic It isn't. If you play with people you don't know, some of them will cheat. If you don't want that, stop playing with strangers.
  - kaetemi 3y ago
    Well, it's definitely not solved by throwing the problem over the wall and praying that anti-cheat tools aren't broken as easily as your game.
- yatac42 3y ago
  > A lot of these games with fancy anti cheat protection the cheat tools basically just tell the server "spawn me a vehicle right here" and the server just does it. Citation needed. I'd be quite surprised if it were common for servers of professional games to trust the client in that sense (i.e. allowing it to decide game logic like what gets spawned where). As far as I'm aware the most common types of multiplayer cheats are * wall hacks, which you could probably prevent by not sending the client any information about objects that the player can't see, but that would require the server to calculate the line of sight for every player/object, * and aim bots, which I don't think you could prevent at all on the server side since they don't rely on the bot having access to any information that the player isn't supposed to have. They just rely on the bot being better at aiming. I suppose if you did all rendering server side and only sent the rendered graphics to the client (i.e. streaming), that would make it harder for the bot because it'd now have to do image recognition to find the target, but that just makes it harder, not impossible. Plus, game streaming wasn't well received for a reason and anyway, I don't think that's what you had in mind when you talked about "not trusting the client".
serf 3y ago
it's anti-player when it is security theatre, which in 95% of cases it is. When I start a game and I see an Easy Anti-Cheat banner I think to myself "Great now I can be killed by an aimbot while simultaneously hosting a root-kit voluntarily." Why do you think these systems are advertised like that, at the forefront of the game load? It's so that the developers create a false trust in the playerbase that they're doing their damnedest to prevent cheaters, when the reality is that they paid a small amount of cash to a third party to use a system that does a piss-poor job at everything aside from being a symbol of effort and adding incompatibilities where there shouldn't be. eac bypassing is trivial to a laymen, that doesn't bode well as a defense against people that have made cheating their hobby. and to be clear : I use EAC as the example because to me it symbolizes the 'security theatre' side of the effort. Real anti-cheat efforts exist, and those should be applauded. EAC ain't it, but it's the industry standard... worrisome.
bigstrat2003 3y ago
I personally would far rather have the occasional cheater than have the game install literal rootkits. It's absolutely bonkers that people are willing to accept that.
ijhuygft776 3y ago
But does it ever work? Its just a game of cat and mouse.... like all other software, bugs will always be present apparently.

ekianjo 3y ago

Not every gamer wants an esport experience to have fun

Wytwwww 3y ago
I assumed that cheating is way more widespread amongst multiplayer gamers? There is a lot less anonymity in esports and if you get caught and blacklisted.. well you just wasted thousands or tens of thousands of hours. It's pretty hard to have fun when the server is full of cheaters.
- diggan 3y ago
  > I assumed that cheating is way more widespread amongst multiplayer gamers? I mean, hard to call cheating in a multiplayer game the same as cheating in a singleplayer game. The former ruins the experience of others, the latter just affects your own session. Hard to be against cheating in a singleplayer context.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - Wytwwww 3y ago
    I was thinking about casual and professional online gamers (yet somehow managed to leave out a word in comment...). Of course "cheating" in single player games isn't even a real thing
- barbariangrunge 3y ago
  Cheating in single player is sort of like modding
aseipp 3y ago
There's nothing "esports" about wanting to avoid wallhacks/aimbots in games like Tarkov, Rust, or Destiny, which completely ruin the entire game for every player in the lobby in an instant. It has nothing to do with "esports" and everything to do with actually being able to play the game. Do you also think it's because of "esports" when you're forbidden from cheating at a game of chess in person? When my friend plays Rust and gets upset because a flying aimbot hacker raids his base, gets banned, and comes back 1 hour later (buying a hot key off some shady 3rd party site), is he thinking "Damn, esports is really ruining this game"? No. The players are expected to fundamentally abide by the same rules. That's what a game is. Realistically these days with how expensive most of these games are to run and make, if you do not keep cheaters away it can tank the entire project, e.g. Cycle: The Frontier basically had to shut down because they couldn't keep cheaters at bay, in a system that heavily relies on player count to remain healthy and fun. Once the cheating gets bad enough, people stop playing the game, which leads to a death spiral: it starts with bad queue times, which leads to people playing other games, and that spiral further diminishes the playerbase beyond a point of no return. Cycle barely made it 12 months and the result was a multi-million dollar project getting flushed down the drain.
- steveklabnik 3y ago
  RIP to the Cycle. It deserved better. I am glad that Bungie is going with fog of war for Marathon. And heck, given the features Marathon is getting, maybe someday Destiny can have those nice things too. We'll see...
- earthling8118 3y ago
  A kernel level invasion of privacy is required to stop flying players? That doesn't sound right to me. Not to mention that apparently it isn't working if your friend is witnessing it. So players of those games are sacrificing privacy for no security at all by the sounds of it.

kaetemi 3y ago

Or they could just not trust the clients, instead of throwing the problem over the wall. A lot of these games with fancy anti cheat protection the cheat tools basically just tell the server "spawn me a vehicle right here" and the server just does it. Garbage.

charcircuit 3y ago
That is the way things are going with cloud gaming.
dijit 3y ago
Realistically some trust has to be in the client, otherwise your game will feel horribly sluggish and the corrections will drive you crazy. I can make a game with full server trust to show you if you like.
doublepg23 3y ago
Wow, it’s awesome you’ve solved the entirety of multiplayer gaming. Here I was thinking anti-cheating measures was a complex topic but it’s great you’ve elucidated me.
- thaumasiotes 3y ago
  > Here I was thinking anti-cheating measures was a complex topic It isn't. If you play with people you don't know, some of them will cheat. If you don't want that, stop playing with strangers.
- kaetemi 3y ago
  Well, it's definitely not solved by throwing the problem over the wall and praying that anti-cheat tools aren't broken as easily as your game.
yatac42 3y ago
> A lot of these games with fancy anti cheat protection the cheat tools basically just tell the server "spawn me a vehicle right here" and the server just does it. Citation needed. I'd be quite surprised if it were common for servers of professional games to trust the client in that sense (i.e. allowing it to decide game logic like what gets spawned where). As far as I'm aware the most common types of multiplayer cheats are * wall hacks, which you could probably prevent by not sending the client any information about objects that the player can't see, but that would require the server to calculate the line of sight for every player/object, * and aim bots, which I don't think you could prevent at all on the server side since they don't rely on the bot having access to any information that the player isn't supposed to have. They just rely on the bot being better at aiming. I suppose if you did all rendering server side and only sent the rendered graphics to the client (i.e. streaming), that would make it harder for the bot because it'd now have to do image recognition to find the target, but that just makes it harder, not impossible. Plus, game streaming wasn't well received for a reason and anyway, I don't think that's what you had in mind when you talked about "not trusting the client".

serf 3y ago

it's anti-player when it is security theatre, which in 95% of cases it is. When I start a game and I see an Easy Anti-Cheat banner I think to myself "Great now I can be killed by an aimbot while simultaneously hosting a root-kit voluntarily." Why do you think these systems are advertised like that, at the forefront of the game load? It's so that the developers create a false trust in the playerbase that they're doing their damnedest to prevent cheaters, when the reality is that they paid a small amount of cash to a third party to use a system that does a piss-poor job at everything aside from being a symbol of effort and adding incompatibilities where there shouldn't be. eac bypassing is trivial to a laymen, that doesn't bode well as a defense against people that have made cheating their hobby. and to be clear : I use EAC as the example because to me it symbolizes the 'security theatre' side of the effort. Real anti-cheat efforts exist, and those should be applauded. EAC ain't it, but it's the industry standard... worrisome.

bigstrat2003 3y ago

I personally would far rather have the occasional cheater than have the game install literal rootkits. It's absolutely bonkers that people are willing to accept that.

ijhuygft776 3y ago

But does it ever work? Its just a game of cat and mouse.... like all other software, bugs will always be present apparently.