3 ms·

The article just glosses over the fact that detecting cheaters is far from easy. It just makes it sound as if it's a done-deal, "if you cheat, you're isolated a

by unwind 14y ago

The article just glosses over the fact that detecting cheaters is far from easy. It just makes it sound as if it's a done-deal, "if you cheat, you're isolated away". Speaking with at least some amount of insight, I can say that cheat-detection in modern networked multiplayer action games is far from easy.

pestaa 14y ago
The first thing I remember from a multiplayer networking tutorial is that it is close to impossible to distinguish cheaters from really good players.
- Cushman 14y ago
  It's a bit more complex than that, I think. It's easy to distinguish careless cheaters from good players. It's hard to distinguish conservative cheaters from good players. It's also hard to distinguish good, nonconservative cheaters from really exceptional players. But really, it doesn't matter. You can winnow out the obvious game-breaking things like wallhacking and instant-headshotting, but to the average player it doesn't make a difference whether the person who keeps killing them is a phenomenal player or just a skilled cheater; it's not fun either way. A solution to one is a solution to both: Your game needs to be designed such that it maintains balance and remains fun when some players are performing much better than others, for whatever reason.
  - jamesaguilar 14y ago
    > It's hard to distinguish conservative cheaters from good players. True, but getting the flagrant ones is usually enough so that in any given game the average player does not have to deal with cheating.
daenz 14y ago
There's a fantastic intro to modern game cheating and cheat detection here, for anyone interested: http://www.altdevblogaday.com/2012/04/02/extravagant-cheating-via-direct-x/ http://www.altdevblogaday.com/2012/04/02/extravagant-cheatin...
X-Istence 14y ago
The biggest way that games attempt to catch players that are cheating is simply by scanning their memory space for changes that have been made, by seeing whether or not certain processes are running on the computer, whether extra DLL's have been imported into the application. The thing is, that once code is running on my machine technically the game is over and it becomes a huge cat and mouse game. I can choose what to execute and how to execute it. Sure it takes time to figure out all of the different ways that you are trying to detect it, but I have control over my machine and thus can make it do what I want.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  Yes, that is true. Additionally I don't necessarily want to run a program on my computer that has that level of access to my system (and submit it back to someone elses server) in order to run a game. This is firstly for privacy reasons but also because the program could possibly be exploited by malware people who could either inject code into the app or use it to gather information about my machine that could be used to exploit it via a different vector.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
kmfrk 14y ago
Any anti-piracy or -cheating measure with a false positive rate over 0% is going to meet a shit storm not worth the effort. You have to really know what you're doing.
DanBC 14y ago
But sometimes it's really easy. See the YouTube channel of this Griefer who blatantly griefs and trolls teams on a variety of games on XBOX Live. Many people report him; he's still playing and griefing. This is in a relatively walled garden - the client software and hardware is controlled; the servers are controlled. NSFW (http://www.youtube.com/user/GeneralMinus?feature=watch http://www.youtube.com/user/GeneralMinus?feature=watch)

by unwind 14y ago

pestaa 14y ago

The first thing I remember from a multiplayer networking tutorial is that it is close to impossible to distinguish cheaters from really good players.

Cushman 14y ago
It's a bit more complex than that, I think. It's easy to distinguish careless cheaters from good players. It's hard to distinguish conservative cheaters from good players. It's also hard to distinguish good, nonconservative cheaters from really exceptional players. But really, it doesn't matter. You can winnow out the obvious game-breaking things like wallhacking and instant-headshotting, but to the average player it doesn't make a difference whether the person who keeps killing them is a phenomenal player or just a skilled cheater; it's not fun either way. A solution to one is a solution to both: Your game needs to be designed such that it maintains balance and remains fun when some players are performing much better than others, for whatever reason.
- jamesaguilar 14y ago
  > It's hard to distinguish conservative cheaters from good players. True, but getting the flagrant ones is usually enough so that in any given game the average player does not have to deal with cheating.

daenz 14y ago

There's a fantastic intro to modern game cheating and cheat detection here, for anyone interested: http://www.altdevblogaday.com/2012/04/02/extravagant-cheating-via-direct-x/ http://www.altdevblogaday.com/2012/04/02/extravagant-cheatin...

X-Istence 14y ago

The biggest way that games attempt to catch players that are cheating is simply by scanning their memory space for changes that have been made, by seeing whether or not certain processes are running on the computer, whether extra DLL's have been imported into the application. The thing is, that once code is running on my machine technically the game is over and it becomes a huge cat and mouse game. I can choose what to execute and how to execute it. Sure it takes time to figure out all of the different ways that you are trying to detect it, but I have control over my machine and thus can make it do what I want.

jiggy2011 14y ago
Yes, that is true. Additionally I don't necessarily want to run a program on my computer that has that level of access to my system (and submit it back to someone elses server) in order to run a game. This is firstly for privacy reasons but also because the program could possibly be exploited by malware people who could either inject code into the app or use it to gather information about my machine that could be used to exploit it via a different vector.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]

kmfrk 14y ago

Any anti-piracy or -cheating measure with a false positive rate over 0% is going to meet a shit storm not worth the effort. You have to really know what you're doing.

DanBC 14y ago

But sometimes it's really easy. See the YouTube channel of this Griefer who blatantly griefs and trolls teams on a variety of games on XBOX Live. Many people report him; he's still playing and griefing. This is in a relatively walled garden - the client software and hardware is controlled; the servers are controlled. NSFW (http://www.youtube.com/user/GeneralMinus?feature=watch http://www.youtube.com/user/GeneralMinus?feature=watch)