6 ms·

Gamers arent demanding this. There are tons of ways to detect cheaters, the most effective one being human moderation. But no, companies wont do MaNuAl WoRk bec

by tpxl 2y ago

Gamers arent demanding this. There are tons of ways to detect cheaters, the most effective one being human moderation. But no, companies wont do MaNuAl WoRk because it doesnt sCaLe, even though they have more than enough cash in the bank.

dgellow 2y ago
How do you do manual moderation on a massive fast-paced game like Valorant? It’s correct, that doesn’t scale
- scotty79 2y ago
  maybe not manual ... but ... log behavior, find outliers, make outliers play with outliers only
  - mholm 2y ago
    This absolutely happens already. The problem with finding statistical outliers is that plenty of legitimate players are outliers too. And if you're banning/segregating players for being outliers, you get a very angry player base. Riot has a pretty indepth blogpost about their anti-cheat systems, they've had years to mature them on some of the most demanding competitive gaming platforms ever made. Requiring players install kernel anti-cheat was very far down the list of possible solutions, but that's what it came to. It was either this or stop being free to play.
    - choo-t 2y ago
      The server is all-seeing, if there is no way for the server to discriminate cheater from other player, then no player can possibly know there a cheater on the server, thus cannot complain about cheating is either irrational or the server-side detection is severely flawed.
      - mjr00 2y ago
        > The server is all-seeing, if there is no way for the server to discriminate cheater from other player, then no player can possibly know there a cheater on the server, thus cannot complain about cheating is either irrational or the server-side detection is severely flawed. It's impossible to tell in-game if a baseball player is using steroids, yet there's a laundry list of banned substances and players who got banned for taking them because the MLB believes it gives them an unfair advantage. It's called competitive integrity. Since it sounds like you don't play games, at least not competitively, I'll clarify that "cheating" in this case isn't the obvious stuff like "my gun does 100x damage" or "I move around at 100mph" or "I'm using custom player models with big spikes so I know everyone's location" that you would've seen on public Counter-Strike 1.6 servers in 2002. Cheating is aim assistance that nudges your cursor to compensate for spray patterns in CS, it's automatic DPs and throw breaks in Street Fighter 6 that are just at the threshold of human reaction timing, it's firing off skillshots in League of Legends with an overlay that says if it's going to kill the enemy player or not. All of this stuff is doable by a sufficiently skilled/lucky human, but not with the level of consistency you get from cheating.
        choo-t 2y ago
        > It's impossible to tell in-game if a baseball player is using steroids, yet there's a laundry list of banned substances and players who got banned for taking them because the MLB believes it gives them an unfair advantage. It's called competitive integrity. This is relative to meat-space, not videogame, but we could go there and say caffeine or Adderall use is cheating, thus making anti-cheat a little more invasive… And there another difference, you're referring to professional sport. I have no problem with invasive anti-cheat for professional gamer, even better it the gaming device is provided by tournament organization. But we're talking about anti-cheat used for all players, akin to asking people playing catch in their garden or playing baseball for fun an the local park to take a blood sample for drug test. > All of this stuff is doable by a sufficiently skilled/lucky human, but not with the level of consistency you get from cheating. That's the point, there no difference for the other players between playing against a cheater and playing against a better player. Any ELO-based matchmaking will solve this, cheater will end-up playing against each-other or against very skilled player. You could argue that they could create new account or purposely cripple their ELO ratting, but this is the exact same problem as smurfing.
  - dgellow 2y ago
    You're basically ignoring the past 30+ years of the gaming and cheating industry. Everybody already does log behaviour, try to find outliers, and have some systems to try to keep cheaters outside from the general player pool. That's what gaming companies have been doing since at least the early Halo days. That has its own set of side effects, such as creating a horrible experience for the most talented and active players — also the ones most likely to stream and advocate for your game, to produce youtube videos to complain about bad experience, and to have a very influential profile in the community. The state of game cheating has professionalized A LOT, it is extremely competitive and cheating companies produce extremely good quality tools compared to what we had 20 years ago. There is a lot of money to be made, we are at the point where you can just pay a cheap monthly subscription and you get access to actively maintained cheating tools. I know people working on the anti-cheat side, it is a really messy, highly dynamic (the bad actors are constantly adapting), complicated problem that isn't solved once and for all. We are far from the situation where just a few people are using some hacked-together software that will obviously be spotted as cheaters. Game dev companies (at least US/European ones) have zero interest in developing or paying for kernel-level anti-cheat. That's a massive barrier of entry for the player base and they know this. It's also far from being cheap. (Note: ignoring geopolitical factors, Chinese companies such as Tencent or Russian companies could definitely have interests in developing kernel-level anti-cheat for information gathering)
- beeboobaa3 2y ago
  You limit the amount of matches you host to those you can actually referee, just like any sport where people care about cheating.
- tpxl 2y ago
  While there are solutions, I won't comment on Valorant - free to play games are a whole can of worms the companies have nobody but themselves to blame. I will comment on a game I used to play though: Escape from Tarkov. The game costs somewhere between 40$ and 250$+tax, depending on what pack you buy. Banning cheaters for this game is literally a profit center. Every time you ban a cheater and they re-buy the game, you made at least 40$. The majority of cheating in the game was due to real money trading - cheaters would make in-game millions quickly, sell them, get banned, buy the game again at a profit. The solution to this is brain-dead simple - more manual moderation (these cheaters are very obvious to spot). What the developers did instead just killed the game.

by tpxl 2y ago

dgellow 2y ago

How do you do manual moderation on a massive fast-paced game like Valorant? It’s correct, that doesn’t scale

scotty79 2y ago
maybe not manual ... but ... log behavior, find outliers, make outliers play with outliers only
- mholm 2y ago
  This absolutely happens already. The problem with finding statistical outliers is that plenty of legitimate players are outliers too. And if you're banning/segregating players for being outliers, you get a very angry player base. Riot has a pretty indepth blogpost about their anti-cheat systems, they've had years to mature them on some of the most demanding competitive gaming platforms ever made. Requiring players install kernel anti-cheat was very far down the list of possible solutions, but that's what it came to. It was either this or stop being free to play.
  - choo-t 2y ago
    The server is all-seeing, if there is no way for the server to discriminate cheater from other player, then no player can possibly know there a cheater on the server, thus cannot complain about cheating is either irrational or the server-side detection is severely flawed.
    - mjr00 2y ago
      > The server is all-seeing, if there is no way for the server to discriminate cheater from other player, then no player can possibly know there a cheater on the server, thus cannot complain about cheating is either irrational or the server-side detection is severely flawed. It's impossible to tell in-game if a baseball player is using steroids, yet there's a laundry list of banned substances and players who got banned for taking them because the MLB believes it gives them an unfair advantage. It's called competitive integrity. Since it sounds like you don't play games, at least not competitively, I'll clarify that "cheating" in this case isn't the obvious stuff like "my gun does 100x damage" or "I move around at 100mph" or "I'm using custom player models with big spikes so I know everyone's location" that you would've seen on public Counter-Strike 1.6 servers in 2002. Cheating is aim assistance that nudges your cursor to compensate for spray patterns in CS, it's automatic DPs and throw breaks in Street Fighter 6 that are just at the threshold of human reaction timing, it's firing off skillshots in League of Legends with an overlay that says if it's going to kill the enemy player or not. All of this stuff is doable by a sufficiently skilled/lucky human, but not with the level of consistency you get from cheating.
      - choo-t 2y ago
        > It's impossible to tell in-game if a baseball player is using steroids, yet there's a laundry list of banned substances and players who got banned for taking them because the MLB believes it gives them an unfair advantage. It's called competitive integrity. This is relative to meat-space, not videogame, but we could go there and say caffeine or Adderall use is cheating, thus making anti-cheat a little more invasive… And there another difference, you're referring to professional sport. I have no problem with invasive anti-cheat for professional gamer, even better it the gaming device is provided by tournament organization. But we're talking about anti-cheat used for all players, akin to asking people playing catch in their garden or playing baseball for fun an the local park to take a blood sample for drug test. > All of this stuff is doable by a sufficiently skilled/lucky human, but not with the level of consistency you get from cheating. That's the point, there no difference for the other players between playing against a cheater and playing against a better player. Any ELO-based matchmaking will solve this, cheater will end-up playing against each-other or against very skilled player. You could argue that they could create new account or purposely cripple their ELO ratting, but this is the exact same problem as smurfing.
- dgellow 2y ago
  You're basically ignoring the past 30+ years of the gaming and cheating industry. Everybody already does log behaviour, try to find outliers, and have some systems to try to keep cheaters outside from the general player pool. That's what gaming companies have been doing since at least the early Halo days. That has its own set of side effects, such as creating a horrible experience for the most talented and active players — also the ones most likely to stream and advocate for your game, to produce youtube videos to complain about bad experience, and to have a very influential profile in the community. The state of game cheating has professionalized A LOT, it is extremely competitive and cheating companies produce extremely good quality tools compared to what we had 20 years ago. There is a lot of money to be made, we are at the point where you can just pay a cheap monthly subscription and you get access to actively maintained cheating tools. I know people working on the anti-cheat side, it is a really messy, highly dynamic (the bad actors are constantly adapting), complicated problem that isn't solved once and for all. We are far from the situation where just a few people are using some hacked-together software that will obviously be spotted as cheaters. Game dev companies (at least US/European ones) have zero interest in developing or paying for kernel-level anti-cheat. That's a massive barrier of entry for the player base and they know this. It's also far from being cheap. (Note: ignoring geopolitical factors, Chinese companies such as Tencent or Russian companies could definitely have interests in developing kernel-level anti-cheat for information gathering)
beeboobaa3 2y ago
You limit the amount of matches you host to those you can actually referee, just like any sport where people care about cheating.
tpxl 2y ago
While there are solutions, I won't comment on Valorant - free to play games are a whole can of worms the companies have nobody but themselves to blame. I will comment on a game I used to play though: Escape from Tarkov. The game costs somewhere between 40$ and 250$+tax, depending on what pack you buy. Banning cheaters for this game is literally a profit center. Every time you ban a cheater and they re-buy the game, you made at least 40$. The majority of cheating in the game was due to real money trading - cheaters would make in-game millions quickly, sell them, get banned, buy the game again at a profit. The solution to this is brain-dead simple - more manual moderation (these cheaters are very obvious to spot). What the developers did instead just killed the game.