5 ms·

The future of serious cheating is probably a second machine watching the video and playing the game.

by Animats 10mo ago

deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
YPPH 10mo ago
I reckon hackers get a thrill out of doing the inputs themselves. They seem to be able to disregard the fact they've got an unfair advantage, pretending that they are still achieving something by their acts. Where vision based AI will start running riot is in games like Runescape where macroing is a huge problem. I expect it will become undetectable and therefore unbannable.
- vips7L 10mo ago
  I could see a vision based solution being popular in an mmo too. Gold farming is lucrative.
thecommakozzi 10mo ago
[dead]
Rohansi 10mo ago
That's still an improvement over the current state of games. Cheats being able to read hidden game state is a huge advantage vs. just what is visible on screen.
- orbital-decay 10mo ago
  No, it just leads to subtler cheating. Closet cheaters are much worse than obvious ones, and they thrive in exactly these conditions: the game is not too broken by rage mode cheaters so there's a lot of fair players they're preying on, they have an inconspicuous advantage, and the advantage is gatekept with some entry barrier so there aren't too many of them. You can have a fully encrypted and attested click-to-photon DRM chain, but it will just a) turn your computer into an appliance and b) cause even worse cheating.
  - seba_dos1 10mo ago
    You're right, but developers don't really care about cheaters cheating. They care about cheaters ruining the game to others, so closet cheaters are not such a big deal to them even when they're thriving as long as they remain closeted.
  - pyrolistical 10mo ago
    Good! It would push down the cheating down to really low percentages. It won’t be easy for a script kiddie to just download any cheat.
    - orbital-decay 10mo ago
      There's nothing good about this, and you'll be surprised how many people are willing to spend more than $1k/mo just to cheat in video games. Your game will still be ruined in a worse way, and every step towards the full lock-in just makes this closer. As I said, closet cheaters are MUCH worse than obvious ones, and much harder to catch (and for the context, I used to host very popular servers for several games, so I've seen player complaints and retention rates). Here's my previous comment about what it takes to actually eliminate cheaters. Anticheats are only marginally helpful in this, it's all about observability, manual control, and community building. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46139481 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46139481 Intrusive DRM schemes will just take any semblance of computing freedom away from you, while actually making the problem worse in the end.
      - pyrolistical 10mo ago
        If we could eliminate all cheaters down to those willing to spend $1000 per month to cheat, I would consider the war won
        orbital-decay 10mo ago
        Which is a pretty naive view of the cheating landscape that ignores everything I posted above. Enforcing the rules by technical means is largely superficial everywhere except the actual esports, the culture around the multiplayer gaming (both esports and not) needs to change.
- snailmailman 10mo ago
  I don’t think it is an improvement. At the level of League of Legends me and my friend group play, we never noticed cheaters. We play casual ARAM games. Never noticed any hackers or anything. But we definitely notice when at the start of the game, one of our team didnt actually get past the loading screen because Vanguard decided instead they need to reboot their machine. And then good luck winning when you are down a player for several minutes. It doesn’t happen often, but it happens way more often than cheaters did. And this bug happens to multiple people in my friend group. This anti cheat software is extremely buggy. And causes way more problems than it solves for us. I wish i could say “but the software is improving” because the last few weeks it’s been fine, until literally yesterday. I got out of fountain and into combat and then got a “Vanguard must be running” popup. It kicked me out and I couldn’t get back in until I rebooted. And then if you open league too fast after the reboot, because you are hurrying to get back in, you can actually open League before Vanguard starts and then too bad you have to reboot again!
smileybarry 10mo ago
There's some ML image-based cheats out there but they're much worse (and have been for years). Some games have sidestepped this with tiny imperceptible color changes to nametags & outlines to throw off the cheats while not bothering a human player.
goykasi 10mo ago
This youtuber had an interesting approach: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjJImfcQGjI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjJImfcQGjI "Neuromuscular Cyborg Aim Assist"

The future of serious cheating is probably a second machine watching the video and playing the game.

by Animats 10mo ago

The future of serious cheating is probably a second machine watching the video and playing the game.

deleted 10mo ago

[deleted]

YPPH 10mo ago

I reckon hackers get a thrill out of doing the inputs themselves. They seem to be able to disregard the fact they've got an unfair advantage, pretending that they are still achieving something by their acts. Where vision based AI will start running riot is in games like Runescape where macroing is a huge problem. I expect it will become undetectable and therefore unbannable.

vips7L 10mo ago
I could see a vision based solution being popular in an mmo too. Gold farming is lucrative.

thecommakozzi 10mo ago

[dead]

Rohansi 10mo ago

That's still an improvement over the current state of games. Cheats being able to read hidden game state is a huge advantage vs. just what is visible on screen.

orbital-decay 10mo ago
No, it just leads to subtler cheating. Closet cheaters are much worse than obvious ones, and they thrive in exactly these conditions: the game is not too broken by rage mode cheaters so there's a lot of fair players they're preying on, they have an inconspicuous advantage, and the advantage is gatekept with some entry barrier so there aren't too many of them. You can have a fully encrypted and attested click-to-photon DRM chain, but it will just a) turn your computer into an appliance and b) cause even worse cheating.
- seba_dos1 10mo ago
  You're right, but developers don't really care about cheaters cheating. They care about cheaters ruining the game to others, so closet cheaters are not such a big deal to them even when they're thriving as long as they remain closeted.
- pyrolistical 10mo ago
  Good! It would push down the cheating down to really low percentages. It won’t be easy for a script kiddie to just download any cheat.
  - orbital-decay 10mo ago
    There's nothing good about this, and you'll be surprised how many people are willing to spend more than $1k/mo just to cheat in video games. Your game will still be ruined in a worse way, and every step towards the full lock-in just makes this closer. As I said, closet cheaters are MUCH worse than obvious ones, and much harder to catch (and for the context, I used to host very popular servers for several games, so I've seen player complaints and retention rates). Here's my previous comment about what it takes to actually eliminate cheaters. Anticheats are only marginally helpful in this, it's all about observability, manual control, and community building. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46139481 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46139481 Intrusive DRM schemes will just take any semblance of computing freedom away from you, while actually making the problem worse in the end.
    - pyrolistical 10mo ago
      If we could eliminate all cheaters down to those willing to spend $1000 per month to cheat, I would consider the war won
      - orbital-decay 10mo ago
        Which is a pretty naive view of the cheating landscape that ignores everything I posted above. Enforcing the rules by technical means is largely superficial everywhere except the actual esports, the culture around the multiplayer gaming (both esports and not) needs to change.
snailmailman 10mo ago
I don’t think it is an improvement. At the level of League of Legends me and my friend group play, we never noticed cheaters. We play casual ARAM games. Never noticed any hackers or anything. But we definitely notice when at the start of the game, one of our team didnt actually get past the loading screen because Vanguard decided instead they need to reboot their machine. And then good luck winning when you are down a player for several minutes. It doesn’t happen often, but it happens way more often than cheaters did. And this bug happens to multiple people in my friend group. This anti cheat software is extremely buggy. And causes way more problems than it solves for us. I wish i could say “but the software is improving” because the last few weeks it’s been fine, until literally yesterday. I got out of fountain and into combat and then got a “Vanguard must be running” popup. It kicked me out and I couldn’t get back in until I rebooted. And then if you open league too fast after the reboot, because you are hurrying to get back in, you can actually open League before Vanguard starts and then too bad you have to reboot again!

smileybarry 10mo ago

There's some ML image-based cheats out there but they're much worse (and have been for years). Some games have sidestepped this with tiny imperceptible color changes to nametags & outlines to throw off the cheats while not bothering a human player.

goykasi 10mo ago

This youtuber had an interesting approach: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjJImfcQGjI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjJImfcQGjI "Neuromuscular Cyborg Aim Assist"