Game Developers Cracking Down on Cheating

Hector73 writes "ZDNet has an article discussing a growing concern for the makers of on-line video games. Cheaters and trolls are making it harder for casual users and newbies to get hooked on the on-line versions of games. Considering that on-line gaming may become the major revenue source for game makers over the few years, maybe they will actually do something about it."

Comments

Xbox live to combat cheating

[magicsquid]

This is precisely why Microsoft announced that all of the Xbox's online games will be run off of Microsoft controller servers. They've seen how cheating can rapidly cause a subscriber base to shrink. By controlling everything themselves they hope to limit the damage done by those looking for ways to cheat. I imagine that just in case anything should go wrong, this means frequent backups that can be restored upon a users requests.

Re:Question.

[Peridriga]

Dongles, in the historic sense have been cracked/emulated a long time ago.

A great sound editing software for the Mac was Power Tools. Originally package with a dongle to prevent piracy. The dongle was emulated about 24 hours after the release of the product.

Now though with the cheap USB storage devices hitting the market the concept of dongles might come back. Although the only way to truely secure it would be with a strong cryptographic code to secure both the device itself and the traffic between the device and the software. Althogh you still come down to the fundemental problem that the information is still passing through the users computer and is open to sniffing and cracking.

Securing end client software has always been an extremely difficult problem to solve....

The author needs to check their facts

[Corby911]

In multi-player action games such as "Quake III" and "Half-Life," hackers will try to tap into the servers running online games to execute cheats that let them see through walls or automatically aim weapons.

Most, if not all of the cheats for Half-life and Quake III are client-side or proxy cheats.

Proxy cheats require 2 computers: the one you game on and a proxy that you connect to the server through. The proxy keeps track of what's going on in the game by analyzing the packets that get sent through it. It then makes adjustments (ie aiming corrections) to the packets as they are sent out to the server. This in no way involves breaking into the server.

The common transparency cheats are to a) replace the textures used on the walls with translucent/transparent ones or b) hack your video card's drivers. Neither of those affects the server in any way.

There's a multitude more of these types of cheats. I know because I used to run a decent Half-life and Counterstrike server. I got so depressed at the prevalence of cheating (and cheating accusations), I shut down the server and very rarely play any online games.

HSX Cheaters

[jamesmartinluther]

This article is right on, especially with regard to tapping your game players for help in regulating and busting cheaters.

At the Hollywood Stock Exchange simulated stock market, there have been problems with cheaters for many years. HSX cheaters - called "manipulators" and "shills" - use information tactics and coordinated buying and selling patterns to dishonestly make HSX dollars.

Internally we have an "SEC", which consists of individuals who seek out cheating patterns in the trading data. We also get suggestions from players as to who may be cheating and how they are able to cheat. HSX Traders that are "guilty" of manipulation are fined according to set procedures.

One of the most interesting cases of cheating was when we received an AIM transcript of real-time cheating behavior. It read like someting out of "Wall Street", except with lots of net slang. We busted them and fined their accounts (after an investigation and due process, of course).

Despite the "threat" that cheating poses to the "civility" of a game community, cheaters and the interesting tactics that they use no doubt make online games more interesting. I often ponder about how to better design game play which can harness the criminal instincts of simulated market manipulators (for the betterment of the game).

As cool as this sounds, I do not think that unleashing 1980's style "media raiders" onto the trading community will ever happen at HSX. HSX trades are transformed into marketing data used by movie production studios, hence requiring us to ensure that game play is fair, and, generally, that trades reflect the real media preferences of HSX traders.

- James

Supplemental reading

[defile]

The ZDNet article is missing the link to my original article which is what lead the news.com writer to interview me.

I can see why they left it out though, it calls a lot of the people they interviewed in addition to me names. ;)