Using MAC Address to Uniquely Identify Computers

An anonymous reader writes "One of Australia's gaming networks, GamesArena has recently imposed a third party program required to access their gaming servers. One of it's features is that it records your NIC's MAC address to identify your computer, and subsequently in future, ban you if you cheat/break the rules etc. The response from players is mixed. It is not open source software, nor is it optional to install. "Install it or find another server to play on". Question remains, is it going too far?" Definitely not- unfortunately it won't work since MACs are changable.

Comments

Ban the IP.

[lennywood1]

Too many violations from that IP range? Ban the /24 it came from. Send back a "Too many cheaters from your ISP" error. MACs are too easily changed, but then again, so are IP's. But considering most gamers have DSL with a static IP, an IP ban is a much better option.

NAT routers

[MartinB]

NAT routers such as the Linksys range allow you to specify the MAC address from their web-based setup - ideal if your broadband provider insists on you registering (and limiting the number of) MAC addresses of all the machines going to connect.

I wonder what they'll do when they discover several simultaneous connections to the server (and sessions) from the same MAC?

hmmm

[awing0]

Nope, MAC addresses won't work. You'd have to have a unique number that's hard coded into something expensive. The Pentium III's CPUID feature would work. However, as much as I hate cheaters in my favorite games, I don't like an ID number open to abuse.

Quake III has recently enabled anti-cheat software called Punk Buster. It does a ban via your Quake III CD-Key, so you can't play on any Punk Buster enabled servers if you get banned. But with the game under $20 at BestBuy, I'm not sure if it will stop many of the problems.

Cheaters aren't a problem in Multiplayer Action.

[Qbertino]

It's solid code of honor amongst Clans not to cheat. Anybody as dedicated to playing online action games would render his pasttime pointless by cheating. And if anyone found out you've cheated your way into Ladder position you'd get an extremely hard time (on and offline).

And when you're playing on a public server, cheaters are easyly identified by playing like crap and either scoring immediate kills once they actually *do* manage to hit or by simply not throwing the towel no matter how many times you flak them at point-blank. Both area mostly less than minor drags to a skilled player and have a somewhat funny aspect to it.

I've seen entire matches in UT (1st) where cheaters we're just plain ignored because of the simply fact their skill level (not trained by playing under real conditions) rendered them something more like 'moving obstacles' rather than actuall participants.
Anyhow, some one using more subtle cheats, such as see-through textures or so, can be anoying. Then on the other hand, if you're that good to know for shure that someone is using such a cheat, you'll be playing clan games most of the time anyway. And I haven't met a single Clan player cheating yet. At least none of mentionable Clans.

BTW: I once had a cheater on my team in a pub UT CTF match. I switched sides and telefragged him 'til he gave up and disconnected. That was fun. :-)