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Cheating in Multiplayer Games
millertime3250 writes "Tom's Hardware is running an interesting article on cheating in multiplayer games. In an issues that has gained increasing notority, it is a great read for those Counter-Strike players and others alike. It defines the different types of cheats like Client Hook, OpenGL Hack, and Hard-Coded Hack, and cheating's effect on gaming."
Imagine when information becomes free and we all have source code access? I think at some point you can't stop the technology and you just need to trust. We'll just have to play with those we know.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
I'v heared of some neat cheats where they disable wall's (keep them wirerame) so you always know where everyone is. Although I would be pissed if this ever got used against me. It's just more fun to play on a level playing field.
"Mr. President, we cannot allow a mineshaft gap!"
because they "aren't that good" or "I still get killed even though I'm cheating!"
I've seen lots of cheating in Americas Army and it was the primary reason I stopped playing that game. It really ruins the game, although it is fun to kill a cheater when you KNOW they are cheating! :)
I've heard rumors of touch-screens being used to make headshots. Under the definition given by the article (altering config files, etc) this isn't classified as "cheating."
:)
Does "better" equipment constitute cheating? Someone with a laggy connection, for example, becomes harder to hit. Someone with a bigger monitor may be able to see movement more clearly than a poor guy with a 15in screen. Is this the digital divide in fragging?
I know touch-screens could provide a REAL advantage but wouldn't be defined as a cheat by the article. Sure, it's not as deliberate as an aimbot but it has to at least come close.
I'd rather play with the possibilities of cheaters then be forced to run something that 'checks my hard drive' or 'takes screenshots' of my game and ftps them back.
Yeah. It's annoying. Cheating also takes place in casinos and in other physical forms of game play. It's a difficult problem that has been around since games were invented... and it's not going away anytime soon. I don't claim to know the answer. It's just like SPAM, popup ads, and all sorts of other online annoyances. There may not even be a good technological solution... The only thing I can think of is to play with people you know, and if you play with someone else, be wary of what's going on. If they cheat, fuck 'em... There are lots of other people to play with.
While that's the usual and stereotypical reason given, I think there's a more obvious reason; to these people, it's really really funny to watch everyone jumping up and down and getting angry screaming "OMG CHEATER" because of their cheating. That's the fun for them - not the winning, but pissing everyone else off.
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".
Cheating has always been a problem, and always will. The only way to deal with the problem is ignore the cheaters and play on LANs or servers you _personally_ trust. Lamers will always want to install hacks that allow them to cheat their rear ends off and pretend to be l33t.
Pack when I played Quake 3 quite a bit, I didn't mind the cheaters. I looked at it as playing against an enemy with an unfair advantage. And while I might have lost more often than not against a cheater, I'd still be honing my skills against them. Plus if someone else won the deathmatch, they'd be pissed out of their minds, which was always funny.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
One issue, as I see it, is the architecture of the game servers themselves. Half-Life, for example, feeds information about the location of all players on the entire map to the client. You can add all the signing and checking of client side binaries that you want, but someone is going to figure out a way to creatively intercept that data if it is there.
The long-term solution is to just not have the data there. While it would be more work on the CPU to make the game engine instantly draw a character on-screen from no previous information, I would think most multiplayer gamers would give up a few FPS to play cheat-free.
I'm not familar with any back-end changes for games like HL2 and Doom3. Is anyone out there thinking of this? It just seems common sense. If people are exploiting data, just remove the data.
- "When you want something with all your heart, the entire universe conspires to give it to you" -Paulo Coelho
Believe it or not. This is actually one of the DRM applications I am actually looking forward too. It would make (massively multiplayer) online games so much more entertaining.
This goes to show once again that no technology is inherently good or bad. It is the application of said technology where we must collectively learn to act more responsibly.
Thats like saying "Oh, this virus that has the potential for taking down every major computing service on the face of the planet, but it's under the GPL so it's a Paladin compared to that black knight of an OS whose source is closed." Give me a fucking break. Companies need to make money. Very few companies (especially game companies) have found a way to be profitable using open source. Take Loki Games. They made some great games, but they died, because few people bought them. Valve releases the content code so you can make things like Counter-Strike. You can make new games with the game they made, but you can't touch the engine. I think thats pretty fair. id software releases their older games to public under GPL. Thats mighty nice of them. Think you can make something better than half-life, open souce, and make enough money to devote your life to it? Then fire up your editor of choice and prove me wrong. Yes open source is all well and good, but until a paradyme shift occurs (both on the business end and on the users end) I don't see open source prevailing as well as closed source. Most open source advocates think that free as in speech go hand in hand with free as in beer, and thats where the problem lies. They don't want to pay because they're used to the word free so it makes things automatically equate with zero price. Perhaps we should call it "Liberated Source" or "Disclosed Source" or "Buy me and get the code" source. *shrug* My two cents, I could be wrong, but so can you so think that one out before you mod me.
Viva La Revolucion! Buy a Mac!
I can't really follow your argument here, you say that the games are worse than the cheaters because the games are *payware* and the cheats aren't ?
Where do you think the next big game will spawn from, some late-night-hackers' bedroom, or a company that charges money...
Jeez some day I hope that even slashdot-zealots could figure out the simple little fact that everything in life doesn't come for free...
This seems quite easy to me...I play CS, I play FPSs, etc...and the simple and reliable solution that works for things like /dogmode (read godmode), etc. is ADD THEM to the game. Let these kids have their wall hacks, their aimbots, their stupid lameness...build it in, and let server admins turn them off. If you go to Gamespy right now and look hard enough, you can find a server that invites and serves cheaters...so why not? Build the cheats in and let most the servers be free of cheats, while the people who "want to go weeee but ain't got drugs yet" can yack off to their 42448ness (or whatever the hip number of the CTIME is).
Okay...obviously they could still create proxys and such that would try to let them cheat where they can't, as they do now...but I think this would honestly help deter the average guy who isn't creating proxies for the time and effort it takes to actually find a way to slip through the current protections...I hope.
-HobophobE
Nothing laughs forever.
A low ping is the first advantage one can have, but any tech edge is destroyed by the way game makers have to include the Rocket/Bazooka type weaponry that appeals to youngsters.
Seems to be what you're saying. It's pretty well known that doesn't work. And assuming the source does open, it'd be much easier to cheat than to prevent it.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
it actually wasn't _really_ his computer. They did catch him cheating and set him up with a fake box. Did you notice how easy it was to pull his computer out? There were no wires attached.
bananas like monkeys.
The problem is you don't always know who they are, and too often highly skilled innocent players are accused.
I think that wherever it makes sense, have a handicap rating system that segregates players by ability or peer-rating, or both. That way, if someone chooses to cheat, he will either have to deliberately play badly for a time (no fun), or take some kind of penalty to remain in the same class, or be moved up to the next level.
In the best case, all of the cheaters would wind up playing against each other.
A system like this would probably not work well if the game has a small player population, but in that case, there probably would be few cheaters anyway.
Cheating in Multiplayer online games is one of the reasons why I rarely play against people I don't know.
I'm sure there will be those who disagree, but maybe Microsoft is on to something when they started Xbox Live. I've yet to come across someone who is cheating. The playing field is level and you know that those who beat you did so simply because they were better and not because they installed some hack.
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If the game's designed properly all the important and sensitive stuff is done server-side so that patching your client won't have any effect. This would put more load on the server since it would probably have to do quite a bit more processing, but it would eliminate cheating if all the client did was send keystrokes to the server, which processed everything else. Then only the server admin could enable cheating.
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".
Why not make a server that acts like a honeypot for cheaters. Have the server silently detect the cheaters, and send them all to the same map, while the non-cheaters play on another map. Let the cheaters fight themselves!
I had the honor of participating in the beta of MPBT 3025. It was both an eyeopener and lesson in the problems of online gaming.
For those not in the know MPBT 3025 hnceforth BT, was an online version of the battletech boardgames. You have a space faring civilization that has fallen from its golden age. There is much lost technique and technology. Not the least of which is the political organization that allowed all those people to live together. The game was organized along the lines of the 5 major successor states. It consisted of the successor states battling for control of the known universe. The States or Teams had at various times upwards of 3k players and intense rivalries.
The game had a long history having been out and in development for over 10 years. The latest version having been do real soon for nearly 8 years. I am not certain but I believe it was the complete inability to resolve community issues related to the various forms of cheating that first killed interest in the game by players and finally caused EA its last owner to kill the project.
Imagine quake capture the flag with 5 sides and 2 to 4 thousand players a side. Now imagine "responsible players" being tasked with controlling the behavior of their teams, and having nothing but the power of persuasion to do so. This was the community of MPBT 3025.
Needless to say the game became every kind of a cesspool you can imagine. There wasn't just one level of cheating but multiple levels of cheating and betrayal. The base level was what The tom's article speaks of and is the most minor of cheating in online gaming. The hacking of the connection, game engine, weapon data files was something both obvious and by and large easy to deal with. The experienced players could spot the game behaving freakily and would ostracize the cheats or find ways to harrass them. It was something that was annoying but easily dealt with.
The higher levels of cheating were most likely what did the game in. The next level involved multiple accounts, various point transfer schemes, and impersonation. This is where "Cheating" showed that violationg the social contract produces truly disgusting results. There is very little that can compare to participating in an online world, and finding yourself betrayed by people you felt were your friends. In other online games theres similar problems, i.e. people in multiple guilds, people in multiple nations in the smaller empire games. But, in bt, with 5 large nations and virtually no way to keep track you had betrayal as the purpose of the game. Almost all combat was team combat, and towards the end everything revolved around planting ringers.
Cheating is bad, betrayal by supposed friends is a catastrophe for a game. I can't say this loudly enough, and it is something that will either limit the scope of online games or limit them to weird survivor/lord of the flies knockoffs.
The final and worst form of cheating was, the players who volunteered as honorary staff to gain a leg up. As bad as regular betrayal this was worse. In my mind it was the last nail in the coffin for the game. Its, also the great lesson for all online games to come. Make certain that you have automated checks built in before the game even starts. That way, you can not only watch the players but watch the watchers.
While I enjoy FPSes as much as most, my passion lately has been role-playing games. Cheating in these games is much more of a problem because your characters are persistent, and permanently affected by cheats. Trade hacks, leveling hacks, and RvR hacks basically define what can be done in Dark Age of Camelot, and it bugs me. I've spent hundreds of hours crafting my way to 'legendary' status, and others that I know have used cheat programs are taking orders away from me and my characters!
Unfortunately, there's a central authority--the game server admins--and they have to use their authority to stop this stuff. Sadly the policy for most persistent online games is "every player we boot off for cheating is a player who won't pay us money anymore."
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
They just don't take the games as seriously as you do and enjoy making a mockery of your competition.
Yes, they don't take it seriously enough that they covertly and as secretly as possible spend hours every night attempting to earn the respect for their gameplay...clearly they're, err, "mocking" (at least after they're caught). You must be the kid who sent love notes to girls, and when they laughed you away claimed that you were "just joking". The world is all a retrospective laugh to the pathetic.
an online gamer calling someone else the 'weak of the herd'?!?
Yes, "online gamers" are a real rare breed these days, now aren't they. 1989 called: They'd like you to move out and maybe get your own place in the modern world, where pretty much everyone partakes in this newfangled thing called "the internet". The only ones who would proudly proclaim that they don't participate in online gamers are the dumb.
Having said that, the point is that healthy, "competitive" adults like a fair challenge, even if it means losing. I'm not the greatest player in many of the games I play, yet when I am beaten I can respect the gameplay of the opponent, and accept defeat graciously. That is unless you magically get blindsided time after time, and then spectate the culprit to watch an obvious wallhacker and aimbotter at work, smashing down everything around them. I remember first going online with Diablo to give it a shot to find 900 hp "level 2s" who would just sit in the dungeon killing everyone who came along: These are the anti-social a-holes who sneak out at night to kick down snowmen and smash pumpkins.
If those things were done on the server, it would increase network usage for every player, degrading the performance of the entire game.
Somewhat more reasonable would be including code in the client to create fake enemy images behind solid surfaces...
However, if the game client software was smart enough to do that (meaning it could calculate for itself which walls totally blocked off your view of the area), then it might as well just not send 100% concealed enemy pictures to the video card.
The kinds of driver-hacks I'm talking about are possible because the game relies on the video card to decide if an enemy is visible to the player, rather than computing that itself.
(Even better would be for the server to restrict transmitting enemy data for things you cannot see. The original Quake did this- I don't know why they took it out. This would have a side effect of making 40 player games smoother...)
Dunno about everyone else, but when I fire up my RTCW on Linux, I run it as a "game" user with no privileges.
Permissions are your friend! Whilst not unstoppable, it makes it a damn sight harder for untrusted code to break your system.
Windows has more sophisticated ACLs than *nix, so surely it would be possible to set up a similar game user with no access to the rest of the file system/registry. Why don't game installers do this by default on Windows to proactively try to prevent this type of hack? Why don't lazy Windows users do this themselves?
Bah
I stopped buying pc games for my oldest nephew, whether the online shootemup variety or other kinds. All he ever does, I've noticed, is go directly to the internet to find out how to cheat. Waste of good money, and I'm not going to give it away to the game publishers for nothing anymore. Not til they straighten their shit out. (Yes, in many cases they encourage this phenomenon).
He's a good kid, but assholes have convinced him and others that the only way to succeed is to cheat. They have no self-respect or shame, and so what he sees beyond his family is people his age and older cheating wherever possible. Cheat the system, cheat at school, cheat at games -- these days it goes all the way from the little shit like this particular topic, up to stealing investor billions and stealing elections.
Multiplayer games are about playing with other people. People who cheat either don't comprehend the antisocialness of what they are doing or are arseholes.
If enough people in the game think that doing something is cheating, unless you can convince them it's legit then it's cheating, even if it's allowed by the environment/server. Coz you're playing with them.
For example if there are a bunch of people on a CS server and they had decided to play knife fights only even though the server allows other stuff, you're an ass if you ignore them and mow them down with machineguns. Of course if you just joined and they didn't say anything then you're excused for the first time. The point is you want to play with them, you play by the "agreed on" rules. You don't like it, try convincing them. Sure you could convince them that playing "knife only" is not a good idea by being an ass, but that leaves them also convinced that you're an ass.
After all there are plenty of other servers for you to go. You might even be able to set up your own. But if no one wants to play with you and you have to go from server to server pissing people off, you're the one that has no life, not those who are "taking the game too seriously". After all, there are probably servers around which officially allow cheating (or set up your own), and if all the cheaters have to go to a "no cheats" server to cheat, that shows what sort of people they are.
In many games there are lots of rules (e.g. golf, football etc). There are also lots of unwritten rules. Often when an unwritten rule has to be written, it means someone has been an ass. Similarly, when added complexity has to be added to game servers. The players and the game suffer an additional cost.
Playing a multiplayer game is like setting up a mutually agreed reality. If you win by the rules of that mutually agreed reality, there is some honor. If you're the sort who can't play by the rules, you're one of the good reasons why people are not omnipotent. You'd self/mass destruct given an eternity.
I suppose Hell for these people would be being given God mode in their own reality, but nobody will play with them.