Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Do Anti-Cheat Systems For Online Games Work?

Posted by simoniker on from the i-am-aimbotting-joo dept.

Mr Wriggle writes "There is nothing worse than playing your favorite game online game, only to have someone frag you and your teammates blatantly using cheats. As many of you are aware, there are various Anti-Cheat systems available i.e. Punkbuster and Cheating Death. PunkBuster comes bundled in some games and is mandatory to play certain games on certain servers. I would like to ask the Slashdot community whether you think these systems work well, or do they cause more problems than they solve? Or is there a solution that the anti-cheat developers have overlooked? Additionally, is the locking-out of CD keys of people caught cheating the reason why more and more viruses attempt to steal CD keys of such games?"

5 of 131 comments (clear)

  1. Inverse by mugnyte · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Howabout a game that encourages cheating? Lag normalized, the constraints are the time you get to react to the incoming stream and build a response. Anything you can do with the incoming data is up to you. I know this gets away from "game" and more into code war, but that sounds more fun overall, especialyl if it lent itself to genetic algorithms. Eh, maybe I just miss Core Wars.

  2. Whenever you keep score by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Whenever you have a game that keeps score you will have people who try, and many times find a way to cheat. Even when there is nothing to directly gain from it. For the life of me i can't figure it out

  3. Push hasn't come to shove yet mostly by MMaestro · · Score: 5, Insightful
    After reading everyone else's comments, I noted that most of the "successes" anti-cheat programs have attained are largely in the FPS genre and centered around only a few games (namely BF1942, Enemy Territory, Half-Life+mods, and SOF2).

    However, I think both the previously made comments and the news report itself is asking a different question for a different topic. Read the title again.

    Do Anti-Cheat Systems For Online Games Work?

    Note the fact that it merely states 'Online Games', yet everyone here is talking about FPS games. Well what about games like Warcraft 3? Theres currently no Punkbuster support for it (although Blizzard is doing a fairly good job at monitoring and banning cheaters). Theres no (effective 1st party) support for anti-cheating programs for Half-Life and its mods (Punkbuster and Cheating Death don't count).

    What I'm trying to say is that this generation of anti-cheat systems is nothing more than a "warm-up" for next-gen games such as Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 (and maybe UT2k4 we'll have to see how its accepted though since its shipping on SIX CDs). We know pretty much anyone who considers themselves a gamer will pick up either HL2, Doom 3 or both so the chances of cheats being written is obviously high. When HL2 comes out (since its being released first), expect to see a complete change in the way anti-cheat systems are implemented in games.

    Oh, and to answer the question: Yes, they do work. For now.

  4. Re:Different goals... by Nyhm · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I agreee with malakai's philosophy: anything in the client is suceptible to attack by the local player. However, I do not share malakai's optimism that Palladium (and other DRM technologies) will solve any of this. Rather, it'll just be another level of the same "arms race."

    It is a fundamental flaw to attempt to secure what is in the hands of the enemy (to paraphrase a well-said post below).

    (OK, so I don't have anything of substance to add, yet. Sorry, I was deliberately wasting your time.)

  5. Banning CD keys by Carthum · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Banning CD's keys sounds like a good idea to stop cheating but in the end it only hurts the naive players. Those who cheat generally have no problem scamming people out of their cd keys. They are already proved they are dishonest by cheating in the first place.