Arcade Golf Game Fraud Scandal Revealed, Probed

Thanks to Highway Games for reprinting The Stinger Report articles on further developments regarding revelations of tournament fraud in arcade game Golden Tee Golf. The situation developed after "Incredible Technologies... ejected eight ranked players following investigation into the manipulation of scores... [following the discovery of] either a software or firmware system to deceive the ITS [networked arcade golf] network." The piece notes that "Over US$12 million in cash prizes has been awarded since the International Tournament System (ITS) [for Golden Tee] began in 1995", although the amount involved in this fraud is rumored to be closer to $20,000, and it's also mentioned: "Efforts to exceed this interface's limits has led to a series of bizarre experiments on personally owned machines ranging from a Belt Sander or even the drive wheel of a motor scooter employed to max out the track ball." In this case, it's theorized that "...fraudsters may have created a firmware mechanism that emulates the movement of the trackball and talks to the game board, so able to generate the optimum power and direction for shots."

Comments

Bummer

[NanoGator]

"Efforts to exceed this interface's limits has led to a series of bizarre experiments on personally owned machines ranging from a Belt Sander or even the drive wheel of a motor scooter employed to max out the track ball."

I wouldn't dream of cheating at the game using a belt sander or a motor scooter... but man I'd sure love to try that on the real thing!

Do people have to cheat at everything?

[josh glaser]

I mean, if you're playing a game alone it's OK, but everybody is sick of cheaters in online games and now this? Come on...

Play fair. That's an ORDER!

Re:Do people have to cheat at everything?

[gl4ss]

the kind of pathetic loser that sees it's time for some $$$.

this doesn't really surprise me at all, rather I'm surprised they would allow such a system in the first place.. it's just asking for some 'improvements' because the game changes at that point, instead of being a game of who's best playing it, it becomes a game of who's best at making the servers think they've won fair and square.

so instead of skill sports it becomes technical(motor) sports.. which wouldn't be that bad if they were open about the possibilities of it. if they don't want that then they can just forget the multiple location playing and hold the tournaments on site, because really that's the only way.

Ancient Chinese Wisdom:

[Anonymous Coward]

Where there is money, there are criminals.

Belt Sander

[MRe_nl]

i wonder what the actual life expectancy is of a belt-sander driven track-ball is!

Re:Belt Sander

[WorkEmail]

I should have recommended the belt sander idea to my crazy friend, who, while playing Golden Tee drunk and attempting to take a few steps back and really hit that white spinning ball as hard as he could, broke his wrist when he slammed it into the thing trying for a record drive.

They should have known...

[GregoryD]

what did they expect when they saw [myg0t]l337ha}{0r0wn3djoo atop the leader board?

When you mix money and video games...

[PeeweeJD]

This is bound to happen... Need to have punkbuster installed on golden tee machines now...

This is not new either. Back in teh 80's I used to have a plastic comb in the inside pocket of my jean jacket... this comb had all the teeth removed (except at the end)... it was for track and field... I could make my guy run hella fast with that comb... A friend made a battery powered thing to push the buttons that was cool, but did not work to good...

course design?

[h0mer]

I've never played Golden Tee, I'm curious to know how the holes are laid out and what the maximum power is. Is it possible to drive the ball 400 yards if you can hit the trackball the right way? And if so, is hitting a long ball beneficial? Depending on the physics, seems like the ball should bounce right off if a player tried to drive the green.

Either way, I don't see why anyone is surprised by this. Money - supervision = People taking advantage.

Re:course design?

[vitaflo]

I've never played Golden Tee, I'm curious to know how the holes are laid out and what the maximum power is. Is it possible to drive the ball 400 yards if you can hit the trackball the right way? And if so, is hitting a long ball beneficial? Depending on the physics, seems like the ball should bounce right off if a player tried to drive the green.

Yes the faster you spin the trackball, the further the ball goes. This is why you see guys beat the hell out of these machines. For most of them I think it's a macho "look how hard I can beat on this piece of plastic" thing, which is rather stupid, simply because there are much better ways to get the trackball to spin fast than pounding the thing (two thumbs on the ball w/ a quick motion works extremely well). And yes, I have seen drives well over 400 yards.

Thus, the long ball is very benefitial. There are many shortcuts in the game that can get you to the green faster, or on the green in one shot, and many of these you need to be able to hit the ball very far. But they're high risk/reward shots. If you don't shoot far, or accurate enough, you usually end up in the drink, or some other not so nice place. As for the physics, you'd think the ball would bounce right off the green from a drive, but there's a backspin button in the game, and, as unrealistic as this sounds, you can backspin the ball off any club, including the driver, making the ball slow down on the green very quickly.

what?!?

[randomdef]

I've lost to a belt sander, awww. stupid belt golfing beltsanders.

Anyone with personal experience?

[kathgar1]

After reading both articles I am still somewhat confused. It seems that initially that the harddrives were not encrypted at all and were easy to hack. Then with the someware updates (that seem to be quite costly I might add) this was changed.
How is the interface designed? They keep refering to a trackball, which I assume records your swing somehow but it is lax on the details. I guess google and eBay might have some information. I wonder if they even encrypt the data down the line.
Frankly I am not sure they can have a secure system. Even if you get rid of the home ownership, what about the bar's owner messing with it? The users control the client, and when there is money to be made people will try to cheat. Even Las Vegas has problems with people cheating their slot machines and they have a government agency and inspections.

Tournament Standards?

[mdielmann]

Although cheating like this is deplorable, it also raises the question of how this tournament is run. Don't they have officials supervising the game play? I mean, can you imagine what would happen in any other tournament if you could bend (or break) the rules?

a belt sander?! that seems kinda extreme

[enrico_suave]

An arcade trackball is very much the same technology used in analog mice (i.e. the ones with the balls, lol!) They just make them out of better/stronger parts to take abuse of bar play/patrons (i.e. steal rollers and good ball bearings instead of plastic rollers and bushings).

With that said, I don't see why one couldn't make a very simple electronic interface (instead of bullying yoru track ball with a sander). It's just light choppers blocking a signal from an ir led to a ir reciever led... bypass that and send your own pulses... and wooooooosh (without the physical wooooosh).

Like the previous poster mentioned using spoons/pencils on track and field... I always wanted to hack an atari2600 controller and make a turbo (left right left right) button to conquer Decathalon... my palms are still scarred =P

e.

The Real Story

[Ralph Wiggam]

I am involved in the Golden Tee community. One of my best friends runs GoldenTeePlayers.com and I've known about this scandal since it happened a few months ago. The way these guys got caught is because on the national tournament results it shows your name, score, and longest drive distance, which is the third tie breaker. All seven of the top scores had an identical long drive distance. We figured they had opened their home machines, unplugged the trackball, and plugged in some kind of signal generator to create perfectly repeatable, exact shots. Apparently other people assumed that because it's mentioned in the story write up. The real story is much dumber. The trackball has two rollers, one for X and Y movement. If you unplug the Y roller, you hit a pefectly straight shot. That's all they were doing. It's obviously still against the rules and they were all banned for life. But it's not like they were Lex Luthor. There were two rule changes as a result. The 50 to 75 people who owned machines in their home have been forced to place them in bars. Also, the tournament conditions now change every 4 hours instead of every day. Yes, those seven guys won several thousand bucks by cheating, but there were still 3000 other prizes awarded each month. It sucked, but we're still playing.

-Barry