Valve Gets Tough On Counter-Strike Cheaters

Tycow writes "Valve is finally getting tough on Counter-Strike cheat creators, according to a post by Gabe Newell on HL2-Fallout, who confirms: 'We've started taking legal action against cheating (cheat-sites, cheat creators,...) both in the US and abroad.' The makers of OGC, one of the mainstream cheat software sites for online games, are apparently seeking legal advice. CS-Nation also has a story noting: 'This is just another front in Valve's anti-cheating campaign. Back in April, Valve began a significantly more aggressive banning methodology, that came as a byproduct of a rapid series of VAC updates silently distributed to all CS servers.'"

Comments

Quit blaming other people for your own problems

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps, instead of relying on yet-more-lawyers and yet-more-lawsuits, Valve should try to fix the FUCKING BUGS FIRST.

The vast majority of exploits and cheats are based on bugs. Fix the bug, you fix the problem.

Quit blaming other people for your own problems Valve.

Re:Quit blaming other people for your own problems

[airjrdn]

While on the surface, I agree with you, it goes somewhat deeper.

Consider Unreal Tournament 2004 for example. Both a widely popular game, and an often chosen engine for other similar games. UT does MD5 checks to make sure the files on your system match the checksum amount they should match to determine if you are using altered files. However, via a fairly easy to find proxy, you can run a small TSR that will intercept the calls to run the MD5 check on your files and always send back what it wants to see...a valid MD5 checksum.

How can the developers get around that? If they check for the TSR, it'll only change immediately to something they aren't checking for. Whatever the devs do, the cheaters will find a way around. For the most part, it's the better programmers that find a way around the things, but they will often post their applications for any kiddie to use.

I don't know if legal action is the right action, but at least it's AN action. It's better than the company behind that $50 game saying what Epic says....it's up to the Unreal Admins to ban the cheaters.

And this is legal how?

[pilot1]

What exactly gives them the right to shut down a website that distributes software that they don't like?
While I hate cheating, I don't know how they have the legal right to do this.

Re:And this is legal how?

[xenocide2]

Technically, cheat software like OGL can be considered derivative work. Under US copyright law, derivative works require permission, otherwise its a form of copyright infringement. Of course, the same can be said of all those console cheating devices like .

Furthermore, CS uses a key permission infrastructure to play online. Some cheaters use software to switch won IDs to evade bans and the like. This can also be used to find valid keys, which might qualifty as some sort of copyright protection circumvention.

While I don't like cheating, I'm not sure a non-techincal solution is going to work. The only surefire way to stop cheating like that is to only send data to clients they should be seeing or hearing. That eliminates see through walls cheats, a significant kind of cheat for CS. I've been accused of cheating when I shot through some permeable materials to kill people, accusations are nearly a big a problem as cheating itself. Hopefully Valve is taking as many steps as possible to alleviate this problem.

Cheats are not illegal...

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. We all hate cheaters, but mucking around in the legal system isn't exactly the best solution here.

Is distributing a cheat a violation of the (US and/or international) law? Nope.

The people who run the cheat website's haven't necessarily violated the EULA either.

The US and International governments are busy dealing with millions of starving people, wars, trade agreements. Your "cheat" isn't even a blip on anyone's radar...

Great work, Valve.

[mrseigen]

There goes their entire customer base. :)

(Just kidding, I'm sure there are very few people who cheat in CS.)

A Potentially Disturbing Trend

[quantax]

I am a proponent of anti-cheating measures & detection, however this seems like it could be bent to serve other purposes, such as attacking the creators of trainers for games. The difference between most of the cheating that goes on in CS and a trainer is that (usually) the trainer is used only for singleplayer, while cheats are used in multiplayer.

My question is, who draws the lines and where do they fall; is a trainer now considered cheating? I would argue quite heavily against someone who favored the illegality of trainers given that they are meant for a player to change a single-player experience more to their liking. Developers have mixed feelings about trainers, ranging from 'you can play the game how you like' to 'we made this game this way for a reason, by changing that, you wreck the entire game, we dont like that', both of which are understandable. Now, what stops a developer who is highly against trainers from hijacking such legalities to go after trainer developers & distributors. Are they drawing the line at multiplayer cheating only? Or are they going to go with the more artistic: non-permissible alteration of a game is not allowed since it ruins its original purpose of the game which the developer intended.

In short, is this the potential road to DRM-like measures in games, where your ownership is only partial and is dictated by the publisher as to what you can and cannot do to the game. I know my comments are somewhat off-topic and may seem a bit overly dramatic but this can easily lead in other directions, especially in the enterprising hands of companies such as EA whom are trying to further consolidate the market.

Re:A Potentially Disturbing Trend

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

Well, as far as I can see, trainers do no harm to the publisher of the game. Online cheats do. I used to play Quake, Q 2 and Q III quite a lot. Dabled in Unreal Tournament, and Sin was my favorite by far. THen the cheaters came.

I don't buy online FPS games anymore, because the playing field is never level. THere's always some fuckwad who found a cheat that gets past the latest set of countermeasures, there to kick over the gameboard for the other players.

Valve is doing exactly what they should. The day fuckwads are to scared to run cheats and kick over the gameboard because they can lose their fucking HOUSE is the day that people can start playing and enjoying these games again.

I hope Valve cleans every last one of those motherfuckers out. Puts them in refrigerator boxes for their next homes. Makes sure their children never go to a good college. Most of all, makes sure they can never afford anything more advanced than a shitty $8 grociery store calculator for the rest of their natural lives.

DRM isn't necessary at all in this case. THese people are harming Valve's business. They can be sued, and damage assessed on that measure. I hope it's assessed as harshly as possible.

I want to be able to play those games again.

cheaters vs thieves

[OmniVector]

i'd prefer that they get tough on people who use keygens that manage to generate LEGAL keys, thus making my legal copy useless since STEAM refuses to let me sign up with a key already used! thanks!

and it's only $10 to ship me a new cd! how thoughtful of you valuve. and FYI, this CD is 2 years old. i can't get the "90 day free cd".

What I'm doing

[mrgrey]

I used to play CS but have stopped due to cheaters. I got a little fed up and created a fake aimbot/wallhack. Lamers download the hack, which is simply a batch file compiled to an .exe, run it, and get sent to an unlisted page on my website where their IP is logged and they're added to a counter. They are asked to share their thoughts in the forum.

So far I have logged over 900 (counter messess up every once in a while) to my counter, but my stats page shows 17324 hits, and the list of IP's I have logged is 31 pages long.

http://igogg.com/mrgrey/