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The State of Cheating in Online Games
Gary Mullins writes "GameApex has a nice article up meant to inform other gamers about the presence of cheating in online games. The article covers the types of cheats to be aware of, the type of person the average cheater is, and even includes plenty of information from anti-cheat experts from PunksBusted, United Admins, and The Cheat Police." From the article: "If recording a demo is not an option then you can always use screenshots. While these are not as effective they do work. Once reviewed by you, if you do suspect the player is cheating, forward the information to the server admin. This information is always in the listing of the server or even in scrolling messages on the server in-game. Speaking as someone who has been a server admin, when you have a player who you suspect is too good to be true make sure you check them out before immediately kick or ban them. Sometimes it is better to err on the side of caution and presume the player is skilled, than to assume they are cheating. If they really are cheating it will be proven sooner or later anyway."
i used to play sof2 quite religiously, and at some point, got extremely good at it. And eventually, got kicked and banned from just about every server. for one server in particular, i decided to take a stand and try to get myself unbanned. i was initially banned for cheating because i had a score of 120-5 or something like that. so from there started a long series of forum debates while i was trying to unban myself. it ended up, as i found out, that half the admins there thought i was cheating, and had demos to back their claims. and then the other half thought i wasn't cheating, using their own set of demos and also by pointing out things in the demos that alleged i was cheating. in truth, there is a lot of subjectivity for very skilled players when viewing a demo and trying to determine whether or not the person really is that good, or if they've got an aimbot, wallhack, or some other type of hack. long story short, after a month's worth of fighting, they unbanned me, and let me back on the server. from there, i was recruited into a competitive clan, and participated regularly in tournaments that the server group would hold. and then i was eventually banned again by an admin who was new to the servers and his powers... claiming that i was too good to be true, despite the rest of the community saying otherwise. the fun part is that of all the players on the servers who would accuse left and right as soon as they get killed by the same person a few times, i noticed that it was always the good players who never cared if somebody was cheating or not. if a person was cheating, the skilled would find a way to play around it, or just simply leave. and what was left were the whiners and complainers. so i'm rambling on a bit... but just screenshots and even demos along aren't enough to distinguish between a really skilled player and a cheating player. the differences are often very subtle. but what you end up having to look for are mistakes, if things are repeated, etc... but even then, those things can be completely human, but appear to be due to a bot. in the end, i believe it's the community and relationship each player builds with a server's admins that's way way way above demos and screenshots alone. an ungodly good player with a good attitude are rarities that keep people coming back to a server or game. the ungodly good players with bad attitudes are what kill servers and kill games. so despite it all, i believe it's ultimately up to the types of people a game attracts, the friendliness and supportiveness of the community, and the fairness and levelheadedness of it's admins that will trump any cheater.