An Interview with a Cheater

Dan writes to mention a post at the Aeropause site. Author Richard was recently given the rare opportunity to interview a cheater, shining a light into the dark recesses of a conflicted mind. The article explores why the cheater cheats, and the great excuses they use to be able to look themselves in the mirror. From the article: "Aeropause: What made you decide to mod your Xbox to gain an unfair advantage in games like Halo 2? Schmuck5000: Modding is not an unfair advantage. There is just as much chance that there will be a modder on the other team. I am there to even things out. Halo 2 is beginning to get old, us modders are just making it more funner."

Comments

That old idiom.

[Kirin Fenrir]

Cheaters never win. Okay, well, they always win, but that's what makes them losers.

Re:That old idiom.

[BorgCopyeditor]

Cheaters never lose, and losers never win.

But cheaters are losers.

Ergo, there are no cheaters!

Ladies and Gentlemen:

[Winckle]

Halo 2 is beginning to get old, us modders are just making it more funner."

This is the 12 year old kid who followed some instructions on the internet so he can stop losing at Halo.

Re:Ladies and Gentlemen:

[bradkittenbrink]

While, he does claim to be 24, in general I agree with you, he definitely appears to think like a 12 year old. For example:

Aeropause: How many times have you been banned or suspended from gaming servers?
Schmuck5000: .... The people at Bungie are the worst. How can they complain about people like me. They should have built a anti-cheating engine in the game to prevent it. Its not my fault that modders cheat.

Aeropause: .... What advice would you give game designers to help discourage cheaters?
Schmuck5000: Give Up! There is no way to stop us. Everyone wants to cheat and we will always find a way to do it.

That's some ironclad logic there, if I've ever seen it.

Re:Ladies and Gentlemen:

[voice_of_all_reason]

Rarely is the question asked: Is our players modding?

Re:Ladies and Gentlemen:

[CortoMaltese]

That's the only part of the interview that truely [sic!] surprised me (when he said he was 24). Either he's much younger or the educational system is clearly failing.

Duh. He cheated in the exams.

I know what he means

[svunt]

Schmuck5000: Modding is not an unfair advantage. There is just as much chance that there will be a modder on the other team. I am there to even things out.

Exactly. This is why I carry $1000 in Monopoly money in my underpants at all times.

Re:I know what he means

[Anonymous Coward]

You wear underpants? I've been hiding it in bodily cavities until people wanted to stop playing because of the smell. Then I declare myself winner by default.

Re:I know what he means

[svunt]

$1000? What's that worth? 2 hotels?

Naw, dog. I'm from the ghetto, that stretch of slum land from Go to Jail. A grand will buy you crack, a lap dance, a few forty ounce bottles of malt liquor, and your own chain of Flag Inns.

New for XBox 360

[Siberwulf]

"Speak Easy 2: Haxxing"



You to can make ur games much more funner then before! Plug in yer haxx and away yous go! Cal Now!

Cheat or cheater

[Bloke down the pub]

I thought a person who acts unsportingly was a cheat. Whereas a cheater's sort of like a leopard.

Re:Cheat or cheater

[PeeAitchPee]

Whereas a cheater's sort of like a leopard.

Correct. It's very similar to the other Southern Appalachian big cat, the lyin'.

Really lame interview

[EVil Lawyer]

FTFA: "Aeropause: Do you have a girlfriend?"

Boh the interviewer and interviewee appear to be relatively idiotic. This interview might have been marginally interesting if they had interviewed someone more on the cutting edge of cheating -- someone who actually creates the mods, or develops new cheating modalities.

Re:Really lame interview

[xtracto]

I would like to say thank you to Schmuck5000 for letting us in on how utterly dumb and senseless the mind of a cheater can be. I am sure all our faithful

I agree with parent, the interview is stupid, it is just one person whining because the 'cheater' beat him. I agree that what would be interesting is to interview the developers of the cheats.

However, the reason why the people develop cheats is just because there is demand for cheats. So in a sense this cheater has a point, there is people who wants to cheat, it has been like that since the GameGear times of the NES (or before).

My first cheat was with the Price of Persia game on the PC, I remember looking the PRINCE.SAV file on Xtree Gold and editing it in Hex mode (without knowing what it was, just hacking my way trough it) to have more lives and time. Oh, and to bypass the manual letter verifiaciton =o)

Re:Really lame interview

[Score Whore]

People who are cheating are playing a different game. They may be having fun, but they are not playing the same game as the rest of the players.

They want to be bully's and the only way the can bully people is to use a "tool" to get over whatever is preventing them from bullying without the "tool".

Re:Really lame interview

[1010110010]

You're missing the point of the interview.

Yes, it would be very interesting to ask technical as well as moral questions to the people who enable cheaters to cheat, but this interview gave us insight into why a person would cheat in the first place.

I would also like to add that there is a strong difference between cheating at a single player game, and having fun figuring out the save system, and cheating at multiplayer. When you're cheating by yourself, whether it be because you enjoy reverse-engineering the save file or because you simply want to advance faster, it has no impact on anybody else.

Cheating at multiplayer is an annoyance for everybody. The interviewee clearly demonstrates that there is no technical challenge to what he is doing. He's not doing it because he wants to understand how the game works. He's doing it because he's not very good at the games he likes to play and he wants to win, to the frustration of everybody else.

Re:Really lame interview

[ergo98]

I agree with parent, the interview is stupid, it is just one person whining because the 'cheater' beat him. I agree that what would be interesting is to interview the developers of the cheats.

It's impossible for a cheater to win. People who face cheaters get irritated because they completely ruin the game, not because they're such potent adversaries.

Even when you aren't getting shot by magic bullets from adversaries who can track you and shoot you through walls, once cheaters have permeated a domain you can no longer enjoy the game: Instead of ceding that your opponnet played better, once there's cheaters in the mix you can never savour a loss (to put it in a funny but truthful way). Suspicion and bitterness overtake the game (on both sides. I was pretty good at Urban Terror, and my abilities were endlessly chalked up to "cheats" by my victims. I could never enjoy my wins, and they couldn't enjoy their loss or learn from it, because the game was saturated by cheaters).

I agree that what would be interesting is to interview the developers of the cheats.

I think what motivates the creator of the cheats is clear to us all. Hell, I would never spam, but creating spam-track avoidance software has always intrigued me because it's a challenge. I'm sure the cheat developers are just playing their own game, and they are legitimately winning.

The people destroying online games, however, are just the scriptkiddy wankers, and really I doubt the actual developers behind the cheat (who do legitimate, real work for their achievements) ever really even bother using their cheats online.

Re:Really lame interview

[JavaLord]

I'm willing to bet most people that cheat in games won't have a girlfriend. Otherwise why would they be so obsessed with 'winning' an online game? People with a SO have better things to do that worry about if they won or lost..

You are wrong, I created and released an aimbot for a certain FPS game and I had a girlfriend at the time. It's amazing people still don't understand what a griefer is. It never mattered to me if I won or lost, just as long as I pissed someone off, and got a laugh out of it.

Also the author of the article claims that "Modders", aimbotters, whatever..cheat because they have no skill. That isn't true either, as I've played for first place on a very popular online gaming ladder for the game I used to cheat at, and I know other people who were good players who botted just for the hell of it.

There are some players who use bots, mods, whatever and try to pass them off as 'skill', but for the most part they are just losers. It's much more fun to cheat, and let everyone know about it. :)

Re:Really lame interview

[Vellmont]

For some reason the word "sociopath" keeps coming to mind when I read your post. Anyone who enjoys pissing off anonymous people in a computer game, and actively seeks that out has a screw or two loose. Perhaps you should up your meds?

Re:Really lame interview

[Jekler]

Other posters said it sounds like sociopathic tendencies. It's not a tendency, you are a sociopath.

"It's amazing people still don't understand what a griefer is."

That's practically the definition of a sociopath. A person who does not think or feel the same genuine emotions the rest of society does, but you firmly believe everyone else's brain is wired up the way yours is.

People with normal minds do not play games for the disenjoyment of others, don't understand why someone would want to, and wouldn't enjoy it if we tried. Your thoughts and behavior are equivilant to someone going to medical school so they can cut people with a scalpel. (i.e. Someone who wants to end up with half a dozen bodies hanging in their basement.) You've chosen a course of action for exactly the opposite reason most people do, but you think it's strange the rest of us don't seem to understand or empathize.

Re:Really lame interview

[HiVizDiver]

Actually, a closer definition would be psychopath. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopath/
That should make everyone feel better. O_o

Re:Really lame interview

[Pentagram]

How much is someones online gaming time worth really?

It's not for you to decide how much someone else's time is worth.

All of the things you listed above would take time and money to fix, what I did would take disconnecting from a server and going to another one to fix.

Why should others have to inconvenience themselves to accommodate your antisocial behaviour? If, IRL, you came across a group of people playing [football, rugby, Ultimate...] would you feel justified in running around and disrupting their game -- after all they could find somewhere else to play?

I don't play x-box online, as for your line with cheating in video games...If someone camps they are fucking up your life experence so isn't it the same thing? If someone plays really well, you could argue they are fucking up your game so is that the same thing? When someone threw you at street fighter 10 years ago in the arcade, was that the same thing? Really it's no different, and easy to agitate people like you are the ones who make it so much fun. You act like an aimbotter is the reincarnation of Hitler. Your emphasis on how much the game matters is what makes you an attractive target.

I agree with the other posters' assessment: you are a sociopath. Justifying annoying others because they take their chosen leisure activity seriously is bizarre.

athletes use same excuse

[192939495969798999]

Athletes often use the same excuse, that since there will be "other" players on drugs, they need to use the same drugs to stay competitive. However, this should only be the case if the drugs are allowed, because any given cheater could be exposed and stripped of their titles, video game or otherwise. That's the ultimate slap-down, because anyone after that will assume you're cheating even if you're not.

Re:athletes use same excuse

[Red Flayer]

Athletes often use the same excuse, that since there will be "other" players on drugs, they need to use the same drugs to stay competitive.

I think there's a difference between recreational gaming and professional sports, however. Professional sports are ALL about winning (unfortunately, IMO -- it sets a bad example). Look at the famous quote by Vince Lombardi -- "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing."

Recreational gaming is about competition, win or lose -- and the fact that some people are willing to cheat doesn't change the fact that if I cheat, I'm throwing away the concepts of fair play and good sportsmanship.

In life, as in gaming, there will always be people who cheat. The questions are:

1) Does your moral system acknowledge that when competing within a ruleset, it is immoral to reach outside that rule set? And,

2) Are you willing to suffer negative consequences for sticking to your morals, even when others are obviously acting outside the rules?

People who cheat usually justify their actions by their response to these two questions; a negative response to the first indicates a contextually amoral system, a negative response to the second indicates an immoral attitude.

The subject of TFA is of the second camp; his justification is that because others have broken the rules, and he doesn't want to suffer thereby, that the rules have changed to allow cheating.

However, this should only be the case if the drugs are allowed, because any given cheater could be exposed and stripped of their titles, video game or otherwise. That's the ultimate slap-down, because anyone after that will assume you're cheating even if you're not.

That works in professional sports; not so in on-line gaming, where anonymity cancels it out. I don't really see a solution -- I know that when I play, there are others playing with whom I'm not competing (the cheaters). It's frustrating, but I can always get my jollies from feeling that I've got the moral high ground. When there are too many cheaters, I play a different, less popular game -- where cheating is less rampant.

Re:athletes use same excuse

[edxwelch]

Are you suggesting that taking anabolic steroids can increase your performance in a Halo2 death match?
interesting

Interview the Enabler Please

[eldavojohn]

I haven't read this article. But from that last sentence of grammar stumbling, I'm not interested in this interview at all. I don't know what Xbox modding is but I'd imagine that Schmuck5000 didn't invent this 'modding' procedure. A lot of times, they just follow some process online and then run around killing people saying "1337 h4Xx00rs pwn you n00bz0rs." I consider these people much less than 'cheaters' although I don't think the names I have for them are for public display.

What about the people who write the code or make the hardware for the mods? You know, the people that actually do all the work? I want to talk to these people who probably don't even use it all that much but just consider it a challenge and then get bored after the challenge is overcome. Game Genie & Game Shark are popularized commercial versions of this but it's not online play. I wish I could talk to the people that reverse engineer the packets sent out using something like Burp or a networking tool that gives them speed hacks. These people work for it while I don't even think their end goal is really to cheat. I kind of have the feeling that they enjoy the cat and mouse game that appearantly Blizzard has won (after rounds of losing) but Xbox Live has lost.

I investigated writing a program that read the memory from video and tried to interpret it using heuristics on what to do in casewise instances. While it might work for some games (like Tetris), 3D emersion worlds like WoW or online play are much much more difficult. If people are out there and writing these 'bots' that are pretty highly sophisticated, I'd love to hear from them and ask them real questions (not "Do you have a girlfriend?").

By the way, the article has a picture of Steve Martin as "The Jerk" and it's pretty obvious they were interviewing an idiot and doing a radio talk show host job of making him look like a poser.

Re:Interview the Enabler Please

[Cadallin]

Here's a hint: AI's in Video games don't look at the video data.

The subject was then told that

[antifoidulus]

he cannot "mod" the English language as easily as he can his XBox.

Re:Weeeoooeeeoooeeooo...

[revlayle]

Nah, I bet those were the words of THE CHEATER.

See kids: IF YOU cheat at Halo 2 OR become a Slashdot Editor, your grammar skills *will* slip.

(There's a moral here, but damned if I could figure it out!)

Oboy! News for Nerds!!

[arun_s]

I always wanted to get inside the mind of a cool haxx0r.

Give Up! There is no way to stop us. Everyone wants to cheat and we will always find a way to do it. Anyone reading this is simply jealous of the fact that I have enough nuts to cheat and play the game the way I want to.

Man that guy's got balls! None can stop our XBox-modding overlords.
Thanks /. for bringing this to our attention.

The Worst Part...

[HappyCycling]

The worst part of cheating is that it forever creates doubt, mistrust and skepticism about the skills of others online, meaning that if you play well, you are labeled a cheater. Respect goes out the window.

Rare Opportunity?

[KermodeBear]

The summary calls this a "rare opportunity to interview a cheater". Cheaters are hardly rare and it isn't difficult to talk to them. Granted, you're likely to get "OMGSTFUONTEHBBQ!!!11!1!one!eleven" than a real conversation, but...

Regardless, the amount of cheating that exists online now is the reason I only play online with people I know, on locked servers. The rest of the time it is single player stuff. When I play a game I play to have fun, and cheaters make games very UN-fun.

Catching them can be a problem. I'm happy the some companies are taking steps towards anti-cheating measures, but ultimately the cheaters are going to win. They control the software running on their hardware and they can modify it as they see fit.

PunkBuster was a good example of this. A server with PunkBuster running required all client connecting to be running a PunkBuster client, which reported to the server various bits of information such as video drivers, what processes are running, if something might be modifying the game's memory, etc. But, after a while, it was useless because the client software was hacked to make the cheater player seem legitimate.

Anti-cheat software is like a lock on a door: It only keeps the honest people out.

Re:Rare Opportunity?

[Buzz_Litebeer]

I used to help write anti cheat software, and the thing is the cheats have their own forums as well.

if you want to "interview a cheater" it is very easy to find them.

To successfully find out what cheats were out there I had to get on those boards and become a member and all that stuff. Trust me, "skill" can easily be downloaded for almost any game out there.

The cheaters get all angry and stop playing if they cant cheat, cause the game "aint fun" because they losing or they expect someone else is cheating against them when they lose.

We are teaching our kids that the only way to have fun is to win, and if you are second place it just means your the first loser and all of that.

Kids arent learning that the POINT of the game is to show how good you are at it versus someone else, when you are cheating you arent really playing the same game and your rules are better in your favor. Its completely pointless.

I used to cheat on Halo 2 too!

[Stormx2]

So you can get an interesting look into my mindset if you want. I expect heavy critisism but I'll continue anyway: Halo 2 is a fun game. I'm not gamer, and Halo 2 is one of the only games I actually play, besides the ones on my old Megadrive! I played online for quite some time until I experienced a cheater on a matchmade game. I became interested. I'd been using linux for 6 months and the idea of putting it on my xbox - to cheat - appealed to me. It took me a lot of getting to grips with the text talk used by all the "modders" as they prefer to be known on Halo 2. Eventually I managed it, and got banned in 6 hours on my subscription account! I guess that taught me a lesson. For a few months I cheated offline with friends. Some of the less destructive hacks (such as the new-ish 0 gravity hack) can make some interesting playing, and I agree with said cheater that it can bring a different edge on a game which can become repetitive! I decided to mod online one day. Not for glory, just to see if I could. It actually takes 2 people to mod online, and 4 hours of fussing around with that meant I totally screwed it up, and didn't have a single sucessful game! Heres my excuse: I'm a bit of a documenter/tutorial maker myself. Hacking Halo 2 isn't that simple. A lot of newbies get stuck, I was one. A lot of cheaters are fools and pre-teens (including mental age here), but not all of us! Much like the OSS community have their shared ideas, "modders" do too. I'm not demonising OSS here either. I actually wrote a rather lengthy and detailed tutorial, the only of its kind, on this topic (Halo 2 Softmodding, google it). Thats my excuse. I haven't played halo 2 in 6 months now, but cheaters don't always cheat to win. A lot do, but try and bare this point in mind! And please comment on this =) I just wrote a blog post on my second slashdot comment. Ah, such a newbie.

Cognative Dissonance

[SanityInAnarchy]

I hope I spelled that right...

But man, it's amazing this guy can't put two of his responses together:

The people at Bungie are the worst. How can they complain about people like me. They should have built a anti-cheating engine in the game to prevent it.

Ok, ignoring for the moment that they did do that (they put it on a freakin' console, for one), even ignoring that banning cheaters is an "anti-cheating engine" of sorts, when asked how game designers should stop cheaters (since he suggested that they do), he says:

Give Up! There is no way to stop us.

So, damned if they do, and damned if they don't.

Still, this has got to be my favorite quote:

The other players are just jealous p***ys who wish they had the ability to cheat.

Funny, I think this guy cheats (not hard!) because he's a jealous pussy who wishes he had the ability to play fairly.

I can play each and every game I cheat at very well.

I call BS. The people I know who can play a game "very well" -- some of them could be tournament-level if they practiced just a bit more -- would all much rather play fair. Oh, they have fun with new cheats and exploits, for about 10 seconds, and we're talking about things like Warthog jumping. The rest of the time, they are the ones who will be winning anyway, by knifing the aimbotter in the back.

But I suppose it's like trying to teach a Ferengi about honor, or a Klingon about restraint, or a Trekkie about the Real World. He'll always cheat, and he'll always suck, and nothing I say will change that.

Bad grammar, imaturity, poor spelling.....

[Prien715]

Schmuck5000: Modding is not an unfair advantage. There is just as much chance that there will be a modder on the other team. I am there to even things out. Halo 2 is beginning to get old, us modders are just making it more funner.

Bad grammar, immaturity, poor spelling...Quick Taco! You've found a new Slashdot editor!

Twink

[MeanderingMind]

The principles the cheater presents are remarkably similar to arguments for twinking in WoW. Players claim they do it for a variety of reasons, but a very common one is to "even things out" since the other side probably has twinks.

Also interesting is the similarity in attitude. Anyone posting anti-twink messages generally gets called a "loser" and more offensive terms and is labeled as jealous because they can't get the funds to twink. The cheater says the equivalent, calling people who complain about cheaters some nasty things while saying they are envious because they can't cheat or aren't "smart" enough to.

There's also the classic "If they (being the game creators) didn't want me to cheat (or twink) they would have built an anti-cheat engine (equipment based team selector)" argument. As well as the "I have 1337 skills and even without cheats I'll pwn you" argument.

While there are certainly mature people who do things like twinking because they are bored or because they enjoy fighting other twinks, I think it's obvious (especially if you've ever fought them) that the vast majority are without skill and make up for it with whatever advantage can be afforded to an unskilled moron. If everyone actually cheated, they'd stop playing because they wouldn't be able to win.

The fact that the cheater is 24, lacks a girlfriend (quite defensive about it too), and quotes a hideous translation from a dub of a mainstream cartoon show doesn't lend us to have faith in his intelligence.

Re:Twink

[dwiget]

Twinking characters is not even remotely close to cheating. Sorry.

Re:Twink

[Sqweegee]

Twinking in an MMO is part of the game mechanics, nothing like cheating. If someone goes through the effort of gathering the rare items that allow them to equip better gear then they deserve the advantage they have.

You don't get mad at the person who ran around an FPS map gathing weapons, ammo, and armor before opening up on you, or do you expect them to only fight with the default handgun?

Hacker/mod cheaters should be banned and are really only showing their lack of skill at playing the game.

Re:Note to Self

[spun]

People who say "recursive" are more funner.

In related news...

[autophile]

In related news, AeroFLOT interviewed The Cheat:

Aeroflot: In Soviet Russia, interviewEE interviews interviewER!
The Cheat: Mrr, rrr, m! Mm mrr mrah mreah!

--Rob

I sense a disturbance in the force...

[musicon]

... as if millions of grammar nazies cried out in terror, and were silenced.

"more funner" indeed.

Re:I sense a disturbance in the force...

[BadMrMojo]

.... naziEs ...?

* My head a'splode! *

Re:anti-cheating engine

[twistedsymphony]

I thought the exact same thing when I read it...

It also got me thinking about what an anti-cheating engine would look like...
Honestly why don't companies like bungie simply run a CRC on any downloaded content, or record the downloaded date server side and compare it with the modified date client side. I honestly don't know much about cheating online but as someone who has modded Xbox consoles I would imagine the cheating comes from modifying the extra content that was downloaded from Xbox live and sits on the hard drive (extra maps, etc.). Since you can't modify the disc content (if you did you'd need to run a modchip and if you're running a modchip when you log into Xbox Live MS can detect that and ban your sorry ass).

I would think something as simple as a CRC or date check would be simple enough, once you download the content it shouldn't ever change so the CRC should always pass and the modified date should never change.

I'd also like to point out that there IS a LARGE distinction between modders and cheaters. I'm a modder, I make changes to the console that allow me to run Linux, Xbox Media Center and other homebrew apps, I'm currently working on an HTPC based around an Xbox console. There are even game modders that create new levels, weapons, and other content for Halo and other games... these don't let you cheat but they give you new things to play with just like user mods in PC games... I would think the nerdy gaming community should be able to recognize this difference (particularly /.ers) what with all the public misuse of the term "hacker".

Re:anti-cheating engine

[lbrandy]

Honestly why don't companies like bungie simply run a CRC on any downloaded content, or record the downloaded date server side and compare it with the modified date client side.

Because it's not that simple. Think of the code that gets run.

Calculate CRC
check CRC to answer
if not equal jump to OMG_HACKER
if equal jmp to PLAY_GAME_PLEASE

All a hacker has to do is find any location in 'Calculate CRC' and put a single instruction 'JMP PLAY_GAME_PLEASE', and he's bypassed your CRC check. So now you have to put in a check to make sure that code hasn't been screwed with, etc, etc. To be totally secure, it would need to be "turtles, all the way down".

Bah!

[SirJorgelOfBorgel]

I must say, I hardly play FPS's online anymore as I can't spare the time and today's FPS's just aren't what they used to be. I have been #1 on ngWorldStats for UT/CTF a few times. I have written (non-cheater)mods for a game or two, and an ANTIcheating tool for another (all very well received by their communities). Cheating pisses me off. Yes I used to be real good at some FPS's, and I spent a LOT of time becoming it, playing several hours a day (so call me sad, whatever). What the hell is fun in cheating? If I go into a server and own everybody in there, do I feel good? No. It sucks! I leave and find a server with people who are up to par with my skills. Sometimes they're way above you, then you find a server that is only a little bit above your own skills. And if you get really good in a game, you get to know the other good players. You know who cheats and who doesn't. You don't play with cheaters in general, though sometimes it is fun to kick their scrawny girlfriendless hinies. If you cheat, where's the challenge? What is fun in winning all the time? Ok, I may have actually written a few cheats, but that is because I love coding - it's not like I ever used them 'in the wild'.

Online cheaters are below contempt. I don't care what their motivation is. You don't go and purposely ruin others people's fun. It's just "not done". I don't care if your retarded, doing it for kicks, have some half decent self invented excuse or whatever, you just don't. Hell, I've ended real life friendships when I learned they were cheating (in various ways) and couldn't convince them it's just not done.

The arguments presented in the article are just beyond sanity. "I tend to ignore those people, they bitch and morn about how I cheated but they could have modded their box just like mine.", "How can they complain about people like me. They should have built a anti-cheating engine in the game to prevent it.", "Anyone reading this is simply jealous of the fact that I have enough nuts to cheat and play the game the way I want to.", "why should I stop if no one else does"

It's all about the morals and values. Hell, I could've been fairly rich if I didn't hang on to it. Many players of various games have used tools (mods, extensions, cheater-finding, etc) I've made daily. I could've taken most of their accounts if I wanted, selling them on ebay, and in some cases just exchanging it for real world cash (in case of real-cash-economy games). And believe me, there's lots and lots of cash in that. Morals and values...

Saddest thing is, we are most likely to see this guy grow up to be president of some company that earns millions by ripping other people of or otherwise cheating them (spammers anyone?). Fuck that.

why people cheat

[the dark hero]

no one wants to work for things anymore. they want the quickest way to the top. instant gratification. it's the bane of american society.

Cheating is natural

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not a mystery. It is very simple. Our brains are the products of evolution in a competitive environment. In the good old days, the losers got eaten (or starved to death or what have you). So, those who used all their resources to give themselves every advantage they could tended to be the winners.

We, therefore, are instinctually driven to use all resources available to us to give ourselves every advantage we can. Hence, the "temptation" to cheat is an ever-present behavioral drive.

Good sportsmanship is an arbitrary social construct. There is nothing natural about it. It takes an act of self-denial to be a good sport, and to not cheat. Now, this may be ethically and socially superior...it may be the more enlightened path...but it is not natural and as such most people don't walk it.

Re:Cheating is natural

[phulegart]

In games like Freelancer, what you suggest was done over and over again. Servers were set up so that those who wanted to mod their clients before connecting to gain an unfair advantage (disallowed weapons, faster ships, impervious hulls, etc) could do so and play al they wanted, with other modders /cheaters.

It doesn't work.

Apparently part of the modder/cheater mentality is not only to have an advantage over the other players, but to exploit that advantage in the FACE of those who are trying to play an honest game. Kind of a huge "Look how much better I am than you. What a loser you must be." kind of attitude.

Re:Cheating is natural

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not a mystery. It is very simple. Our brains are the products of evolution in a competitive environment. In the good old days, the losers got eaten (or starved to death or what have you). So, those who used all their resources to give themselves every advantage they could tended to be the winners.

Your argument has so many flaws it isn't even funny. First, nobody ever cheated in the wild. You can't. There are no rules.

Games, and rules are an artificial, social contstruct, created by humans. Cheating is just as artificial. One major difference between a video game and real life is that a video game has rules posted.

In life, using all of the resources available to you is fair game. In video games, using all of the available resources to you is called "playing." It isn't the same thing as "cheating."

Your argument holds water for one type of person, the type who can not mentally differentiate between real life and video games.

Re:Cheating is natural

[misleb]

It is not a mystery. It is very simple. Our brains are the products of evolution in a competitive environment. In the good old days, the losers got eaten (or starved to death or what have you). So, those who used all their resources to give themselves every advantage they could tended to be the winners.

Depends on what you mean by the "old days." Humans are social animals and always have been (as far as we know). Generally speaking, individuals cooporate in a social situation. It pays to play by the rules within the group (which may include *lawful* competition). In a group, you're more likely to be killed for "cheating" (theft, for example) than get a survival advantage. It is therefore the norm for humans to obey the rules of the social group. "Cheating" is a deviation... an aberation that ultimately hurts the stability of the social group.

Cheating may, however, still be natural in the sense that it is an evolutionary carryover from a time when the animal that humans eventually evolved from was not social/cooporative. But as far as being human goes, it is not "natural."

Good sportsmanship is an arbitrary social construct.

Social contructs are no more or less arbitary than any other survival adaptation such as tool making. We make physical tools. We make social constructs. Same basic purpose: survival.

-matthew

Re:He has a great future

[Oligonicella]

"I think he has a great future in front of him. As we are continually told, life is a competition. The point is to win and not to winge about how it wasn't fair when you loose."

The you're an idiot and don't understand the meaning of competition. Competition implies that there are rules being followed.

Want to play without rules? Great. Come and play a game of poker in my neck of the woods and cheat. Please don't winge (whatever that is) about the lack of working knees when you get caught (ie: lose).

Life is not (regardless of your outlook) a computer game without consequences. Cheaters who get caught usually pay a stiff price. That's because those of us who don't like cheating or cheaters wreak retribution. That, little man, is not complaining about being cheated, but doing something physical (life) about it.

Re:anti-cheating engine

[abandonment]

this is pretty much what most online games do, lookig for unmodified content, but again you're relying on the client to tell you that it hasn't been modified, which is pretty much impossible to trust.

punkbuster et al rely on a seperate executable checking the state of another executable, which is a slightly better situation, but it ends up in a situation like bf2 where the 'validating client data' stage of loading a game takes as long as loading the content & connecting to a server, if not longer.

modders like this person have pretty much ruined online gaming and should be dragged into the streets and shot.

if he's just 'evening up the odds', it's an arms race that can never be won by the modders, so if this is their actual motivation, you'd think they'd be supportive of developers that DO successfully provide counter measures to cheating.

at least with BF2 anyone that mods content are forced to play on non-punkbuster servers - on xbox live, there is no such 'alternate' network that we can throw the cheaters onto.

the worst part is that doing any kind of LEGITIMATE mods of games falls afoul of the anti-cheat systems which has a negative impact on the game's lifecycle as well - you can't mod anything in BF2 without getting rejected from punkbuster servers for 'modifying your game content'.

The software used

[w33t]

This is a timely article for me since Saturday evening on Battlefield 2 I ran upon an entire squad/clan of cheaters.

It was around 4am with no admins on the server, so they were being quite blatant about their cheating. I believe they were using the wallhacks and aimbots offered from MSXSecurity

Check out the videos:
http://media.putfile.com/MSX-Aimbot
http://media.putfile.com/MSX-Video2222
http://media.putfile.com/pwnage5580
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-364914118 8840786715

Unfortunately, I must be honest, these hacks actually DO make cheating look kind of fun. Like you are a mutant with super-human powers.

I would like to see a team of cheaters going up against another team of cheaters though - that would be strange and pointless gameplay I would think.

Wait?

[ad0gg]

You're comparing cheating to twinking? Cheating involves breaking the rules, twinking involves playing within the rules to gain the best advantage. What next? Ferrari F1 team is cheating because they have a better car than the Williams-Coswort team?

Re:anti-cheating engine

[scribblej]

Since you can't modify the disc content (if you did you'd need to run a modchip and if you're running a modchip when you log into Xbox Live MS can detect that and ban your sorry ass).

You don't know what you're talking about.

I don't cheat because I don't play online games because I can't stand f-ing cheaters, okay?

That said, you're just wrong. I've modded about a dozen Xboxes. None of them using a modchip, all done in software. When I am finished modding an Xbox:

1) You can connect and play on Xbox live. The SOFTWARE mod, no modchip, creates a virtual disc that looks to MS like an unmodded box. HARDWARE modchips usually come with kill switches so you can flip in a regular BIOS just like that. You can play on Xbox Live with either a hardware or software mod. Period.
2) You run all the games from copies on your Xbox hard drive. Modifying those bits is as easy as writing to a hard disc... which ain't hard.

You *can* play a game off a disc, but you wouldn't want to. Load times playing off the hard disc are WAY faster. Loading times for games played off the disc frustrate the hell out of me. It's why I've copied all my LEGITIMATELY PURCHASED games onto my Xbox HDD. It makes things like Fable or Jade empire actually playable.


I would think something as simple as a CRC or date check would be simple enough, once you download the content it shouldn't ever change so the CRC should always pass and the modified date should never change.

All you do is change the code to respond with the appropriate CRC instead of the real CRC. You can't stop people like this. You wrote a nice post, you got modded informative, but you're just plain wrong.

Abusing social trust is for children and loonies

[alienmole]

It's just childish, pure and simple. Humans cooperate in social networks by trusting each other in various unspoken ways. It's easy to abuse that trust. People who think that they've achieved something by abusing that trust are either children, still experimenting with social limits, or mentally defective in some way, whether sociopathic, desperately insecure, or whatever. That's all there is to it.

Sociopath

[Phat_Tony]

Exactly. Instead of

"They bitch and morn about how I cheated but they could have modded their box just like mine."

How about "They bitch and moan about how I broke into their houses and stole their stuff, but they could have lots of stuff too if they just broke into other people's houses and stole theirs." [insert random grammatical mistakes for added authenticity]

This is about the basic trust and respect for other people that makes society a decent place to live. Saying "it's OK that I'm an asshole because everyone else could just be an asshole too if they wanted" gives me no sympathy for his views. Yes, if everyone was a sociopath and took every opportunity to take advantage of others in betrayal of the accepted rules, everyone would be on equal footing, and the world would suck. If this guy got mugged, do you think his opinion would be "that's OK, I could have mugged other people too?"

Unfortunately, I'm afraid his reaction probably would be "Hey, that's a great idea! I could mug other people too!"