Infinity Ward Fights Against Modern Warfare 2 Cheaters

Faithbleed writes "IW's Robert Bowling reports on his twitter account that Infinity Ward is giving 2,500 Modern Warfare 2 cheaters the boot. The news comes as the war between IW and MW2's fans rages over the decision to go with IWnet hosting instead of dedicated servers. Unhappy players were quick to come up with hacks that would allow their own servers and various other changes." Despite the dedicated-server complaints, Modern Warfare 2 has sold ridiculously well.

Comments

VAC

[roguetrick]

They decided to use VAC instead of Punkbuster on the PC. Like many of their decisions, this one wasn't well thought out.

Re:VAC

[roguetrick]

Also, this says alot about the uproar over no dedicated servers:
http://www.blogcdn.com/www.joystiq.com/media/2009/11/gam_boycottfail_580-1258143415.jpg

Re:VAC

[OverlordQ]

PunkBuster is just as vulnerable to being bypassed and disabled as VAC is, so saying they should have used PunkBuster is a cop out.

Re:VAC

[roguetrick]

I don't know the specifics of it, but I was under the impression that the guys running punkbuster had more experience with the underlying platform.

Re:VAC

[Narpak]

They decided to use VAC instead of Punkbuster on the PC. Like many of their decisions, this one wasn't well thought out.

I personally feel that the only system I have seen so far with a reasonable rate of success is dedicated servers with some sort of permaban of accounts caught cheating. While by no means a perfect system; my personal experience (with TF2 as that is the only FPS game besides MW2 I have played over the last few years) was that I found a gaming site that ran servers for a variety of games. An extended group of people frequented those servers, creating a community of sorts, and I personally never had much problems with cheaters (that I can recall). Either they were banned/kicked swiftly and effectively, or they never logged on that particular set of servers; or possible a combination of the two. Though it should be mentioned that over the last two weeks, or so, of playing Modern Warfare 2 I haven't really seen a lot of players that I could confidently claim were cheating; though I have seen a few that were ridiculously good. Perhaps that is just me not really paying attention.

Cheating or no cheating, sales or no sales, I personally feel that despite Modern Warfare 2 being a really great game at its core, I won't be playing much more than I have; as it really feels impersonal when all the other players are random. And there is no forum for me to hang around talking some trash between matches and evenings. This of course isn't helped by the fact that Iwnet seem to have about a 30% (number I pulled out of my behind but it is how I have experienced it so far) failrate; disconnects, game closings, kicked from a lobby before you have connected to it, random ping, and people leaving games because a map comes up that they don't want to play (Highrise and Estate seem to see half the "group" leave when they come into rotation) leading to lobby's closing most of the time.

Re:VAC

[Anonymous Coward]

WHOOSH! You missed the point. Those are members of a group calling for a boycott. Most of them are playing MW2 (indicated by the status under their avatar).

Re:VAC

[Bakkster]

But Punkbuster has its own issues. Many players were not able to play on Punkbuster-enabled servers in CoD4 because some driver or other bit of code caused an incompatibility.

Really, any anti-cheat will eventually be defeatable. The bigger issue is that since IW is running all the servers you have to depend on them to remove any cheaters, rather than being able to play on a server with a good team of admins keeping them away. It's possible IW will do an even better job of this, but I think it's that choice that people want.

Re:VAC

[FictionPimp]

Plus most of them bought the game anyways I'm sure.

I've just come to the conclusion I'm the only person on the planet who stuck to my guns and didn't buy this game.

Re:VAC

[PopeRatzo]

I don't know what the press release says, but I see from the "Top Sellers" chart on the Steam portal that MW2 has already dropped to number 3 behind a bargain basement Mirror's Edge and a bundle of older THQ games w/ Red Faction Guerrilla.

Something tells me MW2 is not meeting Infinity Ward's expectations despite all the whistling past the graveyard. I'm sure it'll be a money maker, but god-willing, it will be a disappointment for them considering their willingness to crap in the face of the loyal customers who made the COD franchise successful.

.

Re:VAC

[PingSpike]

From most of the comments I've read about this game and the uproar about it, most people now consider "Pirating with Righteousness" the no-lose alternative to boycotting. It is understandable. I mean, how can we expect some one to live without something so vital to their very survival? It would be like boycotting food! I'm pretty sure there aren't even any other FPS games out there available so what are they going to do?

Re:VAC

[GameboyRMH]

+1. The rootkit approach to anti-cheating is stupid. The anti-cheating app should be a regular service the user has full control over. There is no need for a rootkit - if the anti-cheating service crashes or throws an error, the game closes, it's that simple. Any other problems are due to poor game design and lack of decent cryptography. An online-playable game has to be secure, if people can mod the game files or interact with the game in any unauthorized way, that's a security flaw. A little server-side checking would go a long way too. Is player run speed greater than X, jump height greater than Y? BAN. Aim doesn't match signals from the mouse/joystick (verified by anti-cheating service)? BAN. No direct access to the hardware to check that? Have fun playing offline.

Re:VAC

[Xest]

"Really, any anti-cheat will eventually be defeatable. The bigger issue is that since IW is running all the servers you have to depend on them to remove any cheaters, rather than being able to play on a server with a good team of admins keeping them away. It's possible IW will do an even better job of this, but I think it's that choice that people want."

This is key, really on the PC the best option would've been to include an XBox live style setup so you can select a player as a player you wish to avoid in future. What happens then is when you start matchmaking it wont matchmake you with these players. If people cheat they will soon find a lack of people playing with them. If the feedback is sent to IW, then it'd be a good indicator for who to check for cheating to give account bans too as well, if someone has 500 players blacklisting them then it'd suggest there's probably something there to check out.

Re:VAC

[Angeret]

Which is another bone of contention - pay more money for less game to start with and I can skip a part of the game, therefore making it shorter? Pass, I'd rather go play Solitaire. I know a couple of people on consoles (who laughed at PC gamers' apparently pointless whining) who bought MW2 and wished they hadn't.

Re:VAC

[Bengie]

I wonder if something like this would work.

Add someone to a personal ignore list. The match making would have a negative weight for people in your ignore list and try to put you in a game with fewer of those people. If someone tries to join a game and 50% or more of those people have that person in their ignore lists, the match making won't put them in that game.

Make this list server side and reset after 2 months. Enough time for VAC to kick in. If someone gets voted a second time after the reset by the same person, they would get perm added to that person's list.

This would make it so
#1. you'd be less likely to join games with cheaters or people you thought were cheaters.
#2. if enough people thought that person was a cheater, the cheater could not join their games

Any thoughts?

Re:VAC

[Angeret]

You may have missed the point on that one. First you get a game where you are given a moral choice to make - I've already made my position clear on that. Then you find that due to the choice made, a game which has already been noted by many as being quite short in the single player mode gets shorter after PC players have clearly been ripped off by inflated pricing, removal of features, etc, etc.

So, it's not a case of complaining in both cases, it's a clear case of adding insult to injury, followed by a badly considered AC post. Glad it's not Monday. I don't like Mondays.

Um, no

[OverlordQ]

Specifically, Steam's VAC anti-cheat system is in place for abusers of the PC version, and this news is either proof that the setup is proving more efficient for catching cheaters, or proof that even with this arrangement Infinity Ward still can't get rid of the cheating problem.

Um, no. VAC2 is easily bypassed or disabled by most competent hack writers. They like to pretend that VAC is the holy grail of anti-cheats but it's just as vulnerable as PunkBuster or any of the league anti-cheats.

Re:Um, no

[NoName Studios]

Even if VAC detects the cheater, the way it deals with it allows hackers to go on. VAC detects, logs, and then bans the player two months later. The cheater causes two more months of grief to the player base. The only reason it waits two months is to make it difficult for the cheater to figure out which hack caused the ban.

Re:Um, no

[Anonymous Coward]

That is actually a very bad design choice. See, with VAC I can attach a debugger, and at my own relaxed pace figure the game out. Or Vac, for that matter. They dont even care to make it difficult to attach a debugger. This way I will have my hack done with no hassle. If the account is banned in 2 months, fine, i will get a clean one.

Now with PB it is a different story, try to debug it carelessly and you will find yourself banned in no time, making debugging slower and generally more difficult.

To add, MW2 has a dated engine which everyone and his brother knows. It has been tweaked but not much. How about that: the game's player list is referenced by a static variable. And it's a straight, static array with braindead simple structure. The engine also offers flags like 'isVisible' which make lightweight, non-DX hacks a pure pleasure to write. No attempts whatsoever to make it difficult to hack the thing. Compared to RedOrchestra or even Battlefield series, COD was traditionally the easiest, by far easiest, to hack. If you reverse the thing you will notice the programmers did not care one bit to make it hard. To add some perspective: most hobbysts have had their hacks ready one day after launch, and a few days later mainstream cheating sites were filled with in-depth reviews of the data structures. It took few months for such level of details to become public knowledge for BF2, and for games as RedOrchestra it *never* became public. Looking at COD6 code I'd venture a guess the dev team was not treated very well and was all but motivated. Just my few cents.

Re:Um, no

[Xest]

"With DRM you're trying to prevent the user from viewing the content under certain conditions but allowing them to view it under others"

This is really what you're doing in the anti-cheating scenario, just on a more abstract level. You still have to pass raw data to the graphics API or graphics card eventually as raw data. You cannot both render it with standard hardware and keep it in an encrypted format. Realistically though it's in a plain format before this because performing client side logic on encrypted data would be a nightmare, if even possible at all.

"Anti-cheating can allow the user to look at the content all they want, you're preventing the user from altering it or faking certain inputs and outputs, which is entirely possible with proper cryptography"

What sort of cryptography is "proper" cryptography in this case? The client has to know the keys and the algorithm to encrypt and decrypt and so the cheat program must surely always know it too.

"lots of client-side verification and a little server-side verification"

What's stopping client-side verification being faked? If it does a CRC check then why can't the cheat program just branch the code here to use the hacked content and forward the expected CRC? Even more complex checks involving keys sent from the server still end up in the hands of the cheat program.

"Some of Windows' copy protection mechanisms work this way and are 100% effective"

Really? How do people keep managing to crack it then?

"copies installed with generated keys can't be updated via Windows Update."

Why can't the user just keep an unhacked copy of the game and update that - which would work because it would be legitimate, and then re-apply the cheat program which must also be updated to point to the relevant changes in memory locations and/or logic too?

The destructoid article is wrong: no dedicated

[Tei]

the destructoid article shows the use of a patch that enable the console, to change game defaults configs to something insane (insane fun? the video looks like fun). It can be a step to dedicated server, but is NOT a dedicated server. Is still a machine hosted by a player logued and playing the game, it needs a GPU, etc, etc..

NOT DEDICATED.

Oh, AGAIN?

[Rogerborg]

For those not in the know, this is how the conversation goes.

• Developer: We need to design-in anti-cheat methods from the get-go, or honest players will get raped.
• Producer: And that'll delay my demo, right? Where's my demo? Show me a demo. Demo-demo-demo.
• Developer: But it'll save us time in the long run, and we won't have to play whack-a-hacker catch up after release, with all the costs and bad press...
• Producer: Yeah... but I'm only producing it up to release. And are you going to be relegated to the support crew, or am I going to take you with me to my next exciting project?
• Developer: Uh... I'll get on with the demo.

That's the best case scenario. A depressing number of devs don't even consider trying to design-out hacks, and think that whack-a-hack is a winning long term strategy, despite the decades of evidence that say it ain't so. I'm looking at you Blizzard.

Re:Oh, AGAIN?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Given Blizzard's sales numbers, I'd say that they have a solid decade's worth of evidence that what they are doing is a thoroughly winning strategy...

Re:Oh, AGAIN?

[Xest]

It's because, on the PC, you can't, without shifting everything server side.

Even then by the time we have the resources to shift everything server side we'll probably also have the resources client side on the PC to do in game pattern matching and have cheats that just match images sent to the client and respond to automatically aim at them or similar.

The idea of cheat free gaming on the PC is a fantasy, it can't happen, it's not a suitable platform for such endeavours.

Similarly though, I'd never want to see rid of the PC because it's openness is important in other areas. The issue here is that the PC's biggest advantage is also it's biggest disadvantage for things like online gaming.

I'm sure developers understand this, that if you want to deal with cheating then cat and mouse is the only way, at best you can just play whack-a-mole with the worst hacks. Perhaps the biggest improvement for the likes of Blizzard is that people need accounts to play their game, and if they do play whack-a-mole they can at least ban accounts and convince players not to cheat based on them possibly losing hundreds of hours of investment in the game.

Re:Oh, AGAIN?

[Narpak]

I would, with little evidence to support my claim, say that cheating in level 80 PvP isn't really a big issue in WoW; at least not that I saw when I played it last. If you get caught cheating in WoW you risk getting an account ban; which means losing a lot of hours, sweat and blood; invested in the game. Of course gold farmers will still try to hack and cheat as much as they can, but at least they don't run around doing it in PvP.

Re:Oh, AGAIN?

[Xest]

No, it's not that simple.

Even if you don't give up control of the server you cannot protect against many different cheats. Player locations have to be sent even when they're behind a wall or whatever because otherwise they pop awkwardly into view. Models/art assets can still be hacked on the client to be more visible and similar regardless- even if they're not stored locally and sent every game session they can be modified in memory by a determined cheater.

Aimbots are always going to be possible because you can still alter the executable in asssembly. A guy known as nopcode did this as far back as Quake III writing an aimbot directly into the Quake III executable.

No amount of CRC checks, encryption can protect because the cheater always knows what CRCs are expected, and the encryption keys are always used by the client to decrypt content or commands so that they can be used by the client to render and so forth in the first place.

At best on a logical level you can eliminate cheating by severely limiting your game's design, but that's really not a solution- especially when closed platforms like consoles don't have to. There is no solution to the problem that on an open platform, whatever the client has access to, the cheater has access to and can modify it or use that data outside it's intended purposes to give themselves an advantage too.

Barely a start

[ifrag]

ONLY 2500 accounts? That's not even a drop in the bucket, the slightest slap on the wrist of the anti-competitive players in MW2. Based on personal experience of having an aim-bot user in roughly 1 out of every 3 matches I'd say 2500 isn't even a start. Maybe it's a lot worse in some game modes, especially the 16 player "big game" matches where it's more likely simply due to having more people in game (or more targets? I suppose the bots like having more victims). I don't even like having them on my team, even though it's usually a win because the bot ends up stealing almost all the kills, or they just settle for a 25 kill tactical nuke and end it. Maybe if they get up to 2500 accounts per day it'll make a difference.

Re:Barely a start

[Toridas]

I'm rank 42, I play probably 90% domination and 10% team deathmatch (not ground war) and I haven't seen a single person I would call a cheater, unless you count a few people who hacked their rank.

Re:Barely a start

[thisnamestoolong]

Oohhhh... I see... you're that guy -- you know, the one who always yells OMFG HAXXXX every time they get killed. Aim bots are notoriously difficult to spot as there are a lot of people out there who are just ridiculously good -- I have a feeling most of the "hackers" you have seen are just people who are way better than you and consistently snipe you in the face from across the map. Is this annoying? Sure. Is it something that they should be banned for? No.

Re:Barely a start

[mike_c999]

Got to say this is so to the point.

Many time I've made some good clean kills followed by a lot of "OMFG nice wall hack/Aim bot/cheating...." and I'm not even that good.
There are far more competent player out there make far more constant kills than me and its not cheating, Its just good reflexes and hard work.

My comment is to just get over yourself and have fun.

Re:Barely a start

[roachdabug]

I've seen the videos of aimbots and the ability to see players' positions through walls.

As far as aimbots go, It's genuinely hard to tell if somebody is using one most of the time. Even my noob ass has pulled off some pretty unbelievable shots. If you're decent enough to get some of the better kill streaks, you can easily rack up a large amount of kills.

As far as wall hacks go, I HAVE had several experiences where opposing players have been practically supernatural.

In addition, I've had times where I'll plant 3 rounds square in the chest of an enemy without recording a single hit. It could be lag or extreme horrible luck, but my aim was spot on.

Even if IW manages to ban every hacker in existence, there will always be some very skilled players out there. It would be nice to know that some of the most severe beatings my team has received could be attributed to cheating, though.

Re:Barely a start

[MetalPhalanx]

Unfortunately, "That guy" is at least one third of the gaming populace, with a large overlap with the "Rage quitters" group.

I agree totally though. I semi-regularly get accused of hacking for some of the stuff I manage to pull off, and I don't even feel that it's really that special. But, it's the internet. And, no-one could POSSIBLY be better than THAT GUY at ... so if they beat him, they MUST be hacking, right?

Re:Barely a start

[flitty]

This is why I like COD's Kill Cam. There were many times where I thought "No way that guy killed me in 2 bullets with a SMG", only to find that there was a sniper up in a tower across the map who was taking pot shots at me too. The feedback you get about how people take you out is invaluable, and one of the reasons why I play COD Multiplayer more than most multiplayer games.

Re:Barely a start

[PPalmgren]

Being at the top of an FPS community causes a lot of accusations. I was banned from a large percentage of old NS servers because of accusations, but unlike my competitive counterparts I didn't even use a pistol script (which was allowed in competitive play). Ignorance is bliss. If they were honest, they'd simply say they don't want people of a certain skill level on their server.

Re:Barely a start

[jgtg32a]

It's called aim assist, which is basically the same thing as an aimbot

Re:Barely a start

[PingSpike]

I'd say anyone who is even moderately good at a FPS, or even just had a few lucky days has had this happen. Let's not forget being banned for the grave offense of "Killing the admin." :P

I remember once turning a corner in CS:S, while playing as CT and finding 4 Ts aiming my direction. My response to this situation, understandably, was to hold down fire button while backing out in the direction from which I came. While the first guy that died was a fairly legit aimed shot, the other 3 that fell to lucky headshots during my wild blasting were mere luck. A kick/ban vote was immediately called. Considering their poor reaction time attacking me, I was surprised at how quickly they found my name in the list while screaming "Hacks!" But then, CS players have always been better whiners than players.

Re:Barely a start

[shutdown -p now]

Got to say this is so to the point.

Many time I've made some good clean kills followed by a lot of "OMFG nice wall hack/Aim bot/cheating...." and I'm not even that good.
There are far more competent player out there make far more constant kills than me and its not cheating, Its just good reflexes and hard work.

It's even funnier in Left 4 Dead.

For one thing, most Infected there produce a very distinct sound, and with a little bit of training, one can aim at sound alone and shoot through walls, hitting more often than not. With more experience you can hear that sound from quite far away.

Then there are bugs in the game engine which result in shadows "bleeding through" walls or roof at some spots, and occasionally even chunk of the model - again, leading to wall shots.

Finally, after playing for a long time, you learn the maps really well, and that includes all the typical ambush spots. At that point quite often you start shooting before turning around the corner, so that if a Boomer is there (probability 30%), he dies before he has any chance of barfing on you.

In all of the above scenarios, if you're the one doing the shooting, you'll get "OMG! wallhax/aimbot!" whines more often than not, especially when the other team is relatively unexperienced (or is being pwnd). I've been vote-kicked off servers several times because of that.

Not this time

[PopeRatzo]

Maybe the sales figures in the press releases are true, but there's no way to know how big the sales could have been if there had not been such bad word of mouth before release.

I know this much: The sales charts on the Steam home page showed that unlike Borderlands and Dragon Age: Origins, the pre-sale of MW2 didn't even make the top ten until just before release, where as the pre-sale of the other two went right to the top very early on.

The only way to deal with a company that ignores consumer wishes is to not give them money. Personally, I decided to spend my time and money with Borderlands and DA:O instead.

We'll see if the sales figures continue to grow now that the scene "demo" of MW2 has been released. I bet that one will allow for dedicated servers.

Stats

[s1lverl0rd]

Are there any correlation statistics between pirates and cheaters? Are pirates more likely to cheat?

Re:Stats

[roachdabug]

I don't believe pirates are likely to even be playing multiplayer in the first place. Everything is tied into Steam this time around, even for those who bought the box off the shelf.

How about non USA/Europe players?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're not going to allow people to host their own servers, then you screw up Brazilians who don't get less than 250 ping. Ignoring a country with 150 million people and a project to bring internet connectivity to every home in a couple of years is a really good plan. Besides, we love being treated like a 3rd world country. Worry not, we'll remember this, when we laugh our ass off playing in a hacked server with a pirated copy of your game.

Re:How about non USA/Europe players?

[Ash-Fox]

I don't really see how this is a troll. Why would you waste your time on investing in a country that generally pirates everything constantly? Where past attempts for investment lead to nothing? It would be a waste of money for Infinity Ward.

It didn't exactly sell ridiculously well...

[Runefox]

While it outsold MW1, MW2's PC port sold a paltry 3% of total MW2 sales - I believe that says quite a lot about it.

Frankly, I'm fairly sure that's what they're going for - Cripple the experience on the platform that's easiest to pirate for, and encourage people to move to the locked-down platforms (360, PS3). At least, that's what it looks like to me. There's more money in the console versions, and the numbers pretty much scream as much. I can hear it now - "Why bother with the PC this time around? It only sold 3% last time and look at the piracy! Just focus on the 360/PS3". I wouldn't really even give a damn if not for the fact that controllers are absolutely worthless to me as far as first-person shooters go.

Re:It didn't exactly sell ridiculously well...

[MetalPhalanx]

Unfortunately, the people making the decisions have probably never held a controller, let alone attempted to play an FPS with one.

Re:It didn't exactly sell ridiculously well...

[Hadlock]

On the contrary, I would assume most of the junior management played Halo 1 in their frat houses all the time. Probably plenty of middle managers played Halo 1 in their off time while working on their MBAs. It wouldn't surprise me if most of them played a good bit of Halo 2 as well. Which would explain a lot regarding the recent turn towards console-based FPSes.

MW2

[kalirion]

Anyone else think "MechWarrior 2" whenever they see the acronym?