Valve's Battle Against Cheaters

wjousts writes "IEEE Spectrum takes a look behind the scenes at Valve's on-going efforts to battle cheaters in online games: 'Cheating is a superserious threat,' says [Steam's lead engineer, John] Cook. 'Cheating is more of a serious threat than piracy.' The company combats this with its own Valve Anti-Cheat System, which a user consents to install in the Steam subscriber agreement. Cook says the software gets around anti-virus programs by handling all the operations that require administrator access to the user's machine. So, how important is preventing cheating? How much privacy are you willing to sacrifice in the interests of a level playing field? 'Valve also looks for changes within the player's computer processor's memory, which might indicate that cheat code is running.'"

Comments

The casualties of the battle are ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... the innocent people who have been banned by VAC because of hardware failures or software bugs. Customer support staff ignore or abuse these people and won't even take the time to check their logs. They do not acknowledge the possibility of a false positive. I realize that they don't have time to investigate every complaint sent to them. But their customers deserve a better degree of service than what amounts to an instant and final termination without any evidence necessary, at the total discretion of Valve. Paying customers should not be at the mercy of those from whom they purchase goods.

It is the 'better a guilty man go free' issue played out on a stage where contracts of adhesion reign supreme. Valve can do whatever they want. I won't buy any products from Valve again. And any recognition for taking on the noble cause of preventing cheating in online games is undeserved. Our contempt is what they ought to be given.

Re:Ayn Rand had a lot to say about this

[Khyber]

"What a load of crap.

A "superior player" doesn't need cheats any more than top baseball players or Olympians need steroids.

As a matter of fact....it's an easy argument to make that INFERIOR players are the ones who need to leverage cheats."

Go say that to anyone in the Q3 community and watch the nearest railgun get rammed up your ass - we RELIED upon those engine glitches to gain the edge.