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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.'"
Ayn Rand was an insufferable bitch with opinions that... wait why the fuck would you even TALK about playing games if you're a Rand fan? Don't you have work to do with all your waking hours?
For a given value of 'best'. In theory, as you say, being the 'best' will likely entail hard work and genetics, but they should also be ethical; examples to us all as to what we can achieve. The reality is closer to what you say, though - although I doubt it's only steroids that they use to enhance performance. Then again, we might just be comparing apples to oranges here since it's probably a lot harder to cheat (and not get caught) in a gaming tournament, where actual money is on the line, than it is in an athletics competition.
What Vavle is really trying to do with crying about cheaters is create another excuse (along with piracy) to completely abandon the PC platform altogether and just make console games, like everyone else is slowly doing.
Oh that must be it! It makes perfect sense to abandon the largest online games distribution platform on the planet that's literally making them billions!
Alan Greenspan, a long time Randist, had the same opinion about fraud in financial markets. He essentially argued that there was no such thing as "fraud", and that anything done within the bounds of the "free market" was a valid expression of the mechanics of that system, whatever those mechanics may be. It does work out well if you happen to be the one committing the fraud, and for an Objectivist the line between "I have the right to keep what's mine" and "I have the right to take what's yours" seems like it would be an easy one to cross.
Sadly, Valve is living in the past, a past in which computers were weak and booted each game from floppy instead of running an operating system, so that nothing but the game-controlled environment would be running. Those days are long gone.
Computers today are powerful enablers of their owners' wishes, and that includes personal game automation tools of many kinds, not only aimbots but also keyboard remappers and command scripting, extra radars, drop discovery scanners, damage rate calculators, quest handlers, and many other things. It also includes many kinds of accessibility aids for those with impaired eyesight, hearing or limb mobility problems, allowing the disabled to play games which would otherwise be beyond their physical abilities without such aids. And it's not just extra software that extends the capabilities of game players, but add-on hardware as well, such as special gaming keyboards, joysticks, and other dedicated controllers. All of this falls into a single category: making the whole computer an empowering extension of its user.
Valve (and other game providers) don't seem able to cope with this new situation, and blindly continue with their "anyone using computer assist is a cheat" rhetoric while the world changes around them. It's attempting to sweep back the tide, and it won't work any more than DRM will work.
The correct response to this changing environment is to consider the whole computer as the "player", not just the human sitting at a dumb keyboard and mouse. This impacts on how games must be written. Everything in the game client must be considered accessible to the player, and everything which the player must not be able to access must be hidden on the game servers. The interface between this "extended player" and the controlled environment of the game must be the network, with no secret game data sent to the client until such a time when the game allows it to be known.
Game developers are loath to write games in this fashion, firstly because it slows the games down unless the developers are clever, and secondly because it's harder to write and susceptible to network problems. Well that's tough, it's not optional in today's world if you insist on controlling the game environment. It's a delusion to think that there is a level playing field anyway --- hardcore gamers with hotrod gaming machines and 100Mbps broadband links have bought themselves a powerful advantage compared to the casual player (let alone compared to the player with disabilities), yet somehow Valve doesn't see this as "cheating"?
There never was a level playing field. Game companies need to come to terms with that, and work with modern gamers instead of against the march of technology. "Game developers as Luddites" would be a funny saying if unfortunately it weren't so true in many cases.
Get with it Valve. You can do better than this. Warfare and gaming and virtually all of modern existence is now automated, and it would be nice if you accepted that your gaming worldview needs some modernizing, as do your coding practices.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Lets see, if anti cheating is such a priority, how come MW2 is so broke?
I can't play anymore, as its got so bad that I've seen 3 aimbotters in one game.
No votekicking or PB makes it so that you have to put up with it. VACs answer to banning people is purely based on stats, there is no checking of memory resident cheats at all.
Add to the fact that the game gets patched every blue moon, and it's a hackers dream.
Shove VAC up your arse, don't try and blow your own trumpet over something that just doesn't work.