Study Finds Online Cheating Is Infectious

Freddybear writes "A study of online gamers in the Steam community finds that those who are friends with cheaters are more likely to begin cheating themselves. From the article: 'First up, cheats stick together. The data shows that cheaters are much more likely to be friends with other cheaters. Cheating also appears to be infectious. The likelihood of a fair player becoming labelled as a cheater in future is directly correlated with this person's number of friends who are cheaters. So if you know cheaters, you are more likely to become one yourself. Cheating spreads like flu through this community. Finally, being labelled as a cheat seems to significantly affect social standing. Once a person is labelled as a cheat, they tend to lose friends. Some even cut themselves off from friends by increasing their privacy settings.'"

Comments

So....

[ak_hepcat]

This isn't about my ex-wife....

Awkward post then.

Re:So....

[Billly Gates]

Funny I was thinking the same with my exwife.

Sadly, I was serious too for about 5 seconds until I got the conclusion it talks about people cheating games.

Re:So....

[datavirtue]

You guys have issues, but anyway. What is the point of cheating at a game that you play because someone designed the challenge--that you pay for? Doesn't make much sense to me. Cheats always seemed like something for little kids. Game cheats act to rob you of the value of the game.

Re:So....

[datavirtue]

Forgot to insert requisite Italian joke. [Disclaimer: I'm part Italian.]

Re:So....

[cduffy]

Cheating in a game can be fun in and of itself -- reverse-engineering the checksums used for saved games, finding offsets in a hex editor, tweaking the emulator you're playing your game in to allow editing of memory state and the like is something I consider legitimate entertainment.

...now, cheating in multiplayer games? Nothing legitimate about that whatsoever.

Re:So....

[lightknight]

Agreed. When you're playing by yourself, there's nothing more stress-relieving than switching on god mode after a bad day, and punishing your enemies. At that point, it's not about a challenge, or proving yourself, or learning, or whatever; it's mind-bleach. Boss yelling at you? Teacher being a bitch? Cop handing you a ticket for doing 65 in a 50, with no one else on the road? God mode is how you ensure the next 30 minutes of your life will go well, save your computer gets hit with a lightning bolt.

However, when it comes to multiplayer, no cheating. You have an actual human being(s) playing a game with you, and they are looking to have some fun. And there's no finer victory (or salve for the soul) than beating your opponent without having to resort to cheating; there's something about watching your fleet crush your (temporary) enemy's base or chasing his avatar with the Quad + BFG, through careful planning or quick reflexes, that amuses all gamers.Losing to a cheater is no defeat; and beating a cheater doesn't feel like a victory.

 

Re:So....

[antdude]

Male geeks/nerds don't have any women so that's a lie about your former wife! :P

Re:So....

[Anonymus]

Just like a lot of people release anger by yelling at other people, some people feel the need to stress other people in order to relieve their own stress.

Both of those sorts of people deserve to be smacked down every time they attempt it.

Re:So....

[517714]

That isn't cheating, it's simply playing a different game.

Makes sense

[backslashdot]

Not just in online gaming, but in other things too.

Re:Makes sense

[inviolet]

Not just in online gaming, but in other things too.

Well sure. We're social creatures, and so we look to our fellow tribesmen for cues on what behavior is acceptable. Having others cheating gives us a sense of permission to do likewise.

Add to this the fact that online interactions do not carry the normal risk of disapproving looks, shame attacks, and damaging the reputation of one's name. Such things are vital in maintaining a society's integrity, and they are almost completely missing online.

Re:Makes sense

[Ethanol-fueled]

There are 2 major types of cheating:

The acceptable kind, which serves to spare the user the expense of unnecessary tedium. They include using a bot to automate grinding in WoW and unfairly receiving help during tests for mandatory fluff classes that will have no effect on your future.

The unacceptable kind, which are blatant misrepresentation of true skill. Those include exploiting a bug in WoW to make you invincible and a prospective structural engineer cheating their engineering classes.

Re:Makes sense

[Gaygirlie]

The acceptable kind, which serves to spare the user the expense of unnecessary tedium. They include using a bot to automate grinding in WoW and unfairly receiving help during tests for mandatory fluff classes that will have no effect on your future.

Why is it "acceptable" then? I atleast do not find it acceptable to use a bot to do anything like that, it still gives you an edge over those people who stay completely honest.

Re:Makes sense

[inviolet]

Wow, yeah. Because paying attention to someone's reputation rather than the arguments they're making is so intelligent. And going along with what everyone else approves of always works out. People shouldn't do things that make other people give them disapproving looks!

In fact it usually does. I'm a subversive libertarian, but I readily admit that most behaviors that garner disapproval -- shoplifting, profanity, physical intimidation, dangerous driving, theft, vandalism, cheating, tresspassing -- do in fact deserve it, in the sense that our society is more efficient at producing safety, comfort, and pleasure without such behaviors occurring.

I think being anonymous is important. It allows people to reveal truths or feelings which might otherwise never be revealed (because of herd mentality). It's also a great thing if you like privacy.

Absolutely. Me too. My .sig used to say something like "Privacy allows you to behave morally, when those around you would judge you by an irrational moral code." But it is nevertheless the case that MOST gauche behaviors really are destructive to all concerned.

Re:Makes sense

[CrimsonAvenger]

Why is it "acceptable" then?

Generally, when someone speaks of the "acceptable" forms of cheating, they mean "the forms of cheating I use"....

And I'm pleased to see that someone managed to start justifying cheating within a handful of posts. When I read online gaming forums discussing cheating, it generally takes not more than six comments to find someone justifying cheating....

Re:Makes sense

[gl4ss]

well, online games cheating is a _game_ in itself. they're just playing a different game.

which is actually why online games should be designed differently from what they are designed now - in the sense that you would be free to do anything you want with the data you're sent and could send back any data you'd want(the server should only accept just movement controls usually from the players client - and the client should only be sent data the player should see). actually onlive is almost like that, you're only fed your screen and the client only feeds back the inputs - if you run image processing on that feed it should be fair game.

if you're "cheating" in online games it's more like playing the games as if the game was the matrix. that has the potential of being vastly more interesting than most online games in itself. in the long run with most games it would get really boring though.

besides, once you start optimizing your gaming.. it becomes a very fine line at which point you would be cheating and at which point you're just being creative. no crosshair displayed by game in certain situations? well just put a sticker on your screen! is that cheating? probably no. is a mouse that allows switching different speeds cheating? again, no. is having a friend work as a spotter while you play(by watching your screen) cheating? again, probably no. is changing gamma correction to appear "wrong" so you can see better in dark areas cheating? again no. but running a memory analyzer to pinpoint your enemies locations probably is. an aimbot working from gl-information or from memory read information is probably cheating, but is using a touchscreen and a friend as a gunner cheating - because from a gameplay recording it's pretty hard to tell the difference in some games?

I don't cheat in online games, in fact I don't play them very much nowadays at all. but I used to play subspace pretty seriously in retrospect, and we had custom skins, custom sound files etc to help us and it seemed pretty standard fare.

I used to play WoW too - and would have played longer if scripting my character had been allowed, it's quite a bummer if mods suspect you of being a cheat or a bot because you just do something creative accepted within the game rules to explore or to make some game gold. even then pretty much nobody played wow without any ui tweaks, map helpers and such.

Re:Makes sense

[Gaygirlie]

Generally, when someone speaks of the "acceptable" forms of cheating, they mean "the forms of cheating I use"....

Indeed, that's why I posed the question, I want him to formulate proper arguments for why one form of cheating is good while another form of cheating isn't. I mean, it IS still cheating, it wouldn't be called cheating if it was acceptable and within granted limits, so it's kind of an oxymoron in and of itself.

And I'm pleased to see that someone managed to start justifying cheating within a handful of posts. When I read online gaming forums discussing cheating, it generally takes not more than six comments to find someone justifying cheating....

I personally am strongly against cheating; I do not befriend anyone who does that, when I lead a guild in WoW I actively kicked people from the guild whom I caught from such behaviour and reported them to GMs and so on. I just simply find cheating extremely detestable.

Re:Makes sense

[bipbop]

I missed the mention of "Steam" and interpreted this as being about relationships. Whoops!

Re:Makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Using a decent keyboard and mouse gives you an advantage over someone who's using a laptop. Where's the line between an acceptable and an unacceptable advantage?

Re:Makes sense

[10101001 10101001]

I want him to formulate proper arguments for why one form of cheating is good while another form of cheating isn't. I mean, it IS still cheating, it wouldn't be called cheating if it was acceptable and within granted limits, so it's kind of an oxymoron in and of itself.

Well, how about a silly example of a form of cheating I see as acceptable. I like the game Mega Man X3 a good bit. I've played through it plenty of times. There's a certain spot in the game where a bot with two morning stars for arms sits fully blocking the path. However, it is the case that the hit detection is a bit off, so it's actually possible to, if timed right, do an air dash through the very upper part of the bot without taking damage and proceeding forward. Now, as I see it, this is acceptable because it both exploits a glitch in the game (questionable hit detection) while simultaneously being a rather moot point (it's a single player game and the action is done more to make the play every so slightly faster and more enjoyable--the very fact that one can glitch is part of what makes it enjoyable).

Now, the best argument I can hear against doing the above is that to exploit the glitch cheats oneself. One could say the same about intentionally getting hit so one can stand on otherwise instant kill spikes. Perhaps at some point the designers intended for this to be an acceptable part of play, but even then it's clearly a cheaper act to ever intentionally get hit. So, every time one plays a game without trying one's best (ie, to accept that one can survive taking many hits so may choose to never exert more effort to learn the game than the amount needed to survive), they could be said to be cheating themself. And maybe that's true as well.

But it's also true that one plays a game for enjoyment and playing at one's best isn't always enjoyable; I certainly enjoy one-hit-kill games, but I don't play them all the time and for games that offer the mode I wish to play that in addition to the multi-hit-kill mode. So, given that the core issue is a matter of enjoyment, it'd seem clearer that for friends to "cheat" together would be acceptable but that cheating in the wild with people who don't know if one is "cheating" or not.

So, does that help explain why it's an unclear issue and it's not simply a matter of being an oxymoron?

Re:Makes sense

[10101001 10101001]

Sorry, I should have proofread that.

'... it'd seem clearer that for friends to "cheat" together would be acceptable but that cheating in the wild with people who don't know if one is "cheating" or not [is not].'

Re:Makes sense

[bky1701]

I buy very good mouses. My latest one is very vast, and has a polynomial speed curve, so I can aim quickly and accurately. This gives me an edge over others - but is it dishonest? I do not even buy good mouses for that purpose, I do for graphical design; should I have to downgrade to the level of others?

Situations aren't as black and white as people want to make them. MMOs are designed to suck up time, either to cost the players more money directly (subscription games) or encourage them to spend more ("hey, look at my hat, it only cost 20$!" while grinding). I don't play these games because of that, but if I did, I certainly wouldn't feel it in any way wrong to use a bot.

Cheating on fluff classes I am inclined to not care about, either. The education system is screwed up and needs fixed badly enough that people stuck in it now should be using whatever means they can to get through and get the piece of paper entitling them to be some kind of magically upstanding citizens (regardless of actual skill or knowledge). Again, I never cheated on tests, but I wouldn't necessarily vilify those who do. If cheating on a meaningless test makes the difference for someone between flipping burgers and having a fairly good job, I can't possibly fault them for it, and I think you'd be hard pressed to do so, even. Maybe if the system weren't broken it would be different, but I just see bigger ethical and moral issues in the world than that.

You basically have to draw the line somewhere, and a lot of people, you seemingly included, take whatever some authority figure has defined it as for you as gospel. That's bad; bad for you, and bad for society, because it leads to a false sense of ethics and ultimately double standards. Somewhere between buying a better computer mouse and using steroids in the Olympics you need to define a line, a line which probably isn't where the group mentality placed it for you.

Re:Makes sense

[Goat of Death]

And I'm pleased to see that someone managed to start justifying cheating within a handful of posts. When I read online gaming forums discussing cheating, it generally takes not more than six comments to find someone justifying cheating....

Context is important. I never cheat in online multiplayer and find it pathetic the people who do. To me playing multiplayer online is about challenging myself and my abilities, especially fps. Cheating degrades the experience for others and that's weak.

However, for single player campaigns like rpgs I don't see the problem with modding the game however I want. I'm generally not playing to challenge myself, I'm playing to enjoy the game and the story. I liked Icewind Dale but found it too difficult. So I modded my characters up and found it more enjoyable. Dragon Age, I didn't like the tactic slot limits, especially for mages, so I modded the game. It's single player so what's the harm if I want to enjoy the game how I want to enjoy it?

Starcraft ][ they apparently banned people for cheating in the single player campaign. I find that deplorable. What right of it is Blizzards to deny people access to all of Starcraft ][ because someone doesn't play single player the way Blizzard wants. I won't be buying future Blizzard games because of this.

On the other hand I probably won't buy further Battlefield games because of how little EA/Dice is doing about cheating in BF3 which is currently pretty rampant there.

Multiplayer, ban away, ban and burn them across all multiplayer games if you can. However, single player, that's completely nonsensical, because you are affecting no on else and only modifying your own enjoyment of the game.

Re:Makes sense

[lightknight]

Acceptable advantages -> anything hardware, including pasting a cutout of an iron sight on your monitor.

Unacceptable advantages -> giving yourself auto-aim + shoot through walls + all upgrades + reveal map, in a multiplayer game, while your fellow gamers assume you're running the standard vanilla version of the game.

Re:Makes sense

[lightknight]

Agreed. When I find someone cheating, I usually nerf them.

Re:Makes sense

[antdude]

Mouses? :P

Re:Makes sense

[Rinnon]

Cheating on fluff classes I am inclined to not care about, either. The education system is screwed up and needs fixed badly enough that people stuck in it now should be using whatever means they can to get through and get the piece of paper entitling them to be some kind of magically upstanding citizens (regardless of actual skill or knowledge). Again, I never cheated on tests, but I wouldn't necessarily vilify those who do. If cheating on a meaningless test makes the difference for someone between flipping burgers and having a fairly good job, I can't possibly fault them for it, and I think you'd be hard pressed to do so, even. Maybe if the system weren't broken it would be different, but I just see bigger ethical and moral issues in the world than that.

Hard pressed? Surely you jest. Do you know what cheating is a substitute for? Hard work. There is no "fluff" class it's not possible to get through with decent grades through hard work. Cheating, is dishonest. There can be no question about that. And it's not dishonest for the sake of some greater good either, don't act like this is some righteous resistance against an oppressive educational system. It doesn't matter if the educational system is screwed up or not. Cheating is just being dishonest so one can be lazy. I have no sympathy for someone who would rather lie, than work hard to pass a test. They want to have that piece of paper so they don't have to end up flipping burgers? Good for them. How about doing it through hard work, rather than deceit? Not willing to put in the hard work, why do you think they deserve the better jobs then? I would, with 100% certainty, hire a dropout before I would hire a graduate whom I knew had cheated.

Re:Makes sense

[Runaway1956]

It seems that EVERYONE whose wife is doing an 8 foot tall Norse viking makes your mistake . . . .

Re:Makes sense

[bky1701]

"And it's not dishonest for the sake of some greater good either, don't act like this is some righteous resistance against an oppressive educational system. It doesn't matter if the educational system is screwed up or not. Cheating is just being dishonest so one can be lazy."

I can see you're making no effort to go and define that line I talked about.

"Not willing to put in the hard work, why do you think they deserve the better jobs then?"

I don't think they don't deserve the jobs for failing to go through the education process. The problem is you assume they have to in order to get them. I don't see much value in the education system as it stands, so I don't see much value in that "hard work." If you're going to spend a huge amount of effort on something pointless, that's not necessarily a good trait.

"I would, with 100% certainty, hire a dropout before I would hire a graduate whom I knew had cheated."

With the statistics on how many people cheat - you are probably better off hiring a dropout or someone who never went in any case, if that's how you feel.

I would rather hire a person who did exactly the work necessary to get what they want, than someone willing to spend several years doing work they did not need to. There is a saying that good programmers are lazy and I think it is true. Unfortunately, I am probably in the second group, since I seem to do things with no purpose and yet put great thought into it.

Re:Makes sense

[neonKow]

You example is in a single-player game. His question applies to a multi-player game, and your justification for using the glitch is that "it is a victimless crime that increases enjoyment," which is completely valid, but not equivalent nor relevant to the example of using a bot to grind in WoW.

In fact, what you are using may be considered a completely separate form of cheating than the one pertinent to this /. article: it only affects you, and is effectively a mod of your game. It would be similar to changing the colors of in-game sprites or using a difficulty setting.

Re:Makes sense

[themusicgod1]

"unfairly receiving help during tests for mandatory fluff classes that will have no effect on your future."

This is abhorrent - there may be examples of cheating that would be appropriate but I would like to call you out for such flagrant unethical behaviour.

Re:Makes sense

[neonKow]

This is a new grey zone. You get achievements and badges and decals for the single-player game that affect the multi-player. It would be nice to have built-in cheats that disable any achievements, but for other games, you start also getting items that are more than cosmetic in multiplayer. It's not the game maker's job to determine the purpose and capabilities of the third-party programs involved.

Re:Makes sense

[Whorhay]

I'm curious about how they determined who was cheating for the sampling. I know that some games have tagged people as chearters for modifying things that did not give them an advantage. Such as modifying an ini file to bypass the 5 minutes of video splash screens when starting up a game, tweaking graphics settings not available through the in game interface, and on and on.

OK, not surprising.

[tm2b]

Makes complete sense. I can easily see that if everyone you know is cheating, it would start to seem "fair.". Plus, the cheating itself starts to seem like a game in itself.

Griefing in MMOs seems like it would be the same sort of thing.

Re:OK, not surprising.

[rtb61]

Cheating ultimately destroys all games. Games are required to be played by rules otherwise there is not means by which to share the game with others in any meaningful way. Once you start cheating, there is no limit to the extent of cheating and thus no means of sharing context as cheating always shifts the rules upon every exchange.

Often cheaters cheat do so for no other reason than they are bored (likely psychopaths and narcissists even they computer game) and simply wish to spoil the game for every else, purposefully, they ego satisfaction (power and control) from destroying every else's pleasure.

Spoiled brats do much the same, children buying hacks wishing to demonstrate the false superiority of basically the 1%, we all know who they are by now.

Of course there is cheating for profit but that is a whole different issue and limited to games where you can profit in real terms.

Re:OK, not surprising.

[Geminii]

There's also the issue of opportunity. Someone who knows a cheater is more likely to be introduced to the concept of "playing in a slightly different way", and may not actually realize what they're doing won't be looked on beneficially by others until they're labeled a cheater themselves. People who don't have any contact with cheaters are less likely to have cheaty methods of interaction pop up on their radar.

It's not really all that surprising that cheating - like any other human activity or idea - can spread from human to human. Particularly when there are no memetic defenses in place against copying a particular action.

Labels

[The Archon V2.0]

The likelihood of a fair player becoming labelled as a cheater in future is directly correlated with this person's number of friends who are cheaters.

Whereas the likelihood of a fair player being labelled as a noob, faggot, or the son of a whore is directly correlated to both their opponent's self-perceived skills and their opponent's lack of actual skills.

Before you say, "So what?"

[betterunixthanunix]

There is a lot of money at stake in MMOs. If people cheat too often, the revenue stream will start drying up.

Now, if people were running their own servers, this would be less of a deal -- servers that had strict no-cheating policies would attract serious players, and servers that allow cheating would attract cheaters (assuming that people even had an incentive to cheat).

Re:Before you say, "So what?"

[Samantha Wright]

The incentive to cheat in moneyless games like Valve's FPSes is unfortunately quite simple and immune to your logic. It's a desire to torture and torment non-cheaters. Most people who are simply bad at the game don't download aimbots and wallhacks, because that would be admitting defeat. Putting up a "trolls OK here!" sign doesn't generally stop trolls from attempting to troll other communities.

Re:Before you say, "So what?"

[Ethanol-fueled]

Most people who are simply bad at the game don't download aimbots and wallhacks, because that would be admitting defeat.

Good point, but it becomes moot once you remove multiplayer games from the equation. In fact, emulator speed-runs often specifically include classes for cheated runs(even the particular cheats listed). When I came of age and had just discovered NESticle, I treated myself to using cheat codes to beat all those games I never beat when I owned my NES - the most notable being the original Mega man, which is to this day more difficult than any of its sequels.

Most old Nintendo games are awesome in our minds because of nostalgia, but actually playing them and having to start the whole game over and over again after dying at that one hard part gets really old. We're older and smarter now, and cheating enables us to play those old games as if we were reading a book.

Re:Before you say, "So what?"

[Samantha Wright]

Yes, I was going to go on to make the point that once you have everyone cheating, it's no longer a human-directed game—unlike the intricate art of the tool-assisted speed run, which is basically a mission to explore the best possible playtime assuming perfect luck and skill, or reliving an old classic (I'm a strong proponent of the five-second rewind in ZSNES myself), a multiplayer game boils down into a pure struggle of code-versus-code. Suddenly, the arms race evolves into a 3D version of Core Wars played with other people's algorithms, a fabulously boring thing to watch if you don't intimately understand what the agents are doing and why.

What about the wrongly accused?

[Anonymous Coward]

What could be even more lame than cheating?

N00bs joining a game standing still and moving predictably running their mouths with endless accusations of auto-aim cheats as they are mercilessly sweet spotted and head shotted.

Friends of non n00bs are likely to not suck either and before you know it the whole team is "cheating".

Re:What about the wrongly accused?

[Kurrel]

Back in the Counter-strike heyday, my friend would commonly get banned from a server after a few rounds for cheating. All he had was surround-sound headphones and the fast-twitch accuracy of a Korean but I'd get banned by association. Being labelled a cheater doesn't prove guilt; why wouldn't they use VAC analysis rather than hearsay?

Re:What about the wrongly accused?

[Phrogman]

There are lots of people for whom winning is much more important than playing fairly. When they lose, they assume others are cheating better than they are.

There is no sense of sportsmanship these days. None at all.

Re:What about the wrongly accused?

[icebike]

Actually this happens more than you might think. Anyone who spends a LOT of time on specific games
can achieve a skill level that looks like cheating to the newbie player.

The solution to that problem is easy. Go find a better group of opponents instead of beating up on newbies.

Really good players don't enjoy waxing a newbie 100 to 0 time after time. It takes a pretty juvenile mentality to do that,
and playing against the bots ends up being more fun. Many really good players will start offering
tips to newbies to help build their skills. It makes game play more fun for all.

Just asking, "wow cool, how do you do that move" on the chat will get you a lesson from an honest GOOD player
and a taunt or "just practice" from the cheater.

But all too often good players will spot actual cheating, and hacked clients which evade server detection, etc.
The better you are at any given game the more likely you will see things which you know to be impossible.
Recording movies of this (if you have the computer horsepower) will actually allow you to replay
something enough times to see rockets coming out of a guys ass and going thru walls etc.

And cheaters often come in pairs. Lurk long and quiet like you are away from the machine and you will
often catch them chatting about the cheat.

Re:What about the wrongly accused?

[Anonymous Coward]

Back in the Counter-strike heyday, my friend would commonly get banned from a server after a few rounds for cheating. All he had was surround-sound headphones and the fast-twitch accuracy of a Korean but I'd get banned by association. Being labelled a cheater doesn't prove guilt; why wouldn't they use VAC analysis rather than hearsay?

Me and my pals would usually get kicked out for camping. Apparently it was unacceptable to play tactically, to cooperate and assign some team members to cover the team's back while the rest of it conducted their assault.

Re:What about the wrongly accused?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most accusations are, I dare say it, false accusations. People hate losing, and are quick at running their mouths when they have their anonymity.

Re:What about the wrongly accused?

[Scorch_Mechanic]

You're quite right, of course. Mod parent up and whatnot.

I played a lot of TF2 for a very long time, up until I was exiled from my favorite community for reasons that don't deserve airing. I even played some competitive, and I saw and learned things about classes, maps, and moves that would make the average "pub" player's hair stand on end. I knew soldiers who had perfected the art of the rocket, snipers who almost never missed, scouts who executed heavy classes and were impossible to hit, and spies who are so sneaky they could literally hide in plain sight. Playing with and against these people honed my skills so much that I can tell the difference between skill and cheating with ease. It's all about the attitude. Despite the public perception, few if any competitive players are assholes. Being part of a "comp" team necessitates a good attitude and an instinct for rapport that belies the usual arrogance and casual asshattery of a cheater. As you said, an honest to goodness GOOD player will give tips and be courteous. A cheater will respond with insults.

In all my literal thousands of hours of TF2, I only saw a handful of cheaters. I could count the number on two hands. You know why? It's the community. If you don't want to deal with cheaters, find a server that has a boisterous community and a conclave of attentive admins. Good players will gravitate towards servers with other good players, and as long as there's enough friendly admins around to keep a lid on the jerks the server will remain pure and enjoyable.

Re:What about the wrongly accused?

[datavirtue]

Playing World of Tanks, the accusation of cheating was thrown around constantly.

Re:What about the wrongly accused?

[Cruciform]

A few of us used to stay after work and play up to 8 hours of Quake 3 Rocket Arena almost every day, seven days a week. I was okay, but two of my co-workers were monsters - just amazing to watch. And watch you could, via spectator mode. And it was pretty obvious though the movement and traversal of the maps that it was skill, not cheating.

The thing that sucks about a nice spectator mode like that is when you have a squad based game and someone who was killed is yelling to their surviving teammate "He's on the other side of the door!" We used to get that in the 'artist vs. coder' matches of that counterstrike-alike mod for Unreal Tournament. Dirty cheatin' coders.

Re:What about the wrongly accused?

[Cruciform]

The only reasons I've left a TF2 server is bigots and guys who don't want to play but just want to take up slots, stand in one place, and karaoke rap through their mics.

It's a pretty nice community all-in-all :)

Ban everyone

[cheekyjohnson]

Quickly! Ban the friends of every cheater! They might also be cheaters. Such a thing would bring about the apocalypse.

cheating is a bit more complex

[Trepidity]

There are some black-and-white cases of what constitutes "cheating" in online games, but a lot of gray-area ones as well, especially when it comes to when players will accuse other players of cheating (this book is an interesting study). Sometimes it's violating technical mechanisms, like installing a modified video driver or aimbot, but there are a lot of social rules of what constitutes cheating as well, and some mixed cases like using technical features in the "wrong" way. Some tournaments even have to very precisely specify what constitutes "cheating" with legalistic rules, like some of the Starcraft 1 tournaments' rules about which edge cases of unit behavior (mutalisk stacking, etc.) were cheating (banned) versus just edge-case behavior (ok to use).

school

[bcrowell]

There are obvious analogies to be made with cheating in school, doping in sports, government bureaucracies where bribery is universal, ... and obvious caveats about whether those analogies are really valid (online games aren't real, so cheating doesn't hurt people in the tangible way that a bribe-taking Russian cop does).

I teach physics at a community college. It certainly makes sense that students are more likely to cheat if they see their friends getting away with it, or if they see that cheating is so rampant that they start to believe that they have to cheat or else they'll be at an unfair disadvantage. The obvious fix for that would be to take it very seriously if students cheat. Suspend them, expel them, give them an F in the course with a note on their transcript saying why. But it seems to be a nearly universal thing at schools in the US these days that none of that happens. My school's lawyers have advised the administration that they can't allow faculty to give anything beyond an F on the assignment -- which is typically not a penalty at all, since usually the reason students cheat is that they're already failing, so they have nothing to lose.

Re:school

[Shadow of Eternity]

I call bullshit, I attend one of (if it isnt outright by now) the largest universities on the east coast and our academic integrity policy is essentially one step shy of physically branding a giant C on the student's face. The first time someone is caught cheating the professor gets to do whatever they want with the now defunct letter grade, they get a "Z" in the course, if they try to drop the course they're re-added so they can't avoid the grade hit, and they can't retake the course or get the Z removed until they complete a mandatory ethics course and redo the original class. The second time they're just plain fucked.

And all of this is outside of the academic penalties they can get ranging from multi-term suspensions to flat out telling them to get the fuck out and never come back. Getting a "Z" outside of borderline cases is essentially a one way ticket to starting your degree again at another university. IF they take you.

Re:school

[Ethanol-fueled]

since usually the reason students cheat is that they're already failing, so they have nothing to lose.

Most students pursuing a bachelor's in Biology have to take basic mechanics("101") and basic EM/optics("102") physics classes. There is not a damn thing in those classes that a B.S. bio grad would use that is not already overlap from the chem classes they are taking. The official line for justifying forcing so many extraneous classes on students is "producing well-rounded grads," but extraneous classes are irrelevant in this day and age, especially as tuitions skyrocket and information becomes more accessible online.

Then consider that many students, especially at the community college level, already have jobs and/or families. Somebody after a B.S. in biology sure as hell ain't gonna be calculating impulses and force vectors and E/B fields in their careers operating PCR machines or collecting samples in lakes and rivers. If they had to, though they could learn enough to be useful in a trivial amount of time, on their own terms.

Re:school

[datavirtue]

You are comparing a community college to a university. They are VERY different animals.

Re:school

[datavirtue]

Unfortunately it is true that a lot of people CAN and do lie, cheat, and steal to get ahead. The workplace is very competitive, and when someone less capable comes up against someone who doesn't have to cheat the temptation is great. They face a choice of success or failure and the only thing to make it a debate is their sense of honor. Honor has to be taught, and I find it is undervalued or absent from the conscious thought of many. Although, it is possible to over-value your honor as well.

Re:school

[datavirtue]

Having lived and learned my measly thirty years on this planet without a college education, It is my opinion that despite the well known problems with modern education, the requirement and justification of well-roundedness is a very good thing. I started college for the first time at 32 and I can see how valuable it is to take classes outside your field to round out your ability to think and consider new approaches. If there is any reason for college, the most glaring one is the way they force you outside your comfort zone whether you like or not. I have learned to stop dreading and avoiding classes I don't think apply to my interests or field because, almost every time I have taken them, I have been able to synthesize additional wisdom that applies to my interests. Making people take math and physics is a good thing. The only reason people do not perform well in math classes is because they do not study properly. I'm no math genius, but I get A's because I recognize when my study habits are not working and I scramble to adapt them or I simply practice more. The head math professor at my college was not good at math when he was young.

Re:school

[bcrowell]

You are comparing a community college to a university. They are VERY different animals.

Or the legal situation may differ from state to state. I'm in California.

Re:school

[Shadow of Eternity]

I'm in Florida. Don't let the tourists fool you, we're still the deep south.

Re:school

[antifoidulus]

Policy and implementation are very different animals. The GPs policy on cheating may say something similar, but that doesn't mean that the school is willing to implement it out of fear of a lawsuit. Have you actually seen anyone actually get punished in accordance with the policy?

I also attended one of the biggest schools on the eastern seaboard who had a very similar policy, but guess what, what the GP says is absolutely true. Cheating was so rampant, esp. on homework(which is why homework shouldn't be graded, but thats another discussion entirely), that you were putting yourself at a huge competitive disadvantage if you didn't cheat. Hell my friend as part of his PhD student duties was proctoring an ethics exam for first year grad students and he caught a girl cheating(I'll repeat that, she was cheating on her ethics exam), and the school basically said, "drop it". The fear of getting sued is just too great for schools to enforce their cheating policy in any meaningful fashion.

This just in, Friends share activities, News @ 11

[AlienIntelligence]

It has been mentioned in other comments and I did RTFA
but how is this news?

I'm sorta on the fence about studies that prove a known.

I can't imagine that this would be much different than any
other members of a group taking on malevolent activities
to create a dichotomy of the group of those that accept,
tolerate and abhor the activities. IRL, Drugs, crime, sex,
etc. Nothing new there. [That's what I mean, with proving
a 'known'. Yes, more data points but still.]

Furthermore I'm certain this will follow patterns regarding
how people treat/consider their online personas. Allowing
for more flamboyant and extroverted activities to arise and
thus once again polarizing them from others online. That
would be cheating, hacking, griefing, etc.

Add to that, when someone begins to either a) assume
a persona that may provide a thrill/excitement that they
don't get IRL or b) befriends those that do, the social
aspect can actually be HIGHER, as they have suddenly
become a denizen of a guild and have achieved 'geek
power'. So, contrary to the 'assumptions' of this study
there can actually be a higher kinship, (re: gangs IRL)
with brethren that share a cause.

So... another possible title.
"People that share questionable proclivities risk ostracization"
Or,
"Introverts discover world of peers, open up and become social"
but that title is probably too happy sounding for 'news' nowadays.

-AI

Seems reasonable

[Holammer]

If any of my friends cheated in BF or COD, well... Lets just say that I know where they live.

Agree, and disagree

[DeadCatX2]

I agree that there are two types of cheating, and I also agree with the broad outlines that you've drawn. However, I see things a bit differently, as I'm one of the people who actively creates hacks for the games I play. Here are the two types of cheaters that I see.

1) The "white hat" cheater. This is the gamer who would usually cheat at single player or LAN games. This gamer wants to have fun, and cheats enable gamers to calibrate the difficulty of their games to their own taste, "tuning the engine" for maximum efficiency of fun.

2) The "black hat" cheater. This is the gamer who derives pleasure from ruining the experience of other people. They are griefers and their idea of "fun" is pissing people off.

I'm in the first category. I play a LOT of L4D2 (500-ish hours in about 15 months). I don't think I could have played this game for so long if I had to deal with the bugs and the glitches and the design decisions that I don't agree with (the "itches"). Pretty much every game has itches, but what makes L4D2 unique for me is the ability to download a server for free, and the capability to modify the game engine with plugins so that I can scratch those itches.

So I run my own private server, and I can play with friends and they know that my server has been extremely modded. And from some perspective, what I am doing is tantamount to cheating (some of the commands, in fact, begin with "sm_cheat"). But I don't care, because I'm still having fun playing this game after hundreds of hours (total cost so far: 1 cent per hour). And if people join my server and have a problem with it they are free to leave. But for the friends who play on my server with me, are they cheaters?

Cheating?

[Lando]

Well of course cheaters generally have cheating friends, I mean as a cheater, you aren't interested in putting in the work to become good, so why invest the time to find and or make cheats, someone else does that. So how to cheats get distributed? Well because people you know have them and they share them.

I guess I should RTFA at some point, but it would seem to make sense. So what's the issue here?

Duh!

[DaveV1.0]

Cheaters are generally dishonorable, shitbag assholes and dishonorable, shitbag assholes are generally friends with other dishonorable, shitbag assholes. This is not rocket science, folks. People are generally friends with people who share the same behaviors and values as themselves. "Birds of a feather" and all that.

bwahaha lmaof lololololol bwwahahhahaaaa

[Anonymous Coward]

As a software development and electronics engineer what you have just stated about mice is utterly ridiculous and moronic.
Get a life dweeb. The only mouse that matters is the one that the marketing department of these mice companies use to extract brain cells from your head and keep you from thinking. That way they can keep the free flow of money coming from your pocket. I could PWN you with a 1995 ball mouse connected to a RS232 serial port! Sucker.

Re:The real problem lies with the developers...

[schroedingers_hat]

Do you really think you are the first to think of things like this?

All these issues (and many more) are considered in making a big budget game. Much of the time fast response and good tolerance to latency are preferred over security. Better to have an actually playable game that sometimes gets hacked than one which is a piece of crap that noone plays.

Comparing a strategy game to a first person is not entirely genuine. Many things have to be working right so that the tank can appear and have all the latest shiny graphics. Forcing the game to display models with no notice, and report back every position of every physics object every frame is an extra constraint which will require a tradeoff somewhere else.

Granted, sometimes decisions are based on whatever is cheap/fast rather than what is the best game, but they still sell. If you don't like it, don't buy it and tell them why. If you'd prefer cheat-proof games to the latest shiny physics effects and graphics, then write a letter.