Rockstar Creates 'Cheaters Pool' For Game Hackers

itwbennett writes "Rockstar Games announced yesterday in a newswire post that the company has created a 'cheater's pool' (sort of like the populating of Australia with criminals) where players who have hacked the game to give themselves advantages will only be able to play against other cheaters. Although, Ars Technica points out that players may actually prefer the 'special' world."

Comments

Interesting

[Lithdren]

I find this idea rather interesting, but I worry what might happen to someone who was placed in this pool by mistake?

I can imagine that the aim-bot writers would find this rather interesting, you'd have a natural-selection pressure going on where the best and fastest aim-bots would survive. I have to wonder what might come of something like that.

Wouldn't make the actual game very fun though.

Re:Interesting

[localman57]

I find this idea rather interesting, but I worry what might happen to someone who was placed in this pool by mistake?

It still seems better than an outright ban. The guys sent to Australia probably thought it better than the gallows.

Re:Interesting

[localman57]

You're gonna need a hell of a lot more than an aimbot in this pool, I think. We're talking about full blown A/I, I think, to be competitive.

Re:Interesting

[malakai]

The details of this system are scary.

First, this is designed for:

Anyone found to have used hacked saves, modded games, or other exploits to gain an unfair advantage in Max Payne 3 Multiplayer, or to circumvent the leaderboards will be quarantined from all other players into a "Cheaters Pool", where they'll only be able to compete in multiplayer matches with other confirmed miscreants

Which smells to me like they had poorly implemented server side checks, and people who modified their save games or other client in memory vars, were able to rocket to the top or run around invincible. That's just plain bad server-side programming on their end. I don't doubt with the right queries into their server storage they could identify accounts that bypassed something they were supposed to spend time on or accrue. If they had the right amount of auditing sprinkled in.

If you see anyone in Max Payne 3 multiplayer using invincibility hacks, infinite adrenaline, score cheating or doing anything else suspicious, just send us an email at maxpayne3.banhammer@rockstargames.com and include the following:
-Platform (PC, PS3 or Xbox 360)
-Cheater’s Gamertag / ID
-Description of the violation
-If possible, please include concrete evidence, such as a video or a screenshot

Wow, again, very scary. So the server trust the client for things like invincibility, adrenaline, _actual score_..etc. Is this a FPS from 1993?

Will this find aimbots, wallhacks or radar? No. It never will and never can. If you have to trust the client to run your 'aimbot detection code' then you already lost that battle. ( sure, statistically you can find weak cheats, or push down new detection code to try and catch them off guard, but the good ones have checks in place for that ).

All and all, this is part PR ( "Hey we're really mad at those darn cheaters and we'll try and make a difference!" ) and part cover up ( "Oh, we fucked up and let you do crappy memory hacks to rule our leader boards, we were in a rush and couldn't get all the server state checks done in time, plus it was so laggy, so we just decided to trust the client. Now we know better, have more time on our heads, so we'll retroactively try and determine people that cheated and remove them from the leader board")

Re:Interesting

[Anubis IV]

I remember back in the early 2000s when I was playing Medal of Honor: Allied Assault that I was using various exploits to wall hack and have no recoil. I also found a server that was permissive of cheating. Some of the most fun I had was on that server, since the best players there figured out how to exploit the cheats against the cheaters.

For instance, one person could draw attention through a wall while someone else came up from behind, effectively allowing you to use bait without ever endangering yourself. Or you could leverage the fact that everyone with wall hacks "pre-fires" at corners when they see enemies about to round them. Just run headlong at all corners and suddenly stop before turning them. The enemy will generally waste some ammo or will even need to reload, giving you a chance to engage them on your terms. You might even exploit the fact that the other player doesn't know how many walls are between the two of you to get them to leave themselves vulnerable. For instance, if you know they're aiming a rocket in your direction, put a wall between yourself and a window that they can see, pretend that you're crouched under the window, then stand up suddenly. As often as not, they'll launch the rocket prematurely, leaving you safe and them open for easy retaliation.

There's still a lot of room for fun, experimentation, and even skill when you have everyone on a level playing field, even if that field is different than the one most people are playing on.

Re:Interesting

[SuricouRaven]

Aimbots are actually FPS cheats, not RPG. They intercept data from the game in order to track the position of all players and obsticles, and the very instant that a valid shot can be made by the user's character they will supply the appropriate movement data to turn and fire with perfect mathematical precision. They were for a time the bane of Counterstrike - an aimbot-using player with was effectively invincible, as anyone who had a potential shot at him would be instantly killed by the aimbot. Many different anti-cheating measures were incorporated into CS in order to defeat the use of these aimbots.

Other helpful cheater programs included modifying the client to make all walls translucent, thus allowing the cheater to see enemies lurking in wait behind cover, and changing the field of view and control response so that any weapon could be used for sniping, even a pistol.

Re:Interesting

[ottothecow]

Well the way these things usually work are that they don't have to be perfect at catching you cheat, but they only have to catch you once.

Its not even that novel of a concept...look at Valve and VAC, if you get caught cheating on a VAC secured server, your entire account gets blacklisted and can't play on other anti cheat servers (and this applies to every game linked to your steam account which is actually kind of scary). There are still other servers that don't enforce anti-cheat but my guess is they are filled mostly with hackers and pirates (so basically...a cheaters pool).

What happens is someone comes up with a nice hack, people start using it, Valve figures it out and bans everyone it can catch, and then the hack author notices it has been found and they modify it in such a way that it avoids detection again. Every time Valve does this, they ban a bunch of accounts who are gone forever unless they come in and buy a new game. It doesn't stop cheating or make it impossible...but it puts a financial burden on the cheater.

Re:Interesting

[girlintraining]

I find this idea rather interesting, but I worry what might happen to someone who was placed in this pool by mistake?

If you read the terms of the EULA, you'll find out: You can beg for mercy, and perhaps Caesar will grant you a reprieve. Maybe. If he doesn't have gas that day from eating at Taco Bell. You have no rights to the aforementioned virtual world... you can be removed for any reason or no reason, and if you paid money, well tough nuts. You were informed by psychic eminations of the terms when you handed them your credit card, which was a binding and unappealable legal arrangement, and you can't return the product for a refund once you've opened it, you know, in order to read the terms. -_-

This is why I don't pay for software for personal use anymore; If a company can take away what's mine on a whim, then it wasn't really mine to begin with, and I don't spend money on things I don't get to keep.

Re:Interesting

[Andy Dodd]

This is why I never purchased Crysis 2 and likely won't purchase Crysis 3.

The single player game was gorgeous, and the graphics were stunning.

The game had enormous multiplayer potential, but - For all their expertise in making a graphics engine, they didn't know jack shit about networked multiplayer.

If a player shot a pistol at another player, take a guess where the decision on amount of damage done was made? You'd think that after years of online gaming, it would be the correct answer: The server.

You'd be wrong - The damage calculations were done BY THE CLIENT. Both offensive (weapon damage) and defensive (armor effectiveness) calculations were done on the client. Weapon damage calculations were done by the client of the player firing the weapon, armor calcs (esp. for vehicles) were done by the client of the player being shot at.

The XML files in which weapon and armor attributes were stored weren't integrity checked at all.

As a result, it was dead easy to change an XML file, eliminate all bullet spread/variation from a pistol, and declare each bullet as doing 99999 damage. The client would say to the server, "I hit player Y for 99999 damage" and the server would believe it, no questions asked!

Similarly, the server would notify the client of a player operating a vehicle, "You were hit by this weapon class for X damage. How much of that was actually absorbed" - For example, most armored vehicles had 80-90% damage reduction from small arms fire. Well, just like the 99999 damage pistol hack, it was easy to declare a 99% (or even 100% I think) damage reduction to any weapons type. So you could easily create an attack helicopter that was immune to everything but controlled flight into terrain... In nearly every game I ever played, a cheater would eventually get access to an attack helicopter, and even if you decided "fuck it, if you can't beat em', join em'" and gave yourself super-rockets - they could fly around the map with impunity.

I actually eventually decided that the most interesting challenge for the game would be to see how far I could modify things without anyone calling me out - and thanks to the blatant cheaters, it was amazing what you could get away with (think 600 horsepower pickup truck, mobile antiaircraft cannon that could depress its turret by 10 degrees below horizontal, etc...) without anyone accusing you at all.

I think I played legitimately for a week, experimented with cheating for a week as an experiment, then deleted the game. It was so insecure as to be utterly pointless - blatant cheaters in every match, and my own experiments showed that there had to be a whole pile of more subtle cheaters lurking.

Re:Interesting

[X0563511]

Who played Crysis for multiplayer? Cheaters apparently. I never even tried, I just enjoyed the single-player game.

Re:Interesting

[AngryDeuce]

I agree, if only because you simply cannot play a multiplayer game on the internet these days without someone accusing someone else of cheating, hacking, 'glitching', whatever you want to call it. Very few people lose because they're just not as good as the other people in that particular match, no, it's because everyone else is cheating. I mean, people bitch and complain about campers for Christ's sake, and they're not even cheating, they're just not running around like the rest of the retards and are actually employing some strategy beyond "Mash all the buttons!! Fire all the weapons! Jump jump jump jumpity jump jump!!!!!"

If some chickenshit 12 year old accused me of cheating because I had the audacity to kill him more than he killed me, and I ended up lumped in with a bunch of fucking wall-hackers and aim-botters for all eternity because of his butthurt, I would be furious and demand my money back. If they refused, I would never purchase another game from them ever again. There'd better be some sort of concrete proof required other than community feedback, even if they're depending on repeated infractions, because obviously people that are very good play a lot and hence will probably have a lot of bullshit reports of hacking/cheating just by virtue of that fact alone.

Ask Microsoft how many bogus "system tampering" reports they get from butthurt players. I bet less than 5% of those reported are actually guilty of anything other than being better than the person that reported them.

Outside of all that, though, I like the idea of a dedicated place to hack and such. I just disagree with the whole "email suspicious behavior" thing because I feel that is just going to be totally abused.

Re:Interesting

[Seizurebleak]

Gotta love getting insta-railed in DM1 from the top where the 'nade launcher is and from the ledge where the hyperblaster spawns.

The cheaters were few and far between from my experience - although it only takes 1 to ruin a game. Once knowledge of botting got out, however, lots of really good players would get accused of cheating and sometimes booted from public servers. Sore losers and poor sportsmanship ruined online gaming for me, even more so than flagrant cheating.

Re:Interesting

[Lehk228]

technically those are clickers, but yea they are harder to detect just looking at data going to the server, except if you probe for them. send a very brief incorrect set of data indicating a head in the crosshairs, like one or two frames, if bullets come out instantly, drop the banhammer.

Re:Interesting

[X0563511]

But they do have to code it in, which influences the other code and saps hours from all parts of development.

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

most of the pistols couldn't shoot through walls, the deagle being the exception. same for the shotguns/submachine guns. most of the rifles could shoot through one entity (wall/person) and the awp could only shoot through two.

Re:Interesting

[citizenr]

This is why I never purchased Crysis 2 and likely won't purchase Crysis 3.

The single player game was gorgeous, and the graphics were stunning.

The game had enormous multiplayer potential, but - For all their expertise in making a graphics engine, they didn't know jack shit about networked multiplayer.

If a player shot a pistol at another player, take a guess where the decision on amount of damage done was made? You'd think that after years of online gaming, it would be the correct answer: The server.

You'd be wrong - The damage calculations were done BY THE CLIENT

Sounds like ARMA / ARMA 2.
There is a very popular mod called DayZ ( http://dayzmod.com/ ) for ARMA2. It features persistent character and permanent death. Popular cheats involve :
-calling thermonuclear strike on a whole 250km2 island killing up to 50 players instantly
-throwing whole server population into the air, they all die when they fall down
-uploading your own mission file to the server spawning AI, This one is quite clever :) Ranging from spawning 3 women in Burqas following each player :DDD through small military convoy shooting all players on sight, ending with full blown carpet bombing done by AI.
-spawning items out of thin air. Somehow Arma lets ordinary players spawn a BATTLESHIP on top of a building :) not to mention all the guns, equipment and vehicles your heart desires.
-speed hacks / invisibility / aimbots / invincibility / flying (yes, player can tell server his position and server will just place him there without asking).

-and my fav, changing whole server population into goats! :o)

All that possible while being ordinary player joining MULTIPLAYER server, server that talks to a master server supposedly keeping track of all the players.
Did I mention their standard security practice was to ask server admins to mail RDP passwords for all the servers, in cleartext? and that the official mail account got hacked and most of the servers turned into malware zombies for almost a week? and the official website and forum deleted, including most recent backups :D Shit is hilarious.

Some of those companies just ignore past 10 years of experience and reinvent the wheel (or just cover their ears/eyes and pretend there is no problem) :(.

Re:Interesting

[SimonInOz]

Hey - no talking about my family like that!

Re:Interesting

[petsounds]

And there's a reason the UT bots were good: the original UT bots were created by Steve Polge, the creator of the Reaper bot. You could always pick out a UT bot, they were in a kind of behavioral uncanny valley, but they made for a good challenge. Moreso from their accuracy than their tactics. As a map designer, it was very hard to get them to use advanced features of the engine like multi-stop platforms, but in generic DM and CTF maps they could easily hold their own. Sadly, shipping FPS games with bots seemed to fall out of favor with game developers.

I'm not sure I'd say they are the "best" bot made -- the UT bots were short on group tactics, by comparison with the AIs in the Half-Life series. They assumed roles in team gametypes, but I don't remember them ever using flanking tactics or helping each other out. But in terms of being a one-bot fireworks show, yes they were quite proficient.

Re:Interesting

[Shadow of Eternity]

Modern DLL hooks certainly do that, the original primitive aimbots for CS simply used red and green color coded models and would fire at anything that appeared with the color you set it for. There were some funny moments when people realised just having a rainbow spray could instantly lock most aimbotters on the wall.

I like this approach

[Firehed]

Seems like a big improvement over the typical banhammer approach. Let cheaters play with other cheaters while legit players can continue to enjoy the game normally. Contrast this to Blizzard's apparent approach where everyone thought to cheat (even in single-player, apparently, since they've blurred the single vs multiplayer line on D3 with this always-on crap) suddenly have their $60 purchase made worthless.

Just like Australia

[busyqth]

the company has created a 'cheater's pool' (sort of like the populating of Australia with criminals)

And just like Australia, the cheater's pool will become a lawless hellhole, where might makes right, as biker gangsters fight for supremacy in the irradiated wastelands.

Re:Just like Australia

[Oxdeadface]

Two bots enter! One bot leaves!

Re:Just like Australia

[skuzzlebutt]

Stay tuned for "Crocodile Leeeerooooooooooooy Jennnnkiiiins"

Re:Just like Australia

[Samantha Wright]

And now a Political Correctness moment, brought to you by your local public radio:

At no point in its history was the majority of Australia's population comprised of convicts.

I do believe we owe the editors some reheated "ignorant Americans!" comments.

Re:Just like Australia

[lennier]

And just like Australia, the cheater's pool will become a lawless hellhole, where might makes right, as biker gangsters fight for supremacy in the irradiated wastelands.

Australia does have *some* other places than Canberra's Parliament House, you know.

That's fine

[rgmoore]

Although, Ars Technica points out that players may actually prefer the 'special' world."

Sounds like a win all around, then. The cheaters get their "special" world, and the non-cheaters don't have to deal with them. What's not to like?

Re:That's fine

[Endo13]

No more so than any other server and internet resources used for games. Cheaters aren't any less likely to spend money on future content than other players.

Honeypot

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like a honeypot to me.
Rockstar will be able to observe a plethora of hacks in action to better prevent them on normal servers.

I played in cheat servers before

[Anonymous Coward]

Playing in cheat servers in CS: Source was fun but something interesting happened if you played in the server for a while.... most, if not all of the hackers ended up playing hte game properly.

Re:I played in cheat servers before

[jmerlin]

Top-end players used cheats while training. Being able to intimately learn sound->positioning and where you could shoot through walls with what weapons were made possible by sound-esp and wallhacks. Aimbots that aimed at actual hitboxes instead of models gave a better sense of where to shoot to score hits in various animation sequences. Looking at the actual recoil spreads and their trends for different guns (and using pitch/yaw compensation instead of nospread) showed you how to compensate for recoil extremely effectively. Armed with this knowledge, you're far better at the game than average people.

I developed cheats for a while and I was also a cal-i level player. I went 23-0 legit in one side before being banned in a cal-i scrim back in 1.5, and then barred from scrimming with that team again (and a friend was the manager, he swore up and down that I was cheating). This was before it became common to use cheats to study the game, so I had a huge advantage. You can even download modified maps that have transparent walls if you don't want to run some shady executable cheat (now, you couldn't then). People had made player model mods before that painted the head a bright blue/green that made it very obvious where you should aim (and this was accompanied by color-based aimbots which were pretty terrible).

When we're talking about competitive gaming, researching the game to this level with the assistance of cheats is clearly a benefit. If cheats are treated like some form of a plague where once a person is infected they should never be able to ever play again, you're really just dealing with a massive ignorance. You know, the ignorance of all these bad server admins than ban anyone who's better than them. "Once a cheater, always a cheater" level stupidity. Headshot 5 people in a row? BANNED, too many headshots, must be a cheater!

If we adopted this type of reasoning in science, cutting open a body to figure out how it works would be cheating and would be disallowed. Deconstructing atoms with supercolliders would be considered cheating and disallowed. The creation of vaccines and medicines that cure diseases unnaturally would be considered cheating and disallowed. And if you ever violated any of these rules, you'd be sentenced to death, because once a cheater, always a cheater, and cheaters should be permanently banned from the game (life, in this case). Sounds reasonable, doesn't it?

stop and RTFA first

[Eponymous Hero]

there's no idyllic haven for cheaters like the headline and summary imply. they put all the cheaters together and then see if they cheat again, and when they do they get the ban hammer. the only way to stay in the cheaters pool, and the game itself, is to stop cheating. even ars technica missed this important bit of info.

Re:WoW

[cfalcon]

Twinking was never cheating, is the difference. The correct comparisons would be teleport hacks, which normally result in perma-bans.

Throwing all the twinks in the same BGs hasn't stopped it- it just forced them to organize so they can have their twink time. A twinked character is far more powerful than a regular one, but it is all within the confines of game stats- a cheating FPS player has any number of bizarre advantages that create essentially an entirely different game.

That being said, you still can't cheat in the cheater pool, or you get kicked out, so it is nothing like twinking in the twink pool (which was the whole point of the twink pool).

hrumph, what what?

[Thud457]

I'll have you know I look quite dashing wearing my monocle while giving some dirty privateer a through spreadsheet-lashing.

flying to Australia soon?

[at10u8]

Knowing of previous incidents, I suspect that itwbennett may have an interesting time when next dealing with Australian customs.

Has anyone else noticed?

[erroneus]

Has anyone else noticed that the water in the cheater's pool is always a bit warmer and greener?

Re:WoW

[History's Coming To]

Agreed. I play Battlefield with a mate who's actually very good, but will rage quit out of a game if we're losing because "the other players are cheating". His definition of cheating so far includes:

Using shotguns
Sniping
Being good with helicopters
Pinning us down and mortaring us
Being better than us (probably)

It's a war simulator, there's only one thing I can think of in the game that breaks the Geneva convention, and that's shooting people on parachutes before they hit the ground.

Re:Nice

[networkBoy]

Back on Halo we mod'd a couple maps. We had shotguns that fired sniper rounds instead of pellets that had the impact of the rocket launcher. used in a fairly constrained level made for hilarity as people ganked themselves almost as often as they got a kill.
As long as everyone obeys the modified rule set then it still isn't cheating though, it is a modified ruleset. Cheating is when someone violates the social construct of the environment for their own gain.
-nB