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

[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

[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.

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!

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?

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: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