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Top Counter-Strike Players Embroiled In Hacking Scandal
An anonymous reader writes Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is one of the world's fastest growing eSports, but the community has been rocked by scandal in the last week, with several top players being banned by Valve for using various hacking tools to improve their performance. With the huge Dreamhack Winter tournament taking place this weekend, the purge could not have come at a worse time for the game, and fans are now poring over the archives for other signs of foul play in top tier games — be sure to look out for these tell tale signs while playing.
Wall hacks: a common accusation when a player doesnâ(TM)t see their assailant is that they shot them through a wall. There are also hacks that let you see player outlines (like in spectator mode) or grenade paths. One of the more blatant cheats.
Aimbots and triggerbots: like auto-assisted aim on consoles, these hacks can be configured to either snap to a target, or otherwise improve accuracy. Triggerbots fire as soon as the crosshair moves over a target, âoeimprovingâ reaction times in corner ambushes. Can be obvious, or rather subtle.
The âoeESPâ hack: gives you âoeextra-sensory powersâ to know, telepathically, your opponentâ(TM)s ammo/health count and whether theyâ(TM)re walking or sprinting. Can also boost sound levels of footsteps or distant gunfire.
Mobility hacks: these range from slightly increased speed to ability to teleport anywhere on the map. Can include noclip, or âoeghostingâ, through solid objects and walls, however these are less common and almost entirely removed from the game other than cheat console-enabled servers.
Wall-hacking and tracking stuff mostly. Since your client knows the location of all the players for the purpose of generating 3d sound etc you can extract that info. These hacks were distributed through steam workshop due to a flaw in that system, and were thought to be hidden from VAC.. until the bans hit ;)
Sorry wrong link, I was thinking of Borislav Ivanov: http://www.chessgames.com/perl...
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
I used to play people in online chess, but would mirror the games using the game Chessmaster. That way my opponent would not be playing me, but rather Chessmaster. Eventually I got a really high rank and someone beat me. I congratulated him for beating Chessmaster, the game, on the hardest difficulty. He told me that he too was using Chessmaster. His version was higher than mine.
I found that pretty much all the top ranked players were using Chessmaster or some variation to win. In conclusion, all the top ranked players cheat at games if they can get away with it.
...in counter strike?
The hell you say.
lose != loose
I keep hoping and praying that one day someone will come out with a way to effectively deal with this, but the reality is that the problem is here to stay. The way this pans out is that you get a day or two of hack free game play when the publisher updates their anti-cheat code. Then the hackers come out with new binaries that cannot be detected and the game sucks again.
I like FPS games and I really like FPS games on the computer where I can use a keyboard and mouse. Hackers just kill the game though. On a hacker free BF4 server, I will go 3:1 or 4:1 frequently. Yet my overall ratio for the game is down around 0.8:1. That gives some sense of how often the hacks are going undetected.
I do not understand why companies like EA, Valve, etc do not just subscribe to the hacks themselves and update the detection routines as soon as they come out. They have proven that they have technology that will catch the large majority of them. It just seems like they are too lazy to stay on top of it. The cynical side of me thinks that they are have only been aggressive with the BF4 hackers in the last week or two due to Hardline coming out soon.
It really does not require any more skill. If hacking were allowed, it would come down to who has the fastest computer and lowest ping to the server.
Playing the game without hacks requires skill.
Thank you James Tiberius Kirk!
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Take the number of cheaters in all major cycling tournaments, multiply it by the number of cheaters at every major magic the gathering tournament, and multiply it by 10,000 and you've got the number of people who cheat at Counterstrike.
By the way, there is so much wrong with this article I don't know where to start. Reporting people is a fucking joke. It does NOTHING. Going over logs to see who cheated just tells you who cheated. Nothing happens. There is nothing the user can do about it. Until companies get serious about cheating, nobody will play their completely ruined games.
In MW3 for the PC, it became unplayable after about 3 months. You literally cannot play one single online round without someone floating through the air and firing at you with zero recoil. That's a $100 million+ game. They just don't give a flying fuck about cheating.
Here's THE answer. Google [name of game] hacks. Download the hacking utilities that everyone else is using. Look at what directory it installs to or what DLLs go where. Have the game check for those files in the next patch. Permanently ban everyone with the hack installed and ban them from Steam so basically those cheating pieces of shit aren't allowed to play video games anymore.
It really does not require any more skill. If hacking were allowed, it would come down to who has the fastest computer and lowest ping to the server.
Playing the game without hacks requires skill.
Sooo .. sorta like high frequency trading?
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I don't know anything about this so-called "sport", but it sounds to me as if people bring their own machines to these events. This is a very curable problem. Get Alienware to sponsor the event with hardware which gets sent back to them at the end.
This isn't a bad idea, but you still have to allow peripherals to be brought in, since part of the player skill is likely their mouse and keyboard.
Then, you have to give the player time to config the game to their liking (mouse sensitivity, hotkeys, etc.). With all that going on, it might be pretty easy to slip in a hack of some kind.
Hacks are so sophisticated that (this is for nearly a decade now) you can pay a monthly fee and a business will guarantee you their hacks will not get you caught. This means that if you are caught, they will buy you a fresh copy of the game. The hacks come by way of a client software that gets the latest undetectable hacks direct from the company and implements them as your game begins. These can include aimbots, wallhacks, etc. Interestingly, the aimbots are engineered to be less detectable, having some deliberate slop and acquisition time in them so that when a player's game is reviewed, it may appear more natural instead of a quick 'snap' to a headshot.
I know this because I played in competitive BF2 and was a huge proponent of detecting and outing the hackers in the top competitive community. Several of my colleagues were anti-hack people who were assigned to infiltrate those very hack selling companies as clients. Guess what? Those companies have forums where hackers assemble to get together full teams for (I'm sure you've got the picture by now) the top leagues and competitive games.
I'm so glad I don't game competitively for many reasons. I loved it at the time, but the paranoia and concern over hackers was such a big deal. Also, be wary of gamers from quebec. Of the competitive gamers caught in BF2 for hacking there were as many from Quebec as there was from the western hemisphere as a whole. There was a huge culture of disrespect coming out of quebec at the time.
I think the suggestion is that it requires *other* skills, namely hacking skills. However, since hacks would be wind up being distributed (after all, doesn't information want to be free, even if one person worked on it and everyone else is just freeloading?), the skill would be "researching hacks" rather than 'creating hacks".
Why bother with the hacks then? If you want unlimited wall hacks you might as well just hold your tournament in a flat open arena with no cover anywhere and disable all the equalisation algorithms. If you want a hacking challenge try hacking some major corporate network. This also has the benefit of being followed by a stretch of vigorous physical exercise as you try to run away from the FBI SWAT team.
No devices you may bring, no internet connection, and if you need your superspecialawesome configuration for some device, mail it in and have it checked, you'll get it at the tournament during your setup time.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
to Zombocom!
The other half...hardware upgrades and a real life.
Arguing "real life" with a hardcore gamer is like arguing the cost of gas with a NASCAR driver. As if they actually give a shit.
If wasting time was any type of real concern, the game would stay in the box and on the store shelf.
It really does not require any more skill. If hacking were allowed, it would come down to who has the fastest computer and lowest ping to the server.
You've just described high frequency trading.
There is, in fact, a well-documented "conspiracy", though not a very secret one. There was also a well-coordinated effort in social media sites that gamers frequented to suppress all mention of gamergate (Reddit shadowbanned everyone talking about it, 4chan (of all places) banned everyone talking about it).
No, there's a difference between investigation and the concerted harassment by gamergate idiots.
Sure, but both "misogyny" and "journalistic ethics" are dodges here. Neither is really what gamergate is about: it's about a full-on culture war between the majority of the gaming press, and the actual gamers. The call for more gender sensitivity in game design, for example, seems harmless enough, what provokes people is simply outsiders to their culture demonizing that culture and insisting that it has to change - culture war.
Mostly, I think the real issue is just semantics - the culture of, say, CoD players (and other FPS games that attract mostly teen boys) can be toxic at times, but to criticize "gamers" as if they were all in that group really pisses off all of us addictively playing every other kind of games - from Candy Crush to Civ5.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
It was an aim bot but one that only kicked in when you were already close to your target. So much so that even when viewing recorded footage it wouldn't be spotted. That's how they managed to get away with it at LAN events. Someone either has to see it installed or catch it running to detect that hack and apparently that is what happened.
it's stupid though.
if they want it to be even, make them play on the tournament holders computers and raffle them at start of the game.
seriously, I thought the serious tournaments were played in this fashion but I suppose not. otherwise it's like letting javelin throwers bring their own stuff and not have people go through them(and yes sports like ski jumping have quite scientific ways to measure things like suit lift, because all that has been regulated).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.