Slashdot Mirror
Video Game Cheaters Outed By Logic Bombs
Lirodon writes: A Reddit user decided to tackle the issue of cheaters within Valve's multiplayer shooter Counter Strike: Global Offensive in their own unique way: by luring them towards fake "multihacks" that promised a motherlode of cheating tools, but in reality, were actually traps designed to cause the users who installed them to eventually receive bans. The first two were designed as time bombs, which activated functions designed to trigger bans after a specific time of day. The third, which was downloaded over 3,500 times, caused instantaneous bans.
I hope we can get Sean Connery to play the lead role again...
Looks like a classical case of vigilantism.
If doesn't help prevent cheating in tux racer or bzflag why do I care? This tool was probably written in Rust too, wasn't it? Don't lie
It's bad enough you play it religiously, but cheating in it to get ahead? What a fucking loser.
It's the equivalent of cheating at old people's bingo night. Actually, it's even worse because at least if you cheat at bingo you have a chance to win money.
So being a cheater yourself, tell us what the fuck inspires you. It's a game, what possible enjoyment is there in cheating to win? why play at all?
The joy isn't in winning, it's in ruining the game for others and possibly making them quit in frustration. It's the same reason forum trolls exist.
This is why I continue to prefer console games with no internet access ... I don't have to worry about the other guy cheating, but if the company made ways for me to "cheat" it doesn't hurt anybody.
If I want infinite ammo and can't die, who cares if I'm sitting in my basement and nobody else is affected?
Cheat codes used to be part of the fun of one-player games.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Oh, come now ... people are selfish bastards, and if there are rules, someone is always trying to get around them.
Don't go expecting noble acts from video gamers or the internet just because you seem outraged.
This is really no different than real life ... someone is always trying to bypass the rules and not get caught.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I used to make bots for my own use in Puzzle Pirates. Less directly competitive, but there were global ratings and you helped your crew by performing highly (without directly griefing other players). I found that writing them was a lot of fun--it was a challenge to see how optimized I could make them, and how realistically I could make them act as humans. Big 'oops' moment when my bot went to the top of the world rankings after it'd only been running for a couple days, and I think I got banned because my bot optimized for weird combos that humans are unable to predict very well; it would stand out blatantly if anyone ran those particular statistics, but at least it had delays and mistakes and weird mouse movements like a person. In any case I found the 'botting puzzle' to be much deeper than the 'bilging puzzle'. It would still be fun if it was single-player.
But, that's just me as a writer. I could see distributing it to friends as a kind of intellectual challenge in managing people, and getting ahead in the game to see more high-level content. In a one-shot game like CS:GI though, downloading someone else's bot is just pointless. There's no long term progression to gain from, and you don't get the challenge of writing the bot yourself. All you get is the meaningless short-lived internet points from seeing yourself on top of a scoreboard, and you won't even win fights in a way that earns respect from your enemies.
Now see, what I'd REALLY love is a game (fps, mmo, puzzle, mud, etc) that is populated by user-submitted bots only. Upload and then forbid human communication with bots while they're running. Your bot needs to adapt to the way other bots behave that season, maybe your bot even needs to be designed in a way that it can try to form alliances with other bots for common interest--I guess some kind of open spec for communication protocol within the game would be good there. Who's trustworthy, who's not, can you share information, can you trust information, and of course just basic ability at playing the game. THAT would be a serious intellectual challenge. Things like Corewars just aren't as in depth as I want.
A friend of mine and I used to play a football video game back in the NES days. He would employ football strategy to plan his maneuvers, but i knew nothing of the game so I's just choose random plays and button mash. More often than not, I'd beat him because he couldn't figure out what my strategy was to make a counter to it. He'd plan a defense based on the most logical (to someone who knows football) offense, but I'd do something completely different and would win.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
I don't think "logic bomb" means what the submitter thinks it means (the stories don't use that term). These were trojans.
Better known as 318230.
Dice sold Slashdot. Maybe you missed it?
http://meta.slashdot.org/story...
Cheating at single player games (say, to see more content) isn't so bad because you're not ruining anything for anybody else. Just don't post your ill gotten high score :)
Cheat at multiplayer, especially MMOs where you can't simply leave the cheat-affected server, and you're simply being a douchebag.
None of your examples hold weight against a competitive multiplayer game that's play professionally in an e-sports type manner. What you are talking about is griefing or trolling, and I agree 100%, that's just part of life. Actually manipulating the game code be it with mods or actually rebuilding the source, is something completely different. So, ignoring your examples because they don't apply, we can start to argue if this is in fact stealing, because that's what you are really doing, you are screwing other people out of the game THEY purchased. With that said, you do have to give some of these modders credit for the work they've done to get their hacks out there. I respect that, right up until they start illegally profiting from a derivative work they have no legal license to use. Playing skyrim and ignoring the main quests is NOT the same as playing a competitive game FOR MONEY with hacks doing the work for you. The fact you tried to argue this leads me to suspect you are the type of person who would buy these hacks.
Look, if people will cheat for FUN, they'll sure as hell cheat for MONEY.
EVERY endeavor with rules has had someone cheat. The Olympics, car racing, the fucking stock market ... all of it.
Are you so naive as to think that the higher the stakes the less likely someone is to cheat? Because if you are, you need to get out into the fucking real world and look at what humans are really like.
Yes, they're all very bad people who should be punished with spankings and sentenced to hard labor to atone for their sins ... now grow the hell up and stop acting like you just fell of the hay wagon.
I don't play online games because a) I have no desire to interact with some smart ass 12 year old half way around the world who can kick my ass, and b) because I prefer to pick up a game, play for a couple of hours, and put it down. On-line gaming provides no value to me. In fact, it's a negative.
The fact that you felt the need to make an ad hominem attack tells me you're fucking asshole with an inflated sense of self importance, in addition to a woefully incomplete picture of what human nature really is.
I'm not advocating cheating in multi-player games.
But I am saying people who are shocked it happens are probably idiots.
Of course my Skyrim example is nothing like cheating where money is on the line, because it was about why people might choose to define "fun" other than the game designer intended.
But if you think your moral outrage will change the world ... good luck with that. Humans will ALWAYS cheat in large enough samples.
Acting like they don't is naive and childish.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I've made several cheats (mostly using cheat engine, because it's a fine program) but that doesn't mean I cheat in everything, nor that I cheat in games vs other people. It's quite possible that he feels, as I do, that not winning a match through one's own skill is not winning at all. There's no fun in shit-talking a friend about kicking their ass when you don't legitimately kick it.
Valve should just quietly put the cheaters all by themselves, let them piss each other off whilst everyone else gets on with life.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
I am not a gamer but I've read about EVE. Even if they made a client for my system, I'd not play. Nope... Someone's gonna shoot someone over the antics in that game - by the players themselves. I've read stories about some of the greatest takeovers, robberies, and con jobs - and they all took place in EVE. Iceland has like a half dozen firearms, in the whole country. A bunch of crazy Americans are going to hop on a boat, row to Iceland, and just start shooting the developers.
Seriously, EVE is gonna result in someone waking up dead one day. I live vicariously through the stories. No, I seriously do look for the stories and read them. I like the long, exposé, types of stories that go into full details and actually describe what happened. It's like watching a wreck happen in slow motion where the people are cheering and wearing party hats. They know, they have to know, that they're going to die. I'm just waiting for someone to die in real life.
Hell, for all I know, it's already happened and I've just not read about that story yet. Someone, somewhere, is plotting how best to stitch another EVE player's skin into a body suit so that they can wear it while they kill the rest of the team. I'm not saying that I'd agree with such a person, or their behavior, but I'd have a little sympathy. I've read what those fuckers do to each other - intentionally.
It's an evil, vile, game that brings out the worst in people. That has some certain benefits to it and, from a pure outside view, it appears the owners actually appreciate, if not condone, that sort of practice. I know that I'd do so if it were my game to control. Absolutely... I'm just not sure how they'll deal with it when it spills over into the real world and people actually kill each other over their in-game antics.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."