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Videogame PUBG Bans 30,000 Cheaters, Discovers Professional Players Cheated (newsweek.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Newsweek:
The makers of PUBG sent down the banhammer Thursday afternoon in a ban wave believed to iimpact more than 30,000 fraudulent player accounts. What PUBG Corp likely didn't expect, however, was that its new security measures would also implicate several of the game's pro players.
Like ban waves in most popular online games, technology is at the center of it all. In this particular case, Radar Hacking was the main target. For those unaware of how the method works, Radar Hacks reveal detailed server information and send the collected data to an external device via a third-party VPN. In layman's terms, Radar Hacks allowed PUBG cheaters to see all player positions via a second monitor or smartphone application.... Given what we know now, it appears use of this unsanctioned assistive software was somewhat popular in PUBG's European and North American esports scenes. Over the last handful of hours, multiple apologies, suspensions and explanations have been posted on behalf of players and organizations alike.
Newsweek reports that on at least one team, "Suspicions rose when teammates were admonished for not following in-game calls that didn't align with the information available."
Like ban waves in most popular online games, technology is at the center of it all. In this particular case, Radar Hacking was the main target. For those unaware of how the method works, Radar Hacks reveal detailed server information and send the collected data to an external device via a third-party VPN. In layman's terms, Radar Hacks allowed PUBG cheaters to see all player positions via a second monitor or smartphone application.... Given what we know now, it appears use of this unsanctioned assistive software was somewhat popular in PUBG's European and North American esports scenes. Over the last handful of hours, multiple apologies, suspensions and explanations have been posted on behalf of players and organizations alike.
Newsweek reports that on at least one team, "Suspicions rose when teammates were admonished for not following in-game calls that didn't align with the information available."
The e-sports outfits just need to team up with the professional wrestling leagues. The wrestlers can help them become better entertainers and give them many tips on developing their showmanship.
Why is this data being broadcast to the client? It's basic game security 101 that you only send the data to the client on a need-to-know basis to prevent this kind of exploit.
They were using another pc on a vpn to "spectate" the game, then sending that info from that pc to the one playing the game so they could see things they wouldn't normally be able to.
e-sports events needs to be local server only.
So it's fair and so that internet issues don't mess up the event.
If a person that is a so called "pro" uses a hack to get an advantage how can still call them a pro then since they had to use a cheat to get the advantage? Too me if you use such program in online play you aren't a pro you are one lowest forms of life on earth, you are lower then likes of rats and cock roaches.
Just recently I tried a few rounds of the new Battle Royale mode of the ancient CS:GO FPS shooter.
After you die, as you spectate you can enable "X-Ray" mode that lets you see markers for where other players are, even if out of sight - and it made me wonder if someone could log into with two systems, have the first character die off quickly, then use spectra-view to see if he was looking towards other players.
It didn't seem like other players were doing that (no obvious reaction to x-ray information I could see when spectating) but it sure seemed like a flaw to me to broadcast all player information to anyone.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Why is this data being broadcast to the client? It's basic game security 101 that you only send the data to the client on a need-to-know basis to prevent this kind of exploit.
Need-to-know includes units, structures, resources, etc currently not visible. Things that a clean player would not know about yet. Due to network lag and local storage delays a server needs to inform the client of things just beyond legitimate detection so that the client can prepare to render those things smoothly should they become visible, without pause or stutter.
So there will always be the potential for a cheater to acquire an illicit early warning regarding things that a player should not yet know about. Yes, a game should not send everything on the map. But some things local to the player should be sent. The big question/problem in design and polish is how local.
and/or compete from their own locales on their own net, this will forever be a problem.
PUBG is short for PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds which "is a last-man-standing shooter being developed with community feedback."
Maybe I'm just old and out of touch but I think this should have been mentioned in the summary somewhere.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Too bad SuperKendall won't let you suck his dick to satisfy your weird obsession.
... playing pvp Dark Age of Camelot being radar ganked anytime I got into the frontiers. There were multiple windows applications that intercepted network traffic from the game client to parse the player position information in a overlayscreen or secondary monitor.
Just why the hell pubg never acted before is bad as well. They just did not care as long dollars swamped in.
Bach says it all.
Ban wave ... sniping ... spectra ... gamrboiz ... does anybody care except rubber-footed Boscos ? The precious mongoloid spew smells like decaying crap under a SanFran encampment of urban trekkers.
Even Minecraft has this issue with x-raying or knowing information impossible for a human to know.
Radar mods for people AND resources.
Some servers try to get around this by preventing players being sent to clients beyond X blocks from the player, and some go further and automatically mask useful resources if they are too far or hidden on all sides by other blocks.
One issue with the former hiding players too far away is arrows are a thing in Minecraft. They can go pretty far.
There is a huge problem with the latter, though, in that Minecrafts game engine even now is absolutely shit-tier and has high-overhead for editing a single block, never mind multiple.
Any time a block is updated, an entire 16x16x256 (or 512) chunk is sent to any users in the draw distance from it.
Fucking dumb. So dumb. It's trivial to send the chunk ID and the block(s) edited. I created a sub-division based tile system (one less dimension) that handled this properly in 30 minutes to prove it can be done. (I'll be surprised if it works now, I did it in HTML5 canvas back before it was finalized! Every other prototype I did for it broke!)
Another issue with radar mods and Minecraft in particular is most of the decent ones will tell you where a player logged off (if you are near them that is!). This allows someone to trap the player by the time they decide to log back in, if not killing them by lava / spawning enemies / blowing up all the land below them so they fall to their death on login.
There is no easy way to fix issues like this and is very game dependent on HOW easy it is to fix.
Minecraft example only goes so far to making radar mods useless, but it can still seriously impact the usefulness of them.
Network latency and developers cheaping out on shitty servers is the biggest hurdles to fixing this, for the most part.
This is why I will never support companies that actively sue players instead of fixing their shitty servers. See Rockstar and GTA5. Company is dead to me. I despise cheaters, but I despise them more now.
Everyone can say "b-b-but it was their parent company!!!!" all they want, Rockstar has a part to play in it.
If orders - or actions - which doesn't align with "information available" alone is grounds for banning, there will probably be a significant amount of "collateral" bans among intelligent players.
Not that I doubt there are a lot of cheaters, but I somehow get the feeling that getting rid of good players who can quickly process the information available and deduce when what they see doesn't add up is in no way seen as a bad thing and branding them as "cheaters" is probably the easiest and most popular way to do it. You have to keep the masses of bad players happy.
Now e-sports athletes are one step closer to every other professional athlete. Cheating exists in every competition where money is on the line, humans are a greedy and egotistical bunch who don't like losing either the fame or the money.
I used to call this the Jim236 cheat. Back in 1999, there was an Unreal Tournament player named Jim236 that used to connect to his server as a spectator with 4 computers. He would spectate the hard to find snipers and people that threatened to win the match. He'd always know right where you were and no one could do anything about it except to not play on his server. He was the ng world stats leader for a couple of years using this tactic.
I can't tell you how many times I have been sitting silently in a room with no windows in the middle of nowhere on the map only to have a team of dudes open the door and throw in grenades to kill me.
Only way that happens is to be using a cheat device that showed my location to them on the map.
Mike @ The Geek Pub. Let's Make Stuff!
Why does the client need to know where everyone behind walls are? They had this issue literally decades ago with Quake and similar. You got a hacked driver and could see through walls. One card reseller even boasted about it as an official option briefly until blowback made them cancel it.
It also wastes network, a bottleneck for games having truly massive fights.
Just don't send the info. Send shooting data if it goes visible just nothing else beyond a small hysteresis for the client prediction if it looks like the other guy may pop into view.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
TFS quotes Newsweek's Christopher Grough facepalmingly:
The makers of PUBG sent down the banhammer Thursday afternoon ...
<rant>
In today's version of journalism, apparently it's idiots mangling idioms all the way down. We've got "on the wrong tact" nitwits, some random, even number of "sheets to the wind" lunkheads, and now what I'd guess is a recently-graduated journo major who seems eager to add "send down the (varietal)hammer" to the list.
In terms of visiting discipline or punishment on people or organizations, hammers are never "sent down." Ever. They can be brought down. They can be dropped. But, unless they're intended as a gift to be used by the recipient, rather than wielded by an authority against their target, they're never merely "sent," because that would be stupid. And ineffective, at best.
"Hey, you! You've been cheating! Here's a hammer, for you to use as you wish. That should teach you ... !"
</rant>
Check out my novel.
"I am shocked—shocked—to find that gambling is going on in here!" -Captain Louis Renault
Seriously, I'm not even into gaming and I saw this coming from about 500 million miles away.
Offer anything of value -money, fame, notoriety, prizes- and people will cheat. Hell, some people will cheat just because they can, no incentive needed.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
When I played PUBG for a little bit, my experience was either a large number of people are INCREDIBLE at this sort of game or a large number of people were cheaters. The outrageously successful kills were a common part of the game. People would come out of nowhere into where you were hiding and look right at you. 30000 cheaters? From my experience, that seems right. The real news here is that PUBG has been able to rip that many people off with this garbage game. Good idea, terrible, terrible execution.
With GoG I am able to backup my games. I also get free goodies like wallpapers, avatars, soundtracks, hint guides, novellas, and ringtones. Steam charges for that stuff if it is even available at all. When GoG dies, I will still have archives of hundreds of games. When Steam dies I won't have access to any of my games.
Am I supposed to know what PUBG is? Please don't assume that all nerds know all of your stupid games. At least one reference to the full title of the game would have been helpful.
Stuff like this is why I think games as a stream have a future. Where your game's graphics are rendered by the server, then transmitted to you as a video stream (like a movie). The lag sucks, the graphics aren't as crisp (due to having been compressed), and you need a good (fast and stable) Internet connection. But cheaters are why we can't have good things.
And not just PUBG, but most multiplayer online games, period. Pick any multiplayer game and type in it's name followed by "cheats" and/or "hacks" and see how many sites come up. Hell, a lot of them are companies MAKING and SELLING the hacks. It's big business now. I get into arguments on the Overwatch official message board over how much cheating there is going on, only to get told "git gud". I'm not sure if it's because too many people have their heads in the sand over the scope, they just want to troll, and/or they are part of the problem themselves.
And let's not forget that the game makers don't mind because every time they ban an account, the cheater just buys another one, thus increasing their revenue stream. It's getting to where I don't even want to play against humans anymore.
Beware of Sales Reps bearing gifts.
You don't have the skill, and don't want to work to get better. Cheats to the rescue! When you look in the mirror, realize how pathetic you are.
You'd better be trolling. Hate to think you believe that kind of bullshit.
Will have to reevaluate all your other posts now.
Found another anti-China troll
Or is it just you hiding again WB...
Still makes me laugh.