This is the new normal in multiplayer gaming though—a rapidly growing portion don't see past their own personal enjoyment... which also coincidentally happens to be ruining the game for others.
How is it the manufacturer's fault for not writing perfect code? Writing perfect code is really hard and expensive. It's a game, not an investment bank.
^This
Assuming writing "perfect code" was even possible (It's not), and assuming this would be a base requirement for producing an enjoyable game (It's not) the investment required would mean you'd be paying more for your copy of Overwatch than you did for your car, which (I assume) relatively few would be willing to do.
So our options here are threefold:
1) stop making software, as it can't be perfect.
2) assume everyone is/will cheat, and make it part of the game (then it wouldn't be overwatch or competitive or enjoyable - again noone would buy it or play it)
3) Use whatever legal resources are available to protect your intellectual property and prosecute those who both devalue _and_ profit off of your work
Or maybe anti social dorks shouldn't make it so that entertainment requires banking level security to keep these losers from ruining the fun for everyone else. The fault lies with the cheats not the manufacturers.
I'm a programmer and have done a lot of security work for banks (American and Australian, mostly)
While giving any specifics would probably land me in jail or at least with a hefty fine, I can assure you that Blizzard has a far better level of security than many/most banking systems. The truth is appallingly scary.
Very, very few AI's are hard to beat because they are "better players". Most win because they cheat massively (unlimited resources etc.), or simply because it micromanages on an inhuman level because it can click more times per second than any human possibly could while constantly have full awareness of everything going on - even things it shouldn't.
Exactly, that's why we call people who use these bots and "tools" cheats.
The bots _are_ "better players" precisely because they do cheat and can react much faster than a human (interesting point: it's the reaction time that's most relevant)
When creating intentional AI enemies, the developers are totally aware that their AIs cheat as compared to their human players, and it's the balancing of this "cheating edge" that developers tweak to make a balanced game (Because, as it turns out, hiring real humans who don't need to cheat to play all the NPC characters real time is a little bit cost-prohibitive, unless you turn it into a competition between the real players and... oh yeah that's what they did for the main game)
tlrd: the definition of "better player" is open to discussion.
I won't bother to respond to each part of your troll blather, but I will point out that for Blizzard to reverse engineer the cheat programs, they'd have to break a ton of laws, in this case both national and international, and end up just as bad as the company they're suing, and probably get sued in turn.
Also, I'm sure Bliz is fully aware of the Streisand Effect, and I hope it kicks in and people take a close look at the amount of bugs in Overwatch as compared to other studios offerings. (Hint: they look pretty damn rosy)
There's already a lot of posts on here commenting on how "At least Blizzard goes after cheaters" in comparison to other studios.
While many other studios fail, Blizzard continues to produce some of the most popular games in the world with the largest playerbases, and never gives up on hunting down and banning cheaters. Of course there are cheaters, you can expect cheaters in games to stop being a problem the same day that we as a society manage to eliminate criminals and the need for jails. Meanwhile, just as the rest of the world does, Blizzard will continue to deal with cheaters.
Well, not every game has a subscription. Some have microtransactions, which are effectively the same thing in aggregate. The bigger problem is that Blizzard is notoriously poor for having too damned many cheats for their games. Their "solutions" are heavy handed- we have "Warden" scanning all your RAM and being fully capable of exposing anything else your computer is up to, a built in supervisor back door. We have out of line copyright claims, we have them shutting down free software that implements protocols, and of course they run around to shut down people who wrote and run their own WoW server (no closed source code used!).
And what do we get for all this bullshit? You queue a battleground and see bots running around. You play against wallhacks and aimbots. Their code remains a nest of cheating, despite their ludicrously overreaching bullshit.
Overwatch has no subscriptions, they have stated additional maps and characters will be added over time at no additional charge. The only microtransactions are for cosmetics that have zero impact on gameplay.
" Blizzard is notoriously poor for having too damned many cheats for their games"
Actually, all games the size of Blizzard's "notorious" games tend to have cheats. If Overwatch had a playerbase of 10 thousand, we wouldn't even be aware of this issue (and it probably wouldn't exist, as there wouldn't be a market for it).
Their solutions are "heavy handed" because clearly "light handed" doesn't protect their paid customers.
As for "out of line copyright claims" The entire copyright system is "out of line" by all I've read over the last few years on/.
They're trying to protect their intellectual property, they're trying to use the appropriate section of law to do so. Not their fault that section of law is so messed up.
How can someone run a wow server without using wow server code, which I don't recall them open sourcing?
What am I getting for this? A better competitive experience in Overwatch, Blizzard delivering on their promises, etc...
tldr; I replied to this post and halfway through realised he's simultaneously complaining that Blizzard do too much to stop cheaters, and at the same time that they clearly don't do enough to stop cheaters, as they're everywhere (talk about a contradiction!:P), but I'm having fun on this thread so still posting.
Untrue. Consoles have plenty of online multiplayer pvp games with no extant cheats. There are also some games on PC for which no cheats exist either. I avoid games with cheaters successfully, and OP can too. I guess you can't though. Pity.
Summary: "Let cheaters cheat, the only way to win is not to play"
Sure, play games that are not as good, and thus have a smaller player base, and thus are not targets for these hackers. That doesn't seem to me like a way to enhance your playing experience, rather one to severely limit it. Pity.
They say that the cheaters are ruing the game for many legitimate players, but if these players are legitimate, then they have, in fact, already bought the game, and so the cheaters can't actually be causing lost sales.
It might discourage people who aren't cheating from playing the game, of course... but they don't say that, they explicitly use the term "lost sales". I'm not sure how that can possibly be true.
Do you think people buy Overwatch simply because Blizzard tells them to? Or do you think people read reviews of the game, which would be clearly influenced by the presence of cheaters (as cheaters would influence in every other competition of whatever type)?
It's pretty clear that an unlevel playing field makes for less recommendations, and a really small step from there to loss of profits.
And it's not because Blizzard created it this way, but because someone else hacked into their systems and wrote exploits against them, which they're selling for their own profit to others.
To all the people posting stuff like this.... Take a deep breath, step back, and without needing to know any of the actual laws, agreements, contracts or anything like that, just use some common sense:
Germans can purchase the game Overwatch. They agree to the ToS when they do. They are breaking these ToS. If they decide that just because Blizzard is based in the USA they can ignore the ToS. Which is pretty much what you're saying. Assume this is true, Blizzard has no legal recourse. What happens next (and would happen with every other company also, if they couldn't expect their terms of use to be followed) - They stop selling to that country.
Now, in this instance, sure, the company in germany could continue to produce the hack, etc, however how do you think the German government will feel if it fails to protect foreign companies, and those foreign companies then embargo the country. They're going to either end up with no imports (and thus effectively be unable to export) or they're going to start protecting those companies, so they can have an economy.
tldr; Sure it's fun to say "different country, you're USA can't touch us nyah nyah!" but in reality, this doesn't work (and therefore, we have all sorts of trade agreements and the like in place, which these other guys are happy to detail, but noone really wants to bother to read).
While I'm glad a game company is doing something about cheating, I don't think their logic is quite sound here. Unfair competition? Anti-circumvention? Gimme a break, it sounds like they're just throwing a bunch of charges around and seeing what sticks. "Defendants are attempting to destroy or irreparably harm that game before it even has had a chance to fully flourish" Really? Weren't they just bragging about how it already sold 10 million copies or some other huge number?
Do you really need this explained, or are you just trolling?
Clearly those 10 million legitimate customers (of which I am one) would like to get what they paid for (a balanced fair game). Clearly, this other company is subverting this experience, in a way that directly contradicts the terms of service, and there's this area of law called "copyright law" that was created to address such issues. So they're trying to use the correct process in the way it was intended: to protect their intellectual property.
How is this flawed logic?
And sure, there's 10 million users or whatever, and yeah, that's a lot, but no, this game is not yet flourishing. It'll take a while for that. To reference Anders Ericsson famous stipulation: to become an expert takes 10,000 hours of practice. Well, I do think we already have some "experts" at overwatch, but give it time, and it will flourish. Also the game isn't even finished. Competitive mode is still officially in beta mode, and there's a never-ending list of improvements to be done to the game (which would happen faster if not for this other company requiring Bliz to devote money and resources to dealing with them).
And clearly having some players with this unfair advantage will result in those without the advantage receiving sub-optimal results from their effort, and thus, less enjoyment, and thus more likely to leave/not recommend/etc and thus less money for Blizz (that they otherwise would have) and so on.... Not a hard concept, pretty straightforward and logical.
Blizzard certainly takes money seriously. You're applauding this, so I'm going to assume that you're not familiar with the history here. This is not the first time Blizzard has abused copyright to sue people for over something which has nothing to do with copyright, and won: link
Among the consequences of twisting around an inapplicable law in this way is that any time you use a piece of software without permission from the copyright holder, including just using it in a way that the copyright holder did not intend, you are committing copyright infringement. Regardless of whether you've paid for that software, regardless of whether you have a license to use that software for another purpose. If, for example, you install a mod for a game and that game does not give explicit permission to use mods? Or to use that mod? Copyright infringement. A macro for a word processor for a word processor which doesn't want you to use macros? Or doesn't want you to use anyone else's macros? Copyright infringement.
How about if that word processor is only licensed to write letters, and you use it to make a sign? What if you use some politician's campaign app in a way which doesn't support that politician? Copyright infringement. You get the idea. Blizzard is abusing the law in a way which wasn't intended.
"wasn't intended"
Blizzard is using a copyright law to protect their rights to how their intellectual property is used, as non-Blizzard companies are using their code to subvert the intended experience of their product for consumers who are paying for the intended experience.
If copyright law "wasn't intended" to protect intellectual property this way, I'm curious as to what you think the "intent" of copyright law is?
Pulling some processing to the server might be a necessary evil to make cheating more difficult. And you get a lot more processing power per dollar today than when Half-Life and Call Of Duty came out.
As a reasonable compromise, I think plausibility checks on health, movement speed and visibility would make sense, and then
- server-side, overriding characters whose client claims they have over 100% health or extra armor (yes that was once a hack on Day Of Defeat)
- not sending position data of invisible players
- punishing speed hacks somehow
The visibility check might be the most challenging to program, but perhaps it would still be useful at reduced resolution.
And as soon as we have the bandwidth and lack of network latency to allow it, you can bet all these sort of games will render on the server and just send processed video streams. But we don't have that capability today, and it's doubtful we will have the hardware and infrastructure for a number of years yet, and even if/when we do, it will take time for the new software to be developed to properly implement it.
For now, blizzard will continue (as does every other successful company) to do it's best to prevent abuse, and take those who continue to abuse to court, which is their best solution presently.
Of course they'll be staying on top of (and possibly/probably pioneering, to some degree) technology and methodologies to prevent abuse.
(btw, being able to render on the server and just stream low latency high framerate/res video will revolutionise more than overwatch and more than games, as we'll finally be able to have "dumb terminals" where all our devices need only be screens and a network connection pretty much. It won't matter if you're on a PC or a console or how expensive your video card is or anything... gonna be awesome. We'll tell our kids about how when we were young, all our devices were standalone and had to reproduce the same work, etc...)
I will concede it is well-balanced, but at equal levels of mediocrity. It's honestly a travesty to compare it to Team Fortress or similar titles. Small maps with short matches using gameplay that forces "teamwork" by merely crippling each individual, rather than enabling players with better tools that would reward teamwork via being a force-multiplier. IE: 1/2 + 1/2 = 1 rather than 1 + 1 = 3. There is literally no time to properly prod enemy defenses nor space on the maps for anything but blob battles + 1 suicider... I mean "diver" to flank. It's a game that appeals to neither the competitive crowd due to the awful tick-rate and hitboxes, nor the casual crowd who the majority want to play 1 class/character... which will get you rolled quickly. Expect the game to flare out in 6-12 months.
Could you clarify a little?
Firstly, which is overwatch? the 1/2 + 1/2 = 1, or the 1+1=3? (I mean, I think it's the latter, as I know a pharah ult + zarya ult = 3, and reinhardt + bastion often also equals 3, and Reinhart + bastion + mercy = something like 42)
And how is it "crippling" each individual? Isn't a "cripple" usually considered someone who functions at a lower level that everyone else? so if it's literally "everyone" that's a cripple, wouldn't that negate itself?
Or do you mean how the characters perform better working as a team, literally one of the most impressive feats I believe Blizzard has pulled off here, that every other similar game I've tried in the past has failed at (for me)?
Sure new inexperienced bad players will feel like they don't have enough time in a match. Then again, my niece visited last night and got to try my HTC Vive out, and she said she felt she didn't get long enough either. (No the length of time she actually got has no relevance to her sentiment). Also, I can think of quite a number of things I can do that take ~10 minutes that are a lot of fun, and require a certain amount of skill to perform successfully. Why is 10 minutes too short? (Not rhetorical this time, I need a rebuttal for my GF)
The tick rate is moot also, it's just how often the server runs the main loop. Think of it like playing chess, each 'loop' it evaluates the move that was made, and decides if it's check, checkmate, or neither) Those chess 'server ticks' were often in past centuries months apart, but noone claims chess doesn't require skill.
And finally you're complaining about the size of the targets... I assume that the typical archery target size has evolved over the years, as archery competitions balanced out what they thought a good challenge. Blizzard are doing the same thing in their game, and will continue to adjust in search of better balance - this is a good thing, not a bad one. (But sure, it can make some things look a little bit silly, like hanzo shooting an arrow that appears to miss you by a foot, but still kills you, oh well, I could just as easily complain about a myriad of other things that "aren't just like in real life")
Shitty programming isn't responsible for people hacking the game, that's just the opportunity. You need a motive, and it's the game designers that provide that. They needed a retention mechanism, and rather than providing a gameplay that is truly enjoyable on the long run based on its own merit, they chose an addictive micro-reward grinding/collection mechanism.
In such a setup, smartly-priced micro-payment is the only way to prevent the rich and busy from cheating. You would have thought that they learned their lesson with WoW and gold farming.
Um, yeah, for those who don't want to get their loot boxes organically, they've allowed them to pay real money to get ahead there, however this is all cosmetic items, and has zero impact on gameplay. The game is enjoyable on it's own merit.
For those with low skill, however, fair and balanced play is not enjoyable to them, and seeing (as just mentioned) that blizzard provides no 'paid advantage' (having made an enjoyable game - clearly a paid advantage removes enjoyment from the game) this german company has decided to hack in and provide one, ruining the game for others, just as if you buy tickets to nice seats at a concert, then some third party comes and parks a bus in front of your seat full of their outside customers, blocking your view. Of course the theatre wants to disallow those busses.
I played WoW, and yes, it has grinding. Overwatch doesn't have grinding. You play because you want to, you don't gain anything but the experience and personal skill. Levels aren't something you grind for, they're merely indicators of how long you've been playing. They don't give you anything like in WoW. No bigger healthpool, or better weapons, or more shields, or speed, or ability to see through walls (like the hack does). So no, not grinding. (The only thing like grinding is the requirement to play 25 games or whatever before entering competitive, but that's done as they utilise the results of quickplay to matchmake in initial competitive)
Then it's a good thing Overwatch isn't a skill-based game. It's intentionally designed with a heavily constrained and simplistic gameplay loop to appeal to the broadest possible market. Matches are also an average of 5 minutes to hold short attention spans and shorten the gratification cycle. Server tick-rates are less than a third of similar games, and 5-6x less than other games with competitive scenes. Head hitbox is also 1m^2 which is many times larger than the actual model.
And how do any of these things mean Overwatch isn't skill based?
You say, basically, that 1) it's easy to learn, 2) matches are short, 3) the server evaluates the game 20 times a second (actually it's a 1/3rd of some other fps competative, where do you get 6x less?)
Ok, all correct enough anyway, however none of these mean it's not a skill based game. Not in any way.
1) Easy to learn is a good thing, accessable and low barrier to entry is all fantastic. That's how we structure a lot of things in the real world, like education, apprenticeships, etc. Start easy, so you can learn it, rather than start hard and give up. But nothing to do with skill. Skill comes from practice, which (1) facilitates.
2) Arguably the more skilled you are, the shorter your matches will be, so you're supporting me here, more or less. Match length is arbritrary to skill anyway - however skilled you are you can play till you first die, till teh first round, a complete match, a set of 10 placement matches, or just sit there and play all day long. Blizzard just make it easy to chop it into roughly 10m segments, meaning that if you only have a few minutes available, you can still practice, and improve your skill.
3) The first game I wrote that is in any way related to OW was a MUD, so had a server tick cycle, and this cycle was 1/second, 1/20th as fast as Blizzards.
We still had players who were clearly very skilled, and those who were not, and it showed.
tldr; go play 2 competitive matches in full premade parties. One group with an average skill rating of 30, one with an average skill rating of 60. Then tell me this game has no skill factor (mic drop).
Agree with parent.
Blizzard already has one of the best cheat-detection systems in place on the market today.
That's why this german company is able to charge $20 a month for a cheat that sends NO INPUT to the game - they can't do that, cause Blizzard's systems are too good.
Instead, they look at whats running in memory, and duplicate, modify and twist that to create an overlay that reveals the normally hidden information.
Just because the information is normally and intentionally hidden doesn't mean that the client doesn't require it however, so as the parent stated, there is no avenue there for preventing cheating.
The only avenue currently known (though blizzard or some other developers are hopefully working on something better already) is to force the users to install a "watchmen" type program, that usually requires root access to your computer, and sits there monitoring memory access, etc - essentially a resource-hogging security-hole-waiting-to-happen infuriate-your-customers type approach that's been used a number of the times in the past by various companies with limited success (Especially as every added layer of security is also a new attack surface).
(The effect of the hack is in a nutshell: pretend overwatch is a game of poker. The hack gives you a hidden camera behind the other players so you can see their cards)
How is this so? My experience is the following:
Blizzard let me play their new overwatch game for free in open beta, to see what they were aiming for.
After playing it for free, I estimated that I enjoyed playing the game just slightly more than watching an average movie. (I do like movies)
Now, at this point, I've bought a copy of the game, and played it for about 100 hours. it cost me $AU60.00 for PC.
60 cents an hour for movie quality entertainment (better that, imho), and that's if Blizzard deleted their servers and shut the whole game down today.
If I watched movies instead (lets say cheap average $5 rentals, for 90m movies) Well, I'm sure you can see where that math is going......
And I've had similar experiences with smaller studios also.
In fact I've noticed over the years that competition is very healthy in the video games industry, games and concepts have developed and expanded even faster than the technology has (even with VR in retail now).
Companies (and individuals, even) continue to produce quality programming, which I happily pay for.
Then again, only about 10 million other people seem to agree with me (voting with their wallets), so you're probably right, Blizzard is ripping us all off and ruining our lives.
"Make it easy to catch and ban cheaters" - This is something every Dev working on the game keeps fully in mind and attempts to achieve.
Also every dev at microsoft, apple, google, etc. Including me (programmer for government).
Blizzard's Devs are pretty good at it, stay on top of the latest tech and algorithmic concepts, keep up to date on zero days as they appear, etc.
Personally, however, I don't think you should expect Blizzard to make it "easy to catch" cheaters, with "no excuse here" until you can realistically expect your government to make it "easy to catch" lawbreakers, with "no excuse here". (I mean it's shocking that our best lawyers (ok, I just put the word "lawyers" after the word "best" I know, sorry sorry, i'm sorry, sorry.) set up a legal system where so many people can just ignore it and do what they like, often with little risk of even being noticed let alone caught let alone prosecuted)
If they really cared about the business they'd hire better programmers rather than more lawyers.
How many more programmers? Google, Microsoft, Apple - none of them have enough programmers to prevent hacking on their products.
And remember, they're a for-profit business, producing quality products that work already. When people start throwing rocks through shop windows to get easier cheaper access do we tell them "Oh, if they cared about they're business they'd just put up strong enough windows"?
The difference is that software companies make a bunch of good and totally legit stuff.
See what I did there? In case you didn't: I pointed out the gaping hold in your argument.
Now, compare Bossland to the drug company making the black-market anabolics. See my point yet?
Black market antibiotics are made without regulation, and are one of the largest contributors to antibiotic resistance.
Assuming they were making good clean helpful drugs, then they aren't like Bossland, who aren't helping.
It's like blizzard built a carpark, charged everyone $5 to park there, then some unaffiliated company sets up out front, stops people driving in, and offers them "easy parking service" for $10, pockets the money, drives round back, in through a no-public-access service entrance, then starts parking the cars wherever they like, blocking other genuine customers parking.
Damn straight blizzard will march out front, tell them to take off, and that if they stop breaking the lock on the private entrance and bringing cars in illegally, oh, and all that money you've been collecting, taking out of our pocket, we want restitution for that too.
See what I did there? I pointed out gaping holes in your argument. Now compare bossland to the 'unaffiliated company' profiting off blizzard's infrastructure. See everyone else's point yet?
Completely different! Cracks for Windows activation allow people to use Windows without paying for it; people using the cheat still have to buy Overwatch and pay Blizzard for access to their servers. This is more akin to writing software that makes certain Windows tasks easier, something a good many companies make an absolute killing doing, perfectly legally.
Actually, it's not like that at all, what it is like, if you want another real-world comparison, is this:
It's like a company that analyses speed trap cameras, and then makes a device that fools the cameras into thinking you are not speeding when you are.
All the other drivers on the road who aren't using this (illegal) device are impacted by those who do - destroying honest driver's road experience, making it unsafe, etc.
The company making these devices... well they're gonna pay some huge fines and go to jail, automatically, cause they broke the governments ToS. As Blizzard isn't the government and they're enforcing their own ToS they need to go through the courts themselves to get the appropriate result.
Now if they lose, we (gamers) are in for dark times. Why would companies bother making quality products if they have no recourse to hackers and abusers?
And it'd be a legal precedent that'd quickly be applied to areas outside of gaming.... But Blizzard aren't going to lose, cause they're just following proper business and legal practices.
Without ANY bugs? Really? The only way this idea works is if you have a divine programmer who cannot make any mistakes who created the universe. This is more like scientology than science.
If my life has been a software simulation let me assure you, there's a LOT of bugs.
Slashdot Mirror
This is the new normal in multiplayer gaming though—a rapidly growing portion don't see past their own personal enjoyment... which also coincidentally happens to be ruining the game for others.
:s/multiplayer gaming/life/
:s/new/same old/
ftfy.
How is it the manufacturer's fault for not writing perfect code? Writing perfect code is really hard and expensive. It's a game, not an investment bank.
^This
Assuming writing "perfect code" was even possible (It's not), and assuming this would be a base requirement for producing an enjoyable game (It's not) the investment required would mean you'd be paying more for your copy of Overwatch than you did for your car, which (I assume) relatively few would be willing to do.
So our options here are threefold:
1) stop making software, as it can't be perfect.
2) assume everyone is/will cheat, and make it part of the game (then it wouldn't be overwatch or competitive or enjoyable - again noone would buy it or play it)
3) Use whatever legal resources are available to protect your intellectual property and prosecute those who both devalue _and_ profit off of your work
I know which one I'd pick.
Or maybe anti social dorks shouldn't make it so that entertainment requires banking level security to keep these losers from ruining the fun for everyone else. The fault lies with the cheats not the manufacturers.
I'm a programmer and have done a lot of security work for banks (American and Australian, mostly)
While giving any specifics would probably land me in jail or at least with a hefty fine, I can assure you that Blizzard has a far better level of security than many/most banking systems. The truth is appallingly scary.
Bullshit.
Very, very few AI's are hard to beat because they are "better players". Most win because they cheat massively (unlimited resources etc.), or simply because it micromanages on an inhuman level because it can click more times per second than any human possibly could while constantly have full awareness of everything going on - even things it shouldn't.
Exactly, that's why we call people who use these bots and "tools" cheats.
The bots _are_ "better players" precisely because they do cheat and can react much faster than a human (interesting point: it's the reaction time that's most relevant)
When creating intentional AI enemies, the developers are totally aware that their AIs cheat as compared to their human players, and it's the balancing of this "cheating edge" that developers tweak to make a balanced game (Because, as it turns out, hiring real humans who don't need to cheat to play all the NPC characters real time is a little bit cost-prohibitive, unless you turn it into a competition between the real players and... oh yeah that's what they did for the main game)
tlrd: the definition of "better player" is open to discussion.
Perhaps your game is not very good.
OK, so some of the worst games of all time are Chess and now Go. Do I follow your logic correctly? I think I did.
I won't bother to respond to each part of your troll blather, but I will point out that for Blizzard to reverse engineer the cheat programs, they'd have to break a ton of laws, in this case both national and international, and end up just as bad as the company they're suing, and probably get sued in turn.
Also, I'm sure Bliz is fully aware of the Streisand Effect, and I hope it kicks in and people take a close look at the amount of bugs in Overwatch as compared to other studios offerings. (Hint: they look pretty damn rosy)
There's already a lot of posts on here commenting on how "At least Blizzard goes after cheaters" in comparison to other studios.
While many other studios fail, Blizzard continues to produce some of the most popular games in the world with the largest playerbases, and never gives up on hunting down and banning cheaters. Of course there are cheaters, you can expect cheaters in games to stop being a problem the same day that we as a society manage to eliminate criminals and the need for jails. Meanwhile, just as the rest of the world does, Blizzard will continue to deal with cheaters.
But when you don't have a logical argument you can always just get pedantic about language instead right? /s
will fix that for you:
:%s/WoW/Adobe Flash/ :%s/Adobe Flash/Microsoft/
inb4
Well, not every game has a subscription. Some have microtransactions, which are effectively the same thing in aggregate. The bigger problem is that Blizzard is notoriously poor for having too damned many cheats for their games. Their "solutions" are heavy handed- we have "Warden" scanning all your RAM and being fully capable of exposing anything else your computer is up to, a built in supervisor back door. We have out of line copyright claims, we have them shutting down free software that implements protocols, and of course they run around to shut down people who wrote and run their own WoW server (no closed source code used!).
And what do we get for all this bullshit? You queue a battleground and see bots running around. You play against wallhacks and aimbots. Their code remains a nest of cheating, despite their ludicrously overreaching bullshit.
Overwatch has no subscriptions, they have stated additional maps and characters will be added over time at no additional charge. The only microtransactions are for cosmetics that have zero impact on gameplay. /.
:P), but I'm having fun on this thread so still posting.
" Blizzard is notoriously poor for having too damned many cheats for their games"
Actually, all games the size of Blizzard's "notorious" games tend to have cheats. If Overwatch had a playerbase of 10 thousand, we wouldn't even be aware of this issue (and it probably wouldn't exist, as there wouldn't be a market for it).
Their solutions are "heavy handed" because clearly "light handed" doesn't protect their paid customers.
As for "out of line copyright claims" The entire copyright system is "out of line" by all I've read over the last few years on
They're trying to protect their intellectual property, they're trying to use the appropriate section of law to do so. Not their fault that section of law is so messed up.
How can someone run a wow server without using wow server code, which I don't recall them open sourcing?
What am I getting for this? A better competitive experience in Overwatch, Blizzard delivering on their promises, etc...
tldr; I replied to this post and halfway through realised he's simultaneously complaining that Blizzard do too much to stop cheaters, and at the same time that they clearly don't do enough to stop cheaters, as they're everywhere (talk about a contradiction!
Untrue. Consoles have plenty of online multiplayer pvp games with no extant cheats. There are also some games on PC for which no cheats exist either. I avoid games with cheaters successfully, and OP can too. I guess you can't though. Pity.
Summary: "Let cheaters cheat, the only way to win is not to play" Sure, play games that are not as good, and thus have a smaller player base, and thus are not targets for these hackers. That doesn't seem to me like a way to enhance your playing experience, rather one to severely limit it. Pity.
They say that the cheaters are ruing the game for many legitimate players, but if these players are legitimate, then they have, in fact, already bought the game, and so the cheaters can't actually be causing lost sales.
It might discourage people who aren't cheating from playing the game, of course... but they don't say that, they explicitly use the term "lost sales". I'm not sure how that can possibly be true.
Do you think people buy Overwatch simply because Blizzard tells them to? Or do you think people read reviews of the game, which would be clearly influenced by the presence of cheaters (as cheaters would influence in every other competition of whatever type)?
It's pretty clear that an unlevel playing field makes for less recommendations, and a really small step from there to loss of profits.
And it's not because Blizzard created it this way, but because someone else hacked into their systems and wrote exploits against them, which they're selling for their own profit to others.
To all the people posting stuff like this.... Take a deep breath, step back, and without needing to know any of the actual laws, agreements, contracts or anything like that, just use some common sense:
Germans can purchase the game Overwatch. They agree to the ToS when they do. They are breaking these ToS. If they decide that just because Blizzard is based in the USA they can ignore the ToS. Which is pretty much what you're saying. Assume this is true, Blizzard has no legal recourse. What happens next (and would happen with every other company also, if they couldn't expect their terms of use to be followed) - They stop selling to that country.
Now, in this instance, sure, the company in germany could continue to produce the hack, etc, however how do you think the German government will feel if it fails to protect foreign companies, and those foreign companies then embargo the country. They're going to either end up with no imports (and thus effectively be unable to export) or they're going to start protecting those companies, so they can have an economy.
tldr; Sure it's fun to say "different country, you're USA can't touch us nyah nyah!" but in reality, this doesn't work (and therefore, we have all sorts of trade agreements and the like in place, which these other guys are happy to detail, but noone really wants to bother to read).
While I'm glad a game company is doing something about cheating, I don't think their logic is quite sound here. Unfair competition? Anti-circumvention? Gimme a break, it sounds like they're just throwing a bunch of charges around and seeing what sticks. "Defendants are attempting to destroy or irreparably harm that game before it even has had a chance to fully flourish" Really? Weren't they just bragging about how it already sold 10 million copies or some other huge number?
Do you really need this explained, or are you just trolling?
Clearly those 10 million legitimate customers (of which I am one) would like to get what they paid for (a balanced fair game). Clearly, this other company is subverting this experience, in a way that directly contradicts the terms of service, and there's this area of law called "copyright law" that was created to address such issues. So they're trying to use the correct process in the way it was intended: to protect their intellectual property.
How is this flawed logic?
And sure, there's 10 million users or whatever, and yeah, that's a lot, but no, this game is not yet flourishing. It'll take a while for that. To reference Anders Ericsson famous stipulation: to become an expert takes 10,000 hours of practice. Well, I do think we already have some "experts" at overwatch, but give it time, and it will flourish. Also the game isn't even finished. Competitive mode is still officially in beta mode, and there's a never-ending list of improvements to be done to the game (which would happen faster if not for this other company requiring Bliz to devote money and resources to dealing with them).
And clearly having some players with this unfair advantage will result in those without the advantage receiving sub-optimal results from their effort, and thus, less enjoyment, and thus more likely to leave/not recommend/etc and thus less money for Blizz (that they otherwise would have) and so on.... Not a hard concept, pretty straightforward and logical.
Blizzard certainly takes money seriously. You're applauding this, so I'm going to assume that you're not familiar with the history here. This is not the first time Blizzard has abused copyright to sue people for over something which has nothing to do with copyright, and won: link Among the consequences of twisting around an inapplicable law in this way is that any time you use a piece of software without permission from the copyright holder, including just using it in a way that the copyright holder did not intend, you are committing copyright infringement. Regardless of whether you've paid for that software, regardless of whether you have a license to use that software for another purpose. If, for example, you install a mod for a game and that game does not give explicit permission to use mods? Or to use that mod? Copyright infringement. A macro for a word processor for a word processor which doesn't want you to use macros? Or doesn't want you to use anyone else's macros? Copyright infringement. How about if that word processor is only licensed to write letters, and you use it to make a sign? What if you use some politician's campaign app in a way which doesn't support that politician? Copyright infringement. You get the idea. Blizzard is abusing the law in a way which wasn't intended.
"wasn't intended"
Blizzard is using a copyright law to protect their rights to how their intellectual property is used, as non-Blizzard companies are using their code to subvert the intended experience of their product for consumers who are paying for the intended experience.
If copyright law "wasn't intended" to protect intellectual property this way, I'm curious as to what you think the "intent" of copyright law is?
Pulling some processing to the server might be a necessary evil to make cheating more difficult. And you get a lot more processing power per dollar today than when Half-Life and Call Of Duty came out.
As a reasonable compromise, I think plausibility checks on health, movement speed and visibility would make sense, and then - server-side, overriding characters whose client claims they have over 100% health or extra armor (yes that was once a hack on Day Of Defeat) - not sending position data of invisible players - punishing speed hacks somehow The visibility check might be the most challenging to program, but perhaps it would still be useful at reduced resolution.
And as soon as we have the bandwidth and lack of network latency to allow it, you can bet all these sort of games will render on the server and just send processed video streams. But we don't have that capability today, and it's doubtful we will have the hardware and infrastructure for a number of years yet, and even if/when we do, it will take time for the new software to be developed to properly implement it.
For now, blizzard will continue (as does every other successful company) to do it's best to prevent abuse, and take those who continue to abuse to court, which is their best solution presently.
Of course they'll be staying on top of (and possibly/probably pioneering, to some degree) technology and methodologies to prevent abuse.
(btw, being able to render on the server and just stream low latency high framerate/res video will revolutionise more than overwatch and more than games, as we'll finally be able to have "dumb terminals" where all our devices need only be screens and a network connection pretty much. It won't matter if you're on a PC or a console or how expensive your video card is or anything... gonna be awesome. We'll tell our kids about how when we were young, all our devices were standalone and had to reproduce the same work, etc...)
I will concede it is well-balanced, but at equal levels of mediocrity. It's honestly a travesty to compare it to Team Fortress or similar titles. Small maps with short matches using gameplay that forces "teamwork" by merely crippling each individual, rather than enabling players with better tools that would reward teamwork via being a force-multiplier. IE: 1/2 + 1/2 = 1 rather than 1 + 1 = 3. There is literally no time to properly prod enemy defenses nor space on the maps for anything but blob battles + 1 suicider... I mean "diver" to flank. It's a game that appeals to neither the competitive crowd due to the awful tick-rate and hitboxes, nor the casual crowd who the majority want to play 1 class/character... which will get you rolled quickly. Expect the game to flare out in 6-12 months.
Could you clarify a little?
Firstly, which is overwatch? the 1/2 + 1/2 = 1, or the 1+1=3? (I mean, I think it's the latter, as I know a pharah ult + zarya ult = 3, and reinhardt + bastion often also equals 3, and Reinhart + bastion + mercy = something like 42)
And how is it "crippling" each individual? Isn't a "cripple" usually considered someone who functions at a lower level that everyone else? so if it's literally "everyone" that's a cripple, wouldn't that negate itself?
Or do you mean how the characters perform better working as a team, literally one of the most impressive feats I believe Blizzard has pulled off here, that every other similar game I've tried in the past has failed at (for me)?
Sure new inexperienced bad players will feel like they don't have enough time in a match. Then again, my niece visited last night and got to try my HTC Vive out, and she said she felt she didn't get long enough either. (No the length of time she actually got has no relevance to her sentiment). Also, I can think of quite a number of things I can do that take ~10 minutes that are a lot of fun, and require a certain amount of skill to perform successfully. Why is 10 minutes too short? (Not rhetorical this time, I need a rebuttal for my GF)
The tick rate is moot also, it's just how often the server runs the main loop. Think of it like playing chess, each 'loop' it evaluates the move that was made, and decides if it's check, checkmate, or neither) Those chess 'server ticks' were often in past centuries months apart, but noone claims chess doesn't require skill.
And finally you're complaining about the size of the targets... I assume that the typical archery target size has evolved over the years, as archery competitions balanced out what they thought a good challenge. Blizzard are doing the same thing in their game, and will continue to adjust in search of better balance - this is a good thing, not a bad one. (But sure, it can make some things look a little bit silly, like hanzo shooting an arrow that appears to miss you by a foot, but still kills you, oh well, I could just as easily complain about a myriad of other things that "aren't just like in real life")
Shitty programming isn't responsible for people hacking the game, that's just the opportunity. You need a motive, and it's the game designers that provide that. They needed a retention mechanism, and rather than providing a gameplay that is truly enjoyable on the long run based on its own merit, they chose an addictive micro-reward grinding/collection mechanism. In such a setup, smartly-priced micro-payment is the only way to prevent the rich and busy from cheating. You would have thought that they learned their lesson with WoW and gold farming.
Um, yeah, for those who don't want to get their loot boxes organically, they've allowed them to pay real money to get ahead there, however this is all cosmetic items, and has zero impact on gameplay. The game is enjoyable on it's own merit.
For those with low skill, however, fair and balanced play is not enjoyable to them, and seeing (as just mentioned) that blizzard provides no 'paid advantage' (having made an enjoyable game - clearly a paid advantage removes enjoyment from the game) this german company has decided to hack in and provide one, ruining the game for others, just as if you buy tickets to nice seats at a concert, then some third party comes and parks a bus in front of your seat full of their outside customers, blocking your view. Of course the theatre wants to disallow those busses.
I played WoW, and yes, it has grinding. Overwatch doesn't have grinding. You play because you want to, you don't gain anything but the experience and personal skill. Levels aren't something you grind for, they're merely indicators of how long you've been playing. They don't give you anything like in WoW. No bigger healthpool, or better weapons, or more shields, or speed, or ability to see through walls (like the hack does). So no, not grinding. (The only thing like grinding is the requirement to play 25 games or whatever before entering competitive, but that's done as they utilise the results of quickplay to matchmake in initial competitive)
Then it's a good thing Overwatch isn't a skill-based game. It's intentionally designed with a heavily constrained and simplistic gameplay loop to appeal to the broadest possible market. Matches are also an average of 5 minutes to hold short attention spans and shorten the gratification cycle. Server tick-rates are less than a third of similar games, and 5-6x less than other games with competitive scenes. Head hitbox is also 1m^2 which is many times larger than the actual model.
And how do any of these things mean Overwatch isn't skill based?
You say, basically, that 1) it's easy to learn, 2) matches are short, 3) the server evaluates the game 20 times a second (actually it's a 1/3rd of some other fps competative, where do you get 6x less?)
Ok, all correct enough anyway, however none of these mean it's not a skill based game. Not in any way.
1) Easy to learn is a good thing, accessable and low barrier to entry is all fantastic. That's how we structure a lot of things in the real world, like education, apprenticeships, etc. Start easy, so you can learn it, rather than start hard and give up. But nothing to do with skill. Skill comes from practice, which (1) facilitates.
2) Arguably the more skilled you are, the shorter your matches will be, so you're supporting me here, more or less. Match length is arbritrary to skill anyway - however skilled you are you can play till you first die, till teh first round, a complete match, a set of 10 placement matches, or just sit there and play all day long. Blizzard just make it easy to chop it into roughly 10m segments, meaning that if you only have a few minutes available, you can still practice, and improve your skill.
3) The first game I wrote that is in any way related to OW was a MUD, so had a server tick cycle, and this cycle was 1/second, 1/20th as fast as Blizzards.
We still had players who were clearly very skilled, and those who were not, and it showed.
tldr; go play 2 competitive matches in full premade parties. One group with an average skill rating of 30, one with an average skill rating of 60. Then tell me this game has no skill factor (mic drop).
Agree with parent.
Blizzard already has one of the best cheat-detection systems in place on the market today.
That's why this german company is able to charge $20 a month for a cheat that sends NO INPUT to the game - they can't do that, cause Blizzard's systems are too good.
Instead, they look at whats running in memory, and duplicate, modify and twist that to create an overlay that reveals the normally hidden information.
Just because the information is normally and intentionally hidden doesn't mean that the client doesn't require it however, so as the parent stated, there is no avenue there for preventing cheating.
The only avenue currently known (though blizzard or some other developers are hopefully working on something better already) is to force the users to install a "watchmen" type program, that usually requires root access to your computer, and sits there monitoring memory access, etc - essentially a resource-hogging security-hole-waiting-to-happen infuriate-your-customers type approach that's been used a number of the times in the past by various companies with limited success (Especially as every added layer of security is also a new attack surface).
(The effect of the hack is in a nutshell: pretend overwatch is a game of poker. The hack gives you a hidden camera behind the other players so you can see their cards)
How is this so? My experience is the following:
Blizzard let me play their new overwatch game for free in open beta, to see what they were aiming for.
After playing it for free, I estimated that I enjoyed playing the game just slightly more than watching an average movie. (I do like movies)
Now, at this point, I've bought a copy of the game, and played it for about 100 hours. it cost me $AU60.00 for PC.
60 cents an hour for movie quality entertainment (better that, imho), and that's if Blizzard deleted their servers and shut the whole game down today.
If I watched movies instead (lets say cheap average $5 rentals, for 90m movies) Well, I'm sure you can see where that math is going......
And I've had similar experiences with smaller studios also.
In fact I've noticed over the years that competition is very healthy in the video games industry, games and concepts have developed and expanded even faster than the technology has (even with VR in retail now).
Companies (and individuals, even) continue to produce quality programming, which I happily pay for.
Then again, only about 10 million other people seem to agree with me (voting with their wallets), so you're probably right, Blizzard is ripping us all off and ruining our lives.
"Make it easy to catch and ban cheaters" - This is something every Dev working on the game keeps fully in mind and attempts to achieve.
Also every dev at microsoft, apple, google, etc. Including me (programmer for government).
Blizzard's Devs are pretty good at it, stay on top of the latest tech and algorithmic concepts, keep up to date on zero days as they appear, etc.
Personally, however, I don't think you should expect Blizzard to make it "easy to catch" cheaters, with "no excuse here" until you can realistically expect your government to make it "easy to catch" lawbreakers, with "no excuse here". (I mean it's shocking that our best lawyers (ok, I just put the word "lawyers" after the word "best" I know, sorry sorry, i'm sorry, sorry.) set up a legal system where so many people can just ignore it and do what they like, often with little risk of even being noticed let alone caught let alone prosecuted)
If they really cared about the business they'd hire better programmers rather than more lawyers.
How many more programmers? Google, Microsoft, Apple - none of them have enough programmers to prevent hacking on their products.
And remember, they're a for-profit business, producing quality products that work already. When people start throwing rocks through shop windows to get easier cheaper access do we tell them "Oh, if they cared about they're business they'd just put up strong enough windows"?
The difference is that software companies make a bunch of good and totally legit stuff.
See what I did there? In case you didn't: I pointed out the gaping hold in your argument. Now, compare Bossland to the drug company making the black-market anabolics. See my point yet?
Black market antibiotics are made without regulation, and are one of the largest contributors to antibiotic resistance.
Assuming they were making good clean helpful drugs, then they aren't like Bossland, who aren't helping.
It's like blizzard built a carpark, charged everyone $5 to park there, then some unaffiliated company sets up out front, stops people driving in, and offers them "easy parking service" for $10, pockets the money, drives round back, in through a no-public-access service entrance, then starts parking the cars wherever they like, blocking other genuine customers parking.
Damn straight blizzard will march out front, tell them to take off, and that if they stop breaking the lock on the private entrance and bringing cars in illegally, oh, and all that money you've been collecting, taking out of our pocket, we want restitution for that too.
See what I did there? I pointed out gaping holes in your argument. Now compare bossland to the 'unaffiliated company' profiting off blizzard's infrastructure. See everyone else's point yet?
Completely different! Cracks for Windows activation allow people to use Windows without paying for it; people using the cheat still have to buy Overwatch and pay Blizzard for access to their servers. This is more akin to writing software that makes certain Windows tasks easier, something a good many companies make an absolute killing doing, perfectly legally.
Actually, it's not like that at all, what it is like, if you want another real-world comparison, is this:
... well they're gonna pay some huge fines and go to jail, automatically, cause they broke the governments ToS. As Blizzard isn't the government and they're enforcing their own ToS they need to go through the courts themselves to get the appropriate result.
It's like a company that analyses speed trap cameras, and then makes a device that fools the cameras into thinking you are not speeding when you are.
All the other drivers on the road who aren't using this (illegal) device are impacted by those who do - destroying honest driver's road experience, making it unsafe, etc.
The company making these devices
Now if they lose, we (gamers) are in for dark times. Why would companies bother making quality products if they have no recourse to hackers and abusers?
And it'd be a legal precedent that'd quickly be applied to areas outside of gaming.... But Blizzard aren't going to lose, cause they're just following proper business and legal practices.
Without ANY bugs? Really? The only way this idea works is if you have a divine programmer who cannot make any mistakes who created the universe. This is more like scientology than science.
If my life has been a software simulation let me assure you, there's a LOT of bugs.