Cheating in PC gaming, why is it still a huge issue? (with poll)

[Stoutman]

The drivers license sounds like the best way to verify someone's identity. People usually only have one and I doubt many cheaters would go get a fake ID like that just to game some more.

We have all given the information on a drivers license out many times over the years, it would not be 'new' info, which is good.

Remember, that whatever info you give out is probably going to be sold at some point. Even though companies say they will not give it out, if they are sold, or go out of business, then the customer data has the potential to be sold! Often many times. People never think about what is done with their data after a company goes out of business. I don't think there are many laws about how data is handled after a company closes.

 

[NaffNaffBobFace]

The drivers license sounds like the best way to verify someone's identity. People usually only have one and I doubt many cheaters would go get a fake ID like that just to game some more.

We have all given the information on a drivers license out many times over the years, it would not be 'new' info, which is good.

Remember, that whatever info you give out is probably going to be sold at some point. Even though companies say they will not give it out, if they are sold, or go out of business, then the customer data has the potential to be sold! Often many times. People never think about what is done with their data after a company goes out of business. I don't think there are many laws about how data is handled after a company closes.

I didn't get a driving license until I was 32. Maybe needing one to play computer games would have spurred me to get one in my 20's? :)

 

[mromutt]

For me I have a few reasons I wouldnt want to give them my ID for something like that, first just being I dont want them to have that (they are horrible with data these days). But more importantly cheat detection and reporting sucks ass and where is the line draw of "proof". Back in the day playing quake and unreal I was called a hacker constantly and banned from servers even though I have never used a hack/exploit/cheat ever in an pvp game. Fast forward to just a few years ago a game I played for years since the very first day of closed beta warframe, they talked about banning the use of things like macros and even worse the detection mechanism would not only autoban you for using autohotkey but also key remaping software (it all shows up the same). Luckily this was never done, I personally even talked to the devs about it since I had access from playing with them to test for things ironically lol.I had to explain not all macros and remaps are exploits or cheats but rather to help some with issues play more easily or to just prevent worsening of those issues, that had never even crossed their minds apparently. Point being I dont trust all companies to say what would be called cheating, or how they detect it or even handle "reports" of cheating. At the end of the day we have no guarantees of it being accurate or appropriate.

In closing, I think its to much of a risk for us. :D

 

[mromutt]

I didn't get a driving license until I was 32. Maybe needing one to play computer games would have spurred me to get one in my 20's? :slight_smile:

It would just be the serial on your normal ID :) all forms asking for that take either

 

[FZD]

Ehh, I wouldn't want to give my ID to game companies, much for the same reason I wouldn't use nukes on squatters. Like sure, hackers are annoying, but we shouldn't pervert gaming whilst failing to get rid of them. Because ultimately, if the gaming company can't make a product that is secure against a bunch of script kiddies, they can't be trusted to safeguard your data. This means: A few hackers now have everyones ID. They are selling the ID-lists to script kiddies for pennies on the dollar. There are still cheaters in every game, oh, and legitimate players feel the oppressive hand of the big brother gaming companies, who hold their ID hostage and threaten to ban them from variety of games over the slightest infringement.

 

[Vavrik]

Because ultimately, if the gaming company can't make a product that is secure against a bunch of script kiddies, they can't be trusted to safeguard your data.

Beautifully said!

 

[Sraika]

In any discussion on cheating, i feel compelled to point out that there are several different kinds of cheating. There's cheating in single player, which is not really something most people care about, and not what we're discussing here anyways. Then, in multiplayer games, there's two kinds. 'Benign' cheating is cheating in a way that has little to no effect on other players, and, while annoying, doesn't really change much. For example, if someone cheated to unlock a fancy weapon skin or outfit, something that didn't meaningfully affect gameplay. Not cool, sure, but then, it's basically the same as paying real money for the exact same things, just they didn't pay for it.
The other kind of cheating, 'adversarial' cheating, is stuff that affects other players directly - and, to a lesser extent, indirectly. Stuff like godmode, aimbots, wallhacks, and even just adding extra in-game money are all incredibly irritating to everyone else playing. That's the kind of cheating that really gets on my nerves.
That said, i'm probably not going to give my ID to game companies just to prevent cheating. I mean, i'm not super worried about infosec (with all the things that have been hacked, i'm certain my details are already on the internet somewhere, if anyone cares to look hard enough) but that doesn't mean i'm just going to hand my personal information to anyone who asks. If they have a valid reason for it, like for shipping info or something, then sure, i'd give it to em, but anti-cheating isn't gonna cut it.
Plus, it's possible that not everyone has whatever kind of ID they want. People can only get a Driver's License once they turn 16 (in Canada, at least), and there's no way that there aren't going to be 15-year-olds who want to play. And in any case, it's not like every country in the world has the same kinds of ID, so they'd have to implement it on some sort of country-by-country basis, but at that point, they'd be spending more time on that then on their anti-cheat software, which doesn't seem like time well spent.
And ignoring everything else, there's just no way it's going to be very effective. People are going to cheat no matter what you do, this would just be another obstacle for them to overcome. Sure, it'd deter some people, but not that many.

TL;DR: Interesting idea, not going to work.

 

[Bruttle]

And ignoring everything else, there's just no way it's going to be very effective. People are going to cheat no matter what you do, this would just be another obstacle for them to overcome. Sure, it'd deter some people, but not that many.

TL;DR: Interesting idea, not going to work.

That's the piece of the puzzle that I don't have. I don't know how well using real ID actually works. I know that Korea uses real ID measures to safeguard against cheating. At least, it makes it extremely difficult to be banned from the same game twice. That's why most Korean games are so easy to hack. They were never programmed with the rampant cheating in mind.

So if their developers don't program their games with intent to deter hackers, it would mean that on some level the ID method works. That said, some US games are in the same boat. So it doesn't definitively prove anything. Add on top of that the fact Korea has felt the need to double down and make cheat programs fully illegal. So it may work, and it may not work.

What I do know definitively, is that hacks ruin games. They don't just make them frustrating. They don't just make them unfair. They completely ruin games. They break the competitive elements of the game and drive it into the ground. More than one game has met an early end at the hands of hackers. It is a plague on the PC gamer community and it needs to end.

I also know, that regardless of any pvp switch, despite a 9/1 npc to pc ratio, hackers can and will ruin Star Citizen as well. Hackers don't just gain advantage in PVP, but financially as well. That alone can be a massive advantage. That's not even beginning to account for possible breaches in valuable resource information, cracking "secure" transmissions or other in-game info-running goods, location hacks, teleport hacks, immunity to interdiction, and any other items on the groundbreakingly long list of gameplay options that SC is planning.

Additionally, there is no such thing as a slight hack advantage that is relatively harmless. Just look at all the madness that happens in the P2W argument. One gun comes out in the cash shop that is only nominally better than the in-game guns and all hell breaks lose. That's because in most pvp situations, a millisecond can mean everything. I play with a native 100ms ping. I had a chance once to play CoD on a 10ms connection. I was unstoppable. A slight advantage can change everything.

If it's not a unique, real world identifier that's protected by law like a state ID, it has to be something. It can't just be the same hit or miss detection that most online games provide. I'm sick of half measures and reactive protection. Something needs to be done that is actually effective. That's why we're all here aren't we? We're here because we are tired of the garbage and comprimise that has plagued the industry. We're here to try something different that aims higher than the "minimum viable product". We're here because it's time for something that actually works.

 

[NaffNaffBobFace]

I suppose this is where the PvP and PvE slider comes in.

Once you've had enough of the Haxtors rolling through Terra spreading Terror you slide it back to PvE and ta-daaa, they are gone. And perhaps, if it is ever bad enough, it'd only be haxtors in PvP.

When enough Non-Cheaters have set to PvE or Peaceful PwP (Play With Players) and PvP is nothing but cheaters, God Mode or Lag Switching or whatever in PvP defeats itself when everyone is doing it.

PvP cheaters will become their own worst enemies as those will be the only opponents they have, a universe of invulnerable superheros turning PvP into PvE, because at the end of it, when everyone is super:

 

[Michael]

I suppose this is where the PvP and PvE slider comes in.

Once you've had enough of the Haxtors rolling through Terra spreading Terror you slide it back to PvE and ta-daaa, they are gone. And perhaps, if it is ever bad enough, it'd only be haxtors in PvP.

When enough Non-Cheaters have set to PvE or Peaceful PwP (Play With Players) and PvP is nothing but cheaters, God Mode or Lag Switching or whatever in PvP defeats itself when everyone is doing it.

PvP cheaters will become their own worst enemies as those will be the only opponents they have, a universe of invulnerable superheros turning PvP into PvE, because at the end of it, when everyone is super:

We won't have a "PVE/PVP" Slider. It will be more about Safe Zones und Unsafe zones (like eve online).
(Source latest calling all devs

View: https://youtu.be/UCtG4Zpl9nA?t=8m28s
)

 

[Firen]

using the rules at your advantage, i m ok with it.
deliberatly cheating to get an advantage, i m against

I m a great fan of the idea that on the internet noone should be anonymous. Nowdays with the influence of médias upon our lives, the internet offender should take responsability for there actions. In my country it s forbidden by the law to threaten oneself but on the internet everything is possible because you can be anonymous.

How many ppl comited suicide because there was the target of anonymous haters/griefers , you know recently in my town several teenagers comited suicide just because some anonymous schoolmates harrassed them online for months and as socials médias are going adding the styupidity of the lamb mass. And the justice is having a hard time finding the culprits.

That s why i m ok to give my real ID on internet, where is the arms if it can stop the régression we are heading to.

Go watch the mouvie "idiocracy" and you will see where we are going.

 

[NaffNaffBobFace]

It would just be the serial on your normal ID :slight_smile: all forms asking for that take either

Yes, until I was 32 and got a driving license I didn't have a 'normal ID'.

No passport, no government issued Citizen Card, even my birth certificate when I went to register my intent to marry was revealed to be invalid as a form of ID (Any birth certificate issued after Jan 1st 1983 in the UK is a "Partial" certificate and worth shit, I was informed) and I had to pay them £10 for a full copy, which ironically I did not have to supply ID to get.

I live somewhere where while having an ID is required to get married, drive, apply for a mortgage and all the other stuff, if you don't need or want to get married and don't learn to drive and never need to and can provide a utilities bill for a bank account, you don't get the forms of ID that are universally recognized. Even the certificate of birth I've had all my life is worth nothing (Was I surprised? Yes. Yes I was.)

From my experience as a simple example, what about places that don't have a registered ID system in the first place? As this game is going to span continents and envelope the whole world, some parts of it that don't have a mandatory ID requirement of its citizens, who are either not going to be able to play or are going to be segregated from those who do have an ID making a two tier system and potentially pushing all the players who want to hack from the gated ID community into the slum non-ID community making the problem even worse for a group of people who have not actually done anything wrong, viewing their servers as the only place they are allowed to play while others view them as a playground to wreck shit up. That would only be pushing the problem away from the privileged, not solving it.

-----

Google demanded my ID once, a long time ago before the Star Citizen Kickstarter happened (So in terms SC terms it was pre-history).

I was on Google Plus which had only just come out of Beta, and being the young, creative and impetuous scamp that I was had put a jokey middle name to show I was an easy-going kind of guy. My surname is the same as in a film title (Example: If my surname was "Sally" which it's not, i'd have put "When Harry Met" as my middle name). Google lost its shit and demanded I remove the middle name and provide ID, or be banned from every single Google service. Not just Google Plus, not just the search engine, the email, youtube, blogger - it was even Translate - it was even Chrome browser. Literally everything Google, because G+ was not a social media platform, it was an "Identity service".

What did I do? I deleted the jokey middle name and sent them a scan of what passed for my ID. You think Google has a lot of info on you? They have a scan of my provisional driving license.

Why did I capitulate? Because all of Googles free to access services are, at the end of the day, Googles. You, me and everyone else in the world is only being granted access under conditions and even if those conditions don't make sense, you tow the line or you'll invalidate your own access. I understand and accept that, but a 100% ban from all services because of a jokey middle-name? In terms of knee-jerk reactions their shins probably snapped off and are in orbit around Pluto by now.

I'll tell you what I experienced being one of the only people on the planet being denied access to Google services: It effects you instantly. There are other options on the planet, but Google dominance makes them inferior sometimes to the extreme... For instance have you used Bablefish lately? It only has 15 languages. (No offense Bablefish, you are my only other option now).

Remember the last time you forgot your Smartphone and suddenly everyone around you is a frigging genius because they gen Google something in seconds flat. Yeah, it was like that.

So now I firefox and DuckDuck and only use Googles where I have to. But lately it's become harder and harder to avoid - now BlackBerry is all google OS, I have next to no options other than using an Android device. So I am stuck in the system while trying to use it as lightly as possible just to have half the abilities of everyone else around me.

 

[Michael]

[long text]

(this topic is getting really interesting)

Also who is going to check the IDs of 50+ countrys. You can do it via (paid) service (here in germany it can be done as some kind of postal service).
What i know so far even our police can't really determine the difference between a "good" fake ID and a correct one on a first glance. And they only do a deeper check if they are seriously concerned that it might ba a fake one.

The movies told me that a lot of teens in the us use fake driver license to go drinking. So in my world everyone in the US and A can buy a fake id within minutes :)

 

[mromutt]

Yes, until I was 32 and got a driving license I didn't have a 'normal ID'.

No passport, no government issued Citizen Card, even my birth certificate when I went to register my intent to marry was revealed to be invalid as a form of ID (Any birth certificate issued after Jan 1st 1983 in the UK is a "Partial" certificate and worth shit, I was informed) and I had to pay them £10 for a full copy, which ironically I did not have to supply ID to get.

I live somewhere where while having an ID is required to get married, drive, apply for a mortgage and all the other stuff, if you don't need or want to get married and don't learn to drive and never need to and can provide a utilities bill for a bank account, you don't get the forms of ID that are universally recognized. Even the certificate of birth I've had all my life is worth nothing (Was I surprised? Yes. Yes I was.)

From my experience as a simple example, what about places that don't have a registered ID system in the first place? As this game is going to span continents and envelope the whole world, some parts of it that don't have a mandatory ID requirement of its citizens, who are either not going to be able to play or are going to be segregated from those who do have an ID making a two tier system and potentially pushing all the players who want to hack from the gated ID community into the slum non-ID community making the problem even worse for a group of people who have not actually done anything wrong, viewing their servers as the only place they are allowed to play while others view them as a playground to wreck shit up. That would only be pushing the problem away from the privileged, not solving it.

-----

Google demanded my ID once, a long time ago before the Star Citizen Kickstarter happened (So in terms SC terms it was pre-history).

I was on Google Plus which had only just come out of Beta, and being the young, creative and impetuous scamp that I was had put a jokey middle name to show I was an easy-going kind of guy. My surname is the same as in a film title (Example: If my surname was "Sally" which it's not, i'd have put "When Harry Met" as my middle name). Google lost its shit and demanded I remove the middle name and provide ID, or be banned from every single Google service. Not just Google Plus, not just the search engine, the email, youtube, blogger - it was even Translate - it was even Chrome browser. Literally everything Google, because G+ was not a social media platform, it was an "Identity service".

What did I do? I deleted the jokey middle name and sent them a scan of what passed for my ID. You think Google has a lot of info on you? They have a scan of my provisional driving license.

Why did I capitulate? Because all of Googles free to access services are, at the end of the day, Googles. You, me and everyone else in the world is only being granted access under conditions and even if those conditions don't make sense, you tow the line or you'll invalidate your own access. I understand and accept that, but a 100% ban from all services because of a jokey middle-name? In terms of knee-jerk reactions their shins probably snapped off and are in orbit around Pluto by now.

I'll tell you what I experienced being one of the only people on the planet being denied access to Google services: It effects you instantly. There are other options on the planet, but Google dominance makes them inferior sometimes to the extreme... For instance have you used Bablefish lately? It only has 15 languages. (No offense Bablefish, you are my only other option now).

Remember the last time you forgot your Smartphone and suddenly everyone around you is a frigging genius because they gen Google something in seconds flat. Yeah, it was like that.

So now I firefox and DuckDuck and only use Googles where I have to. But lately it's become harder and harder to avoid - now BlackBerry is all google OS, I have next to no options other than using an Android device. So I am stuck in the system while trying to use it as lightly as possible just to have half the abilities of everyone else around me.

Yeah I personally only have an ID not a drivers licence and I didnt even get that till my early 20s just so I could walk into a bar regardless of drinking or not haha, before that I remember trying to make a bank account and they wanted 2 IDs and im like... what? I have never had a bank account or credit card or anything... WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME! lol XD but now that i have a normal ID luckily here in the states that will do you for most anything since its the same thing just without the driving part XD

 

[mromutt]

By the way if we finally moved over to global ID system (multi pass anyone? :D ) alot of this would me a non issue, but I would still not want to do it because I dont trust them all to decide if you are banned or not

 

[NaffNaffBobFace]

By the way if we finally moved over to global ID system (multi pass anyone? :smile: ) alot of this would me a non issue, but I would still not want to do it because I dont trust them all to decide if you are banned or not

Multi-Pass! :smile:

A GIDS (Global ID system) is a decent idea in theory but when you throw geo-politics in to it there are just too many people on this planet who hate too many other people because of where they come from on this planet.

I worked with a guy who turned up one morning with a black eye and broken wrist in a cast. Turns out he'd gone over the the next largest town for a few drinks and been beaten up: It started well enough, he'd been sat at a bar having a couple of laughs with the regulars and generally getting on with them really well.

After an hour or so, one of them says "I haven't seen you in here before mate, where abouts are you from?" having got on with them well so far, he answered innocently "I'm from Swi-" and that was it. He didn't even get the whole town name out, because at the end of the first syllable he was on his back on the floor having been punched off his barstool. They then proceeded to stomp him down for being from "Swi-". I'd heared the people in that down didn't like the people from the town we worked and lived in, but hadn't appreciated that they'd beat the crap out of you for no other reason.

You arrive in a town like that with your GIDS card and show it to get into a bar, the bouncer quietly closes the door behind you and shouts "Hey! He's from Swi-" only getting the first syllable out before you are knocked unconscious and left face down in the local river.

They say if everyone got amnesia tomorrow and we all forgot world-history, centuries old feuds and bias and hatred would vanish and the would would be a peaceful place. I say we'd just make up a whole load of new reasons to hate each other and it would be World War three by tea-time.

:(

 

[mromutt]

Multi-Pass! :smile:

A GIDS (Global ID system) is a decent idea in theory but when you throw geo-politics in to it there are just too many people on this planet who hate too many other people because of where they come from on this planet.

I worked with a guy who turned up one morning with a black eye and broken wrist in a cast. Turns out he'd gone over the the next largest town for a few drinks and been beaten up: It started well enough, he'd been sat at a bar having a couple of laughs with the regulars and generally getting on with them really well.

After an hour or so, one of them says "I haven't seen you in here before mate, where abouts are you from?" having got on with them well so far, he answered innocently "I'm from Swi-" and that was it. He didn't even get the whole town name out, because at the end of the first syllable he was on his back on the floor having been punched off his barstool. They then proceeded to stomp him down for being from "Swi-". I'd heared the people in that down didn't like the people from the town we worked and lived in, but hadn't appreciated that they'd beat the crap out of you for no other reason.

You arrive in a town like that with your GIDS card and show it to get into a bar, the bouncer quietly closes the door behind you and shouts "Hey! He's from Swi-" only getting the first syllable out before you are knocked unconscious and left face down in the local river.

They say if everyone got amnesia tomorrow and we all forgot world-history, centuries old feuds and bias and hatred would vanish and the would would be a peaceful place. I say we'd just make up a whole load of new reasons to hate each other and it would be World War three by tea-time.

:(

I agree, we would just make new ones, without our past we will only create worse repeats of it (think past wars with our current technology)

 

[FZD]

No passport, no government issued Citizen Card, even my birth certificate when I went to register my intent to marry was revealed to be invalid as a form of ID (Any birth certificate issued after Jan 1st 1983 in the UK is a "Partial" certificate and worth shit, I was informed) and I had to pay them £10 for a full copy, which ironically I did not have to supply ID to get.

Wait, did you want them to catch 22 you? Like, "you need an ID to get an ID, so you can't get and ID because you don't have an ID"? :D

 

[Bruttle]

They say if everyone got amnesia tomorrow and we all forgot world-history, centuries old feuds and bias and hatred would vanish and the would would be a peaceful place. I say we'd just make up a whole load of new reasons to hate each other and it would be World War three by tea-time.

:(

That's pretty spot on. The concept of the Yin/Yang isn't just philosophy, it's psychology. Our lows define our highs. The horrifying portions of humanity define the goodness in it. Light vs. dark, balancing the universe, Jedi vs. Sith shit, call it what you want. It's all the same. However, it's dependence doesn't work the way it does in stories.

People need bad things to point at. There needs to be an unforgivable crime for human psychology to work. If in the future all major crimes were no longer committed, we would consider it a "perfect" society by our standards. However, in that society, something else would just take the place of an unforgivable crime. In a perfect society, spitting on the sidewalk would be a capital offense. I first came across this concept when I was taking psychology in college.

It exists in so many other forms. People need drama. They need horrifying things to point at and be offended by. They need taboos and unforgivable sins. Anyone that has worked in a large office setting can attest to that. Every single office has an employee that nobody likes. Everyone agrees that the person is a shit employee, a shit person, and the office would be better off without them. Then, that employee leaves. There is a few days or weeks of peace, but eventually someone else takes that spot. One of the other employees, even if they were friends before, will become the "bad guy".

.... aaaand I think I derailed my own thread... damn it.

But yea! cheaters bad!

 

[Bambooza]

I suppose this is where the PvP and PvE slider comes in.

There is no PVP slider. Everyone gets to play in the persistent universe as is with NPC security forces creating pockets of security from other players but combat against NPC's and Players is expected. We already see some of it with the introduction of intervention which scales with the ships interdicted. Its also why all of the ships have some form of guns because this is a combat game at its heart. It will be interesting to see how the vastness of the universe, along with NPC security forces, cost of weapons and the impact of death influence player behavior both on those who are more combat oriented vs those who seek out more the passive tasks.

As to the aspect of cheating it really comes down to the programmers and how the client/server code is handled. The more the server trusts the client the more room there is for adverse repercussions of the information being used outside game design. Only reason wall hacks exists is because the server shares the location of all players and lets the client game code z filter the information to the player. When you start to look at console ported games you start to see all of the short cuts developers take to limit if not remove server tasks from the game as they offload most of the logic onto the client. And while this reduces the developer upkeep costs it significantly increases the ease of nefarious code being ran and a poor general experience for those who play by the rules.

I am not in favor of requiring some sort of ID to use for account creation simply because it just creates another possible avenue for that information to be easily acquired and account access granted, while not adding any more deterrent over banning account and requiring the indivigual to pony up another 60 dollars to play again.