Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat • Hacker News Board

Re: Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat

#11

Post by SimbaOnSteroids » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 7:00 PM UTC

mikec3010 wrote: post #9

I wonder if there's an optimization to be made about tolerating a minimum amount of cheating while being vociferous about the countermeasures? Along the same lines as "no such thing as bad publicity", having just enough cheating to piss off a few people and getting them to talk about it and the countermeasures seems like a great way to get free advertising and game engagement of players just curious to see who is che…

Cheating is incredibly toxic in the community, even a whiff of it and people start labeling each other scripters etc. Riot does a lot of work to make their community suck less, lots of player leave or drop engagement because the community is toxic. With that in mind I'd imagine the optimal amount of cheating is less than what they can achieve.

Re: Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat

#12

Post by def_true_false » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 7:00 PM UTC

monocasa wrote: post #8

sthomas1618 wrote: post #7

I feel like the industry would be better off being transparent about anti-cheat strategies and maybe even embracing open-source. Protecting "secret sauce" is basically admitting their anti-cheat are largely through obfuscation and can be defeated by knowing any details.

You obviously shouldn't rely entirely on security through obscurity, but obfuscation can absolutely be an important component of defense in depth. Especially when your attackers own the hardware.

Or you could design the game mechanics so that client-side cheating offers little advantage... but that would probably require doing more than ripping off a popular mod of another game.

Re: Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat

#13

Post by chc » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 7:01 PM UTC

mikec3010 wrote: post #9

I wonder if there's an optimization to be made about tolerating a minimum amount of cheating while being vociferous about the countermeasures? Along the same lines as "no such thing as bad publicity", having just enough cheating to piss off a few people and getting them to talk about it and the countermeasures seems like a great way to get free advertising and game engagement of players just curious to see who is che…

I am skeptical that anyone has ever played a game because they were just curious to see who is cheating today.

Re: Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat

#14

Post by tylerhou » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 7:03 PM UTC

swanson wrote: post #2

I wonder if Riot would consider building the scripting UI they show into some kind of training mode. It's a bit like the argument that no one would pirate if they content was easy to get for a reasonable price. If players could train with the spell range circles, skill shot path projection, last hit helpers, etc in a sanctioned way, I wonder how much this would remove the desire to seek out the cheating programs. Edi…

> I wonder if Riot would consider building the scripting UI they show into some kind of training mode.

The game would probably be more vulnerable then, because now you have "cheat" scripts designed to work with the game.

> If players could train with the spell range circles, skill shot path projection, last hit helpers, etc in a sanctioned way, I wonder how much this would remove the desire to seek out the cheating programs.

People who cheat aren't trying to practice; they're trying to win games. There already exists a "practice mode" which lowers cooldowns and shows tower ranges. And it doesn't make sense to practice with cheats because it won't help you play the game without cheats very much.

Re: Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat

#15

Post by tjohns » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 7:08 PM UTC

sthomas1618 wrote: post #7

I feel like the industry would be better off being transparent about anti-cheat strategies and maybe even embracing open-source. Protecting "secret sauce" is basically admitting their anti-cheat are largely through obfuscation and can be defeated by knowing any details.

But anti-cheat is largely obfuscation. Unless the host system is locked down (i.e. game consoles, systems with TPM-based verified boot), any state the game has access to is also going to be accessible to attackers.

You can limit what state the game itself has access to, but that's just one class of attack. It won't prevent aimbots, for instance.

It's the same reason why secure DRM is so hard. If the user has root, it's not a level playing playing field for developers.

Re: Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat

#16

Post by B-Con » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 7:09 PM UTC

def_true_false wrote: post #12

monocasa wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You obviously shouldn't rely entirely on security through obscurity, but obfuscation can absolutely be an important component of defense in depth. Especially when your attackers own the hardware.

Or you could design the game mechanics so that client-side cheating offers little advantage... but that would probably require doing more than ripping off a popular mod of another game.

That's literally impossible. The entire point of the game is to have client-side input and for that input to be generated by a human and not a computer. There's no way to move that to a server.

Re: Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat

#17

Post by pythonaut_16 » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 7:11 PM UTC

I'd love to see a game where cheating and scripting is the primary means of gameplay. By default the game would present a very simple UI but players would be encouraged to write and share scripts enabling varying levels and types of functionality.

As a game developer your job then would be to write interesting enough systems for players to exploit to come up with interesting gameplay. I can imagine a scenario where different Overwatch-style "classes" emerge all built from the same basic game elements.

Re: Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat

#18

Post by paulie_a » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 7:13 PM UTC

I got into developing by modding doom with a hex editor. Giving my SimCity virtually unlimited money. Cheating in a video game is fun and standard practice in my opinion.

Re: Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat

#19

Post by EthanHeilman » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 7:13 PM UTC

chc wrote: post #13

mikec3010 wrote: post #9

I wonder if there's an optimization to be made about tolerating a minimum amount of cheating while being vociferous about the countermeasures? Along the same lines as "no such thing as bad publicity", having just enough cheating to piss off a few people and getting them to talk about it and the countermeasures seems like a great way to get free advertising and game engagement of players just curious to see who is che…

I am skeptical that anyone has ever played a game because they were just curious to see who is cheating today.

Back in the day I would occasionally play counterstrike on low reputation servers to see all the cheaters. It was amusing for about 5 minutes.

Re: Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat

#20

Post by pbhjpbhj » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 7:14 PM UTC

mikec3010 wrote: post #9

I wonder if there's an optimization to be made about tolerating a minimum amount of cheating while being vociferous about the countermeasures? Along the same lines as "no such thing as bad publicity", having just enough cheating to piss off a few people and getting them to talk about it and the countermeasures seems like a great way to get free advertising and game engagement of players just curious to see who is che…

That seems like a good "wonder", definitely not deserving of downvotes.

I'm pretty sure I want to play games in which there is no cheating though.

You could do handicapping, so in an FPS rather than allowing wallhack lower players get a call from control "someone is closing on your position [from the North"]". Or new players are 'fresh' and can move faster. You need to weight it very carefully though.