141–150 of 197 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because the user controls their own machine, so they can open a hex editor and turn your option off.
Well I assume there are ways to prevent that (or make it extremely difficult at least)? E.g. look at denuvo, nobody has been able to "open a hex editor" and disable denuvo.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not the cheat that has to be accepted, it is the game. The option prevents the cheats (or any other program) from being able to examine the game's memory.
Because the user controls their own machine, so they can open a hex editor and turn your option off.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been playing the same 2 games for many years and I think I got pretty good at them and I've used multiple accounts - under your assumption I look like a cheater.
> under your assumption I look like a cheater In a proper statistical analysis there are far more variables than what I outlined in my preceding two sentence post. It would be naive to think that I would consider anyone a cheater only based on the account age. Smurf accounts are also bannable in plenty of games and I certainly support that. Beyond that, the level of "good" we're talking here goes way beyond dominatin…
When a complete newcomer comes to a field and sees professionals not doing a simple thing, the right question isn't "why don't you just do this, duh", but "I thought this would work, why doesn't it?".
What an interesting day when you see a site you've worked on for the past 2 (3?) years get posted to HN! Except I tried submitting this site years ago when I had just finished it, but it did not seem like HN was that interested at the time, and I don't blame them. It was very niche and video game related, and the site also looked a lot worse. It's come a long way to the point where there where I collaborated with som…
[dead]
That's why even community server owners want additional anti-cheat rather than spending their own time doing it. All those CS ones are examples too, running on community servers. I also remember back in the day community server ICCUP for Starcraft Brood War had their own anti-hack.
There's also the shift of games to the mainstream; more casual players who do not want to be mods. As well as the shift from 16v16 matches to smaller 5v5 matches, making more outliers to check.
The cheaters don't make them, they buy them. It really needs a multi factor solution. The technical solution is not enough. Trying to buy cheats should be like trying to buy chemical precursors to illicit drugs. There should be a strong social stigma. Most cheaters have no problem with it because 'everyone else is cheating', justifying their behavior. There was a time when 'everyone else smokes' was justification, but now it's mostly defeated. There should be real world implications. Sign in with your phone number and 2 factor auth, which is located to a physical address. Cheating is a form of fraud. There should be legal implications.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> under your assumption I look like a cheater In a proper statistical analysis there are far more variables than what I outlined in my preceding two sentence post. It would be naive to think that I would consider anyone a cheater only based on the account age. Smurf accounts are also bannable in plenty of games and I certainly support that. Beyond that, the level of "good" we're talking here goes way beyond dominatin…
I think what's naive is to assume that statistical detection methods haven't been investigated at length by the anti-cheat companies. When a complete newcomer comes to a field and sees professionals not doing a simple thing, the right question isn't "why don't you just do this, duh", but "I thought this would work, why doesn't it?".
I'm not a newcomer though, I've worked on both cheats and anti-cheats going back more than two decades. I know how the sausage is made and it's not pretty.
The anti-cheat companies you talk about mostly sell a mass produced product that works very similarly to anti-virus software. Games embed the anti-cheat module and its cheat definitions get updated. Statistical analysis requries both knowledge of the specific game and access to its database. Often also additional game programming to even store the crucial data. A bespoke solution. This can't be mass produced and is expensive, so most games don't have it.
So to bring it back to the newcomer question, I thought this would work, why doesn't it?, the answer is that game companies don't want to spend the money. [1] A classic answer to most annoyances in life, really.
---
[1] An interesting outlier is the online gambling industry, especially online poker. They spend way more money than non-gambling game developers and have much more sophisticated anti-cheat systems, including statistical analysis. It's also fun to see how techniques used to get around online poker anti-cheat detection slowly make their way into mainstream gaming with a delay of about 15 years or so. As a simple example, nobody serious was even running their code on the same system as the game client back in 2005, instead parsing the video signal and simulating HID inputs. [2] Took more than a decade to see popular cheats for regular games go to that length to avoid detection. Not because the cheat developers were less capable, but because the anti-cheats didn't warrant the investment.
[2] Thus taking the battle almost completely to the statistical analysis realm. Are your mouse movements random enough, with good jitter? Does your bot take belivable micro breaks? Does your average performance, including reaction times, degrade at the end of a long session as you get more tired? Et cetera.
What an interesting day when you see a site you've worked on for the past 2 (3?) years get posted to HN! Except I tried submitting this site years ago when I had just finished it, but it did not seem like HN was that interested at the time, and I don't blame them. It was very niche and video game related, and the site also looked a lot worse. It's come a long way to the point where there where I collaborated with som…
Take the analogy of enabling better police work by granting unlimited access to our private communications. No one doubts it would be effective, but the cost and the threat is too much.
This is the line we draw in the sand: get out of the kernel, anti-cheat has no business being there. The cost and threat are too great.
This acceptance is the same situation that brought us the Crowdstrike incident. It's unacceptable.
We fail as an industry and as a society when we accept these compromises.
What an interesting day when you see a site you've worked on for the past 2 (3?) years get posted to HN! Except I tried submitting this site years ago when I had just finished it, but it did not seem like HN was that interested at the time, and I don't blame them. It was very niche and video game related, and the site also looked a lot worse. It's come a long way to the point where there where I collaborated with som…
The best anti cheat is proper net code. Games rarely do this because it's expensive and difficult. Consumers will buy it anyways.
Anti cheat overtop is like calling an open window with a loud Weiner dog guarding it "defense in depth".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
[dead]
I think there are external kvm like cheat devices though. Scans the image and controls the mouse and keyboard i guess
Not sure about KVM-like hardware cheats, specifically. You could obviously use an AI to simulate mouse movements, but I don't think that's particularly common.
What an interesting day when you see a site you've worked on for the past 2 (3?) years get posted to HN! Except I tried submitting this site years ago when I had just finished it, but it did not seem like HN was that interested at the time, and I don't blame them. It was very niche and video game related, and the site also looked a lot worse. It's come a long way to the point where there where I collaborated with som…
Anti cheat is DRM. It's added specifically to make it so modifications are DRM circumvention and therefore copyright infringement. This isnt to protect the player, but forced by big suit investors to "protect their investment". The best anti cheat is proper net code. Games rarely do this because it's expensive and difficult. Consumers will buy it anyways. Anti cheat overtop is like calling an open window with a loud…