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Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat

engineering.riotgames.com

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Re: Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat

#251

Post by nightski »

Twirrim wrote: post #246
m3rc wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean... sure but they're also only willing to interact with the game when they're making the experience bad for everyone else.

In the case of Riot / League of Legends, these are still potentially customers willing to pay for skins etc, which is their income stream. I wonder if cheaters are as likely to pay for that stuff as non-cheaters?

A game with prevalent hacking/cheating is going to go downhill quick and lose it's established player base. Catering to these people in any way does not seem like a wise strategy.

Re: Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat

#252

Post by 13years »

m3rc wrote: post #238
VectorLock wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an interesting approach because even though they may be cheaters they are _still_ people that are interested in your game. The percent of cheaters with the objective to utterly destroy the game they're cheating at is probably negligible.

I mean... sure but they're also only willing to interact with the game when they're making the experience bad for everyone else.

Certainly not all cheaters have the same interests.

Some are simply curious experimenters, others are trolling, others want to make videos doing the impossible etc.

I wish there was another path out of this mess than the current arms race. It would be interesting what effect would result in providing a sandbox mode where cheating were allowed to see if it would reduce cheating in general population.

Re: Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat

#253

Post by bsder »

stcredzero wrote: post #243

Here's my project's approach to Anti-Cheat. 1, 2, 3) Everything on the server. Server's version always wins. Server is the authoritative source. Granted, I have a mathematical advantage in the game's particular movement mechanics which makes this easy to get away with. The other game mechanics are also designed with facilitating this in mind. Corollary: The client is almost nothing and trusted with nothing. It's pret…

> 4) Scripting -- if you can't beat 'em, join 'em!

Yeah, I was kind of annoyed that he flags this:

> draws the ranges of various abilities, indicates which minions are ready to be last-hit, and shows the path of skillshot projectiles.

as a cheat. It seems like this would be a godsend to new players.

However, I prefer Supreme Commander/Total Annihilation-like games over the twitchfests like Starcraft.

Re: Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat

#254

Post by s_m_t »

m3rc wrote: post #238
VectorLock wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an interesting approach because even though they may be cheaters they are _still_ people that are interested in your game. The percent of cheaters with the objective to utterly destroy the game they're cheating at is probably negligible.

I mean... sure but they're also only willing to interact with the game when they're making the experience bad for everyone else.

I don't think it is really the cheaters that degrade the experience, it is the knowledge (right or wrong) that cheaters exist that reduces trust that makes for not fun experiences.

I've played online games for many thousands of hours over the past two decades and I can count the number of times I encountered a blatant cheater on my hands. Every time it actually happened people had a good laugh about it and either hopped servers or banned the person cheating. Sure I have probably unknowingly encountered a bunch of map and wall hackers but I didn't know so it didn't degrade my experience. For all I knew those players were just better than me, plenty of those around. Having played with some extremely high level players in various games, it actually feels like the good players are using map/wallhacks more than the actual hackers because they have such good gamesense.

On the other hand, I have been accused of cheating more times than I have actually for sure encountered real cheaters. It isn't fun when a server turns sour because everyone is accusing each other of cheating and getting salty over nothing.

Of course, if cheaters are allowed to completely run rampant this isn't the case. But any game with a modicum of community power to enforce rules won't have that problem. The major places you reliably encounter cheaters are non-private servers and matchmaking services that have essentially been abandoned by the developers.

Re: Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat

#256

Post by zucan »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #70
SimbaOnSteroids wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We must have encountered very different online games and communities. Plenty of MMO's seem to have survived well known and endemic cheating without any additional toxicity in the community. No more toxic than the fake outrage when someone loses a loot roll in a dungeon or a pvp round. The "communities" and games usually seem brimming over with toxin with or without cheating. It's a good part of why I now avoid anythi…

The toxicity comes from the focus on competition and the lack of repercussion when misbehaving. A guild kicks you out if your negativity annoys too many or the wrong members, whereas matchmaking has an infinite supply of teammates to abuse.

I agree with you that adding cheating to the cocktail of toxicity would probably not be significant enough to lose a large group of players. However cheating may yield a competitive advantage too large to be overlooked by the players.

Re: Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat

#257

Post by Thaxll »

johnmg wrote: post #117
crsv wrote: post #3

This is a great technical breakdown of some modern high level approaches to common cheats. I think this the most transparent approach (even though the author admits leaving some detail out) to modern anti-cheat for massive multiplayer games. Good on riot for having an open dialogue about this. I don't think you'd ever see someone like Valve going a transparent route with something like this. (Not making a judgement o…

Fair context: I make cheats/utilities this exact game being talked about in this article, so perhaps my opinion on the subject is biased or even invalid. I partially disagree about the transparency of this article, while they do explain most of their approach to anti-cheat (and that is pretty cool for them to do), they seem to leave out any mention of anything that could be controversial. It suppose that it does make…

How do they know you're not doing something shady if they don't actively scan...

Re: Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat

#258

Post by paulmd »

RussianCow wrote: post #249
paulmd wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average user doesn't have to go to such lengths, they just subscribe to a cheat company that does. That's literally how it works today. Cheats are big business.

Okay, but my comment still stands: You don't need to make it impossible, just hard enough that it's not worth the effort. This applies whether we're talking about individuals or companies. As an aside, I don't know anything about the market for game cheats. Do people really pay a significant amount of money for that?

People are diligent enough to crack Denuvo's wall-of-VMs approach for free, even though it takes 6-12 months of work to do it. How much effort do you think people will put into it when there's money on the line?

People pay enough money for cheats that cheat makers have their own pretty intense DRM set up to make sure they get paid. You're probably looking at $10/month for something entry level, going up to $50 or $100/mo for something exclusive (that will take longer to get you banned).

Re: Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat

#259

Post by stcredzero »

bsder wrote: post #253
stcredzero wrote: post #243

Here's my project's approach to Anti-Cheat. 1, 2, 3) Everything on the server. Server's version always wins. Server is the authoritative source. Granted, I have a mathematical advantage in the game's particular movement mechanics which makes this easy to get away with. The other game mechanics are also designed with facilitating this in mind. Corollary: The client is almost nothing and trusted with nothing. It's pret…

> 4) Scripting -- if you can't beat 'em, join 'em! Yeah, I was kind of annoyed that he flags this: > draws the ranges of various abilities, indicates which minions are ready to be last-hit, and shows the path of skillshot projectiles. as a cheat. It seems like this would be a godsend to new players. However, I prefer Supreme Commander/Total Annihilation-like games over the twitchfests like Starcraft.

However, I prefer Supreme Commander/Total Annihilation-like games over the twitchfests like Starcraft.

We've made our client so dumb, even Fog of War is cheatproof. How do we enforce not seeing something? The data for those entities isn't sent. In fact, this is exactly the same thing as making an entity disappear. The entity's tag and movement info aren't sent, and so it's diffed out of the set of visible entities.

Re: Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat

#260

Post by maerF0x0 »

vkou wrote: post #237
maerF0x0 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not deny that the game mechanics would vastly change. The strategy would shift away from "How can I micro these roaches" vs "How can i effectively attack burrowing/unburrowing roaches" to "How can i ensure I get roaches" vs "How can I frustrate/prevent my opponent from getting them in the first place"... As an aside, ANY change to a game is going to disrupt the equilibrium in some manner and I assume would requi…

> How can i ensure I get roaches Which is trivial for any skilled player, because they are an incredibly cheap, low-tech unit, and passive base defenses are currently very good at fending off very early aggression. > As an aside, ANY change to a game is going to disrupt the equilibrium in some manner Yes, and sometimes, the equilibrium settles on an incredibly shallow, uninteresting game-space. StarCraft is a game of…

Yes, but keep in mind this idea and thread is not about SC2 specifically. It used SC2 as an example of the class of games that I personally believe I would find improved by removing the mechanical aspect of the game allowing me to focus on the fun part -- Making decisions and giving instructions patterns more than "micro"
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