Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat • Hacker News Board

Re: Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat

#271

Post by macintux » Wed, Jul 18, 2018, 12:13 AM UTC

hermitdev wrote: post #227

behringer wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People love cheating so much they pay for the tools to do so. The fact is 99 out of 100 banned users were actually banned for good reason and are lying about not cheating. Half of those will also dmit to cheating but beg for forgiveness as if they aren't quite literally destroying the game and everyone's enjoyment of it. That less than 1 percent that is truly innocent is nearly impossible to service because of all th…

Cheating definitely sours a gaming community, as does falsely accusing people of cheating. I left the original (circa early 2000s) Counter Strike community after being routinely accused of cheating. I have never once cheated in a online multiplayer game. But, some people just couldn't grasp that I was really that (comparatively) good & quick of a shot. Also, I don't think they realized that certain materials could be…

Your comment reminded me of a frustrating evening on bzflag.

Long ago I was using a custom Linux box with a slow GPU, and on one map no matter how hard I tried (and no matter how many fellow players watched trying to help me get the timing right) I simply couldn’t jump to the first level of a building.

I’d never experienced a hardware limitation quite like that.

Re: Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat

#272

Post by erulabs » Wed, Jul 18, 2018, 12:16 AM UTC

maerF0x0 wrote: post #158

bllguo wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why you're so intent on doubling down here. There are other strategy games out there that focus on strategy more than micro mechanics. Why not play those instead? I don't think "I want to play Starcraft but without micro" is a compelling argument for changing Starcraft. I actually think it's pretty selfish to make these demands. It's a reasonable premise for finding or even creating a new game.

SC2 was simply an example. Clearly this is about the set of many RTS games more than just one game. And to be upfront, yes, "I want to play Starcraft but without micro" is a decent representation of my gaming desires. I may just go ahead and make such a game sometime and, I suppose, we'll see if anyone likes such a game dynamic. It would definitely introduce a very meta game where creating and tuning your "loadout" c…

Tooth and Tail is pretty close to what you're looking for, perhaps.

Re: Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat

#273

Post by stcredzero » Wed, Jul 18, 2018, 12:23 AM UTC

Operyl wrote: post #269

stcredzero wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Now you have me curious what project you’re working on.

https://www.emergencevector.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7x2uQjLtXkY&list=PLnAL8xf0QQ...

Re: Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat

#274

Post by stcredzero » Wed, Jul 18, 2018, 12:26 AM UTC

euske wrote: post #261

Cheat, anti-cheat, antivirus, malware, and to a lesser extent debugger and profiler. All these tools are going after each other in the same territory: monitoring a certain system activity to report or intervene. To me, it looks that all these functions are traditionally in the realm of operating system. Are we going to have a new middle layer or a new OS architecture for catering things like this? I'm curious.

I'm working on this.

Re: Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat

#275

Post by stcredzero » Wed, Jul 18, 2018, 12:30 AM UTC

username3 wrote: post #192

The best way to prevent cheating is by streaming games. Game streaming services are the future of multiplayer games. Edit: I mean cloud gaming like OnLive, not Twitch.

Essentially, my game system is the low tech version of this. The game is just a dumb terminal for displaying moving objects, which are syncing to info streaming from the server. It's so simplistic and dumb, we can even enforce Fog of War. When an entity disappears, its tag and move information are simply not sent. The client then diffs it out of the set of visible things.

Re: Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat

#276

Post by stcredzero » Wed, Jul 18, 2018, 12:32 AM UTC

SteveNuts wrote: post #199

username3 wrote: post #192

The best way to prevent cheating is by streaming games. Game streaming services are the future of multiplayer games. Edit: I mean cloud gaming like OnLive, not Twitch.

Aren't there massive video latency issues with this? People spend tons of money to get the absolute best frame rates and monitor response times, I can't imagine hardcore gamers wanting to have tens of ms additional latency in their gaming.

You can have real-time games whose mechanics are designed around latency. My game is one example. In fact, I would assert that for now, you have to design around latency in real-time multiplayer games. Until round-trip latency for your entire userbase is below 40ms, it will be an issue.

Re: Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat

#277

Post by wild_preference » Wed, Jul 18, 2018, 12:38 AM UTC

VectorLock wrote: post #268

nightski wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The options presented are 1) segregate them into a separate pool, as suggested. They can then still give you money, the arms race is short circuited, and they don't impact the enjoyment of other players. 2) You ban them.

And then they possibly create an account and tread more carefully next time so they don’t lose their skins. This is behavior you can even see in streamers that get banned.

Frankly I think a zero tolerance approach to cheating makes sense and sends a more serious message. It still looks bad if cheaters exist even to other cheaters, for example a shadowbanned streamer, and makes it harder to take your game seriously.

Re: Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat

#278

Post by stcredzero » Wed, Jul 18, 2018, 12:41 AM UTC

fwip wrote: post #267

username3 wrote: post #192

The best way to prevent cheating is by streaming games. Game streaming services are the future of multiplayer games. Edit: I mean cloud gaming like OnLive, not Twitch.

What part of cloud gaming prevents aimbots? Identify enemy player's head, move mouse, click.

Here would be my solution: Either you don't have headshots, or you make aimbots a part of the game. Publish an API to let users have aimbots. Measure aimbot-ness by speed of aim, and have that status effect another stat, like "shield." ("Cranial shield feedback?") Manipulate that curve, such that the penalty only really kicks in for the truly superhuman.

Now 1) You've motivated the cheat-writing community to try and imitate very good human players, but no better. 2) Your game's mechanics de-emphasize the style of play that would've made aimbots op, making it just a player choice.

Also, not everything has to be an FPS.

Re: Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat

#279

Post by stcredzero » Wed, Jul 18, 2018, 12:42 AM UTC

sthomas1618 wrote: post #221

username3 wrote: post #192

The best way to prevent cheating is by streaming games. Game streaming services are the future of multiplayer games. Edit: I mean cloud gaming like OnLive, not Twitch.

This isn't going to work. Latency will make this dead on arrival for multiplayer games.

It depends on the particular game. You can make the game mechanics, such that round-trip latency doesn't really matter.

Re: Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat

#280

Post by reificator » Wed, Jul 18, 2018, 12:51 AM UTC

exgamedev wrote: post #212

Back when I worked in games we would detect cheaters and then shadow ban. Quarantine them by only matching them into games with other cheaters. You may still have to ban them from certain elements of your game, like player economies (auction house, etc). But the more legitimate their experience looks the better. The idea is that instead of fully banning them and triggering the next iteration of the arms race, you tra…

Sure. Until you're playing Dark Souls for the first time, you get summoned to help someone with a boss, and then get invaded by someone with a 360 degree one-shot kill spell that breaks all your weapons and armor, gives you an egghead that you can't remove unless you know where to go, and gives you an item that marks you as a cheater so you now get constantly invaded by exclusively cheaters.

The item that marks you as a cheater might have been a drop in another invasion, I don't remember. The point remains, once the cheaters realize you have a separate cheaters' matchmaking system, they will weaponize that too.