OT: Blizzard Entertainment disabled around 20,000 accounts of cheaters

[geoschmo]

20,000! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif

So more people cheat at Online Warcraft than even play Online SEIV. Like 700 times more.

We really are a niche game. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Geoschmo

[Arkcon]

from the article
The Battle.net cheaters were using one of several "map hack" tools that removed the fog of war from Online matches, allowing wussy gamers to see what their opponent is doing at all times. This sort of hacking is apparently a lot easier to devise than more serious cheats, such as allowing for infinite mana Online. Nothing like that's appeared yet, fortunately—and, with luck, it'll stay that way.
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Yeesh, just how important are bragging rights in Online games anyway. I can see someone posting it here --

"Bwa Ha Ha. My 50 Organic armor, phased shield XXII, Ultra Massive Mount Null Cannon (reload rate 1) Super Dreadnought took out your 4 Battleships. Ha. Ha. Loser. Loser."

I mean really, what's the point. Does anyone really care that much. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/confused.gif

[sparhawk]

Yes, the reason to cheat is totally unclear for me.
What is the fun of playing a game and knowing that you win, because you cheat http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/confused.gif .
Why should you play: I play because I like the kick when I win, using all of my strategies etc.
and that I know that I'm "better" than my opponents. So cheating is totally fooling yourself with the idea that you are "better" than the rest. so why cheat?????? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/confused.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/confused.gif

Like a game that I played via internet: Tribes2
It WAS a great game to play: different kinds of soldiers, can use vehicles etc.
But the game was killed after a couple of months due to cheating of players.

So this is my sollution: Game makers; don't put cheatcodes in games!!
(offcourse you still can HEX edit the game, but I think most of the cheating could be avoided if they won't include cheatcodes).

Just an opinion.

Sparhawk

[sachmo]

My theory is that it's not so much about the actual win as it is about the acceptance these people feel that they get. My question is...shouldn't they be getting that somewhere else?

[sp0rk]

It's not the cheaters that bug me so much as the guys that write the third party software in the first place. There may well have been 20,000 cheaters, but I'll bet they all used the same handfull of cheat programs.

They guys that make these programs are the ones really looking for the bragging rights amongst their own small group of peers, the programs get posted on cheat forum Boards and then your 20,000 idiots go out and give the creator some kind of ego trip.

You get the same situation in chat rooms with 'booters' and 'laggers'. When excite used the virtual places software there was a whole mini community of programmers devoted to finding and using any exploit in the servers they could find. They were organised and held classes in programming, pooling resources.

Of course, when an exploit was found a program was made, given a nice GUI with the creators name in full view and found it's way to the masses. Every time I got booted it wasn't the goon that pushed the button I got mad at, it was the goon that gave him the button to push in the first place.

[ September 13, 2002, 15:04: Message edited by: sp0rk ]

[Trajan]

The "Why cheat" discussion is always a painful one. I think any long-term on- and offline gamer has had the displeasure of dealing with the specter of cheating.

In every Online gaming experience (except this one) I have encountered cheating. What makes the major difference is how it is handled. The best experience was with the now defunct Starlance Mechcommander league, where the league administators moved quickly to eradicate any cheaters from the league.

The worse experience was either with Diablo or Starcraft. Both of those games had me running to other games within a few weeks as I found the cheating to be tooooooo pervasive.

Everquest is another example of a community where "Cheaters" are dealt with quickly. Though I have only seen a real cheat occur once and the individual was quickly Banned. Do I think others cheat in some format? Probably, though I don't really care anymore. Long-term EQ players have put it all behind them and are there socialize as much as they are to kill.

Anyhow, this (SEIVG) is by far one of the cleanest environments I have ever participated in.

Cheers!
Trajan

[Mylon]

I don't think people cheat to win as much as they cheat to "earn" prizes. I recall that there were some prizes given away to the people on the top of the Starcraft ladder, and while I'm not sure if this is the case with Warcraft III it's probaby similar.

I've actually been considering the cheat potential of SEIV a bit, just for curiosity's sake, but I _think_ it's pretty secure given how turns can be easily generated remotely, thus it really doesn't matter what the components say they do in the player's computer, it's what they say on the host computer that matters. At least, I hope this is how it works. The other issue that could become a problem is people opening up your empire. I'm not sure if they can submit your turn for you, but that omnipresent view would make things pretty difficult. This could be potentially corrected if the save files were split up and distributed to the indivudal empires instead of packaged together.

One important thing to remember about cheating is that if it is possible, it is safe to assume it will happen. Map hacks in RTS games can be very difficult to stop because at least two computers in the group need to be aware of where every unit is and their status to prevent cheating of another fashion (invincibility, free unit production, ect...), but a cheat-free option would require a "moderator" to act as the omnipresent view and distribute limited map information to the other players. Providing this service to everyone would be very expensive with some 100,000 games going on at a time, and trusting a player to be the host gives them the ability to cheat but limits the ability of the other players to do as such.

I've had my own experiences of cheating among even my own friends. Thankfully it was in single player games, but I never really could understand the practice of using "unintended features" of the game to make it less interesting. I remember in Rise of the Triad if you plugged in the god mode code, the character never stopped yawning.

[ September 13, 2002, 15:40: Message edited by: Mylon ]

[Jmenschenfresser]

If 20,000 people are cheating, the environment is so diluted that I'd call the 'cheat' a 'mod' rather than a 'cheat.' Not that it makes it any less pathetic.

***craft games blow anyway.

[Arkcon]

Originally posted by Mylon:
I remember in Rise of the Triad if you plugged in the god mode code, the character never stopped yawning.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">LOL, I never knew that. Pretty cool of them to put that in, was that Apogee, I only played the demo -- good gameplay, but they did lose interest with the blocky graphics. At least it didn't give me motion sickness like Half-Life. Seriously, I can't play these types of games.

[Wardad]

Winning can be fun, losing can be depressing. People with no ethics may see cheating as another tool. After all the next guy is likely to be cheating.

Warchild has unlearned a lot, and teaches me things I do not want to know. He would play MOO in "GOD" mode with cheats and enjoy taunting the AIs.

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Wardad:
Winning can be fun, losing can be depressing. People with no ethics may see cheating as another tool. After all the next guy is likely to be cheating.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Well, if you are playing Warcraft on Blizzard.com, odds are good he is. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[Arkcon]

Originally posted by Wardad:
Winning can be fun, losing can be depressing. .<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">IMHO, someone older than 8 years old should be begining to conquer that feeling. I started my first PBW game. I'm against an organic race, a psycic race, a temporal race, and a religious race. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif I'm playing stock Jarenar. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif I have 3 small planets. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif I'm planning a noble death for my race, not galactic conquest

Originally posted by Wardad:

He would play MOO in "GOD" mode with cheats and enjoy taunting the AIs.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Oh wait, cheating against the AI? Well, if I only intend to play for a half hour sure. Even playing well against the AI is exploiting it.

[Atrocities]

I have but one thing to say.

Ahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahaahhaahhahaahahahah ahhaahahahahahahahhaahhahahahahahahh Finally.

[ September 13, 2002, 20:09: Message edited by: Atrocities ]

[Phoenix-D]

"So this is my sollution: Game makers; don't put cheatcodes in games!!
(offcourse you still can HEX edit the game, but I think most of the cheating could be avoided if they won't include cheatcodes)."

99% of the time the cheats in MP are NOT cheat codes. These gennerally are disabled for MP, and if they are active anyone can use them.

The map hack for example wasn't a cheat code.

Phoenix-D

[Gryphin]

May be old news to some:
"Blizzard Cracks Down on Warcraft III Cheaters
09-SEP-02
Blizzard Entertainment announced on their Battle.net homepage over the weekend that they have disabled around 20,000 accounts used by gamers who cheated their way up the Warcraft III Online ladder"
Link to articale:
http://www.techinformer.com/go.cgi?id=740449

[gregebowman]

Having never played an on-line game before, I can't say anything about that kind of cheating. but I must admit that if I'm playing a game by myself, I am tempted to use cheat codes sometime, depending on how bad I'm getting beat or not getting enough money or resources. That being said, I have only used the cheat code in SEIVG once, on my very first game, mostly so I could get through it and explore all of the nuances of the game that I probably wouldn't have seen the first time around. But ever since then, I have resisted the temptation to use it. And even though I usually wind up getting beat or not progressing as fast as I could, I'm having more fun not using the code than I would have if I had used the codes.

[DavidG]

Originally posted by sparhawk:

So this is my sollution: Game makers; don't put cheatcodes in games!!
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Good idea if you mean only in MP mode. In single play mode game makers do not put in enough 'cheats' in my opinion. When I pay my $80 for a game I want to play it however I feel. If I want to ski that track with out winning all the other first let me damm it! If I don't feel like fighting that one monster 20 times let me press a button and skip ahead. If I want to cruise around that 3rd Island in Grand Theft Auto let me do it! I bought your freeking game... (sorry for the slightly OT rant http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif )

[Grandpa Kim]

DavidG said:

...don't feel like fighting that one monster 20 times... <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I know what you mean David. I hate hacking away at a monster for half an hour using up every goody and trick you've carefully stored up. In desperation, I've used cheat codes to "speed things up"... but it still feels like kissing your sister. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

Kim

[Skulky]

Also, without cheats it might be a lot harder to mod (case in point se4 although there are ways around that with the scenario making mod)

[Instar]

Ive been playing UT2k3 demo some and there are already cheats for it! The game isnt even out yet! What the heck!
(I got the whole demo in about 5 min, got to love the college lan connection! And my GF4 just rips those frames out! Heck yeah!)

[Gryphin]

Keywords: Gryphin > Cheating > Battle.net > Blizzard

Anther example of possible Keywords

[Dragon of the void]

I think you all miss the point of "cheats" in commercial games:

Games have to be tested before they are shipped. You have a QA-department to do that, BUT they are not playing the same game over and over again, they test certain features, as they get ready. And they have limited personal as well as a deadline.

The programer just finished an end-game-feature (lets say level 50), that you can access if you made certain steps in level 10. How do you test this as fast as possible ? You get a tester, skip lvl 1-10, make the right choice, skip lvl 11-50, play (test) the game.

To do that, you have to make code that allows for "cheating" (skipping lvl's, invulnerability, unlim. money, etc). What most companies do before they ship, they "block" or "hide" the code in several ways. But some clever guy is certain to find a way around this and revive the cheat-code.

And this is also why you know the cheat code even BEFORE the game is in stores: an official tester made a few bucks on the side by selling the information how to do his job (testing the game).

That said, I would like to add something: giving an advantage to one player that the others don't have (cheating) is in my opinion not in itself bad. The intention behind this is what makes the difference.

You want a true Babylon 5 mod, and get the feel of the series in the game ? Well, at least the shadows and the vorlon race SHOULD cheat, because they just mop the floor with any other race.
Is it fun to loose as the EA against the shadows ? Usually NO, but if you have a roleplaying aspect behind it that you enjoy, it may as well be YES. You want to play the vorlon yourself and win every time in single player ? Fine with me.

Whatever makes you happy.

(and sorry for long post, I will just shut up and get a life ... oh wait, I have one *g*)