Guarding Against Physical Attacks: The Xbox One Story [video]

"User goes to Walmart, buys console and game. Drives to cabin with no internet. Sets up console and plays game".

Clearly the original design goal didn't require an initial phone home. That may have changed.

Doesn't mean they cheated, new game plus is a thing, and the summoning levels (and now weapon matchmaking) are easily gamed to allow you to invade people less well-equipped than you are.

I've seen videos of actual cheaters, who hit you with a homing soulmass and it breaks all your equipped weapons and armor. Or they never run out of stamina. Or whatever. But I've never seen one in person, and I've wasted far too much of my life on that game.

I don't think most people know how to evaluate who is cheating and who is not, and it's taken as fact that cheaters are rampant so claims of cheating are believed by default.

I'm definitely not saying that cheats don't exist, or that people don't use them. I'm saying the community at large appears to have jumped on the problem as a way to save face. "Oh he beat me, but it's only because he's wallhacking!"

Getting accused of being a cheater is actually more common. One time some guy spent 10 minutes frantically trying to convince everyone that I was aimbotting...on Pyro. I wasn't even doing that well.

I'm told that Dark Souls is the perfect storm of peer-to-peer and trusting clients, but I've only seen videos of cheaters, never in-person. And I've created many characters purely for invasions and summoning.

Amusingly enough, one of the two times I referenced above was actually in Minecraft of all places. We started noticing one player getting resources far faster than everyone else, faster than was reasonable for even a very good/lucky player. I mean multiple nether stars in the span of half an hour, that kind of thing. I think they were filling up books and that somehow let them duplicate items.