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Comment by mike_d | Hacker News Reader

Providing situational feedback during gameplay by way of an overlay or audio queues is clearly cheating.

If I were an investor in this company, I'd be asking the founders what their plan is when they get banned by the major anti-cheat engines.

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listening to a song that has INJECT at the right moment put in for your perfect injects isnt cheating as long as you dont play it during tournaments, its just a metronome to practice to.

Its not a service I would ever want to use because I actually enjoy games and I find coaching it to be too much to care about, but I think "audio clues to practice" doesn't meet the bar of cheating lol.

Is there actually a song like that?

I definitely remember "maximus black" a starcraft 2 streamer talking about a song he had that had this very same setup yeah.

Your description doesn't sound like it's feedback based on game-state, though.

I see your point, but to me its starting to splice hairs because at the time the meta wasn't something that changed much, there was effectively a pre-determined set of actions in the first 10 or so minutes and most matches were less than 16 minutes so perfecting your opening via almost a programmatic efficiency was pretty normal.

The proper inject time (for instance) is just X*N seconds since game start, the second best time is right after that.

Ugh. Why don't the devs randomize things a bit so the game can be more interesting and fun than memorizing digits of pi?

Generally I would agree, and perfected build orders are part of the reason I stopped watching.

Randomizing doesn't always make games more interesting and fun, it often makes them less skill-rewarding and more frustrating. This especially shows if you play for hours every day.

Cheating in video games is a growing industry. But if they push boundaries and are a US or EU company they will be sued to splinters for it.

What tort is "helping someone cheat at a video game"?

Cheating in a game ruins other customers experience so does have a direct monetary impact which is why games companies care about it so much.

Many large studios, I specifically think of Blizzard and Jagex, have a reputation for wielding legal successfully against third party clients, phishing, trademark/branding abuse, botting, and similar activities. Further there are severe legal consequences in China and elsewhere for cheating in video games.

Even if there isn't decisive legal consequences they can carpet ban whoever they want whenever they want. Which is likely the reputation which causes the landing page of this service to be plastered with "don't worry you won't get banned" all over the place.

Thanks for sharing your feedback. We understand your concern but we are very careful to not develop any feature that would be considered as cheating for the majority of the gaming and game developer.

In my experience, may of these companies (Riot, et. al) are not particularly consistent over time or in the application of even current rules. And it's also hard to divine what "would be considered cheating" by these companies as one support person may say something is cheating, and another might consider it cheating and ban your account.

It seems very fraught and risky to use for gamers who desire that their accounts don't get banned.

That's good if it helps get cheaters banned.

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