Comment by riversflow | Hacker News Reader

Comment by riversflow | Hacker News Reader

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Probably going to be an unpopular opinion in this thread, but I am involved in a couple of medium sized (100-200 active members) gaming communities which have to deal with cheaters sometimes, one of which is fairly expert—many members are Global Elite (top Competitive rank) in CSGO, with many of the top players being ex minor league esports people(they all LAN fairly regularly so I can say confidently they aren’t cheaters), and I have never heard (as in someone knows someone) of anyone in over a decade in both communities getting unfairly banned from a AAA title or any title for that matter. And if they did it would definitely be the talk of the Discord/forums, getting called a cheater is pretty much the norm for these folks, so getting a ban would be something between hilarious and a slap in the face. So this is likely exceedingly rare, and many of these people are cheating, and consider their cheats benign and are just in denial that their macros are actually getting detected and earning them bans. Perhaps not OP, and perhaps not the sibling comments, but in my experience cheaters are typically pathological about not cheating.

Cheating of that type is so easy and common in many multiplayer games, and it really sucks the fun out of multiplayer when someone isn’t following the rules.

False bans do happen. Even VAC, which isn't known for banning willy-nilly, will sometimes remove bans because they do make mistakes. Many other anti-cheats have had more or less prominent issues with false bans, for example GTA Online as well as other games had multiple incidents where they banned people using software like Afterburner/RTSS (and subsequently unbanned them). GTA even had exploits which allowed other cheaters to ban other players.

The sentiment of your comment remains popular in gaming circles. But as software people on hacker news, doesn't it seem rather obvious that complex software like anti-cheats embedded in hugely complex software like games will have bugs? Add many people overclocking their computers to the brink of instability and silent corruption into the mix and you will have issues. (VAC must've kicked me dozens of times for failing game integrity checks because of this - now imagine if that's a ban, like Activision does. A checksum failure on a gaming PC hardly proves cheating beyond even a passing doubt)

> doesn't it seem rather obvious that complex software like anti-cheats embedded in hugely complex software like games will have bugs?

No doubt, and it does suck that some people get caught up in it. It’s also lame that they prevent you from playing single player, but I’d guess this is to make engine exploit development more expensive and time consuming. I do think that they should have a manual review appeal, not sure how that would work without undermining the anti-cheat or being extremely invasive.

I honestly hate that I’m defending Acti-bliz, they rake in hoards of cash and become more predatory every year. Recently they downgraded and deleted my favorite game, giving it one of the worst monetization schemes in PC. But cheating is a serious issue, I have abandon a number of games because cheating at my skill level became too common.

First, protect legitimate customers. Second, deal with cheaters.

Protecting legitimate customers and dealing with cheaters is the same thing.

A counter argument would be that, those who are allowed by the anti-cheat to play freely for a decade, are those who were filtered down by the anti-cheat to who it sees as a "good player" to itself. But when the anti-cheat finds someone that they do not like, for example a developer who has tooling such as CheatEngine, WireShark, AHK, or WSL installed, will get discriminated against in preemptive bans, unable to get more than be a casual in said games.

It also does not help that "good players" by the anti-cheat's eye will often enable this bias by doubling down whatever the anti-cheat says is bad. A black box that no human fully understands the behavior of, even its own developers, yet is ultimately trusted without review of anyone hit by a ban. A system ripe for enabling bias to absolutely excessive proportions, and need to be held in better check.

> when the anti-cheat finds someone that they do not like, for example a developer who has tooling such as CheatEngine, WireShark, AHK, or WSL installed.

A lot of these folks are software developers! I’d have to do a poll to get wider info, but I know several people have AHK, WireShark and WSL installed, and have for years. But especially with online multiplayer games, the sentiment has always been that you necessarily give up some freedom to participate. For example, I don’t actually know a single person who dislikes ring 0 kernel anti-cheat, dubbed “spyware” by many.

> absolutely excessive proportions.

Citation badly needed, there are a lot of cheaters! The fact that I can buy a Cronus from a local gamestop, today, speaks volumes. I’d like to get cheaters in check first, how about we criminalize assisting in cheating, not actually enforce it through state-sponsored law enforcement, but make it so that gaming companies have an easy path to shut it down and bankrupt cheat-device manufacturers/retailers/importers. Something like DMCA. In the same bill we can hold game/anti cheat vendors accountable for bans.

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