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Comment by ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 | Hacker News Reader

Back when communities hosted servers instead of companies, it seemed less common, even though it was easier to do.

Back then you could just quit the server/match if somebody was obviously cheating (or they got banned).

With competitive matchmaking cheaters can hold players hostage until the end of the match, as leaving incurs penalties and cooldowns that temporarily ban you from playing.

There are also cheaters on old games (Modern Warfare II (2009)) that will inject code into your client to disable the quit menu, so you have to dashboard. I can't imagine what psyche someone must have to not only cheat, but force people to play against them.

Because those were community servers often built around community. There weren't a lot of them either.

If admins allow cheating - people that want to play would leave the server

If live in a non-metro area, you probably have a handful of server your latency allows you to play on - getting banned would be a big suck

Now you just click "play game" and you get match with some strangers you might never play ever again with. Financially, those privately hosted servers no longer make economical sense for game publishers.

Because games were less common. If you look at community hosted servers now they commonly have more anti cheat, not less. Counterstrike with FaceIT and ESEA. Even FiveM for GTA V rolled out a custom anti cheat before it was added to the official game.

That was not my personal experience. CS and Warcraft 3 community lobbies featured rampant cheating. Way more than CS:GO and Dota 2.

Life was a bit simpler then. At that point in time the leaders also did not get millions for their wins.

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