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Comment by arcatek | Hacker News Reader

That's interesting. However, I wonder ... don't you think it can be abused in some games that try to compensate lag? For example, what if they use a code similar to:

  delay = currentFrameTime - lastFrameTime
  playerPosition += direction * delay

I know that some games (such as Diablo III) may automaticallt ban you if you happen to run a program that may be used to cheat (they detect that via a background process check).

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I have thought about this. In fact I even asked Gabe Newell about whether the use of this program might falsely trigger some anti-cheat mechanism within Steam. (He hasn't replied yet.) So, I guess until I get more official information, please proceed with caution and use at your own risk. That being said, that would imply that using Process Explorer or PsSuspend could also get you banned, since those applications also have the ability to suspend threads.

Yeah do be very careful with this, many anti-cheat programs are very trigger-happy.

Some time ago I had an application crash on a development machine while I was playing a game. On my dev machine crashes go straight to ollydbg. Next thing I know I'm kicked from the game, and it tells me to stop 'using cheat programs'. Go figure :p

Another reason you should cloak your Ollydbg :)

https://tuts4you.com/download.php?list.3 https://tuts4you.com/download.php?view.2425

Heh, spotify did this too, if you had any debugger running then it would just instantly shut down. It probably still does it.

He wrote it's useful for singleplay games that have an intro. If you use it in multiplayer games you certainly will simply drop out of the game as you will loose the connection or what you described depending on the server implementation.

That doesn't just apply to multiplayer, though. OP said Diablo 3, which is multi OR single player. Many games now use those phone-home anti-cheating measures (or drm measures) even when you aren't actually playing with anyone else.

Is Diablo III single player? When I played it at the release, connecting to a remote server was required (which is a shame, btw. I will miss the modding community that Diablo II had).

It is multiplayer only (always connected) but you can play it alone.

It can be single-player, but you still need a connection to do so.

Is this also true for the console port(s)?

Diablo 3 is an always-online game; the reason is that you can take the items you earn in single player and use them for your multiplayer character (and vice-versa). Their security is extra tight because up until recently, said items could be traded for real money. And you don't want anyone to be able to generate things like that offline.

Although they did, there were some item duplication bugs. And even that was irrelevant, since there were quickly popping up small armies of item / gold farmers; every once in a while they'd get banned, but by then they would've earned enough money to buy another fifty copies of the game and continue.

Sure, the issue is that even if you don't use it, the simple fact that it is running in the tray may be enough for an anti-cheat to trigger. Just something to keep in mind.

A popular multiplayer cheat is to suspend the network stack somehow for a split second while their team gets into place and resume causing the game's network code to resync and players will teleport into advantageous positions or become extremely difficult to target or hit during key moments. It's very hard to detect especially if the program doing the suspending is on the router and not the system running the actual game.

Example of this in action: https://youtu.be/I5QyNA6H6rY

It could be considered an exploit in games like Dark Souls where other players can invade. Just pause the game for a few seconds and their connection will drop.

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