ID verification for better game experience

[76561198347967110]

Hello,

I love CS:GO. But I hate hackers. In 10 matches there are at least two games, where another guy is obviously hacking. I copied sketchy profile URLs to check them, and some got a vac ban afterwards.

How can such a popular game have so a bad anti cheat system? Its so frustrating to play an hour, winning, and then the other guy turns on his spinbot and kills everyone.

If a hacker gets VAC-baned, he will just create a new account.

So I have the idea:

Everyone CAN upload his ID, valve verifies it and then you will play only against others, who verified themself too. This prevents hackers to play with verified people after getting banned.

[Yasahi]

1. Valve has no way of verifying IDs from around the world.
2. Valve has no right to such information in many countries around the world.
3. Has been discussed to death, is not something that Valve can really do.
4. Use the search next time you think you have a good idea.

[Mad Scientist]

Why not just push for you can only play the game at 16+ with a verifiable government ID?

The anticheats are doing well, randomized bans from a detection of a cheat is largely a thing so cheat creators don't know what changes/updates pass through. Cheaters don't mind making new accounts and buying the game again or buying hijacked accounts, only so much can be done before people try for more fascist-like allowances on who can play what with what papers.

"Papers, please".
Go to the store "Papers, please"
Buy something "Papers, please"

You can see why this would be just a stepping stone towards a much worse idea.

I understand where you're going with this, but doesn't CS also have "trust factor" for some matchmaking for reasons like that?

[Gwarsbane]

Granaten-Gretel님이 먼저 게시:

Everyone CAN upload his ID, valve verifies it and then you will play only against others, who verified themself too. This prevents hackers to play with verified people after getting banned.

Everyone CAN Photoshop their ID. There is this thing called google, you can find where to buy legit IDs for people at pennies on the dollar because so many identities have been stolen over the years.

Valve has no way to actually verify that ID as they have no access to government servers that would have that info. I don't have a Canadian ID, I have one from my province, so Valve would have to go to every single state/province/area and get access to databases they have ZERO hope of actually getting access to. So now Valve won't be dealing with just hundreds of individual databases that they won't be given access to, they would have to deal with potentially thousands of different databases that they won't be given access to.

This prevents nothing because as mentioned you can literally buy peoples IDs and no access to databases to verify those IDs.


Also uploading your ID to any store, let a lone a gaming store seems like a REALLY bad idea no matter how big that store is.

[Zekiran]

How exactly invasive do you WANT a store front to be?

How about we don't.

How about, "search before posting" too. Please.

Also, if you're experiencing a lot of cheaters in CSGO, improve your trust factor and play with friends. There will *always* be cheaters, everywhere. Vac and Overwatch and Vacnet are *great* at what they do.

[Watermelon {JESUS IS LORD}]

+1 nice idea

[Tolkien Book Fan]

Here in Australia we have National Police Checks where you send a ton of personal ID material through an authorised agency and they get a Police Check done that you can then email to anyone that requests it. So Valve wouldn't have to receive and check IDs itself.

However, there are lots of other issues. It would cost every player $50 or similar local price every year to play a free video game, assuming a country or American state has such a service. You would have to persuade Valve to employ people or put in software to verify that a million people or so have sent in their Police Checks. You would have to persuade the police to do all these checks just to enable people to play a free computer game, and Valve that they want the police asking why a free computer game requires it. The media would doubtless have a field day of course.

And while this theoretically might cut down on cheaters returning to the game, it wouldn't increase the number of cheaters getting caught, which seems to be the actual problem, at least according to the people constantly complaining about it. Persuading people to report cheaters more often and persuading Valve to improve VAC if they can seems to me something that would actually improve things for you.

[Crazy Tiger]

IDs aren't mandatory everwhere. Plenty of people in the world don't actually have IDs.

It's also questionable whether Valve can ask it. In many countries only selected companies actually are required to see and/or check an ID. Valve and gaming/tech companies do not fall under those in my country, for example.

When I connected my daughters Microsoft account to mine through family mode years ago, they wanted my ID as well. I pointed out to them in a nice letter that they cannot ask nor demand it from me, with references to the pages of our government. They proceeded to connect my daughters account to mine without further asking for the ID.

[Carphi]

no age verf- ist the best- kids always gonna get their games somehow..... better through big sites like steam.

[REAPER]

I suggested a better idea in my post. Have players be able to report same as normal, but when you search for a match, it compares your blocked/reported list to the players in the prospective match, at which point if there is someone you previously reported (i.e. hacker, griefer, abusive behavior, comm abuser, smurf, anything that you dislike in a player, be it friendly of foe), it researches for a new match, thereby negating the chances of you ever dealing with the same hacker twice in verified matchmaking.

Valve doesnt review the reported clients themselves, they introduced overwatch to force the community to waste 15min per person per player to watching a cringy match with a hacker, so they can verify whether or not they were hacking, followed by a VAC ban if enough overwatch users flagged it for the same offence. Which is unfair to the community as it involves wasting your own time to better the chances of you having a fair match.

But by comparing your blacklist to the players in the lobby, there is a 100% chance that you will never deal with the same hacker again on the same account, which is atleast an improvement...

Also when they finally get around to banning a player, they should not only ban their account, but blacklist their banking details so they cannot make a new account and repeat their offence as well as blacklisting their MAC addresses that have been used by the account, so they cannot ever make a new account on any of the PCs they've used in the past, they'd be forced to buy an entirely new PC just to get a non-banned account, which makes VAC alot more scary than it currently is, as it would have permanent consequence for any offenders.

I dont like asking for support, but please upvote my discussion so they actually review it and implement the changes, it's the best option I have seen to date for dealing with a toxic community.

https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/10/3084376689327022184/?tscn=1616894543

[Crashed]

Regarding MAC addresses, does Valve collect that info? And if so is it still vulnerable to spoofing or redirection to a cheap USB NIC that could be replaced after a ban?

MAC addresses are typically used by the local network to identify devices within that network at the "data link" layer but aren't used over the Internet as IP is on the Network layer.

[Supafly]

How exactly can Valve confirm our identities? Not like fake ID's aren't easy enough to make. I went to the states years ago and used my UK driving license for ID during the first day. No where accepted because they couldn't tell if it was real or fake. I had to take my passport out for the rest of the trip. Couldn't use a passport now with the Covid situation and let it expire. Plenty of paople both young and old don't have a password or driving.

Pretty sure there would also be legal issues with this.

REAPER님이 먼저 게시:

I, they should not only ban their account, but blacklist their banking details so they cannot make a new account and repeat their offence as well as blacklisting their MAC addresses that have been used by the account, so they cannot ever make a new account on any of the PCs they've used in the past, they'd be forced to buy an entirely new PC just to get a non-banned account, which makes VAC alot more scary than it currently is, as it would have permanent consequence for any offenders.

I have 4 bank accounts with 3 different banks.

IP, Mac ID, hardware ID can all be faked and/or changed. If that became the normal thing it'd be faked before they cheat so the ban affects things the cheater doesn't actually use/have.

What happens to others in my home. I'm not the only one that games from here.

Also have the fact that for none knowledgeable people that may be used hardware end up buying hardware that had a ban attached to it.