Future of Online Gaming - What will we do about cheaters?

[^8l]

All my life, I've resented people who cheat and I have always been fair and modest about it all. I would never report someone unless I knew without a doubt that they were using third party software to increase their performance over others in a non fair way. There are so many things I want to talk about regarding online play, but I don't have the attention span of everyone. When we report someone, does VAC or Steam actually do anything? I've reported people for cheating and several months later, I see them cheating again. Same profile, same name, same digital foot print. Will Steam and/or VAC do anything about the virus (cheaters/hackers/modders) that plagues a once awesome gaming community? Or will we be forced to tolerate the insolence and ignorance that we face when we PvP?

[Valeriaan]

Konstaili a écrit :

VAC need be not so cruel and players will not cheat then, until it give a permanent ban and dont block cheater from creating new accout, new game and use cheat again... it will never stop cheaters...

It doesn't work like that, I'm afraid. In order to create an account on Steam, one has to agree to the Steam Subscriber agreement which explains that cheating on VAC-enabled servers is against the rules, and which also details the penalties for a transgression. This is effectively a contract that is signed.

Now, for every single game that is bought and installed on Steam, you need to accept the End User License Agreement, each of which qualifies as a separate contract that (to my limited knowledge with regards to modern-day law) is considered distinct from the one you signed by agreeing to the SSA. You also need to accept Steam's "terms and conditions", though (can't remember exactly what this is called).

The question is then when someone cheats on a VAC-secured game, if he is in breach of the contract pertaining specifically to that game, or if he is in breach of the contract he signed with regards to his account, or both.

If he is deemed to be in breach solely of the contact pertaining to the game specifically, they cannot respond disproportionally. They cannot ban one user on multiple games across the board or suspend his entire account just because this person has breached the contract of a single game. If they were to do so, they would in turn be suspending multiple contracts to respond to a single breach in contract - it doesn't work like that.

The way I see it, in this situation Steam/Valve can only respond within the specific context of that single game for which a transgression has been established. You cheat in one game, you're banned for that game. There are a few exceptions to this rule which are all detailed here: https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=7849-Radz-6869.

With account-specific transgressions it's different. I don't know what would happen in case it's deemed the contract was broken with regards to the account or when it's deemed that both the account and game-related contracts were broken.

To give you an idea of what happens when it's deemed you've broken the account-specific contract: earlier on, if your account was suspended (in the case of a chargeback, for example) you were left unable to play *any* of the games on that account. This was updated a little over a year ago; now you should be able to access the games you've paid for even if your account has been suspended.
I don't know why it was changed (no do I want to pretend to know) but it might possibly have been to avoid controverse in what is a bit of a grey area from a legal point of view.

From a legal perspective, the contract you've signed when you created your account (by signing the SSA) and the contracts you've signed when you bought and installed games on Steam (by signing the EULA) are separate and distinct from one another.

Of course, in reality they're very much linked: your games are on your Steam account - or put otherwise, the only way to access those games is through your Steam account. The question, then, is really if those contracts are truly considered as completely separate or if one might feasibly be interpreted to supercede the other. I'm inclined to the latter is not the case, though.

In any case, from a practical point of view, Steam/Valve themselves seem to regard them as separate. Even when your account is suspended you still have access to the games you've paid for, and when you get VAC-banned this only applies to the server(s)/game(s) on/for which the transgression was perceived (with a few exceptions). That's probably the most convenient option as well - no legal hassle involved.

[Mendoza]

Archduke a écrit :

Mendoza a écrit :

Any game that aimbot/wall hack is detected...deleted and never allowed to be loaded on that acc again IMO

Are you referrting to the game being deleted & not loaded agaion, or the "aimbot/wall hack"[sic]?

If it's the former, thern the VAC system of banning online play on secured servers pretty much represents the best equivalent within legal liomits across the globe.
If it's the latter, there are very striong legal arguments preventing this sort of intrusion into a person's hard-drive and data storage that would make such a concept extremely risky lawsuit ground for any company and would also be very difficult to correctly implement, especially since many cheats are detected via the memory process threads rather than specific file (even id thoise files have known SHA or MD5 etc. hashes)

___EDIT (BEcause I missed the post I quoted below and didn't want to double-post)___

p4nzer_77 a écrit :

I think if VAC implemented something that could detect users that never miss the target we would be able to at least weed out a few aimbotters. As far as wallhacks go we simply cannot do anything about it unless VAC detects the cheat which happens rarely. If you google CSGO hacks you will find countless websites that offer free cheats (easily detected). Those sites are plagued with members trying to find out how to stay safe when using such cheats. I don't understand why Valve doesn't do anything about those websites. Or at least use those websites to their advantage so they can get a better understanding of what scripts/hacks are being used.

There's very little that can be done with regards to these sites. Also, potentially, the number of these sites offering cheats that end up being easily detected may actually benefiot the VAC system in terms of resulting in banned cheaters (a proportion of which WILL learn a lesson and not cheat again)
Even if it could be proven that such cheat websites are in some way breaking some law or other, would it be worth Valve's while to actively pursue making a claim when ultimately, the real perpatrators are those who are creating the "real" cheats and making money from selling these (though not directly, they sell account access which allows for up[ to date downloads). [/quote]


Im talking about the latter....change the TOS....to steam if you use a cheat or hack that enables you to kill players with use of aimbot or wallhacl delete the game. The same way Steam allows and checks games for updates. It locks your account out of that game. When steam loads it checks you acc id vs your game list and will not allow you to load the game. Hell I even say delete their steam account for all I care.

Without harsh punishment there is no reason not to hack......you make it where cheating with aimbot means = acc or game deletion.

My problem is after using steam for 8 years.....when you play 1000+ hours of FPS you can spot aimbot extremely easily...wallhack is a little trickier if the player really trying to hide it.....

But when I see Aimbotters in MW3 reach 100k+ kills with a 34+ kdr that is absolutely in excusable. I dont care if VAC uses delayed bans.....allowing a player to reach 100,000+ kills and they still have there account is a disgrace to anti-cheat detection/monitoring.

You think for all the money valve makes they could have a small team that actively looks for cheaters in the games they have in thier platform.

[Nyet]

Tar and feather!

[Satoru]

@Valeriaan

Steam has the capability to suspend your entire acount for cheating if they choose to.

Other services may suspend you and other accounts in any way they wish once they detect cheating for example

1) Xbox live suspends teh entire account for modifying your Avatar. You lose xbox live and all purchased products

2) Forza's dev Turn10 has a policy that if you cheat they permaban you and your console. In addition they perma-ban ANY ACCOUNT THAT HAS TOUCHED THE CONSOLE.

Basically they can ban you and your account any 8 ways from sunday.

[Valeriaan]

Satoru a écrit :

@Valeriaan

Steam has the capability to suspend your entire acount for cheating if they choose to.

Other services may suspend you and other accounts in any way they wish once they detect cheating for example

1) Xbox live suspends teh entire account for modifying your Avatar. You lose xbox live and all purchased products

2) Forza's dev Turn10 has a policy that if you cheat they permaban you and your console. In addition they perma-ban ANY ACCOUNT THAT HAS TOUCHED THE CONSOLE.

Basically they can ban you and your account any 8 ways from sunday.

Yes, you're right, I had it wrong. I wasn't too sure about it myself (like I said, not an expert on current-day law), so I've since re-read the SSA and this is also what it explicitly states. I'll quote it to further corroborate your point:

Valve may terminate your Account or a particular Subscription for any conduct or activity that Valve believes is illegal, constitutes a Cheat, or which otherwise negatively affects the enjoyment of Steam by other Subscribers. You acknowledge that Valve is not required to provide you notice before terminating your Subscriptions(s) and/or Account, but it may choose to do so.

(from: http://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/?l=dutch, section 4. Online conduct, cheating and illegal behavior)

This means that the SSA you sign when creating an account does in fact supercede the individual terms and agreements (EULA) of any game you buy (which are technically all contracts in and of themselves).

Whenever you purchase a game on Steam you also have to agree to the (Steam) "rules and conditions" again, or what it's called (don't know by heart) - which reinforces this point even further.

Thanks for clearing this up. :-)

[Sebastian Nielsen]

The best idea to stop cheating, is to remember the "rule of internet security":
Never EVER trust the client. This applies to all client-server coding, regardless if you code a web application, game, medical records application, home automation server, whatever. Always assume the client is malicious! Always check imput. Always check everything is legit.

So the best anticheat security would be like OnLive. That also stops piracy completely.
Think of that, your game "client" only consist of something like RDP (Remote Desktop) that "streams" your input to the game server, and the game server "streams" the rendered scene to you, like a TV or movie stream.
Since a video stream (MPEG4 or something like that) does not contain any metadata on the objects, its just a picture, and the player has to judge which objects to shoot at. Only way for a cheater to succeed would be to scan the image and try to deduce the objects.
But thats pretty impossible - guess why CAPTCHA is sucessful in web forms?

That would give complete security for the game.
Yes 100% COMPLETE CHEAT PROTECTION!

A bonus is that no local storage on the game client is needed except for configuration files, input configuration can be shared across multiple games, and the rig does not need to be top-of-the-notch.
You could even game CS:GO from the mobile, or game for example Call of Duty III: BO from your netbook with a single-core 1,6ghz atom processor with 1gb RAM.
Everything is run and rendered by server in a streamed game system.

[Tito Shivan]

Sebastian Nielsen a écrit :

The best idea to stop cheating, is to remember the "rule of internet security":
Never EVER trust the client. This applies to all client-server coding, regardless if you code a web application, game, medical records application, home automation server, whatever. Always assume the client is malicious! Always check imput. Always check everything is legit.

So the best anticheat security would be like OnLive. That also stops piracy completely.
Think of that, your game "client" only consist of something like RDP (Remote Desktop) that "streams" your input to the game server, and the game server "streams" the rendered scene to you, like a TV or movie stream.
Since a video stream (MPEG4 or something like that) does not contain any metadata on the objects, its just a picture, and the player has to judge which objects to shoot at. Only way for a cheater to succeed would be to scan the image and try to deduce the objects.
But thats pretty impossible - guess why CAPTCHA is sucessful in web forms?

That would give complete security for the game.
Yes 100% COMPLETE CHEAT PROTECTION!

A bonus is that no local storage on the game client is needed except for configuration files, input configuration can be shared across multiple games, and the rig does not need to be top-of-the-notch.
You could even game CS:GO from the mobile, or game for example Call of Duty III: BO from your netbook with a single-core 1,6ghz atom processor with 1gb RAM.
Everything is run and rendered by server in a streamed game system.

The ♥♥♥♥ of such a system have to be taken into consideration because they are not small.
-No ability for modding/custom gaming (being a pillar of PC Gaming since forever)
-No gaming at all without internet connection.(And we cursed Xbox one for calling home once a day)
-Medium level/console-ish graphics (Onlive worked at mid-level detail 720p)
-Need of a fast,reliable, unmettered internet connection (That's far from being a standard in many places)

The fact that Onlive itself went under makes a pretty clear point it's not close to being a practical solution in a near future

[Just wait,Time change..]

Becoming everyday Feedback info Oraclle Cloud Computing a new revolution of computing and structure. there will big changes in the future.

[d3v]

Tito Shivan a écrit :

The fact that Onlive itself went under makes a pretty clear point it's not close to being a practical solution in a near future

when did Onlive go under?

[Satoru]

d3vious a écrit :

Tito Shivan a écrit :

The fact that Onlive itself went under makes a pretty clear point it's not close to being a practical solution in a near future

when did Onlive go under?

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/onlive-we-didn-t-go-bankrupt-we-didn-t-shut-down-we-just-restructured/0112768

They're more or less a non-entity at this point.

Gaikai had a better model, which was to license the technology to devs or publishers to give 'instant demos' to people. That made a lot more sense business wise. Which is why sony bought them.

[-|WaD|- BigMike™]

Most (if not all) cheating is done through what used to be called CSH (Client Side Hacks). You can vastly reduce CSHs by taking the power away from the client. You have the dedicated server determine movement, hit/miss, etc and the client becomes a dumb terminal, sending only input information. The client would still display the graphics. This would eliminate everything except wall hacking (invisible walls, or z-buffer fiddles, etc). But you could counter that by not sending the info of player locations, if the player is occluded by a wall. Wall hack all you want, then, as you wont see what is not there to see.

Downside: lag would be a major concern.

[Τhe Rolling Cheese Wheel]

-|WaD|- BulletMagnet a écrit :

Most (if not all) cheating is done through what used to be called CSH (Client Side Hacks). You can vastly reduce CSHs by taking the power away from the client. You have the dedicated server determine movement, hit/miss, etc and the client becomes a dumb terminal, sending only input information. The client would still display the graphics. This would eliminate everything except wall hacking (invisible walls, or z-buffer fiddles, etc). But you could counter that by not sending the info of player locations, if the player is occluded by a wall. Wall hack all you want, then, as you wont see what is not there to see.

Downside: lag would be a major concern.

Everything you just describe already exist in every competently programmed Multiplayer FPS game.

[Sebastian Nielsen]

BulletMagnet: Better is to render all server-side too. Then the client can't do wallhacks either, since only thing sent is whatever the player should see on screen.

Eg, same technology that is being used to remote control when you working from home and control the company's desktop computer, same technology could be used for cheat-safe gaming.

You know RDP?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_Desktop_Protocol
It's microsofts protocol for streaming mic + input to a server and then streaming a screen picture + sound back to client. That protocol could be reused, but instead of using a framebuffer (which is highly inefficient for streaming full screen applications), it could use some efficient streaming protocol like MPEG4 or something more efficient.

Then theres nothing to tamper with. Even if you completely read the memory, the only thing stored in client side is your imput being sent to server, and whats about to be shown on screen. Nothing more, theres nothing to "hack".
Only thing a cheater could do is a image based aimbot, but that would even false trigger on corpses and such.

Cheating solved - RDP!