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IT Games

Cheat Devs Are Ready for Modern Warfare 2 (vice.com) 58

The PC beta for Modern Warfare 2 was only online for just over a weekend, but cheat developers quickly managed to create wallhacks anyway, according to videos created by multiple cheat developers. From a report: The news highlights the constant cat and mouse game between cheat developers and the companies that make competitive video games, and shows that Modern Warfare 2 will be no different. Warzone, the massively popular free-to-play battle royale game built on top of Call of Duty's mainline games, was notoriously overrun by cheaters before publisher Activision and the development studios working on the game introduced a new anti-cheat mechanism called Ricochet. "I started developing a MW2 beta cheat right away. I was done the same day, the first day of the beta. My users got access once the cheat was complete & tested," Zebleer, the pseudonymous administrator of Phantom Overlay, a cheat provider that has a long history of selling cheats for Warzone, told Motherboard in an email.

[...] EngineOwning, another cheat developer, published a video to their Twitter account over the weekend appearing to show their own product in action, although it didn't seem to be ready for the beta. "Our MW2 cheat is now done and we're currently in close testing," the tweet read. "This means our cheat will be ready when the game launches, with all the features you'd expect." The Anti-Cheat Police Department, a researcher who has tracked the cheating ecosystem and who reports offending players, claimed in their own tweet that "Ricochet has this shitty cheat detected they are just a scam operation at this point."

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Cheat Devs Are Ready for Modern Warfare 2

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  • Cheaters never pro....oh wait, they do.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by NFN_NLN ( 633283 )

      > Cheaters never pro....

      Nancy Pelosi outperforms most Wallstreet traders
      https://seekingalpha.com/artic... [seekingalpha.com]

      "Why Your Congressman Is A Better Investor Than You" - October 2015
      https://finance.yahoo.com/news... [yahoo.com]

      • by gweihir ( 88907 )

        It is easy to do when nobody dares to call you out in using what is essentially insider information.

    • by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

      When the game developers gives up and let people do whatever then it's called mods instead.

      Sometimes allowing for mods can extend the life of a game and increase the popularity of it.

      • Cheats don't really count as mods, they actually hurt the lifetime of a game and its popularity. People who don't want to cheat but want a fair challenge will move away from games that are infested with cheaters, and the cheaters won't stay either once they run out of easy targets that they can easily shoot even without any skill, because the only players left is other cheaters, and playing on a level field is no fun if you have zero skill.

      • Yes, oh so very much YES! Paradox and Squad get this. How old, exactly, are Stellaris and Kerbal? Both are still regulars in plenty of people's gaming rotations, including my own, and the mods... yes even mods that would be called "cheats" by the stick-up-the-ass types... are a big reason why. I don't fathom why so few gaming companies get this. They're so wrapped up in their own platonic ideas of how people should "experience their creations" that they've lost sight of the fact that these are GAMES an

        • Singleplayer and casual coop games. Mod away

          Competitive multiplayer. They are cheats.

          It's not that hard of a concept. No one is complaining about little Timmy cheating his way through the latest campaign on veteran or turning all the baddies into Thomas the tank engine (do they even do campaigns in cod anymore?), but when he goes online with his wallhacks, aimbot and all the trimmings people rightly take umbrage.
          • LOL... If you actually think that the Stellaris and Kerbal mod scenes (Oh, and let's throw in Fallout 4 too since I'm in the middle of a replay with a new build right now.) amount to "Timmy" playing with "Thomas the tank engine", you *really* need to get out more and stop eating only what the game studios spoon-feed you. And frankly, I don't give a rip about anyone taking umbrage at how I care to play my games. I mind my own business. They can mind theirs.

            • Did you read the post? Don't take your mods into online and no one does give a shit.
              • Yes. And I'm not going to be deflected off-topic. Do you know anything about the mod/cheat scenes for ANY of the games I mentioned? (And I forgot to include Surviving Mars... another Paradox title... in my list.) They are extensive and sophisticated and in most cases ADD content and complexity. Some Stellaris mods, for example, are total conversions to the Star Trek or Star Wars universes that change the gameplay completely. What they do NOT do is reduce the game to the level of a toddler playing with

                • I'm not saying anything bad about mods at all and I'm not sure why you think I am. If you are as into mods at you make out you'll know that putting Thomas the tank engine into things is quite a memey one. No I don't know about mods for kerbal, stellaris and others you mentioned because I don't play those but id be surprised if there isn't a Thomas the tank engine mod for at least stellaris. And for the third time, in a single player (or agreed upon environment) mod away. Go fucking nuts. Just not in competi
                • There you go. Stellaris Thomas the tank engine mod right on Steam.

                  https://steamcommunity.com/sha... [steamcommunity.com]
  • So like...they're not even making new names for their yearly refresh?

    • But of course these are new names, citizen! Implying that there are already games with these names and you might play them instead of buying the new ones would be treason. Have a nice day-cycle!

  • This is one of the reasons they put betas out to the public. Expect fixes for those hacks before final code goes out. This is a good thing. I see nothing bad about this as the article implies.

    • There are no fixes when the server trusts the client, just halfway measures. Unless the server is able to validate all inputs, and only send gamestate info that the client is supposed to be aware of, cheats will always be possible.
      • Yup, all true and I'm sure I'm not the only one here to have said the same thing to the dev team, PM, management and others.

        But in this case, it is still beta and now certain hacks have been revealed. They can move to server, try to obscure, try to validate better, erc than they have now. And at least future players will know in advance the game was pre-hacked before they spend a lot of time on it if these things aren't fixed.

        If I was at the company and knew about this stuff, I would have suggested a bet

      • To prevent wallhacks servers should do own render from point of view of each client and withhold exact coordinates of enemy actors deemed invisible. Probably this would make server several orders of magnitude less scalable though.
      • by djinn6 ( 1868030 )

        Even if you do everything on the server, aimbots are still possible. There's no way for you to verify it's the player inputting mouse movements or clicks without a massive invasion of privacy. You'd have to force their webcams on and hire someone to watch the video feed for mismatches between hand movement and in-game movement. And if someone's computer doesn't have a webcam connected, you'll need to secretly install one in their room.

  • And this will be used to justify privacy violating ring0 spyway anticheat on launch. That crap should be optional.
  • by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2022 @03:31PM (#62918873)

    The real problem, as always, are no-honor players that think winning is everything and it does not matter how you do it. In a sense that is a form of corruption. These assholes, of course, destroy everything in the end. If a game does not get cheating under control, I am simply not interested and stay away and many others do so too. Yes, the opportunistic and similarly honor-challenged cheat developers are a problem too, but this is a small group of people and there will always be some of them.

    Personally, I would welcome bans for whole groups of games (e.g. every multiplayer on STEAM) and based on real identities, e.g. with the credit card. Make it easier at the start, say 2 weeks, then 2 months and after they have gotten caught the 3rd time, make it 5 years. Yes, that would require good investigation, a real way to appeal and better software engineering and it would cost money. But longer-term not investing that money harms the whole industry tremendously.

    • by King_TJ ( 85913 )

      Exactly.... these are just games. IMO, it's crazy that people care so much about getting a high in-game score that they're willing to BUY cheating tools and use them, instead of just playing and enjoying the game for what it is.

      I'm not sure if they can ever solve this problem with "anti cheat" code, though I guess it helps somewhat? There definitely needs to be more of an effort to verify when cheating is going on though, and banning those user accounts from playing again. If these cheaters want to treat ch

    • I frankly don't get the idea of cheating in a multiplayer game. I could understand using a cheat to breeze through a single player game, because you want to see all the cutscenes (but even there, why bother playing at all and not just watch them on YouTube...), but in a multiplayer game, I just don't get it.

      Either you win. Then you didn't win, the cheat did. Your accomplishment is zero. You didn't do jack. The cheat did.
      Or you lose. Then you REALLY suck because you can't even win when cheating.

      So why exactl

      • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        So why exactly does someone cheat? It can only hurt your ego.

        To boost ratings.

        A rather large number of cheaters are streamers. There are video series dedicated to revealing streamers that got caught out running cheats (usually through a flash of the desktop revealing the cheat program's icon, or even better, the window of the cheat program running).

        Streamers do this to gain popularity - they want to show to their viewers they can mow down a bunch of people in a game and people like to see that and if you do

        • by gweihir ( 88907 )

          Given the number of streamers, the cheating ones cannot be more than a very small part of overall number of cheaters.

        • When a simple webcam showing the streamer and his monitor setup could have been sufficient to show off that they ain't cheating.

      • by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Me neither. Single-player, everything is fine, that is all between you and the computer. But multi-player? All you can do is some posturing based on a lie and usually the other players will _know_ it is a lie.

        It is basically griefing and disrupting other peoples entertainment and relaxation. People that do this have serious mental issues. But there are enough people around that have never understood that only real skills are yours and think faking it is just as good. The problem is that just a few of these

    • by khchung ( 462899 )

      The real problem, as always, are no-honor players that think winning is everything and it does not matter how you do it.

      That's why I only play these multiplayer games on consoles. But whenever I mentioned this, there would be a slew of PC players telling me "cheating was not a big problem on PC". So, is cheating a problem on PC or not? I don't know and don't bother to find out. I also avoid new games that pushes multiplatform multiplayer, e.g. Battlefield.

      • by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Cheating is a problem on the PC. Depending on the game, it can be a massive one. How is the situation on consoles?

        • Getting worse because consoles are pretty much just locked down PCs but still overall an order or few magnitudes better than PC.

          Let's also not forget Game Genie... I think it was the only way I ever saw the full Contra games... lol. But this was as others said the cheating for old school single player.

        • A lot harder. You can't actually install or edit files without hardware mods which are usually detected and banned pretty quick so straight up cheats are out right away. Stuff with packet modding is doable but that's a whole level of hassle most people won't go to. Glitches and bugs are exploited mercilessly, or they can be depending on the game. It's getting worse in some places in games with console/pc cross play but it doesn't take a genius to work that one out.
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      I don't trust them to investigate properly. I had an email from Nintendo once saying a comment I wrote had been removed for being unkind or rude, and if it happened again there might be consequences. When I finally figured out what the comment was it turned out to be an arrow I had drawn that indicated to players which way they needed to move on a blind fall, because the person who made the level in question neglected to provide one.

      Needless to say I submitted a formal complaint to Nintendo and got it strai

    • The real problem, as always, are no-honor players that think winning is everything and it does not matter how you do it. In a sense that is a form of corruption.

      The same is true for the developers and the legitimate players. They are completely willing to destroy the privacy of everyone in reality for nothing more than catching a few extra cheaters in a time wasting video game.

      If a game does not get cheating under control, I am simply not interested and stay away and many others do so too.

      The same applies to the general public, if the industry cannot stop it's privacy rape, those that care will stay away from the industry, and we'll make others care too.

      Personally, I would welcome bans for whole groups of games (e.g. every multiplayer on STEAM) and based on real identities, e.g. with the credit card.

      So cheat in one game and be banned from all games with ever increasing duration? Does your vengeance know no bounds? Would

    • I have a credit card with CapitalOne and they have a browser addon that lets me create as many virtual credit cards as I want that are tied to my main one. It's trivial to do this (and I use this a lot now since I've had my credit card info stolen several times).

      The problem I have is that any ID system that isn't tied to your real identity is easy to bypass, but using identifiable information that isn't easy to bypass is a privacy problem. And I'm not willing to give these companies my driver's license o
    • by mjwx ( 966435 )

      The real problem, as always, are no-honor players that think winning is everything and it does not matter how you do it. In a sense that is a form of corruption. These assholes, of course, destroy everything in the end. If a game does not get cheating under control, I am simply not interested and stay away and many others do so too. Yes, the opportunistic and similarly honor-challenged cheat developers are a problem too, but this is a small group of people and there will always be some of them.

      Personally, I would welcome bans for whole groups of games (e.g. every multiplayer on STEAM) and based on real identities, e.g. with the credit card. Make it easier at the start, say 2 weeks, then 2 months and after they have gotten caught the 3rd time, make it 5 years. Yes, that would require good investigation, a real way to appeal and better software engineering and it would cost money. But longer-term not investing that money harms the whole industry tremendously.

      The problem with that is false positives. It's easy to get a ban because someone complains about you, a permaban from every game in Steam (or at least subscribing to VAC) from one complaint would be a little unfair. This gets even worse when you've less scrupulous companies (*cough* denuvo *cough*) that install dodgy rootkits that don't report correctly, which can easily cause an auto-ban. Even a human moderator who doesn't bother verifying the complaint or has just had a hard day and swung the banhammer a

  • https://www.eurogamer.net/pubg-mobiles-new-anti-cheat-system-has-already-seen-a-50-decrease-in-cheating-during-testing/ [eurogamer.net] Won't totally prevent aimbots but will help a little, may require a super computer to calculate in 64-128 player games.
    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Most cheats are really basic. For example an aimbot I have personally seen in pubg was simply doing headshots with no preparation. What one person was doing was not seeing me for about 10 seconds and then doing a headshot while still turning around after I had opened fire from behind them. No human can do something like that. It is blatantly obvious. The thing is, any cheat that gives you a real advantage is very obvious. A cheat that does much less is less obvious or may even be hard to detect, but it does

      • Doing it once might be a lucky shot. Doing it twice might be a once in a lifetime coincidence.

        Doing it thrice means you should stop playing silly games and start playing the lottery instead...

        • by gweihir ( 88907 )

          Indeed. And that would be something that could easily be detected by server-side anti-cheat: Just keep tabs on whether some player performs on inhumane level repeatedly. That does not happen in reality, even if some people will claim they can do it.

          The story has a good idea as well: Just do not give the client all info. As network latency is getting better, you do not need the client to know about players behind walls anymore. Or at least the client does not need to know where exactly they are, just that th

          • There are some variables that are hard to take into account. Yes, some people actually CAN do no-scope headshot with frightening accuracy. Also, it is quite possible to shoot someone hiding behind cover that offers protection from being seen but that doesn't stop any bullets (like, say, plywood).

            I have a solution for the second, but not the first.

          • by djinn6 ( 1868030 )

            At some point, the client needs to know it should render the enemy player. Otherwise ordinary players can't see or hit anything either. The trouble with aimbots is it can react way faster than a real human even if you don't give it any time to prepare. And if you did ban anyone doing a series of perfect headshots, it's not particularly hard to include some randomness. And if the cheat maker is a real tryhard, they can use ML to reproduce how real top players aim. I doubt there's anything a human is doing in

          • Just keep tabs on whether some player performs on inhumane level repeatedly. That does not happen in reality, even if some people will claim they can do it.

            And yet slashdot has had three stories claiming that this is, in fact, possible, so Carlsen is just a whiny baby.

  • The seedy bottom rung of software development is full of losers. Cheat developers are scum, of course, but I'm amazed how absolutely fucking inept the phishing scams are these days. "Dear Valood Constomer, your Coinbase is has been sent a $500 money to the account. [all of that, sic]. Please to yuse below linksages if need cancel eth trnansfer! It's very impotent, we no want you scammed!".

    Bottom feeding fucking scum.

  • It's definitely an omission of developers, and that's the reason playing such games is not as entertaining as it used to be. Well, maybe it's also because I decided to switch to sports, and now I'm focused on watching the full game [parimatch.in] of various sports tournaments, but anyway, the gaming industry used to get developed way better.

Keep up the good work! But please don't ask me to help.

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