I am writing this to complain about the entire system of anticheating. VAC etc all fall into this category. First and foremost, cheating is something that is given. People who cheat, cheat to piss others off. Plain and simple. If you can read memory and write to it, you can hack. There is no system of banning that will stop it. Banning players is a complete waste of time, because for $30, you can have a full undetected hack for about 2 months and another key. Now, sites like PBBans rely on the following:
A large group of clueless users who are more concerned with banning players than stopping cheats. I just looked at some ban lists, and they are screenshots of players with ESP running. I found it funny though because the people in the screenshots were saying ‘fuck you I hope you die’
To continue further. I am not advocating cheating. It’s a given. I used to write them, so I know a good bit about them.. One thing people don’t realize is that game developers don’t want to do anything about it to save money on buying worthless products like PB or the others. You simply need to do tricks like stop sending everyone positions to you that aren’t in your viewangles(), you can do this once per server frame, just before a prediction. This has the added benefit of saving the client tons of overhead as they don’t have to draw things you cannot see. This makes the server CPU have more overhead, but what’s a little more CPU into stopping wallhacks?
The people who run the ban sites criticize cheaters for not having any lives, but who really doesn’t have a life? A guy who buys a cheat or writes one that goes into a server for 30 minutes and all out rages, or a person who spends thousands of hours of time and money to create a site to ban groups of people from a game? What about when that one anticheat site was getting blasted by multi gigabit attacks for weeks on end because they thought it would be funny to humiliate a user? Doing that behaviour to people won’t even stop them because they will be back online in 15 minutes hacking the shit out of the game in revenge?
Shrug.
It makes a lot of sense. It is the opposite of what people want.
You clearly know a lot about the subject and sadly many people probably invest in banning sites. This piece is a huge wake-up call. Thanks for sharing.
People cheat because it gives them a sense a satisfaction. Moderators can only do so much. There will always be a person sitting in his chair for hours just to make cheating possible.
Very interesting take. Personally I also believe that cheating will always be there no matter what measures are taken.
I generally try to avoid online gaming communities. The toxicity is just draining!
The harder they try to ban cheaters the harder the cheaters will try to cheat. In the end it’s a self defeating cycle.
The whole anticheating system puts unnecessary strain on the server infrastructure. In some cases it can even bottleneck the performance.
Banned players can always circumnavigate the system easily for a fee. I have never understood what banning people is aimed at achieving.
The people who don’t have lives are those who spend thousands of hours of time and money to create a site to ban groups of people from a game. How idle does one have to be to do such a thing?
Wow, looks like I can understand this. When players have been banned, the more I feel that they have been challenged for cheating more and more.
Are you talking from experience? I have had the misfortune of experiencing this myself.
Much like you, what I hate most are the clueless users who are more concerned with banning players than stopping cheats. I absolutely cannot stand that for the life of me.
Sadly however, the banners will always be there. The same applies to the cheats.
You’ve gone quite technical with this one. From my little knowledge however, there should be at least some moderation in games with bans only happening in extreme cases.
I found the part about players running ESP funny. Thanks for the interesting read.
This was a great analysis. I don’t think cheating will ever go away. People are bound to do it
I agree with you so much. It’s really better to stop/do something about the root of the problem instead of banning players left and right.
Cheating is a tendency in which the person feels over clever and cheats to get satisfied. This analysis is is very informative.
Can cheats be ever eradicated. you know alot about these cheats and I wish there could be some form of punishment meted out to them
We must agree, sometimes cheating saves us. Cheating is part of our lives, everywhere there is cheating.
Like you said; cheating is a given, so obviously you’re not getting your money’s worth with a banning site. It’s good you’re sending this message so people can clue in and understand the dynamics of cheats. Thanks for sharing.
Other than banning players, the logic thing to do should be stopping the cheats. Its quite unfair for other players.
I totally agree with you. Cheaters are always there, so as banners. It will be best to take further actions to the cheat itself, rather than banning people who cheat.
You definitely got a point. Your opinion is quite similar to mine. Using cheat in games isn’t a crime so it won’t end.
The fact that cheating is possible, people will always be tempted to do it. That’s why I agree with your rants.
I like the you are no longer advocating for cheating because it isn’t the best. So let all shun cheating.
people will hardly stop cheating with games especially when they know it involves money. I quite support your views on this.
The only to eradicate this is banning cheats on games sites. Ranting daily might not do much than taking real action
I think getting banned is a bit harsh as a punishment. Thank you for sharing this.
Hmmm, this is something I definitely agree with. Don’t ban the players, blame yourself and fix it!
I agree with your claims. It is not the people that cheat whom we should waste our time with.
Cheating will always be there. I totally agree with that. I hope they assess it in a different way.
I don’t believe banning ever helps. The banned players are usually back on in minutes.
Hackers are interesting people. They walk a very fine line between good and evil.
I think banning has its merits and demerits. Ultimately it’s the game developers to decide their course of action.
The issue of banning has become more rampant in recent times. Too many people are getting wrongfully banned.
What most games lack is a community manager. Issues like this can be handled better with a community manager in place.
Developers ought to focus on bettering their games instead of banning people. It is very counter productive to ban the same people you rely on for your game to be a success.
Sites like PBBans really shouldn’t exist. They do more harm than good in the grand scheme of things.
Thanks a lot for putting out this article. It’s high time someone spoke out about the unreasonable bans.
I have been banned from quite a number of games myself. It’s comical how easy it is to circumvent the bans lol
If only more time would be spent bettering the games than banning people. The world would be a much better place.
I’m of the opinion that moderators in games rarely help. All they do is ban for the smallest reasons.