Thread

1. richwater · 1790964605 · focus · HN ↗

   Everyone here is talking about how games shouldn't have the ability to do this while not understanding that without it, most online games (PVP specifically) turn into a cheaters paradise and ruin it for all paying customers.

   Riot Vanguard has all but eliminated cheaters in Valorant (sporadic instances and DMA hardware can still be used), but the vast (99.9+%) of games are clean because of what they did. Customers place serious value in that.

   1. kasabali · 1790967222 · focus · HN ↗

      I understand that and I still say games shouldn't have the ability to do this.

      1. richwater · 1790969172 · focus · HN ↗

         Then don't download the game. Or run linux and skip the ability to run any online games. I don't know what to tell you.
      2. nkrisc · 1790970237 · focus · HN ↗

         There are many games that don’t do things like this. In fact I play many games that the developers encourage you to modify and cheat.
   2. mrguyorama · 1790975618 · focus · HN ↗

      This was not an issue until games chose to omit custom servers "For your protection" of course.

      Counterstrike and TF2 have absurd problems with bots and cheats on official servers, but because you can just run it yourself, communities were able to handle those problems how they want, including some of them choosing to utilize rootkit level anti-cheat, but many don't, and don't have a serious problem with cheating.

      I remember playing video games where cheating was trivial, and yet they just didn't have a serious problem, because the servers that didn't have someone moderating them and kicking out cheaters were terrible to play on regardless of cheating

      1. vel0city · 1791140443 · focus · HN ↗

         > chose to omit custom servers

         Most of their audience don't want community servers. They want matchmaking.

         Community servers are available in a lot of these games, for instance Counterstrike. What percentage of the playerbase plays on those?

         And sure, let's say we do have community servers. You ban a player. It's free to make a new account. The player just instantly returns. You ban that account. The player returns. You ban that account, the player returns. You ban that account ..guess what happens! You haven't actually solved the problem.

         The issue isn't the moderation, a good vote kick system will handle that. The issue is, how do you actually ban a cheater when there is zero cost (or extremely low cost) to create a new identity? You tie the identity to a harder to change, more expensive to chante, identifier.

         I remember moderating community servers back in the day (I hosted a lot) and essentially being helpless to actually stop people from rejoining. Ban their IP, they rejoin a few moments later from another IP. Ban their account ID, they're back with another account. Whack a mole all day long until they get bored.

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