Tweet
The Scoop on Internet Cheating, and How You Can Combat It
By Matt Pritchard
Gamasutra
July 24, 2000
The following errors occurred when this message was submitted:
The text that you have entered is too long (40386 characters). Please shorten it to 15000 characters long.
CLICK HERE for the full article.
I had planned to begin this article by sharing my own true experiences with online cheating as it pertained to a particular game. But I think the long version of my story would cast an unnecessarily negative light on the game and the company that made it. And since the developers are good friends of ours, I'll stick to the short version that goes like this.
Last year I became hooked on a certain first-person shooter (FPS) game. After a couple months of addictive online gaming, I became convinced that some players were cheating and things suddenly changed that day. I was ready to walk away from the game in disgust and tell everyone else to do the same. Instead, I decided it was time to learn what I could about the alleged cheaters, their motivations, and most importantly their methods. In my case, I discovered at least three distinctly different methods of cheating that could explain what I experienced -- though as just a player I could not prove conclusively which methods, if any, were being used against me.
The aim of this article is to bring the subject of online/multiplayer cheating out of the shadows and talk about it in terms of real problems with real games and to help build a framework for classifying and understanding the various details. I will cover some of the ways that players are able to cheat at various games; at times I will go into the working details, ways to prevent those cheats, and limitations of various game architectures as they relate to multiplayer cheating. This is by no means a comprehensive and exhaustive tome on the issue, but it is a start. There is a serious lack of information on this subject, and paranoia among developers that talking about it will reveal secrets that will only make the problem significantly worse. Several individuals at various companies declined to talk to me about cheating and their games for this and other similar reasons. I respect that, but I think developers have everything to gain by sharing our knowledge about cheaters and how to combat them.
Just how seriously should you as a developer take the possibility of online cheating? If your game is single-player only, then you have nothing to worry about. But if your game is multiplayer only, the success of your entire product is at stake. If your game does both, you're somewhere in the middle. As more games are released with online play as an integral component, drawing ever-larger audiences (and the corollary development of online communities and sites based around the game), it becomes ever more important to insure that each online game player experiences what they believe to be a fair and honest experience. I'm reminded of a quote from Greg Costikyan's excellent report, "The Future of Online Gaming" ( http://www.costik.com ): "An online game's success or failure is largely determined by how the players are treated. In other words, the customer experience -- in this case, the player experience -- is the key driver of online success." Our short version is, "Cheating undermines success."
Consider the well-known case of Blizzard's Diablo -- deservedly a runaway best-seller and great game that acquired a significant reputation for a horrible multiplayer experience because of cheaters. Many people I know either refused to play it online, or would only play over a LAN with trusted friends. Blizzard did their best to respond, patching it multiple times, but they were fighting an uphill battle.
By Matt Pritchard
Gamasutra
July 24, 2000
The following errors occurred when this message was submitted:
The text that you have entered is too long (40386 characters). Please shorten it to 15000 characters long.
CLICK HERE for the full article.
I had planned to begin this article by sharing my own true experiences with online cheating as it pertained to a particular game. But I think the long version of my story would cast an unnecessarily negative light on the game and the company that made it. And since the developers are good friends of ours, I'll stick to the short version that goes like this.
Last year I became hooked on a certain first-person shooter (FPS) game. After a couple months of addictive online gaming, I became convinced that some players were cheating and things suddenly changed that day. I was ready to walk away from the game in disgust and tell everyone else to do the same. Instead, I decided it was time to learn what I could about the alleged cheaters, their motivations, and most importantly their methods. In my case, I discovered at least three distinctly different methods of cheating that could explain what I experienced -- though as just a player I could not prove conclusively which methods, if any, were being used against me.
The aim of this article is to bring the subject of online/multiplayer cheating out of the shadows and talk about it in terms of real problems with real games and to help build a framework for classifying and understanding the various details. I will cover some of the ways that players are able to cheat at various games; at times I will go into the working details, ways to prevent those cheats, and limitations of various game architectures as they relate to multiplayer cheating. This is by no means a comprehensive and exhaustive tome on the issue, but it is a start. There is a serious lack of information on this subject, and paranoia among developers that talking about it will reveal secrets that will only make the problem significantly worse. Several individuals at various companies declined to talk to me about cheating and their games for this and other similar reasons. I respect that, but I think developers have everything to gain by sharing our knowledge about cheaters and how to combat them.
Just how seriously should you as a developer take the possibility of online cheating? If your game is single-player only, then you have nothing to worry about. But if your game is multiplayer only, the success of your entire product is at stake. If your game does both, you're somewhere in the middle. As more games are released with online play as an integral component, drawing ever-larger audiences (and the corollary development of online communities and sites based around the game), it becomes ever more important to insure that each online game player experiences what they believe to be a fair and honest experience. I'm reminded of a quote from Greg Costikyan's excellent report, "The Future of Online Gaming" ( http://www.costik.com ): "An online game's success or failure is largely determined by how the players are treated. In other words, the customer experience -- in this case, the player experience -- is the key driver of online success." Our short version is, "Cheating undermines success."
Consider the well-known case of Blizzard's Diablo -- deservedly a runaway best-seller and great game that acquired a significant reputation for a horrible multiplayer experience because of cheaters. Many people I know either refused to play it online, or would only play over a LAN with trusted friends. Blizzard did their best to respond, patching it multiple times, but they were fighting an uphill battle.
Comment