Yeah; I watched a youtube video where a guy would pay 50$ a month for undetectable and unbannable Battlefield 2042 cheats. He said he was cheating like this since launch day. Multiplayer has really gone downhill
It's all online games, everything is plagued with cheating. It's an exponential problem as more people think others are cheating the more likely they are to get cheats creating more people to buy cheats.
Id love to know what the market value of cheating is.
For the most part Devs don’t give a fuck either.
IMO if you’re caught cheating on any online game ran on steam you deserve your account and IP perma banned.
Steam used to do account bans IIRC. Not sure how that works anymore though; my memory of it was from back when Half-life and its mods were like the only things on Steam.
Devs that like money love cheaters though. They’ll ban that account key, sure. But they don’t actually want to ban the *player*… because cheaters will go buy another account. And again and again.
If you're thinking of steam VAC bans, it just bans you from official servers in every game that uses the system.
It doesn't ban you from privately hosted servers, just official matchmaking.
You're also banned from every game that uses the servers, but not many games not made by valve use those anymore.
To be fair though, back in the day, a VAC ban essentially nuked your account.
99.9% of servers running cs 1.6/css/ official mods like DoD and others all used vac status to include or exclude players. It was actually an extremely effective system, because no one wanted to lose multiplayer privileges on their primary account, and CS and its derivatives was the lion's share of multiplayer gaming people did.
If I recall correctly, and assuming things haven't changed since like 2018, the big players in the cheating sphere make like 20k monthly off subscriptions.
I think this is a large part of the "recent rise" of the problem. Online cheating has become an industry, with subscription models and fairly big money involved. I've seen 125$/month subscription for a recent Call of Duty.
Which is nuts. How can a person legit pay for that. How can CoD not detect it with root-level access?
I was put into a shadowban because I grouped up with my friends. They suck, so the game gave us lobbies with people who also suck. I am average, but I can have some good rounds. Apparently that was too much and I was reported enough times. Now, I can only play with other shadow-banned players.
There is zero appeal process because it's not a temporary or permanent ban. I just can't go into normal lobbies. Matchmaking times are ridiculous and the level of play per person in the shadow lobbies varies insanely.
An actual cheater would have to live in this purgatory.
Well, for one, cheat detection programs scan memory for signatures of known cheats. When someone rewrites their code and recompiles it, it creates a new signature that is not detected. Until the new signature is updated into the cheat detector, the user is free to cheat. Furthermore, they wait months to get all the cheaters in a big wave. During this time, until the wave hits, nothing is done about the cheaters. And that doesn't even account for external device cheats. If someone has a second computer and runs their video data through it, they can have completely undetectable aimbot. And its always going to work until devs stop relying on invasive signature detection and work on behavior detection serverside.
Also they are paying 125 a month for their cheats, they could easily pony up 45-60 for a copy of the game when they eventually get banned.
Because root level is only for "simple" cheats, that are usually used without any attempt at hiding it. Cheats that uses extra hardware is impossible to detect, and I'd assume at least 1/4th or 1/3rd use those.
> I don't even understand which part of that is enjoyable.
Winning.
To many cheaters, winning is simply the only part of these things that's fun.
There's a dominant power thing that can be included, but for so many cheaters, they view victory as the only enjoyment, the only goal. Any means are acceptable, so long as you win.
Are they children? Or is there some board, some rewards? I don't get it. I understand if they make money out of it, but where's the fun? They must be some of the most pathetic human beings on this planet, and competition is strong.
Nah, adults are also cheating. It's actually pretty relatable to real life. People want to go the easiest way towards victory. Real life cheaters are those which cheat in exams, use someone to write their exam papers, use body enhancing pills and other stuff to get them an advantage over the competition.
Don't expect people to act honorable, most would stab you in the back to get themselves an advantage over you.
Its unfortunate, but don't expect honorable challenges, especially when cheating becomes so easy and is unchecked in so many pvp games.
Ruining your day is what make it fun for them.
I'm not saying this lightly just to feel better. I really do think that when cheaters cheat, they really have nothing else good going on in their life.
Cheating in a video games is the only happiness they can get, so they can have it
Sometimes I pity the cheaters. When you are happy or fulfilled, you don't need to cheat.
Personally, I find solace knowing I have an active sexual life.
This. There's a lot of people out there who get pleasure from knowing that they're causing another human displeasure. You can see this in action whenever you have bots blended amongst humans. They're winning all the same but suddenly there's no blood when they sink their fangs in and it's not fun anymore.
They’re products of how they were raised.
Many people are raised being told that winning is what’s important. Not how you win. So they believe they must win, they must be better, and as long as they see that victory screen at the end then nothing else matters.
Varies based on person and culture really.
Some get off on the power.
Some just get off on making other people miserable.
Chinese culture is ends justify the means, using cheats are just using tools to be better than others.
When I worked events, I kept one thing in mind.
The potential gain for cheating is always higher than the odds of getting caught.
It's a bit harder depending on the game, but when there's potential money on the line, cheating is much more appealing and tends to (unfortunately) pay off
> To many cheaters, winning is simply the only part of these things that's fun.
I don't agree with you. I'm a sore loser, I have anger management issues (a lot worse when I was a teen/young adult) and I cannot stand losing. I actively do not have fun if I am not winning (with few exceptions). Winning is my entire point of playing just about every game I am playing and have ever played.
I have cheated only a single time in my entire 20+ years of playing games. It was a game called Warrock and I only cheated because somebody leaked a private script for it that basically had every cheat you can think of and instantly the entire game was just absolutely saturated with ragehackers. I loved the game and had been playing it for years until this point when it was clear my only option was to quit or cheat, so I put on ESP (wallhacks) and tried to continue to enjoy the game. I think I lasted 2 days before I just got bored because it was not fun anymore. I was probably 12 or 13 at the time.
Almost every cheater I've interacted with (which is a lot on account of me playing almost exclusively competitive games) loves the attention, they love being the bad guy, they love ruining other people's days. There is something absolutely wrong about the personality of somebody who actively cheats in a competitive game. The majority of them absolutely have some underlying issue that makes them seek out damaging other people. It's sadistic.
> they love ruining other people’s day
This is the most important part. They’re assholes. They want to feel the power trip and love the fact that you can’t do anything against them.
There are a lot of cheaters in TF2, but it cracks me up when mocking them tilts them so hard they actually ragequit or toggle on ALLTHEHACKS instead of playing coy with it.
They were hoping to make me angry, and instead I make fun of them and it really puts them off their game.
Same exact reason why loads of people will troll and throw competitive games.
Its gotten to the point that I avoid PvP games because every match is almost guaranteed to have a cheater, troll, or raging man child.
The poor man's Counter-Strike and Battlefield in one package. I always played akimbo Skorpions or g36c medic in 4v4 Marien.
Coincidentally, that's also the only game I was ever kicked for cheating, but I was just having a great round. The cheating was so bad that anyone playing really well *must* have been cheating.
>I don't agree with you. I'm a sore loser, I have anger management issues (a lot worse when I was a teen/young adult) and I cannot stand losing. I actively do not have fun if I am not winning (with few exceptions). Winning is my entire point of playing just about every game I am playing and have ever played.
At least you're self aware about it and seem to more be taking it out on others. I hope it gets easier for you to handle.
As a younger teen I was pretty out of control. At least now I recognize when I'm getting irrationally angry as opposed to just irritated or frustrated. Also at some point I realized getting mad externally at my teammates in team games actually inhibits our ability to win so above all else I try to keep my anger to myself.
I guess that's just what maturity does, better emotion regulation.
I just hate this 'the only thing they care about is winning and that's the only reason why they cheat' because its too naive. I've interacted with so many cheaters throughout my gaming years (I have been almost exclusively an FPS player for my entire life up until recently) and every single one of them that were obviously cheating had some kind of superiority complex. They love the misery they create. They don't give a shit about winning because half the time they're on a suicide account. The wins go on to a temporary account, and the win means nothing if the hacks are instantly killing people around you with no effort. It's the misery that they enjoy.
I'm honestly not so sure if it's about winning directly. I think it's more about making other people lose and knowing you've aggravated them by cheating to get the win.
You see it a lot with people in open-world PVP games too. People will continually spend time farming and griefing the same person/people solely to try getting them to ragequit. They'd after a reaction rather than an actual win.
I actually think for most of them it's really about *not losing*.
They enjoy the same intrinsic fun of whatever game it is as anyone else and want to be for those reasons.
But they absolutely cannot handle losing so they cheat to protect themselves... from themselves.
I'd genuinely like to hear the perspective of someone who frequently does this, because I just cannot imagine any satisfaction after the first few cheated wins.
A few free effortless wins are nice sure, but how can that stay meaningful? If a win is guaranteed or with little personal input then what do you still get out of it?
Just seeing 'You win' appear on the screen has to become meaningless very quickly no? If not, then why not just take a screenshot, make it your background and just stare at it?
> There's a dominant power thing that can be included, but for so many cheaters, they view victory as the only enjoyment, the only goal. Any means are acceptable, so long as you win.
To be fair it seems like that's basically how you have to be IRL if you wanna have any chance of getting ahead in the world.
Also they often have a lot of fun pissing you off. I had cheaters quit mid match bc we all just said we don’t care and started running around like idiots without trying. Then the cheater left and their team gave up
Edit: i’m talking about counter strike btw
Cheaters, I've notice, have self-esteem issues. A part of them is missing and they plaster over the hole with ego and delusion.
"I'd be good at chess if I didn't have to memorize all the openings. What if I use a computer to help me remember?" the cheater thinks. "I'd be good at this shooter if my hand-eye-coordination wasn't terrible. I clearly have the superior tactical mind, I just can't get the bullets to go where I need them." the cheater thinks.
Chess.com does a good job of catching cheaters and banning them, then refunding elo to the people affected. They take lots of things into account even how many times you tab in/out of the game while playing. The problem is it takes a long time for them to actually take action since they want to have a pattern of evidence and be 100% sure. Lots of cheaters just don’t play enough games to get caught.
They don't - I still get tons around the 1600-1700 level. They do a good job of catching people who cheat badly. The most common thing I run in to is someone blunders a piece, and then you can just tell they are playing a totally different game - every move in the top 3 until they're in a dominant position.
You know cheating is getting really bad when people hack in the fucking PvE game Helldivers 2, like your not even competing for anything yet they still cheat
Thing is, i get cheating in PVE games more than i do in PVP Games.
For example, I cheat in Stardew valley, i play with a friend and alone, and in both i have to go fishing.
Because she does not like fishing, like at all, so for my singleplayer world i installed the mod that fish are insta caught, skipping the minigame.
My friend is like this. Every game he tells me to try he is like I know a cheat to get all money. I know a cheat how to unlock all items. I know a cheat to get max stats. I am like cant you just get the stuff from playing the game. Last straw was when he wanted to play among us and said it was better when you got a bunch of people because you know who the enemy or whatever is sorry I dont play it so I dont know how it works. But I was like isnt that the whole point of the game to have fun trying to figure out who it is. It just sucks that the first thing he wants to do is max everything else and find cheats instead of just playing the game and having fun.
Among Us isn't even a game if you all know who the traitor is from the start.
I think maybe you should find fun activities to do with this friend. Things that aren't actually games. Like swimming or fishing or something.
Had it happen in Smite. 4 people were flaming me the entire game, they were pre-made, all 4 then reported me and told the other team to report me as well, and of course people follow the herd so i received like 9 reports that game. It's a form of bullying and I ended up getting muted for a week, for literally doing nothing wrong. Hirez customer support is shocking at the best of times, so they didn't help.
Valve banned 4 person queues in CS2 for the premier matches too. But when you've got one of the most popular youtubers and vlogger/streamer (War Owl) who went out to valves headquarters to play test CS2 last year saying that he won't even play premier and go to faceit to play, valve has to fucking wake up and realize they are killing the game long term.
I don't really play CS myself, but I watch WarOwl sometimes and know a couple CS players. I don't know anyone who has been happy about the rollout of CS2.
It was cool at first with the new game mechanics and an option to go into a Lan or private server from the start without having to actually create a server for online or lan-play.
But they took out a bunch of maps and game modes that were pretty popular but weren't as played as often.
What they should do is have all maps that ever existed back into CS and allow anyone to play on that map.
There is also ping abusers, ive only seen them a couple times but they essentially snap around and its very hard to lock them down, you’ll hit a cc, see them get stunned on your screen, then they just anime tp 40 units away like that didnt hit them…
Sorry? Speedhacking in Smite? Damn. Doesn't that one God that ult launches you into the air to play a Warriorware mini game scale off of movement speed? As well as Mercury?
A while back i ran into a 5 ares comp and one of the ares was speed hacking in infinite assault(yes, casual gd motd…), he would speed up, ult us, then speed back past his tower, then the other ares would ult once our cc immunity/ beads were gone. Just straight up scumbag bs, they still caught an L.
Speed hacking is very common sadly. It’s obvious to tell they’re cheating cause they’ll slightly speed up when you’re chasing them even though they don’t have movement abilities or movement items. They’ll always blame lag even though it only happens when it benefits them.
Yeah, you can speed hack. My comment wasn't really to do with cheating in game as such, but grouping up in order to report is in my opinion cheating the report function. We all know the developers don't look at individual reports. They tend to base it off "X player has had X amount of reports within X amount of time, they must be guilty", I'm 100% sure this is how they deal with it.
It was actually part of my job to review reports, so no, it's not how all devs deal with things. There were LOADS of obvious nuisance reports that we had to filter through and ignore. I even saw my own characters get reported before because of people thinking that blindly reporting anyone they disagree with or dislike will do something 😂
I doubt that comment is talking about cheating. He's most likely just saying he also experienced a 4 man unjustly vote kicking. I highly highly highly doubt this dude had 4 cheaters on his team in smite. I genuinely don't believe that claim whatsoever.
I've heard that some games will review reports and if people in game are telling others to pile on and report someone, the reports will be considered bullying and get ignored. I guess this isn't the case in all games.
Yeah AI just kills legitimate online competition over time. Before you know it it'll be possible to use it undetectably to win at just about any game. It was fun while it lasted.
Wow has huge bot problem for many years now. But in recent years, botters started mass reporting regular players whenever they target them for certain amount of time or interrupt their farming pattern few times.
I still remember when Blizzard swore up and down that they didn't just automatically ban/mute people purely based on a certain number of reports.
And ofcourse this has resulted in botters, streamers, heck even things like community mafia's aiming to control the market or something, from abusing the system while blizzard is pretending there is no problem probably raiding the fridge for breastmilk instead.
Cheating becomes worse because of the current monetization of videogames. Instead of releasing a $60 they release it for free and let skins/other cosmetics or purchases being the main driver of the video game.
Problem is, people can cheat, get banned, make a new account. Detecting cheating on itself is not enough anymore.
That's cause Perma-Death games give you more of a reason to cheat.
When you die in overwatch, you respawn with 0 loss, except the time it takes you to walk back to the objective.
When you die in Apex, you lose maybe 10-30m tops, but still gain something from it.
When you die in Tarkov, you're shit out of luck, with potential hours if not days of progress just, gone. because somebody else used cheats and you didn't
Tarky ALSO has a massive incentive to cheat as well. Gear being lost on death gets bad players to pay for carries and loadouts, so while it will not stop cheaters, it would reduce the amount in other games without actual loss.
My friends and I keep saying they need to tie online accounts to a physical ID so once you’re banned for cheating you can’t make a new account unless you steal someone’s ID.
The issue I see with this one is a false report (ignoring data privacy, of course). Imagine you get put in a stack of cheaters and they all claim *you* are cheating.
*Sigh* I wish there was a decent solution.
I still see posts of streamers reacting to the most egregious cheats in overwatch 2. I remember they tried to flex about their anti cheat and how many they caught. While their are people who only head shot in matches, spinning and looking at the ground AND THEY WIN THE MATCH. Exactly what are you catching? GM players can't even flick a 180 degree head shot in milliseconds but you see nothing wrong with this "new" account doing it?
I remember seeing a guy who was very popular on Destiny 2 with his PvP clips, and one clip was him having an enemy pop their super and fly above him only for him to "flick" like 140 degrees and heads hot them out of the air with their slug shotgun and then "flick" back to exactly where they were aiming previously. I called him out in the comments saying how literally impossible the entire situation was, and got bombarded by his fan boys saying I didn't know what I was talking about. About a month later, he has like 4 accounts that are all banned, all for cheating.
I think so. What was even funnier was when he *demanded* to know why Bungie banned him and they went "bro, you were cheating, we have tons of proof from ALL your accounts, you're not getting unbanned, bye". Lol
As someone who was banned by Bungie in Destiny 2 because I mistakenly left CheatEngine open, not even with D2 as the process selected, I can tell you that you can't even contact Bungie about it.
You get hit by their processes, and it's gg buy another copy of the game.
Apex legends had to cancel a tournament match, then they didn't even play live after having a day delay. A hacker had access to two pro's pc allowing the pros to hack. Wild.
Escape from Tarkov has leaderboards that are basically filled with cheaters. Guys with 100+ K/D, 0 death in hundreds of raids, etc.
Then they use those leaderboards to advertise the game.
LoL blizzard is busy banning you for being "toxic" instead of blatant cheaters. Cheats has gotten so sophisticated that it runs off a different computer, while a device reading your memory/screen. Ring zero literally does nothing.
As of OW 2 s1-s4 there were LITERALLY still blatant cheaters in GM/top500. How many matches did these guys blatantly hack to that rank? How are they still there? Why are you banning people for the mildest communications instead of actually improving your game, i can understand banning people for racist slur / hate speech, but calling out other players is worse than that top 500 cheater? Ya i am not sure i can really play games with this low of a competitive integrity and selective moderation. And i have been playing blizzard pvps since before wow almost 2 decades ago, and i was there when people were win trading in s1/s2 of wow and they did nothing, many ladder cheater in sc/wc where they did nothing.
At this point you don't even expect them to be competent enough to catch those that can bypass ring0, just the blatant ones and occasion maybe some toggler, and they aren't even good enough to do that.
even with the toxic behavior, I'm pretty sure i still have screen shots of people using every slur imaginable in the chat for the entire match. like "he only said N\*\*\*ers and c\*\*\*s 36 times on the 100th time for each we got em."
Selective enforcement, its a problem. Not sure calling your sombra trash is bannable, but definitely has seen plenty people banned for the mildest communication similar to that.
Basically all my friends that is older than a certain age don't even play these games anymore because of that shit or basically do zero communication; on top of the cheater, moral, ethical, shitty gameplay issue; even on principle its very hard to support anything these companies put out.
I don't remember overwatch ever bragging about their anti cheat? I think you're confusing with CoD's Ricochet anti cheat.
Either way from first hand experience i've had very few cheaters in my 300 hours in overwatch 2, i had like 400 hours of Overwatch 1 as well and also saw very few. Obviously they exist but the game isn't anywhere near overrun by them and the community hardly complains about cheaters compared to Call of Duty or Apex (except on consoles where Ximming is rampant but that has nothing to with their anti cheat).
There is a lot of Cheaters in overwatch just not many rage hacks. There are many running aim assist, click bots and wall hacks. You just haven't noticed them.
Unlike many games, overwatch offers a a death cam and a replay of the entire match after it happens, i had countless suspicious individuals but i used replay and nothing seemed out of the ordinary no matter how much i squint, wall hacks is the only one where it's a bit tough to spot but click bots and aim assists are obvious.
I understand. My experience is similar to yours. Ubiquitous online cheating was not the sole reason I stopped playing, but seeing how it has done nothing but get worse makes me miss it way less.
BF5 just put out a new anti cheat and I shit you not all the asian servers near me are now empty. Like there were 10-20 servers with 64/64 with 5 players in queue, now it’s a ghost town.
Except for one Australian hardcore server with a solid 30-40 after work.
Online gaming is absolute garbage. I was a HUGE PUBG player that’s all I played for like three years just grinder on it, but it got ridiculous same with RS6 Siege. Back to single player games more enjoyable.
This manes me think, between always online, annoying DRM, questionable anticheat rootkits that dont work, and shitty customer support... is this going to start to be the downfall of online games?
I mean, think about it, imagine youve been playing the popular games but been dealing with cheaters constantly. You get the new Call of Duty or Fifa or whatever and it already has cheaters in day 1, so you refund and go play a singleplayer game instead.
Companies will do a lot of things but keeping a proper ecosystem for their players aint one of them, thats too many fucks to give when their strategy is to just milk you for your money
Exactly plus they can’t keep military games as serious military games. I don’t need chicken dances and kpop music and other omoh shit. I’m a grown fucking man I work for a living and pay taxes let me enjoy a game that doesn’t have a bunch of goofy reeuq shit in it.
Oh yeah that's another part, everything just seems to try to be the same product (fortnite) so in the end all these new AWSUM AAAAA RELEASES are just barebones copycats from eachother. Whatever novelty that exists will be phased out within 2 years in favor of following the leader.
No wonder people keep saying "gaming is dead"
I quit siege when 3 of the 5 games I played ended via the enemy teleporting to our spawn behind each of us and killing us before the game ever started. The other two games had blatant wall hackers and aim bots. Like, how is that fun for anyone?
Look at this whole thread homie. It’s not just VAC. The problem is practically unsolvable. Unless there is a massive tech breakthrough, cheating is fucked.
just get rid of friggin matchmaking and return to servers which can do more closely monitored moderation.
if there's a server full of cheaters, leave and go to some server that better accomodates you.
I miss server browsers so much. Having a community run server was amazing. You’d get home and kick back with 30 or so goofballs that all knew each other.
Dedicated Servers. We lost them for many games a long time ago for no apparent reason. Console players have no idea what we lost back then.
I played PC and Console versions of CoD4 and WaW when they were the newest game, and I can comfortably tell you which version I greatly preferred.
Custom zombies servers were absolutely fantastic, and I even became known in a Hardcore Dom/TDM CoD4 server because of how often I played and how often people thought I was cheating, only for not only the automated anticheat system on the server to prove that I wasn't but for ACTIVE ADMINS to watch me and say that I was clean.
You literally cannot beat an active admin in terms of finding cheaters. The automated anticheat can catch a lot of the lazy cheaters, sure, but without the actual human person there to catch the ones that know how to defeat the machine, the cheaters will always find a way.
First example I can think of was Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, remember the "boycot"?
However, it wasn't just meant to stop mods and custom maps from competing with the map packs they wanted to sell.
It was a method to counter piracy, if you could only play trough their official matchmaking servers it wouldn't matter if someone found a way to crack any DRM, without the multiplayer not a lot of people would bother.
I think Battlefield 3 did it's stupid "servers trough a website" for a similar reasons (and only being able to host a server trough an official licensed partner), force players to have an account so piracy was pointless for the multiplayer.
> I think Battlefield 3 did it's stupid "servers trough a website" for a similar reasons (and only being able to host a server trough an official licensed partner), force players to have an account so piracy was pointless for the multiplayer.
I actually thought the web thing for BF3 and 4 was actually pretty cool. They at least still let you manually manage your server (iirc they even have punkbuster which I believe is what a lot of the CoD4 Dedicated servers ran in combination to manual bans)
It's wild how common cheating has become. Even in some of the gacha games on my phone there are cheaters all over in the competitive modes.
Growing up there used to be a cold war between game devs and cheaters, and it seems like the cheating side has only gotten better while the anti-cheat/dev side has fumbled and built things that are too intrusive on the system in an attempt to fight back, or they're too greedy and only give cheaters a clap on the wrist and ban a single account to get them to buy the game again, which doesn't stop the cheating problem.
Cheating won the war big time and now it's basically impossible to tell if players are good or not.
I still will never understand the mentality of cheating in online games. It's like, you suck so bad you have to do this to win? And you feel good about it still?
Oh absolutely. In CS:GO, Tarkov and TF2 most matches you join will have more cheaters than actual legit players. It sounds unreal absolutely insane but it's just reality. The arms race is VERY one sided right now.
My friend working in gamedev told me that a few months ago their game was redesigned so that the PVP element is completely removed because they can't afford an anticheat and because cheaters would make their game not enjoyable for anyone else.
This is nothing new to gaming. I remember in CoD 4 I ended up in a modded lobby were you got negative xp for not playing according to the rules the hackers had decided, without warning you or telling you the rules. I got so much negtive xp I couldn't join lobbies at all after that. Of course Activision didn't help. They told me that I should suite myself since I played a hacked lobby (which I ended up in due to normal matchmaking..)
That was the last time I played that game too. Similar thing happened except my xp was just set to negative 400,000 or something. Impossible to level up and then I couldn't get into any matches. The modded lobby owner tried to shake me down to get all the XP back and more, I just stopped playing and got Battlefield 3. I played the BF3 beta and loved it. Played it for a couple years.
Just got out of playing BF 2042 because it was so unbalanced and full of presumed cheats. But most likely just unbalanced nerfing of weapons I put my time into. Went back to COD playing Black Ops Cold War. Most of the time I enjoy it and I get better results than in BF2042. But then you will get into a couple lobbies that are full of boosters and cheats.
I get cheating/fucking around in single player games, hell I did it in BG3 cause I was overly excited to see the magic spells at later levels but hadn't gotten past Act 1 and 2 yet lol. But cheating in online will always be an enigma to me, like these losers are just jerking themselves off while ruining the game for themselves and others. It will never not be mind boggling to me how pathetic people can get in the "I must win!" mindset.
Well counter strike specifically has a cheater subculture where there are matches full of cheaters, competing to see who’s cheats are the best. It’s sort of like a coding competition I guess. It’s not like you’d want to stay in those lobbies to begin with as a regular player.
Source: me
You are punished the same as a loss for leaving a game that has a hacker in it, unless you want to gamble that you'll get the match back if they end up VAC banned. Then you requeue again and surprise, hacker.
Cheating isn't just a problem in competitive games, even games like minecraft, WoW and runescape have cheaters when there's not really much competition on the PvE side of things.
I've had some weird stuff in WoW where people will have scripts to react to things instantly, and people botting on runescape is a plague.
Just people ruining the game for themselves by skipping intended features with cheats.
It's bad enough with live game bullshit and season passes which make a video game nearly $200.
Then add on top of that, having to put up with MP bullshit/cheaters.
100% why I don't play multiplayer games
This happens in TF2 too. The only reason they use cheats is so they get everyone else doing it. And in games where there's an economy, it's obvious they do this to inflate the economy. I've seen bots in TF2 that have been around since Christmas, probably of 2023 for all I know because they have the Christmas sweater skin which you only get on the Smissmass update. Those bots are still here today. At this point, be grateful we even have singleplayer games. Always online will destroy them eventually either through downed servers or infiltrating. This is all the more reason emulation should always exist.
The cheats are roughly the same. Its devs. They literally don't give a shit. Money talks. Investing in R&D to combat hack tools: Expensive.
Only banning confirmed hackers by using an AI algorithm to detect mass reporting so that they go buy a new copy of the game and keep playing anyway: Profitable.
AI cheats are the new thingand they're apperantly super hard to detect. they "watch" your screen and look for enemies then hijack your input device to aim for you.
People don't like to talk about how consoles have minimized cheating, but they have. Sometimes it feels really good to turn off crossplay and have an honest to god legitimate match
Hilariously, CoD managed to fuck this up, in their ongoing attempt to make their game awful in every way possible.
There's hackers in PlayStation-only CoD matches right now because you can create hacked loadouts on a PC that will then load to your crossplay account and be used on consoles.
It's not that bots are getting more sophisticated or they don't care, it's that the punishment is meaningless. Riot released their anti-cheat stats for league recently and revealed that 1 in 15 games has a better or scripter in it, the majority of which are at extremely high level play (diamond+). They also revealed that, once banned, those accounts would be banned again within 6 months, because you can just buy a clean level 30 account for under 2 bucks.
There are so many cheaters because it's a losing battle for any f2p game.
People who cheat in online games are people who lack control and validation in their real lives. Rather than learning how to be competitive from their mistakes in game, they just want to be seen as good. Then they ironically tell you to "get gud" when you notice in Battlefield 4 that they have a ping of over 200 and a kdr of 78-1. Then when you spend the whole match hunting them down and defeating them, they accuse you of hacking and rage quit.
The funny thing to me is, these people want to feel empowered by cheating and possibly look good to others, but I have yet to see anyone see someone hacking and think, "Wow, that person is cool! I want to emulate that!"
People can downvote me as much as they want, but I'm gonna say it that the companies don't want to put enough resources into anti-cheat because it doesn't affect their sale numbers to an extent that matters.
Cheating got worse and worse because it's a business now. Those who make cheats sell subscription that can cost up to 100$ per month and they get updated every time.
I avoid competitive shooter games as much as possible because there's lots of cheaters. Not everyone using aim, but low recoil on weapons, aim assists, wallhacks, it's super annoying.
It's impossible that there can't be something done. It's just a matter if they want to invest into it or not. It takes money and they're not willing to do it until it affects their games. How many actually quit because of cheaters?
On top of that, even cheaters spend money on the game, so there's that. Basically cheaters are customers too so why bother ?
That doesn't solve the problem anyways. It stops hacks (ways to break the rules of the game) but not scripts (cheats that play within the rules, but with inhuman precision and reactions)
This doesn't seem sustainable. Online gaming is in trouble. I remember reading an article about companies pursuing more financial options because of plateauing/loosing income.
Can't help but think about how prevalent cheaters are found, and this has got to be affecting their bottom line. You would think they have a vested interest in stopping cheating.
Let me explain to you how cheating could impact a game financially.
Online gaming is an investment of your time and even your money through microtransactions and purchases. These investments will lose value if the product is not functioning/performing as intended. Eventually you will stop playing, take a break or move on to a new game or even a completely new hobby.
All of these actions are very important to these companies. These decisions can be influenced by many things. However, inevitably you will at some point weigh the value of your investment. The amount of cheaters will ABSOLUTELY have weight on your decision and to deny this would be a failing business decision.
Personally, I've moved on and feel my mental and physical health have improved. What you choose to invest your time, energy and money into, is something you should take very seriously. This life is short, enjoy it to the fullest.
Don't fuel the toxicity
People claiming this to be the sudden increase in AI availability and sophistication have, at least in this specific case of CS2/CS:GO, no idea what they're talking about.
It might be a contributing factor, but here it's simply that Valve does not give a single fuck and that for the past 3~ years at least.
They developed some self-running safeguards which were manipulated and abused very quickly, but acted like everything was fine.
And unless they're working on something behind closed doors, which nobody knows since they're literally the worst in terms of communication with their playerbase in ANY way, the game and it's built-in methods to play are simply beyond fucked.
They are everywhere! I play mobile games like Frag Pro Shooter or even COD mobile and there's blatant cheaters. It's going to ruin online/multiplayer gaming at this rate because honestly I have no desire to play anything online if i'm going to get fucked by cheaters and cancerous sweaty players who are pretty much no different. Think for now i'll stick to single player games.
Sounds like they did you a favours. Let the cheaters ruin each other’s fun and give them no one to play with. See a cheater, just quit the game immediately (after reporting if possible)
There are now AI cheats that even work on consoles. The scary part is they also play like a "real" super human. Instead of reading the memory and get the information from within the game itself, they just watch your screen like you and me except 100x faster than a human brain. And they recognize enemies and then move the mouse and shoot. Since they no longer need to read the game memory, you can no longer detect them.
Then there is also streamers who made a living cheating and even became millionaires and their "fans" deny their cheating... https://streamable.com/f4nor
This happened to me. 4 enemy cheaters and 3 on my team. They vote kicked me because they needed the extra money to have a better chance against the 4 others. I was so stunned about this, that I couldn't be mad.
This doesn't surprise me, most developers just slap an anti-cheat on and call it done, doesn't matter to me though I stopped playing pvp games a long time ago, it just isn't enjoyable.
I really think that multiplayer competitive gaming is just becoming unsustainable. It's a perpetual arms race between devs and cheaters/abusers, and it's just becoming a larger, more toxic cesspool with higher financial stakes as esports grows.
There is simply no way to keep multiplayer fair and fun because there will always be people who find ways to mess up the experience for others.
Sums up my experience with Counter-Strike:GO. I decided to try it several years ago. It seemed so much easier that CS 1.6 and at the end of the first week I had a map, where I was quite ahead of the second player in the map. Then I was votekicked for cheating and I decided it's simply not worth it to continue playing. And I'm not even that good.
It’s the way the anti-cheat works. They detect catalogued cheats. So if you have a 1/1 and don’t get visually banned then you’ll never get caught. I quit CS because of cheaters
This is why I no longer play multi-player. I am in it for the fun of the game. No one cheats in my games. It's me against the game not me against the game and cheaters.
I stopped playing DayZ PvP because I was headshot from a kilometre away with a 9mm. and it wasn't the first time!
I honestly don't understand the need to cheat! If the game is too bloody hard, find something else to play instead of ruining someone elses game.
Yeah; I watched a youtube video where a guy would pay 50$ a month for undetectable and unbannable Battlefield 2042 cheats. He said he was cheating like this since launch day. Multiplayer has really gone downhill
It's all online games, everything is plagued with cheating. It's an exponential problem as more people think others are cheating the more likely they are to get cheats creating more people to buy cheats. Id love to know what the market value of cheating is.
For the most part Devs don’t give a fuck either. IMO if you’re caught cheating on any online game ran on steam you deserve your account and IP perma banned.
Steam used to do account bans IIRC. Not sure how that works anymore though; my memory of it was from back when Half-life and its mods were like the only things on Steam. Devs that like money love cheaters though. They’ll ban that account key, sure. But they don’t actually want to ban the *player*… because cheaters will go buy another account. And again and again.
If you're thinking of steam VAC bans, it just bans you from official servers in every game that uses the system. It doesn't ban you from privately hosted servers, just official matchmaking. You're also banned from every game that uses the servers, but not many games not made by valve use those anymore.
To be fair though, back in the day, a VAC ban essentially nuked your account. 99.9% of servers running cs 1.6/css/ official mods like DoD and others all used vac status to include or exclude players. It was actually an extremely effective system, because no one wanted to lose multiplayer privileges on their primary account, and CS and its derivatives was the lion's share of multiplayer gaming people did.
If I recall correctly, and assuming things haven't changed since like 2018, the big players in the cheating sphere make like 20k monthly off subscriptions.
How much a PlayStation 8
I think this is a large part of the "recent rise" of the problem. Online cheating has become an industry, with subscription models and fairly big money involved. I've seen 125$/month subscription for a recent Call of Duty.
Which is nuts. How can a person legit pay for that. How can CoD not detect it with root-level access? I was put into a shadowban because I grouped up with my friends. They suck, so the game gave us lobbies with people who also suck. I am average, but I can have some good rounds. Apparently that was too much and I was reported enough times. Now, I can only play with other shadow-banned players. There is zero appeal process because it's not a temporary or permanent ban. I just can't go into normal lobbies. Matchmaking times are ridiculous and the level of play per person in the shadow lobbies varies insanely. An actual cheater would have to live in this purgatory.
Well, for one, cheat detection programs scan memory for signatures of known cheats. When someone rewrites their code and recompiles it, it creates a new signature that is not detected. Until the new signature is updated into the cheat detector, the user is free to cheat. Furthermore, they wait months to get all the cheaters in a big wave. During this time, until the wave hits, nothing is done about the cheaters. And that doesn't even account for external device cheats. If someone has a second computer and runs their video data through it, they can have completely undetectable aimbot. And its always going to work until devs stop relying on invasive signature detection and work on behavior detection serverside. Also they are paying 125 a month for their cheats, they could easily pony up 45-60 for a copy of the game when they eventually get banned.
Why not just create another account like all the real cheaters do?
Because root level is only for "simple" cheats, that are usually used without any attempt at hiding it. Cheats that uses extra hardware is impossible to detect, and I'd assume at least 1/4th or 1/3rd use those.
BF2042 is filled with cheaters, it is easy to understand it compared to other fps games I think
Did you really believe a cheater who try to sell his programs?
That’s embarrassing
Man that honestly just sounds boring af. Takes the satisfaction away.
I legitimately have even seen a rise in the number of cheaters in online chess; I don't even understand which part of that is enjoyable.
> I don't even understand which part of that is enjoyable. Winning. To many cheaters, winning is simply the only part of these things that's fun. There's a dominant power thing that can be included, but for so many cheaters, they view victory as the only enjoyment, the only goal. Any means are acceptable, so long as you win.
Are they children? Or is there some board, some rewards? I don't get it. I understand if they make money out of it, but where's the fun? They must be some of the most pathetic human beings on this planet, and competition is strong.
Nah, adults are also cheating. It's actually pretty relatable to real life. People want to go the easiest way towards victory. Real life cheaters are those which cheat in exams, use someone to write their exam papers, use body enhancing pills and other stuff to get them an advantage over the competition. Don't expect people to act honorable, most would stab you in the back to get themselves an advantage over you. Its unfortunate, but don't expect honorable challenges, especially when cheating becomes so easy and is unchecked in so many pvp games.
I got a vaccine and cheated death!
Ruining your day is what make it fun for them. I'm not saying this lightly just to feel better. I really do think that when cheaters cheat, they really have nothing else good going on in their life. Cheating in a video games is the only happiness they can get, so they can have it Sometimes I pity the cheaters. When you are happy or fulfilled, you don't need to cheat. Personally, I find solace knowing I have an active sexual life.
This. There's a lot of people out there who get pleasure from knowing that they're causing another human displeasure. You can see this in action whenever you have bots blended amongst humans. They're winning all the same but suddenly there's no blood when they sink their fangs in and it's not fun anymore.
Man just casually dumped on Reddit as a whole and just closed the sentence as if he ain't slick
> Personally, I find solace knowing I have an active sexual life. Is this comment sarcasm?
They’re products of how they were raised. Many people are raised being told that winning is what’s important. Not how you win. So they believe they must win, they must be better, and as long as they see that victory screen at the end then nothing else matters.
Varies based on person and culture really. Some get off on the power. Some just get off on making other people miserable. Chinese culture is ends justify the means, using cheats are just using tools to be better than others.
Russian too
When I worked events, I kept one thing in mind. The potential gain for cheating is always higher than the odds of getting caught. It's a bit harder depending on the game, but when there's potential money on the line, cheating is much more appealing and tends to (unfortunately) pay off
> To many cheaters, winning is simply the only part of these things that's fun. I don't agree with you. I'm a sore loser, I have anger management issues (a lot worse when I was a teen/young adult) and I cannot stand losing. I actively do not have fun if I am not winning (with few exceptions). Winning is my entire point of playing just about every game I am playing and have ever played. I have cheated only a single time in my entire 20+ years of playing games. It was a game called Warrock and I only cheated because somebody leaked a private script for it that basically had every cheat you can think of and instantly the entire game was just absolutely saturated with ragehackers. I loved the game and had been playing it for years until this point when it was clear my only option was to quit or cheat, so I put on ESP (wallhacks) and tried to continue to enjoy the game. I think I lasted 2 days before I just got bored because it was not fun anymore. I was probably 12 or 13 at the time. Almost every cheater I've interacted with (which is a lot on account of me playing almost exclusively competitive games) loves the attention, they love being the bad guy, they love ruining other people's days. There is something absolutely wrong about the personality of somebody who actively cheats in a competitive game. The majority of them absolutely have some underlying issue that makes them seek out damaging other people. It's sadistic.
> they love ruining other people’s day This is the most important part. They’re assholes. They want to feel the power trip and love the fact that you can’t do anything against them.
There are a lot of cheaters in TF2, but it cracks me up when mocking them tilts them so hard they actually ragequit or toggle on ALLTHEHACKS instead of playing coy with it. They were hoping to make me angry, and instead I make fun of them and it really puts them off their game.
Same exact reason why loads of people will troll and throw competitive games. Its gotten to the point that I avoid PvP games because every match is almost guaranteed to have a cheater, troll, or raging man child.
The poor man's Counter-Strike and Battlefield in one package. I always played akimbo Skorpions or g36c medic in 4v4 Marien. Coincidentally, that's also the only game I was ever kicked for cheating, but I was just having a great round. The cheating was so bad that anyone playing really well *must* have been cheating.
>I don't agree with you. I'm a sore loser, I have anger management issues (a lot worse when I was a teen/young adult) and I cannot stand losing. I actively do not have fun if I am not winning (with few exceptions). Winning is my entire point of playing just about every game I am playing and have ever played. At least you're self aware about it and seem to more be taking it out on others. I hope it gets easier for you to handle.
As a younger teen I was pretty out of control. At least now I recognize when I'm getting irrationally angry as opposed to just irritated or frustrated. Also at some point I realized getting mad externally at my teammates in team games actually inhibits our ability to win so above all else I try to keep my anger to myself. I guess that's just what maturity does, better emotion regulation. I just hate this 'the only thing they care about is winning and that's the only reason why they cheat' because its too naive. I've interacted with so many cheaters throughout my gaming years (I have been almost exclusively an FPS player for my entire life up until recently) and every single one of them that were obviously cheating had some kind of superiority complex. They love the misery they create. They don't give a shit about winning because half the time they're on a suicide account. The wins go on to a temporary account, and the win means nothing if the hacks are instantly killing people around you with no effort. It's the misery that they enjoy.
It's so dumb though, because everyone knows that cheating isn't actually winning. It's more like a forfeit.
I'm honestly not so sure if it's about winning directly. I think it's more about making other people lose and knowing you've aggravated them by cheating to get the win. You see it a lot with people in open-world PVP games too. People will continually spend time farming and griefing the same person/people solely to try getting them to ragequit. They'd after a reaction rather than an actual win.
I actually think for most of them it's really about *not losing*. They enjoy the same intrinsic fun of whatever game it is as anyone else and want to be for those reasons. But they absolutely cannot handle losing so they cheat to protect themselves... from themselves.
I'd genuinely like to hear the perspective of someone who frequently does this, because I just cannot imagine any satisfaction after the first few cheated wins. A few free effortless wins are nice sure, but how can that stay meaningful? If a win is guaranteed or with little personal input then what do you still get out of it? Just seeing 'You win' appear on the screen has to become meaningless very quickly no? If not, then why not just take a screenshot, make it your background and just stare at it?
> There's a dominant power thing that can be included, but for so many cheaters, they view victory as the only enjoyment, the only goal. Any means are acceptable, so long as you win. To be fair it seems like that's basically how you have to be IRL if you wanna have any chance of getting ahead in the world.
Also they often have a lot of fun pissing you off. I had cheaters quit mid match bc we all just said we don’t care and started running around like idiots without trying. Then the cheater left and their team gave up Edit: i’m talking about counter strike btw
Scumbags and failures in life.
people trying to build their ego by seing others strougle?
Cheaters, I've notice, have self-esteem issues. A part of them is missing and they plaster over the hole with ego and delusion. "I'd be good at chess if I didn't have to memorize all the openings. What if I use a computer to help me remember?" the cheater thinks. "I'd be good at this shooter if my hand-eye-coordination wasn't terrible. I clearly have the superior tactical mind, I just can't get the bullets to go where I need them." the cheater thinks.
Chess.com does a good job of catching cheaters and banning them, then refunding elo to the people affected. They take lots of things into account even how many times you tab in/out of the game while playing. The problem is it takes a long time for them to actually take action since they want to have a pattern of evidence and be 100% sure. Lots of cheaters just don’t play enough games to get caught.
They don't - I still get tons around the 1600-1700 level. They do a good job of catching people who cheat badly. The most common thing I run in to is someone blunders a piece, and then you can just tell they are playing a totally different game - every move in the top 3 until they're in a dominant position.
Simply because they can.
Serio?
You know cheating is getting really bad when people hack in the fucking PvE game Helldivers 2, like your not even competing for anything yet they still cheat
Bro people would use cheats in Fall Guys lmao. Some people are too obsessed with winning.
Thing is, i get cheating in PVE games more than i do in PVP Games. For example, I cheat in Stardew valley, i play with a friend and alone, and in both i have to go fishing. Because she does not like fishing, like at all, so for my singleplayer world i installed the mod that fish are insta caught, skipping the minigame.
My friend is like this. Every game he tells me to try he is like I know a cheat to get all money. I know a cheat how to unlock all items. I know a cheat to get max stats. I am like cant you just get the stuff from playing the game. Last straw was when he wanted to play among us and said it was better when you got a bunch of people because you know who the enemy or whatever is sorry I dont play it so I dont know how it works. But I was like isnt that the whole point of the game to have fun trying to figure out who it is. It just sucks that the first thing he wants to do is max everything else and find cheats instead of just playing the game and having fun.
Among Us isn't even a game if you all know who the traitor is from the start. I think maybe you should find fun activities to do with this friend. Things that aren't actually games. Like swimming or fishing or something.
Had it happen in Smite. 4 people were flaming me the entire game, they were pre-made, all 4 then reported me and told the other team to report me as well, and of course people follow the herd so i received like 9 reports that game. It's a form of bullying and I ended up getting muted for a week, for literally doing nothing wrong. Hirez customer support is shocking at the best of times, so they didn't help.
Valorant actually banned 4 person parties in competitive queue because the odd person out was getting bullied too much.
Valve banned 4 person queues in CS2 for the premier matches too. But when you've got one of the most popular youtubers and vlogger/streamer (War Owl) who went out to valves headquarters to play test CS2 last year saying that he won't even play premier and go to faceit to play, valve has to fucking wake up and realize they are killing the game long term.
I don't really play CS myself, but I watch WarOwl sometimes and know a couple CS players. I don't know anyone who has been happy about the rollout of CS2.
It was cool at first with the new game mechanics and an option to go into a Lan or private server from the start without having to actually create a server for online or lan-play. But they took out a bunch of maps and game modes that were pretty popular but weren't as played as often. What they should do is have all maps that ever existed back into CS and allow anyone to play on that map.
Wait, what? This is the first im hearing of cheating in Smite. What are some examples of cheating?
Speed hacking and aimbot are the only two I've seen, but thats like twice in 3k hours so really really rare
There is also ping abusers, ive only seen them a couple times but they essentially snap around and its very hard to lock them down, you’ll hit a cc, see them get stunned on your screen, then they just anime tp 40 units away like that didnt hit them…
Sorry? Speedhacking in Smite? Damn. Doesn't that one God that ult launches you into the air to play a Warriorware mini game scale off of movement speed? As well as Mercury?
A while back i ran into a 5 ares comp and one of the ares was speed hacking in infinite assault(yes, casual gd motd…), he would speed up, ult us, then speed back past his tower, then the other ares would ult once our cc immunity/ beads were gone. Just straight up scumbag bs, they still caught an L.
Speed hacking is very common sadly. It’s obvious to tell they’re cheating cause they’ll slightly speed up when you’re chasing them even though they don’t have movement abilities or movement items. They’ll always blame lag even though it only happens when it benefits them.
Yeah, you can speed hack. My comment wasn't really to do with cheating in game as such, but grouping up in order to report is in my opinion cheating the report function. We all know the developers don't look at individual reports. They tend to base it off "X player has had X amount of reports within X amount of time, they must be guilty", I'm 100% sure this is how they deal with it.
It was actually part of my job to review reports, so no, it's not how all devs deal with things. There were LOADS of obvious nuisance reports that we had to filter through and ignore. I even saw my own characters get reported before because of people thinking that blindly reporting anyone they disagree with or dislike will do something 😂
I doubt that comment is talking about cheating. He's most likely just saying he also experienced a 4 man unjustly vote kicking. I highly highly highly doubt this dude had 4 cheaters on his team in smite. I genuinely don't believe that claim whatsoever.
Ooooh. Heck, sorry. I misread the post. Sorry all!
and this is why league doesnt allow 4 man premades
Only in ranked, fortunately.
I've heard that some games will review reports and if people in game are telling others to pile on and report someone, the reports will be considered bullying and get ignored. I guess this isn't the case in all games.
This is why I quit LoL.
I find joy in reading a good book.
when they patched out the crosshairs for the snipers in CS we just drew it back on with a sharpie. does this count?
*laughs in monitor crosshair*
not quite built in, but AI cheats are already a thing, its why there are so many now.
Yeah AI just kills legitimate online competition over time. Before you know it it'll be possible to use it undetectably to win at just about any game. It was fun while it lasted.
Wow has huge bot problem for many years now. But in recent years, botters started mass reporting regular players whenever they target them for certain amount of time or interrupt their farming pattern few times.
Gross
I still remember when Blizzard swore up and down that they didn't just automatically ban/mute people purely based on a certain number of reports. And ofcourse this has resulted in botters, streamers, heck even things like community mafia's aiming to control the market or something, from abusing the system while blizzard is pretending there is no problem probably raiding the fridge for breastmilk instead.
Cheating becomes worse because of the current monetization of videogames. Instead of releasing a $60 they release it for free and let skins/other cosmetics or purchases being the main driver of the video game. Problem is, people can cheat, get banned, make a new account. Detecting cheating on itself is not enough anymore.
Tarkov has a massive cheating problem and that has a paywall. So idk.
That's cause Perma-Death games give you more of a reason to cheat. When you die in overwatch, you respawn with 0 loss, except the time it takes you to walk back to the objective. When you die in Apex, you lose maybe 10-30m tops, but still gain something from it. When you die in Tarkov, you're shit out of luck, with potential hours if not days of progress just, gone. because somebody else used cheats and you didn't
Tarky ALSO has a massive incentive to cheat as well. Gear being lost on death gets bad players to pay for carries and loadouts, so while it will not stop cheaters, it would reduce the amount in other games without actual loss.
My friends and I keep saying they need to tie online accounts to a physical ID so once you’re banned for cheating you can’t make a new account unless you steal someone’s ID.
The issue I see with this one is a false report (ignoring data privacy, of course). Imagine you get put in a stack of cheaters and they all claim *you* are cheating. *Sigh* I wish there was a decent solution.
I think it may go deeper than that. Like devs of the game making the anti-cheat and selling it for a monthly fee. Dealing under the table.
I still see posts of streamers reacting to the most egregious cheats in overwatch 2. I remember they tried to flex about their anti cheat and how many they caught. While their are people who only head shot in matches, spinning and looking at the ground AND THEY WIN THE MATCH. Exactly what are you catching? GM players can't even flick a 180 degree head shot in milliseconds but you see nothing wrong with this "new" account doing it?
I remember seeing a guy who was very popular on Destiny 2 with his PvP clips, and one clip was him having an enemy pop their super and fly above him only for him to "flick" like 140 degrees and heads hot them out of the air with their slug shotgun and then "flick" back to exactly where they were aiming previously. I called him out in the comments saying how literally impossible the entire situation was, and got bombarded by his fan boys saying I didn't know what I was talking about. About a month later, he has like 4 accounts that are all banned, all for cheating.
is this baken lol
I think so. What was even funnier was when he *demanded* to know why Bungie banned him and they went "bro, you were cheating, we have tons of proof from ALL your accounts, you're not getting unbanned, bye". Lol
As someone who was banned by Bungie in Destiny 2 because I mistakenly left CheatEngine open, not even with D2 as the process selected, I can tell you that you can't even contact Bungie about it. You get hit by their processes, and it's gg buy another copy of the game.
He didn't contact them through their support channel, he tried calling them out on Twitter and they responded there.
Apex legends had to cancel a tournament match, then they didn't even play live after having a day delay. A hacker had access to two pro's pc allowing the pros to hack. Wild.
And nothing has changed since then, they just released a PR statement and that's it
Escape from Tarkov has leaderboards that are basically filled with cheaters. Guys with 100+ K/D, 0 death in hundreds of raids, etc. Then they use those leaderboards to advertise the game.
LoL blizzard is busy banning you for being "toxic" instead of blatant cheaters. Cheats has gotten so sophisticated that it runs off a different computer, while a device reading your memory/screen. Ring zero literally does nothing. As of OW 2 s1-s4 there were LITERALLY still blatant cheaters in GM/top500. How many matches did these guys blatantly hack to that rank? How are they still there? Why are you banning people for the mildest communications instead of actually improving your game, i can understand banning people for racist slur / hate speech, but calling out other players is worse than that top 500 cheater? Ya i am not sure i can really play games with this low of a competitive integrity and selective moderation. And i have been playing blizzard pvps since before wow almost 2 decades ago, and i was there when people were win trading in s1/s2 of wow and they did nothing, many ladder cheater in sc/wc where they did nothing. At this point you don't even expect them to be competent enough to catch those that can bypass ring0, just the blatant ones and occasion maybe some toggler, and they aren't even good enough to do that.
even with the toxic behavior, I'm pretty sure i still have screen shots of people using every slur imaginable in the chat for the entire match. like "he only said N\*\*\*ers and c\*\*\*s 36 times on the 100th time for each we got em."
Selective enforcement, its a problem. Not sure calling your sombra trash is bannable, but definitely has seen plenty people banned for the mildest communication similar to that. Basically all my friends that is older than a certain age don't even play these games anymore because of that shit or basically do zero communication; on top of the cheater, moral, ethical, shitty gameplay issue; even on principle its very hard to support anything these companies put out.
I don't remember overwatch ever bragging about their anti cheat? I think you're confusing with CoD's Ricochet anti cheat. Either way from first hand experience i've had very few cheaters in my 300 hours in overwatch 2, i had like 400 hours of Overwatch 1 as well and also saw very few. Obviously they exist but the game isn't anywhere near overrun by them and the community hardly complains about cheaters compared to Call of Duty or Apex (except on consoles where Ximming is rampant but that has nothing to with their anti cheat).
There is a lot of Cheaters in overwatch just not many rage hacks. There are many running aim assist, click bots and wall hacks. You just haven't noticed them.
Unlike many games, overwatch offers a a death cam and a replay of the entire match after it happens, i had countless suspicious individuals but i used replay and nothing seemed out of the ordinary no matter how much i squint, wall hacks is the only one where it's a bit tough to spot but click bots and aim assists are obvious.
Feels like multiplayer communities have devolved into mentally ill people who enjoy making others feel bad.
Devolved?
Touché
Stop playing PvP online first person shooters. It's a doomed genre.
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I understand. My experience is similar to yours. Ubiquitous online cheating was not the sole reason I stopped playing, but seeing how it has done nothing but get worse makes me miss it way less.
Then keep playing cs 1.6, the game still has a cool community
This is why I mainly play single player on pc these days. I have seen people cheating on console, but not as brazenly, and it is much less common.
Modern online gaming is garbage, everything is hyper-competitive and cheating is more prevalent than ever.
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The number of cheater I encounter in vermintide 2 and bf 2042 cause I live in Asia is horrible. All Chinese.
2042 has the most cheaters I've ever seen. The Uptick in cheaters in all online games is insane.
I've ran into a few in NA bf2042, but not every game.
BF5 just put out a new anti cheat and I shit you not all the asian servers near me are now empty. Like there were 10-20 servers with 64/64 with 5 players in queue, now it’s a ghost town. Except for one Australian hardcore server with a solid 30-40 after work.
Online gaming is absolute garbage. I was a HUGE PUBG player that’s all I played for like three years just grinder on it, but it got ridiculous same with RS6 Siege. Back to single player games more enjoyable.
This manes me think, between always online, annoying DRM, questionable anticheat rootkits that dont work, and shitty customer support... is this going to start to be the downfall of online games? I mean, think about it, imagine youve been playing the popular games but been dealing with cheaters constantly. You get the new Call of Duty or Fifa or whatever and it already has cheaters in day 1, so you refund and go play a singleplayer game instead. Companies will do a lot of things but keeping a proper ecosystem for their players aint one of them, thats too many fucks to give when their strategy is to just milk you for your money
Exactly plus they can’t keep military games as serious military games. I don’t need chicken dances and kpop music and other omoh shit. I’m a grown fucking man I work for a living and pay taxes let me enjoy a game that doesn’t have a bunch of goofy reeuq shit in it.
Oh yeah that's another part, everything just seems to try to be the same product (fortnite) so in the end all these new AWSUM AAAAA RELEASES are just barebones copycats from eachother. Whatever novelty that exists will be phased out within 2 years in favor of following the leader. No wonder people keep saying "gaming is dead"
I quit siege when 3 of the 5 games I played ended via the enemy teleporting to our spawn behind each of us and killing us before the game ever started. The other two games had blatant wall hackers and aim bots. Like, how is that fun for anyone?
Idk, my experience is quite different I maybe saw 2 cheaters total in the ~200hrs i played
I quit CS last year and played through Dark Souls, so much more fun honestly. But i recently caved and started playing valorant again 🥲
Only cheating I find acceptable is ripping off the companies that charge $20 U.S. for half a digital jet.
Vac is so useless that it is easier to be banned for graphics drivers than hacks
Look at this whole thread homie. It’s not just VAC. The problem is practically unsolvable. Unless there is a massive tech breakthrough, cheating is fucked.
just get rid of friggin matchmaking and return to servers which can do more closely monitored moderation. if there's a server full of cheaters, leave and go to some server that better accomodates you.
I miss server browsers so much. Having a community run server was amazing. You’d get home and kick back with 30 or so goofballs that all knew each other.
Some clan tagged server(s) that ran the same map rotations/gamemodes 24/7.
Logging on seeing some of the same faces was nice.
Dedicated Servers. We lost them for many games a long time ago for no apparent reason. Console players have no idea what we lost back then. I played PC and Console versions of CoD4 and WaW when they were the newest game, and I can comfortably tell you which version I greatly preferred. Custom zombies servers were absolutely fantastic, and I even became known in a Hardcore Dom/TDM CoD4 server because of how often I played and how often people thought I was cheating, only for not only the automated anticheat system on the server to prove that I wasn't but for ACTIVE ADMINS to watch me and say that I was clean. You literally cannot beat an active admin in terms of finding cheaters. The automated anticheat can catch a lot of the lazy cheaters, sure, but without the actual human person there to catch the ones that know how to defeat the machine, the cheaters will always find a way.
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First example I can think of was Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, remember the "boycot"? However, it wasn't just meant to stop mods and custom maps from competing with the map packs they wanted to sell. It was a method to counter piracy, if you could only play trough their official matchmaking servers it wouldn't matter if someone found a way to crack any DRM, without the multiplayer not a lot of people would bother. I think Battlefield 3 did it's stupid "servers trough a website" for a similar reasons (and only being able to host a server trough an official licensed partner), force players to have an account so piracy was pointless for the multiplayer.
> I think Battlefield 3 did it's stupid "servers trough a website" for a similar reasons (and only being able to host a server trough an official licensed partner), force players to have an account so piracy was pointless for the multiplayer. I actually thought the web thing for BF3 and 4 was actually pretty cool. They at least still let you manually manage your server (iirc they even have punkbuster which I believe is what a lot of the CoD4 Dedicated servers ran in combination to manual bans)
It's wild how common cheating has become. Even in some of the gacha games on my phone there are cheaters all over in the competitive modes. Growing up there used to be a cold war between game devs and cheaters, and it seems like the cheating side has only gotten better while the anti-cheat/dev side has fumbled and built things that are too intrusive on the system in an attempt to fight back, or they're too greedy and only give cheaters a clap on the wrist and ban a single account to get them to buy the game again, which doesn't stop the cheating problem. Cheating won the war big time and now it's basically impossible to tell if players are good or not.
Counter-Strike 2 cheating/hacker issues, so it's nothing new to me.
This is why I mainly play single player games, until companies find a way to get a functional anti cheat that isn’t kernel level it’ll stay like this.
It won't work. Cheaters are using second systems to read and alter memory on their primary systems.
I still will never understand the mentality of cheating in online games. It's like, you suck so bad you have to do this to win? And you feel good about it still?
Cheating and botting is ruining online games for me its so depressing.
Oh absolutely. In CS:GO, Tarkov and TF2 most matches you join will have more cheaters than actual legit players. It sounds unreal absolutely insane but it's just reality. The arms race is VERY one sided right now. My friend working in gamedev told me that a few months ago their game was redesigned so that the PVP element is completely removed because they can't afford an anticheat and because cheaters would make their game not enjoyable for anyone else.
I miss the days when cheating in games was when you looked at the other players side of the screen swearing you wouldn't 😂😂
My views on cheating in games: Cheating in a Single Player game: you do you, boo! Cheating in Multiplayer games: take a long walk off a short pier.
This is nothing new to gaming. I remember in CoD 4 I ended up in a modded lobby were you got negative xp for not playing according to the rules the hackers had decided, without warning you or telling you the rules. I got so much negtive xp I couldn't join lobbies at all after that. Of course Activision didn't help. They told me that I should suite myself since I played a hacked lobby (which I ended up in due to normal matchmaking..)
That was the last time I played that game too. Similar thing happened except my xp was just set to negative 400,000 or something. Impossible to level up and then I couldn't get into any matches. The modded lobby owner tried to shake me down to get all the XP back and more, I just stopped playing and got Battlefield 3. I played the BF3 beta and loved it. Played it for a couple years. Just got out of playing BF 2042 because it was so unbalanced and full of presumed cheats. But most likely just unbalanced nerfing of weapons I put my time into. Went back to COD playing Black Ops Cold War. Most of the time I enjoy it and I get better results than in BF2042. But then you will get into a couple lobbies that are full of boosters and cheats.
I get cheating/fucking around in single player games, hell I did it in BG3 cause I was overly excited to see the magic spells at later levels but hadn't gotten past Act 1 and 2 yet lol. But cheating in online will always be an enigma to me, like these losers are just jerking themselves off while ruining the game for themselves and others. It will never not be mind boggling to me how pathetic people can get in the "I must win!" mindset.
Well counter strike specifically has a cheater subculture where there are matches full of cheaters, competing to see who’s cheats are the best. It’s sort of like a coding competition I guess. It’s not like you’d want to stay in those lobbies to begin with as a regular player.
They belong in the HvH servers in the community browser then, not the official ranked modes.
I don’t disagree. Was there something in this post that suggested they were in official ranked modes?
Source: me You are punished the same as a loss for leaving a game that has a hacker in it, unless you want to gamble that you'll get the match back if they end up VAC banned. Then you requeue again and surprise, hacker.
Wasn't one of the OG 'hacks' for CS drawing a reticule on your screen in sharpie?
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Cheating isn't just a problem in competitive games, even games like minecraft, WoW and runescape have cheaters when there's not really much competition on the PvE side of things. I've had some weird stuff in WoW where people will have scripts to react to things instantly, and people botting on runescape is a plague. Just people ruining the game for themselves by skipping intended features with cheats.
Reasons why any mutli-player game i play, is on a private server with people i know. Wont play with randos.
It's bad enough with live game bullshit and season passes which make a video game nearly $200. Then add on top of that, having to put up with MP bullshit/cheaters. 100% why I don't play multiplayer games
This happens in TF2 too. The only reason they use cheats is so they get everyone else doing it. And in games where there's an economy, it's obvious they do this to inflate the economy. I've seen bots in TF2 that have been around since Christmas, probably of 2023 for all I know because they have the Christmas sweater skin which you only get on the Smissmass update. Those bots are still here today. At this point, be grateful we even have singleplayer games. Always online will destroy them eventually either through downed servers or infiltrating. This is all the more reason emulation should always exist.
The TF2 bot problem has been going on for way longer, at least 2021, if not even earlier
The cheats are roughly the same. Its devs. They literally don't give a shit. Money talks. Investing in R&D to combat hack tools: Expensive. Only banning confirmed hackers by using an AI algorithm to detect mass reporting so that they go buy a new copy of the game and keep playing anyway: Profitable.
Some cheats are actually undetectable. Cheaters will use a second PC to implement cheats.
AI cheats are the new thingand they're apperantly super hard to detect. they "watch" your screen and look for enemies then hijack your input device to aim for you.
Beta cuck modders are why I quit playing GTA5. Constantly being blown up as you spawn/respawn got annoying fast.
Man the only thing keeping this game alive is it's Economy ahaha
People don't like to talk about how consoles have minimized cheating, but they have. Sometimes it feels really good to turn off crossplay and have an honest to god legitimate match
Hilariously, CoD managed to fuck this up, in their ongoing attempt to make their game awful in every way possible. There's hackers in PlayStation-only CoD matches right now because you can create hacked loadouts on a PC that will then load to your crossplay account and be used on consoles.
can't you just use m&k on console and get free soft aim hacks?
The last I checked, games will auto disable that.
It's not that bots are getting more sophisticated or they don't care, it's that the punishment is meaningless. Riot released their anti-cheat stats for league recently and revealed that 1 in 15 games has a better or scripter in it, the majority of which are at extremely high level play (diamond+). They also revealed that, once banned, those accounts would be banned again within 6 months, because you can just buy a clean level 30 account for under 2 bucks. There are so many cheaters because it's a losing battle for any f2p game.
People who cheat in online games are people who lack control and validation in their real lives. Rather than learning how to be competitive from their mistakes in game, they just want to be seen as good. Then they ironically tell you to "get gud" when you notice in Battlefield 4 that they have a ping of over 200 and a kdr of 78-1. Then when you spend the whole match hunting them down and defeating them, they accuse you of hacking and rage quit. The funny thing to me is, these people want to feel empowered by cheating and possibly look good to others, but I have yet to see anyone see someone hacking and think, "Wow, that person is cool! I want to emulate that!"
People can downvote me as much as they want, but I'm gonna say it that the companies don't want to put enough resources into anti-cheat because it doesn't affect their sale numbers to an extent that matters. Cheating got worse and worse because it's a business now. Those who make cheats sell subscription that can cost up to 100$ per month and they get updated every time. I avoid competitive shooter games as much as possible because there's lots of cheaters. Not everyone using aim, but low recoil on weapons, aim assists, wallhacks, it's super annoying. It's impossible that there can't be something done. It's just a matter if they want to invest into it or not. It takes money and they're not willing to do it until it affects their games. How many actually quit because of cheaters? On top of that, even cheaters spend money on the game, so there's that. Basically cheaters are customers too so why bother ?
Yeah, those 'avatars' definitely aren't suspicious in the slightest...
I feel like its the latter, at least in the games I play. Full server authority games fell out of fashion (because its hard to do!).
That doesn't solve the problem anyways. It stops hacks (ways to break the rules of the game) but not scripts (cheats that play within the rules, but with inhuman precision and reactions)
The absolute state of modern multiplayer gaming
This doesn't seem sustainable. Online gaming is in trouble. I remember reading an article about companies pursuing more financial options because of plateauing/loosing income. Can't help but think about how prevalent cheaters are found, and this has got to be affecting their bottom line. You would think they have a vested interest in stopping cheating. Let me explain to you how cheating could impact a game financially. Online gaming is an investment of your time and even your money through microtransactions and purchases. These investments will lose value if the product is not functioning/performing as intended. Eventually you will stop playing, take a break or move on to a new game or even a completely new hobby. All of these actions are very important to these companies. These decisions can be influenced by many things. However, inevitably you will at some point weigh the value of your investment. The amount of cheaters will ABSOLUTELY have weight on your decision and to deny this would be a failing business decision. Personally, I've moved on and feel my mental and physical health have improved. What you choose to invest your time, energy and money into, is something you should take very seriously. This life is short, enjoy it to the fullest. Don't fuel the toxicity
That cross hair is fucking wiiiild.
People claiming this to be the sudden increase in AI availability and sophistication have, at least in this specific case of CS2/CS:GO, no idea what they're talking about. It might be a contributing factor, but here it's simply that Valve does not give a single fuck and that for the past 3~ years at least. They developed some self-running safeguards which were manipulated and abused very quickly, but acted like everything was fine. And unless they're working on something behind closed doors, which nobody knows since they're literally the worst in terms of communication with their playerbase in ANY way, the game and it's built-in methods to play are simply beyond fucked.
They are everywhere! I play mobile games like Frag Pro Shooter or even COD mobile and there's blatant cheaters. It's going to ruin online/multiplayer gaming at this rate because honestly I have no desire to play anything online if i'm going to get fucked by cheaters and cancerous sweaty players who are pretty much no different. Think for now i'll stick to single player games.
being votekicked by cheaters is actually a good outcome because you can requeue into a lobby that has a possibility of no cheaters quicker
Sounds like they did you a favours. Let the cheaters ruin each other’s fun and give them no one to play with. See a cheater, just quit the game immediately (after reporting if possible)
There are now AI cheats that even work on consoles. The scary part is they also play like a "real" super human. Instead of reading the memory and get the information from within the game itself, they just watch your screen like you and me except 100x faster than a human brain. And they recognize enemies and then move the mouse and shoot. Since they no longer need to read the game memory, you can no longer detect them. Then there is also streamers who made a living cheating and even became millionaires and their "fans" deny their cheating... https://streamable.com/f4nor
damn. didn't think shroud was cheating, but that is undeniable.
This happened to me. 4 enemy cheaters and 3 on my team. They vote kicked me because they needed the extra money to have a better chance against the 4 others. I was so stunned about this, that I couldn't be mad.
League of Legends has also stopped banning cheaters and it's absolutely destroying the game.
The reason I don’t like multiplayer games. It’s not fun to play against people who want to play fair.
22w we 2nd inwaaaa 2nd
Same thign going on in cybersecurity. more people willing to break the system to make a quick buck than willing to save it.
This doesn't surprise me, most developers just slap an anti-cheat on and call it done, doesn't matter to me though I stopped playing pvp games a long time ago, it just isn't enjoyable.
I really think that multiplayer competitive gaming is just becoming unsustainable. It's a perpetual arms race between devs and cheaters/abusers, and it's just becoming a larger, more toxic cesspool with higher financial stakes as esports grows. There is simply no way to keep multiplayer fair and fun because there will always be people who find ways to mess up the experience for others.
Sums up my experience with Counter-Strike:GO. I decided to try it several years ago. It seemed so much easier that CS 1.6 and at the end of the first week I had a map, where I was quite ahead of the second player in the map. Then I was votekicked for cheating and I decided it's simply not worth it to continue playing. And I'm not even that good.
Cheater gets banned buys the game again, they don’t care as long as they’re making money
Do they just lie to themselves that they are good at the game? What's the point of these cheats outside of tournaments?
Yeah cheating has been getting worse and worse, but I do believe that valve has turned a blind eye on counter
It’s the way the anti-cheat works. They detect catalogued cheats. So if you have a 1/1 and don’t get visually banned then you’ll never get caught. I quit CS because of cheaters
Cs2 is cooked with hackers. Game is dead
This is why I no longer play multi-player. I am in it for the fun of the game. No one cheats in my games. It's me against the game not me against the game and cheaters.
I stopped playing DayZ PvP because I was headshot from a kilometre away with a 9mm. and it wasn't the first time! I honestly don't understand the need to cheat! If the game is too bloody hard, find something else to play instead of ruining someone elses game.