MSNBC story on online game cheating [why companies drag their feet]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21086113

They mention the fact that people cheat online in games. Either to turn a weapon into a super weapon, or to aquire a hard to get item.

They also mention that the game companies kinda drag their feet because:
1]Cheaters still have to pay for their accounts.
2]The cheater gets banned, then has to buy a new copy of the game then hope to get a new account.

Then they talk about Intels new chip. How it will monitor how a person is interacting with software and then let the server know its legit or not legit.

I hate the idea of a hardware solution to solving cheating. Heck punkbuster creates just as many problems as it solves.

Maybe the solution to cheating in online games is to switch them off....

As for me, and the talks of cheating in uo:

Yes its upsetting that it goes on.
No it wont stop my play, because the cheating has little impact on what I do. Which is play with friends or solo hunt in low level dungeons.


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All games are dealing with this crisis. I hope that the chipset can carry anti cheating in it, that would really work well. Then folks cant cheat!

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Maybe the part about losing account revenue by going after cheaters if the real reason here.

Integrity and respect for your player base means nothing. Revenue is the only measurement.

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I'm curious who those authors are, and what their experience is.


E. Jeremy Dalberg
UO Community Coordinator
EA Mythic

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The problem with cheating has NOTHING to do with hardware or software.

The problem with cheating stems from a perception that has been fostered beginning with the 8-bit systems and continuing throughout that cheating is NOT a bad thing.

Be it by codes, bugs in the program, or by add-on devices and "guides", cheating in console gaming has never been seen as a big deal, especially on the single player level.

However that mindset has permeated into online gaming originally with BBS door games, into the FPS shooters and Diablo (limited client/server), and later into MMOGs.

In the console games, many times it had a point (to beat the game), in a game like UO, which has no end, the point of cheating becomes less altruistic ("I'm only cheating myself out of the full experience to see the plotline more easily") and more adversarial ("I want to be better than everyone else").

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Anyone who believes that a company allows rampant cheating in a game to increase revenues is deluding themselves.

Well...

Heh. As I was writing this, I remembered baseball....

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I don't think they allow it per se, but it wouldn't surprise me if there are a LOT of meetings in which they argue the pervasiveness of a given cheat vs the damage it causes vs how much in lost revenue they would eat to remove the people involved.

It seems like one hell of a balancing act, especially for a subscription based game.

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It really needs a lazer operation for sure.

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UO, especially since it has so few subscribers, either must be bold and "to hell with the consequences," or give a "wink and a nod" to the various cheaters out there who so permeate UO.

My former guild consisted mostly of people who wouldn't "cheat" for anything, but didn't think anything of using the forbidden program to work up skills or even mine AFK. But, that guy over there is one speedhacking cheater! There were even scripts on our guild's web site.

I am of an age where such statements as "it isn't whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game," had retained at least SOME of their efficacy. That mindset, through the years, has been replaced by the constant refrain of "If you're not cheating, you're not trying." or "It's not cheating if you're not caught."

There is no shame anymore, for the most part, except for the shame you feel when getting caught. But, all you have to do these days is say "I'm sorry," and all is forgiven.

So, what are we left with?

Rampant cheating in professional sports. All professional sports, at every level. Rampant cheating in our schools, even by the teachers and administrators so to make the grade when THEY are "tested." Cheating by our President to win a lawsuit and a significant majority of our populace, rather than being offended by that behavior, attacked those who WERE.

In UO, we have systems which, for whatever reason, almost seem to be designed to favor the cheater with no checks in place to put any govenor on that cheating when such would seem to be relatively easy to code. But, it's a resource thing, isn't it? Like the arms race, if EA is able to rid the game of cheaters for now, they'll just come back...the same guys with better cheating programs, causing the cycle to begin anew.


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and that balancing act gets harder the lower amount of subscriptions you have.

Wow can easily make an example of a couple of thousand accounts caught cheating, they have plenty to spare.

UO on the other hand will be materially impacted if they remove those accounts.

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A hardware solution will have the same stumbling blocks as software. If someone want's to cheat, they'll find a way around the block, hardware, or software.

Even if you have a 100% detection, there will still be cheaters, because once someone finds the right loophole, even 5 minutes of cheat time, may gain the cheater a much higher gain. Combined with proxies, and all sorts of other methods to spoof your identity, being unable to completly remove the cheater from playing really doesn't allow for effective removal.


As to why the feet are dragged, it probably varies from company to company. Sometimes it's simply the workload of dealing with the cheaters and the programming needed to close loopholes.
Othertimes, a company may have too high of a percentage of cheaters to be financially feasible to get rid of them outright.

Lets face it, you keep the cheating under control, there should be very little revenue generated from cheaters.

Remeber, there's actually only a very small portion of truly dedicated cheaters, the others usually follow because it's easy (tools made by pro's), and usually associated with low risk vs high gain.

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An interesting comment made by an NCsoft exec at AGC was that Lineage 2 bans 25% of their playerbase every month. That doesn't seem to be hurting them financially any...

E. Jeremy Dalberg
UO Community Coordinator
EA Mythic

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So to speculate on that in relation to UO..
If the repeat/die-hard cheaters were banned inside of one month's time, then UO would actually make more money off of their accounts than they would if the accounts were not banned.
Ban a few of them per day and that should easily account for the cost to have a pro-active GM ban-master. Then the bonus income from people believing in the solid integrity of UO would be.. a potentially very significant bonus. Yet for some reason it hasn't been done yet (or at least it isn't being done effectively yet).

Take that high figure of 25% * ~100,000 = ~25,000. That would equal about $250,000 extra per bust-to-renewal period (in the Lineage2 example that would be +$250K every month @ the rate of one bust/one renewal per month).. Now imagine if that caused the playerbase to greatly expand, as well as cause cheating to lose its appeal. That would be even more money coming in for EA/Mythic. Yet there must some type of reason why it hasn't been done yet (or at least it isn't being done effectively yet).

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Unless one believes that you can generate 25% of your playerbase in new customers every month, then, I would suspect that most, if not all, of the "new" players are simply recycled banned cheaters.

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Well it's one of the reasons I no longer play. It stems from a scripter bot which used to drop in front of my house about every 20 mins and strip the mining spot clean in ~ 6 seconds then hop around and hit every spot in the area gold or better. I contacted GM and nothing. I posted it and even a UO person responded saying it was not possible. I replied with I can prove it come and see and no one came. Then I knew that they only cared about the monthly fee.

Besides that they never seemed to fix the bugs that affected the type of characters I played. Not long after I stopped playing.

The one problem they have ignored and is coming back to bite them is when the ratio of legit players to cheaters hit a certain point the game will be gone and it will be quick because the cheaters will not be able to turn a decent profit. Of the 17 people/friends that started about the time I did and built a guild only 1 is left. All but 2 left for the reasons stated above.

I came back for the 2 week trial to see if things got better and they have not changed except for the declining number of people.


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Cheaters would adapt.
Or, at least, those that enable cheating would adapt.
Plus, it would potentially impact legitimate things that may resemble cheating.
A possible example, based on their example in the article:
I could program a macro on my G11, on one of the G-keys, to type "I wish to lock this down"
That's a ton of 'keystrokes' being sent to the client, for only one actual keystroke
For the protection to not impact computer performance, it would need to be totally in hardware. That hardware would need to be able to completely understand what is and is not cheating by itself. Perhaps it could be programmable, with updates made to the near-endless list of inclusions and exceptions.
Oh, and then there's the slight gaping hole of older hardware, and other hardware manufacturers (AMD, anyone?).
I'm pretty sure no one needs to be holding their breath for this new Intel technology to ride in and save the day.

I recall, from some time in the past, Intel were planning to work with Microsoft, on hardware-based DRM for software. The design was simply to prevent unsigned software from running (that is, software that Microsoft didn't sign as Ok, which would include modifications of signed software), and some manner of hardware-specific activation of software, the nature of which I forget.

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I hate to post something as rude as what I am going to do but here goes anyways.

Jerermy, your postings here seem to have some type of edge or tone to them that passes accross to myself as near mocking. I cannot believe that with the blatent cheating/speeding/scrpiting that has been going on in this game the last number of years that you could dare to show in such a thread. The player base has been crying for some type of solution to above problems for ages and we have recieved little effective support. Sure a few accounts get banned and you make a statement about trillions of gold whiped but so what, it was a small showing of what has been going on for ages.

Give us some type of token showing that the dev team actually gives the smallest hoot about whats been going on, this record your writing is horrid at best.

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think when Jeremy asked... "I'm curious who those authors are, and what their experience is." she was well within her rights too, this is after all a story by MSNBC which is just an American mass media company, and we all know how the media (of any country) can bend the truth, or even make things up just to sell a story.

Not saying they have in this case mind you, just saying that questioning the Media's credentials is perfectly understandable, after all Jeremy works for a software company, the journalists at MSNBC dont.

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I have absolutely zero trust in the mass media myself. They are large companies built to generate a profit, just like any other business out there. Many companies/corporations cheat, cut corners, or outright lie to increase their profits, even by marginal amounts.

Even if the people working for them believe what they are doing has a positive influence on the world, it only takes one or two corrupt officials at the highest levels to screw everyone over. *coughs* ENRON *coughs*. The media is exactly the same, the few people at the top have the last word on what kind of "spin" is put on any information that becomes public.

I remember listening to the news on TV one day (can't recall what station) when they announced the details of double murder somewhere. Apparently an average sounding young man had killed both his parents just the day before. You know what the first thing they announced about him was? When they searched his room they found Dungeons & Dragons books and paraphernalia. They actually announced that on a news broadcast. Might as well have announced "Look out for D&D players! They're uncouth devil worshipers!". That's like saying all postal workers carry around guns and retain a very tenuous grip on sanity, it's just utter bullroar. I was terribly offended to say the least . Was the child abused mentally or physically? Was the kid on a crazy whacked out crack trip? Nothing else even entered into the equation. It was a clear cut case of some prejudiced moron injecting his own "morals" (and I use that term loosely) into the report. Thats when I stopped watching the news on TV.

what is so amazing is to get banned for no cheating! Yet using the game like this- I have a char that was an archer having 115 resist 120 bush and 120 in all archery skills and such... dont want go into it but being a knight of honor you could lighting stike with at times over 100+ damn, then if you would honor them you would do 1 hit kills... so I went to shard stepped out of the gate honoring a mage I went on killing him in 1 hit, then killed another mage with 2 hits then guard killing another, I then ran down another that trying to goto the sever line he made it and in steed of casting heal tryed to paralize me well because of my resist it did not work and he died.. so getting back to the gate when had a guy say "well your going to get banned" im like for what? he goes on in spirt speaking saying no one could kill players like that and you have to be cheating.... im like well im not cheating but go get resed and I will show you again how i did it. Well 2 min after that gm pulled me saying this well no one could kill players like that and you have to be cheating.... um where did he get that so im like I was not let me show you why he squelches me and then kicks me making me lose at that time 94 month beta account no way around that that is bitterly wrong... then amazing how they just send you here and there. All the while they dont have any people that even speak english... one time I had issue took 3 weeks and 2 weeks into it they asked me so what is happening with your sims online im like amazing.

Well the big cheating debate will continue for as long as online games exisit.But i have come up with a solution the gaming company;s have to offer a reward program also annomous for people who bring cheaters to justice in the game , this is a system that is implemented in large corporations with employees and works like magic i beleive it would work here as well.Any imput on this

Well sucks i dont cheat or anything and yet if have great chars and great understanding and yet all they do is say "you are called a cheater" amazing. what is worse is gms they even have said the same thing

Cheaters dupe items and sell them for real money online...These cheaters pay off EA so as not to have the chars they use banned from the game. The UO staff knows nothing of this as the EA execs will not allow them to have mass bannings. Its a ring and totally leagle as long as EA sponsers it under the table.

Outright cheating is for the weak. I understand certain game mechanics grey areas like being attacked but not harmed by mages and such from behind gates for example. If in a fantasy world, would this happen from these creatures? If so, I don't see a problem with it, just like picking off creatures from a cliff that don't have projectile weapons/spells. To me stuff like this is realistic just like a guy in a deer stand shooting a deer. Perhaps it's not fair to the creature, but it is in my opinion acceptable.

On the other hand duping, scripting, speedhacking, etc. isn't. It's not that I can't find the programs and the exploits. I have. I choose not to use them because it is wrong (and clearly so).

It is a minor reflection on our society today that wrong "isn't wrong" is you don't care, if other's don't care, or if you don't get caught. I should laugh when reprecutions hit for wrongs, but it's not funny at all. Sad, disappointing, sobering because I too commit wrongs and also because I realize what this means our society has become and becomes moreso immoral with each generation from the leaniency and apathy of parents. But when you quit caring and start justifying wrongs or become that person that does nothing you are just as bad as the wrong itself. Will it continue? Of course it will. It's mankinds nature. Does that mean we should quit caring and stop trying to stop it? No.

I guess it is not so much the simple act of cheating that bothers me, so much as it is what it comes from and what it breeds in attitude and behavior.

hear hear well said mate

well everyone has there own take on the subject bottom line someone cheated in pong when it came out , and someone will cheat in uo 2050 it's part of reality sadly