I wanted to make sure you all saw this excellent article by Foe which covers the topic of cheating in online games. The article covers the types of cheats that are used, why the typical cheater cheats, quotes from anti-cheat experts from PunksBusted, United Admins, The Cheat Police and much more. I encourage you to go check out the article and if you like it, then go digg it over at Digg.com to help get the word out.

Article // The State of Cheating in Online Multiplayer Games

Digg URL

Very good article Foe . It's funny but when I read the list of game you put in there the VERY FIRST game listed, AvP, is the reason I started online gaming and the reason I quit online gaming. It was the best video game I've played to date either on the pc or a console but there were just too many cheaters and or people complaining about cheaters to keep the fun alive for me. I now play F.E.A.R (single player) and I love it I've beaten it on easy and medium and now am working at hard, but I doubt I'll ever go back online just for the simple reason that I buy and play a video game to escape from stress, complaining, thinking, reality etc etc and although it may have changed those thing seem to seep into online gaming and mostly due to cheaters and the effects they have even when thier not there.

Again , GREAT article and it hits all the points DEAD ON.

Very nice. I can say that i do cheat in MP games, but I do so in cheating servers, so therefore, I'm not really cheating . Also, I am a server admin in a CS:S server, and when i log in to the server, I make sure that my cheat is loaded, but not on, this allows me to instantly turn on the wall hack when in spectate to see if someone is walling, or trigger bot , or autoshoot.

*stupid noobs, learn to hide your hack better*

Thank you guys for cheaking out the article, and the comments!

The Captain
I cannot say I am thrilled that you cheat, but at least you do it on cheat servers. Please don't do it on the non-cheat servers.

There will always be cheaters. I mean there are somethings you cant stop. A friend of me had a NEC flat panel monitor with a piece of plastic covering the actual lcd. He would get a dry erase monitor and outline the cross hair. He would pick up the sniper rifle which usually doesnt have a crosshair and go slaughter. It just goes to show you that people will try anything to get the edge.

Excellent write up Foe. I especially liked the look into the cheaters psyche, because that's something I've always had a hard time understanding.

Well researched and well written, good job.

Quote: Originally Posted by GlitterKill Digg URL

Digg is good, but have you considered submitting articles to slashdot? Youd generate a lot more traffic, although i might worry about the servers.

Well done Foe that was a very good article, as a pretty hard core gamer I'm interested in this subject. I just wish there was a way to stop cheating all together.

Reza
I wish that were something we could do also. Alas though we can only do what the AC applications will allow us to implement. Hopefully more game developers will implement the AC prior to the releases. THat would be a considerable help.

Thanks for checking out the article!

Quote: Originally Posted by Cyno01 Digg is good, but have you considered submitting articles to slashdot? Youd generate a lot more traffic, although i might worry about the servers.

I submit there all the time. Our server should be fine... getting them to post it is another story.

Nice article. I myself am a Cheat Police certified for my server.

And Cync01, I believe Digg actually has more users than Slashdot .

Quote: Originally Posted by Sleepy_Sentry Nice article. I myself am a Cheat Police certified for my server. And Cync01, I believe Digg actually has more users than Slashdot .

Yeah, but theres a lot more content to sift through, not just a main page of stories. Havn't ever heard of the "digg effect".

Quote: Originally Posted by Sleepy_Sentry Nice article. I myself am a Cheat Police certified for my server. And Cync01, I believe Digg actually has more users than Slashdot .

Sleepy_Sentry
You should also get your server(s) streaming through PsB. It is free, but brings loads of benefits.

Great article.

And for the record, I stopped playing CS because the cheating was out of control. Now I won't play an online game if there is no anit-cheat in it. It just ruins the game. Of course that does not stop me from buying a game to go throught the SP.

fine article Foe....we needed that,,,
winterhawk

Maybe I'm late to read this article, but it really struck a chord. It's a great write-up and I wanted to rant about my experiences with MP game cheaters (or as we called them in the Quake days, "script-fags").

Back in the Quakeworld days, I just LOVED MP Quake. However, back then, I was not one of the lucky ones, I did the best I could with a 33.6 US Robotics modem...and I am happy to say, I did pretty damn good, even though I was an HPW battling LPB's (High-Ping Whiner/Low-Ping Bastards). You could do pretty good in MP games, even against players with much better connections, if you guessed what they were gonna do a split second before they did it. Against a *good* MP deathmatcher with a low ping, you'd never win, but you could surprise him 1 out of 3 times if you did a good job of prediction.

So a few years later I got my first high-speed connection, and logged onto a Quake 2 multiplayer server, expecting to kick some major a$$, because I've always been a pretty decent MP DM'er, regardless of my connection...mostly due to experience and this "prediction factor" that you can only get from playing MP games for many years. Well, I was shocked and frustrated as HELL to have my a$$ literally HANDED to me, from about half of the players on most of the servers! Hell, they were rail-gunning me as I hopped from crate to crate, I was being picked off in mid-air as I fell unexpectedly from a bridge, and so on! I was fuming mad!!!

But in Q2 you can sometimes login and spectate, and choose a player to spectate, and that's when you can truly see who is cheating or not. The cheaters would always make a bee-line to the railgun, because that's a weapon that can hit a target at any distance without leading it, as it's an immediate hit no matter where or how far the target is, as long as you can aim at it (the same can surely NOT be said about the shotgun or rocket launcher, which take time for the ammo to hit the target, or lose their effectiveness with distance).

I could get into a 1-on-1 battle with one of these script-fags and they'd nail me every single time, with maybe only 1 miss out of 5 tries with a railgun--but could never beat me with a shotgun or rocket launcher (because their aimbot could only function effectively with a railgun because it hits exactly where you aim it at that instant).

It was sooooo disappointing and frustrating to see my favorite all-time multiplayer game (Quake & Quake 2) degenerate so badly to the point that you could only enjoy the experience if you were playing with friends or playing on your own server. I can honestly say the beginning of the end of my multiplayer gaming days was directly influenced by online cheaters (I prefer "script-fags" because it's the gayest, most pu$$ified way to win an online game)...and I'll always have fond memories of my first ever forays into the online MP game arena with Quakeworld (Quake 1) and Quake 2...and Aliens vs. Predator 2 being a close runner-up.

Very well written!