[HN Gopher] On non-technical video-games cheat mitigations
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       On non-technical video-games cheat mitigations
        
       Author : dijit
       Score  : 20 points
       Date   : 2024-01-12 19:49 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (dustri.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (dustri.org)
        
       | stryan wrote:
       | Would have been nice to mention Valve's Overwatch system used in
       | CSGO (not sure about CS2) and DOTA2 [0][1]. I'm not sure how
       | effective it is in CS but it's seemed to be a remarkable
       | improvement in DOTA2, at least for toxicity if not hacking.
       | 
       | [0]https://counterstrike.fandom.com/wiki/Overwatch
       | 
       | [1]https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/570/view/30258248211..
       | .
        
         | duskwuff wrote:
         | Valve also had a _creative_ approach to banning a batch of
         | users from DOTA2 for abusive behavior last month:
         | 
         | https://www.polygon.com/24002666/dota-2-frostivus-2023-bans-...
        
       | bee_rider wrote:
       | Ranking systems seem to work OK, or at least seemed to 5-10 years
       | ago when I played online shooters more. The key is just to not be
       | too good; cheaters would shoot up out of my potential matches
       | very quickly I think. I guess that must have been annoying for
       | the very good players, but for the rest of us it was fine.
       | 
       | It would be interesting if a company would just release a shooter
       | that has an open source client and explicitly allows plugins or
       | alternative clients or whatnot. The server gives you what it
       | gives you, everybody use it to the best of their ability. If
       | everyone is cheating, it isn't really cheating, it is just
       | testing different skills. We've all got auto-aim? Then this is a
       | game about positioning and map knowledge.
        
         | riversflow wrote:
         | I'm sure your idea would attract some players, but people using
         | cheats explicitly want an unfair advantage.
        
         | dontupvoteme wrote:
         | That sounds interesting but it also sounds like a mechanism to
         | turn an FPS into a NvM player RTS where everyone controls one
         | peon.
         | 
         | (FWIW I'd definitely give it a shot on that basis alone :)
        
       | Modified3019 wrote:
       | So far I'm a fan of megascatterbomb's TF2 crowdsourced
       | cheater/bot database system that's being developed. Especially
       | since valve is clearly not going to do anything about the
       | problem. Makes used of recordings that allow replay of a
       | suspected cheaters actions for confirmation.
       | https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EPsWjdkyoPo
        
       | asylteltine wrote:
       | Another really easy non technical mitigation is to simply region
       | lock China! Fun fact: if you just lock away China away from
       | literally everyone else, your main game will lose most of the
       | cheaters just like that.
        
       | starkparker wrote:
       | LAN games I used to play in had a cinderblock security system, in
       | which if a player was cheating, someone would get up, lift, and
       | throw a cinderblock at them or their PC.
        
       | alkonaut wrote:
       | Having admins is the best way of ensuring a good experience. Play
       | on servers with the same people coming back so there is a
       | community. Play on servers where there are admins. If your game
       | doesn't allow communities to form for multiplayer games then vote
       | with your wallet. "Casual" gaming where anyone jumps into a game
       | with 63 unknown randos is never going to be pleasant as it will
       | need to rely on automatic measures and reports only.
        
         | dontupvoteme wrote:
         | Do any games that aren't Valve games even _have_ this anymore?
        
           | grotorea wrote:
           | I very rarely play multiplayer but don't indies still do
           | this?
        
       | dontupvoteme wrote:
       | This is one of those few cases where I wouldn't mind TPM
       | solutions for online play. It's basically all proprietary
       | software anyway.
       | 
       | Of course this would probably just be used as an excuse to
       | implement things for adtech..
        
         | gs17 wrote:
         | TPM will not stop cheating, it will just make it a little more
         | expensive: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27790723
        
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       (page generated 2024-01-12 23:00 UTC)