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Why don't developers push to create Anti-Cheating / Botting Laws?
Dauzqul
Member RarePosts: 1,982
I know that this sounds extremely sassy, but I've always wondered why video game developers don't push to create Anti-Cheating / Anti-Botting (Farming) laws - federal or state laws that will fine the cheater or botter.
Enough botters can destroy a virtual economy. This makes it very hard for a casual or legit gamer to get ahead in the marketplace. The same concept applies to cheaters (speed hacks / aimbots). It turns many people away - forcing many to quit. The worst I've ever seen cheating was in MW3. I experienced a different cheater 7 games in a row. I'm not talking about suspicion, but am talking about a blatant cheating (80-100 headshot kills within 5 minutes - snapping kill-cam proof - auto text that the cheater was spamming, e.g., "HAHAHAH OWNED - BUY OUR CHEAT AT www.*********.com" etc.
I ended up quitting. Shortly after, CoD was offering to sell some map-pack add-ons. I remember saying, "yeah right... so I can play with more cheaters?" Thus, they didn't get any of my money because of cheating.
I know that these are just games to us, but it's much more to the staff and developers. They need people playing / buying their games, else they won't be able to pay the bills. So since botting and cheating can put a dent in potential earnings, shouldn't they push for new laws that punish the cheater or owner of the Internet connection line?
Comments
Very good point there Kano, seems to me most of the time they would be going for the wrong person.
Don't we have enough silly laws on the books?
No more.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville
Every time someone says "We need Anti-XXXXXX laws" and the Govt' gets involved and makes Anti-XXXX laws, the very thing those laws were set up to protect becomes even more screwd than it was before, and the criminals just find way around them anwyay,
Really, do you want gov't laws inside your games now?
Has anyone said it would be too expensive and largely unenforceable yet?
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
And who is going to enforce it and who will for that enforcement? Tell the population that their taxes are going up for these law enforcement and don't be surprised being ripped apart and never making it off the floor. It makes about as much sense as enforcing laws that make people's bass in their cars not hearable by people outside the car. Or enforcing laws of these incessant telemarketers for harassment as they never stop calling.
Really enforcing game conduct with federal/state laws is utter nonsense. Companies have the right to ban people, it should start and end there. But they don't do that effectively and that's your problem. It's your choice to play or purchase. If ever it gets to a point that people quite due to cheaters exceeds the profit of the cheaters then the company will do something, and really your example sounds more like a coding thing than anything. Name an MMO that is a reputable company where people can cheat, heard Mortal Online people where cheating but that was developed by a POS company and shame on those that bought the game.
The best way I can think of to enforce Anti-Cheating would be to create an internet service that removed every single shred of anonymity from online access. To the point that a DNA signature was required to log in, with a backbone service that would immediately detect if duplicates of one person were to be logged in at one time, match it to average play times to have a 'pattern' of where and when people log into, location restrictions, region locks, etc, etc. Make it absolutely Draconian.
Then to have a network of killer satellites orbiting the planet with pin point laser beams. Get flagged as a cheater. Zap. Dead.
Now I understand I'm taking this to a ridiculous proportions. But inviting the government to police something like this, is only a premise to give them more and more control over the internet, which won't just 'stop' at them finding cheaters. It'll end up with them looking for 'anything' we're doing wrong.
For the short term, I think region locking IPs is the best way to go. Russia and the Asian countries get put into their own pool, since they have the highest proportion of botters, farmers, and gold sellers. EU can be put into their own pool and NA can be put into their own pool. At that point it's up to the Game Company to create their own internal tools to police and monitor game events and transactions. I think MMO games are inherently easier to catch things such as gold selling/farming/botting/powerleveling. Than online shooters would be, because of the ease of metrics being able to be captured and calculated.
It's not an easy or simple fix due to the nature of technology changing so quickly. But we certainly don't need the government sticking it's nose into it.
My theme song.
Because you cant make laws for other countries. The EU has very lax laws on botting. They dont feel its a crime. Most bots are made in the EU which state that its legal to make bots.
Well with games like COD that is just messed up. Thats something to try and screw other people. Not all bots are like that.
I am someone who likes botting. I do it for my own gain though. Not to screw everyone over. I farm mobs to get gold or items. Stuff I am too lazy to do on my own because of time restraints now.
To stay relevant for stuff I do enjoy doing which is raiding. I make about 1/5 of what you would make if you farmed the same time. I use bots that are free to use which have limited abilities.
Do I want to farm fish all day in WoW? No, who does. But ill do it so our raid can have food for raids.
I have spent so much time in games that I dont find the whole farming fun anymore and makes me fall asleep even trying to do it anymore. I dont care if you think its wrong. Im not trying to break anything.
I use to play the AH and would really affect the prices of things. I would saturate the market with items and undercutting everyone by a huge market. Prices would slowly fall. I then would buy it all up and then raise the price and buy anything under it to make it my price making a huge profit everytime. This took tons of time and patience. I would consider that much worse than me botting for my own gain that never affected anyone. Just something to think about.
I agree that botters who try and destroy the markets, try and harass other characters, who try and exploit things in game, etc should be stopped but there is a decent amount of botters that want to play the game but do not have all the time in the world to stay relevant.
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
If developers took a more active role in it they would continue to develop blocking technology that would remove this problem. As for new laws, where does it stop, maybe at breathing the air of the person standing next to you at the bus stop.
We already have enough laws that tell us we can not do something!!!
Because it is so cheap and easy to prevent cheating, yes?
Developers have to choose between running things on the client or on the server. Run things on the client or even just provide information to the client, and you'll get cheaters because that information will be available to client side hacks. Run things on the server and you'll eliminate one avenue of cheating, but you'll get players complaining because their game won't run without a connection to the server. It's not that simple. If it was, developers would have eliminated cheating by now. They wouldn't even have to ban people. Cheating just wouldn't be possible.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I don't think it is possible to make a bot-proof game at this point.
As to laws, the last thing I want is law makers looking into gaming. There is a segment of the population who believe that video games create killers/rapists and such and who have paid for phoney studies supporting this. If you point out to lawmakers that you want some laws regarding games, you might get them. They would not likely be your anti-cheating laws and something much worse. Like the Christian Coalition telling the law makers what laws to make.
If you get laws passed, you need some government law enforcement/oversight. That costs money. How does the gov get money for this? Taxes. Do you want games to get taxed?
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
I believe it's fairly difficult to stop cheaters on an open platform like Windows or Linux. Perhaps that's why we are seeing so many people using closed platforms (consoles, tablets) now.
I would ask is it any worse then developers selling items in game for real money? To me it's not.
Because neither MAC address nor IP Address are effective. You can easily change your MAC address.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
Suppose that you're the police. You've just got a report that someone got stabbed and a report that someone is botting in a game. You only have time to investigate one. Which do you pick?
If game developers wanted the police to target some sort of online crime, they'd probably start with credit card fraud. That's already illegal, as well as a far more easily defined crime. It's also far more troublesome to online game developers than mere botters. And as an added bonus, you'd get rid of a lot of the botters and gold farmers for free if the ones committing credit card fraud expected to be caught and prosecuted for it.
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
Unless, you consider yourself a liberal. There are many of them around these days.
I don't think they will ever push governments to let them fine anyone lol. And almost every game with autobanning systems in place are terrible and can accidently ban non hacking players. Imagine waking up to a bullshit fine cause of a shit auto banning system, then having to try fight that fine. Anyway companies should start looking into decent banning systems. Or changing lines of code every few hours to force the hacks out of date? Even VAC is shit these days. Look at RUST, plagued with hackers and facepunch thought VAC was good enough. I'll never understand why people enjoy cheating on a game.
Great idea! How long would the statute of limitations be on that? I would love to press charges against by little brother for cheating me at checkers all those times.
The fact that someone, anyone, even considers this a valid option speaks volumes about where our society is right now.
Unbelievable.
Did I say Spoofing? No, I mean change your MAC address. If I meant spoof the MAC Address, I would have wrote spoof instead of change. The days of having the MAC Address stored on a PROM were over back in the 80s.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
I hope we never do.
The federal government, state government, and unionized labor would destroy this lovely industry.
Technology, and even the internet, is too complicated for public officials to constructively legislate on.
Fix the damage FCC did to Net Neutrality first, then we can talk about other more complicated tech.
-WL
Werewolf Online(R) - Lead Developer
because both can be changed, yes even mac, plus IPs tend to have more then one user on it banning ips could possible ban legit players, one way to hold agsint bots and such would be to use your social number(in korea they do something like this) but then it bring a whole lot of other problems, and people could just rob or use otehr people number for it