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Hacking/Cheating Threads being Taboo
stux
Member Posts: 462
I have played so many games that have been hurt or ruined by rampant cheating and I don't understand why ALL legit game sites (this one included) and especially the game's own forums don't allow discussion of them showing what is being done and how to do it.
The fact that it is so taboo that if you post video of what, how to, or where to find them the posts gets deleted and the poster may get banned.
This practice is ruining the games for the honest players because it doesn't allow them the knowledge of what cheats are prevelent in the games we play. It makes it to hard for the honest players to know when someone is cheating (some times it isn't obvious).
It imo, also slows down the developers from stopping the hackers.
If people are discussing the problem, are aware of what and how they work, there would be A LOT more pressure for developers to fix this problems.
But instead the hacks/cheats are kept in the dark for everyone except the cheaters/hackers and they continue to ruin many competitive online games.
Because of this there are many many games I would never play online due the amount of cheating ruining the games.
Comments
It's a double edged sword.
If you show how to replicate it, there will be idiots who will run back to the game to take advantage of it, making things worse.
Then again, the more exposure and worse the problem gets, the more pressure there is on developers to get off their back-sides and fix the problem/s in a timely manner.
In my opinion, the best way to handle it is to talk in generalities when speaking about it publicly. i.e. that there is an exploit and what it relates to, i.e. it's a dupe or an invincibility/instant kill exploit/bug, but not to state enough information that would allow other players to reproduce it for themselves. Of course, also actually report it privately to the devs with as much information about the issue as possible.
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scientific basis of the guideline: http://arxiv.org/abs/1112.4915
If you have the game's best interests in mind, you submit this info as a bug and tell nobody else.
Otherwise you basically fan a small fire into a huge blaze, which typically does more harm to a product than good.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
If you post explaining, or showing where you can find cheats you are actually feeding the issue here, since you are showing others how to cheat as well as hack in game. You should not be going to the forums to show that you have found or seen hacking/cheating, but sending a vid as well as info on the hacks/cheats to the actual devs and r gms of the game mostly since only they will get t fixed. ALso by skipping the mddle-man (the forums.) you speed up the proccess that they will find as well as fix the issues, since they do not have to search tthru forums for such info.
Quite right - report it, don't be stupid and spread it around for everyone to try it! The idiots that show a video of it are part of the problem, not the solution.
The forums and websites avoiding and deleting all this threads and information are mostly afraid of legal actions taken from the developers and publishers against them of helping / allowing this kind of information on their sites. If I had a site or forum I will probably be smart and do the same.
Unless it's considered a big enough problem, developers tend to put off fixing bugs. Even if it's a serious exploit, if they figure barely anyone knows about it and it's obscure enough, they put off fixing the issue.
Letting others in the playerbase know that there is an exploit out there, let's them watch out for and potentially avoid it if it's something another player can use against them that incurs some type of loss. This also helps in reporting those who abuse said exploits when players are better able to spot those doing it. It also puts public pressure on the devs to get it fixed faster because it's not something they can so easily sweep under the rug and put off fixing.
Of course, by no means should anyone ever publicly state steps of how to reproduce said exploit, or where to find such information. Reproduction of the exploits should only ever be told to the developers via a bug report.
i got to say only trick on what to use to prevent it should be allowed and then only if reviewed by moderator like mikeb first!wehy? it is already hard enough to control the way cheat go at it without putting oil on the fire and ,lets say mikeb opened the door to how to prevent hack,what you think happens!this is what happen ,someone chime in showing an exemple of how to bypass this etc !exactly what everybody is trying to prevent!
i wish there was a way to keep hackers out but that will never be the case. i just don't see the enjoyment cheating in order to win. doesn't prove to you or anyone that you're actualyl good.
Which of these scenarios sounds better for players?
An exploit becomes widely known, forcing the developer to spend x dev hours fixing it.
An exploit is minimally known and low impact, allowing them the option of spending x dev hours improving the game instead of fixing the exploit.
Obviously dev teams need to prevent exploits in the first place where possible, and smartly prioritize the exploits that do slip through, but it's really quite bad for players if the dev team on their favorite game is hamstrung fixing a bunch of exploits rather than improving the game and adding features.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I disagree. It forces devs to put a stop to it. Just like when DAoC radar usage got out of hand they actually had to react, and find a way to detect the cheaters.
It's funny how people can easily find hacks and explots in a game and yet are not able to find the bug report section.
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Honestly, per the times I've seen how devs choose to handle exploits, I'd prefer that an exploit become widely known and forcing the dev to take immediate action. I've seen what happens when exploits are left in the dark. When developers know about a serious exploit, but opt to put off fixing it because it's considered obscure enough that it's low impact.
SWG's credit duping, for example. The credit duping issue lingered around for weeks after it was first discovered. If people mentioned it on the forums, any trace of it was wiped out and users squelched. But it wasn't fixed, it just sat in the game festering into a bigger problem as a minority of players took advantage of it and duped credits. It wasn't until SOE actually got off their asses and admitted it was a real problem, that the damage was already done. Millions upon countless millions of credits had been duped in game, and had weeks to trickle throughout the game's economy. Prices inflated ridiculously, and several people at the origin of the exploit lost their accounts. Despite that, it was impossible for SOE to track down and correct all of the duped credits because they had been transferred between so many innocent players or otherwise laundered by the exploiters to other accounts. And it was definitely too late to do server roll backs, because they would have had to roll back at least a month to undo most of the damage.
Then there's Rift's artificer(?) exploit that was day two of release. Basically you could disenchant and sell the same item to a vendor at the same time, which would give you the disenchanted materials, but also allow you to buy-back said item to repeat for easy materials which could be sold for a lot more money. Trion was extremely quick in their reaction, actually disabling the ability to disenchant items while the servers were still live to stop the exploit dead in it's heels. Granted it was annoying being someone who's main character need said ability, but I'd rather have that than the game's economy be destroyed right out the gate by an uncorrected exploit.
And that's why I prefer there be pressure on Devs to fix major exploits ASAP, rather than sit back and hope that it's obscure enough to not do much damage to the game.
Agreed. Best time for people to learn (if ever) that an exploit existed is after it's been fixed.
Er...but that sounds like two examples directly supporting my breakdown. In the former, if players hadn't reported the exploit it might've gone totally unnoticed and far far fewer credits duped (while in the meantime new features were developed). In the latter, the dev recognized an exploit and smartly prioritized its elimination.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I have tried the report bug options in all of the games I have played. I have followed all the options (gm reports, forums reports, and submitted tickets) and yet in many many of the games I have played the devs do very little unless it is HIGHLY talked about all over the internet to put the pressure on. I have talked about the issues in the games with the people I play with and they follow the "correct" aveneue of reporting it in the proper fashion and still a lot of the problems go on for years or are never addressed. The people using them wind up with such a large advantage is ruins the fun for everyone else.
They aren't discussed, few get fixed, and more and more are found until there are tons of them.
Most dev teams in a lot of game seem to wait until it is to late and people have moved on before they fix the problems.
The problem is that you can't control what players do, or prevent other players who aren't so honest from figuring it out themselves and telling others. The devs on the other hand, can make the choice to fix serious exploits.
In SWG the duping issue took several weeks to actually be fixed from when it was originally reported. It wasn't until after a small number of players started spreading word of the existence of the exploit, not even how to reproduce it, that anything started to happen. Unfortunately the players that were trying to raise awareness got forum suspensions and bans, simply for pointing out that there was a serious problem that wasn't being addressed.
To give you an idea of just how bad the duping got, SOE's official statement threw out the number of 550,000,000,000 in duped credits removed from the economy... and that wasn't even all of it.
550 BILLION credits, and that doesn't even account for all of the credits that had weeks to trickle into the server economies and transfer between countless innocent players. Several innocent players were even banned for unwittingly receiving duped credits when trading. Had these players known that there was a credit duping issue, they might have declined trade offers that involved an abnormally high amount of credits being offered to them... which was ironically suggested by SOE when they finally admitted there was a duping issue.
So again, I'd much rather the existence (not how to reproduce) an exploit be know, so developers can get off their asses and fix it ASAP.
I don't have any problem with people posting videos of other players cheating/hacking as long as those videos don't describe how perform the hack.
Never trust a screenshot or a youtube video without a version stamp!
You seem to understand my point.
By allowing it to happen over time it ruins the game.
It may start off as one duping, then there are a few of them, then there are mobs exploits, the afk macros, then a mod for the game. Next thing you know the cheating players have been allowed to cheat for so long and keep the rewards of doing so the honest players decide to move on.
I definitely do. I've seen what happens to games when exploits are brushed under the rug.
That said, I don't agree with spreading the knowledge of how to reproduce exploits (aside from to the developers), but rather merely to spread knowledge of the existence of said exploits, to put pressure on the developers to address them ASAP.
Just discussing it is just as likely to get you flamed and called out as BS.
Then a string of people asking for proof.
The thing is if it isn't know it just stay under the rug other then for those talking advantage of it. Those using it are just as likely to post on a forum that you are full of it so they can't continue talking advantage of it and as a bonus it makes them look innocent.
Then the dev teams see a small percentage using it and a fair amount not even believing it is a problem because they don't see the proof.
Nothing ever seems to happen until it is wide spread.
You can discuss about hacks, but for obvious reasons you can't explain the "how to". I guess you have hidden interests if you want to know the "how to".
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