
Respawn will deal with Apex Legends cheaters by making them fight each other - yrochat
https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/346620/Respawn_will_deal_with_Apex_Legends_cheaters_by_making_them_fight_each_other.php
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egypturnash
I hope they are also keeping separate rankings for cheaters, that would be
pretty cool.

"I'm currently the #5 player in the cheater zone of Apex."

Heck, embrace it: don't call it the _cheater_ rankings, call it the _tool-
assisted_ rankings, by analogy with "tool-assisted speedruns". Tag people at
the end of the game with which particular cheats you detected. Pop up a polite
notice that "We have noticed that you seem to be using external tools to help
you play better; we will now be matching you up with other cyborg players to
keep things fair. Good luck, and may the best man-machine win!"

~~~
Reedx
That would be really interesting! Although it'd be like offering a gym for
cheaters, heh. A place for them to hone cheating tools and techniques that
would end up back in the regular game.

But could avoid that if a game embraced it holistically, where the default is
tool-assisted and anything goes.

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zrobotics
Isn't one of the hardest parts of making these tools evading detection? An
aimbot isn't that tremendously difficult to create, the hard part is creating
an aimbot that is hard to differentiate from a skilled player.

If the competition is all using assists, then the sneaky aimbot that simulates
slower human reflexes will lose to the bot that positions the sights directly
on the opponent in <0.1ms. I like this idea, I don't see why it would make it
any easier to develop the types of cheating systems that affect human players,
and it might be fun for the types of players that enjoy things like tool-
assisted speed running; where the ultimate aim is more about studying the
underlying game mechanics to determine the algorithmically-optimal way to
play. If the default is tool-assisted, then all the human players will be
excluded by default.

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krageon
Even in the very old days it was more of a balancing act: It's not super
difficult to make it undetectable, but it will be slower. Slower means that
you will always lose to the more detectable variants that somehow still manage
to evade the technical filter (but not the people filter). The second segment
will of course eventually get banned, but in the meantime you will keep losing
to them.

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H8crilA
Counter strike has a similar system, based on a hidden score called trust
factor. Matchmaking system does some optimization and tries to pair similarly
skilled people with similar trust factors.

They also have a neural network setup that constantly scans match logs for
cheaters. If I remember correctly it is responsible for > 50% of all cheater
reports (the rest comes from players). Final conviction comes from a crowd
sources system called Overwatch, where experienced players rewatch anonymous
demos and convict cheaters. Conviction itself may require even 40 or more
individual player convictions, and is Bayes-based.

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cameronbrown
> They also have a neural network setup that constantly scans match logs for
> cheaters

For those wondering what this is referring to, it's a system called VACNet[0]
presented at GDC last year.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObhK8lUfIlc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObhK8lUfIlc)
[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnRgW54EWwA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnRgW54EWwA)

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setr
So the matchmaking equivalent to hellbanning

I wonder if anyone has actually put any real thought into effectiveness of
such concepts? Creating a parallel universe to stick your undesirables; 4chan
and reddit do something similar (though the user self-influcts it) with their
containment boards, so the history definitely exists

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ssully
DoTA 2 has been doing this for years now with toxic players. I don't recall
reading anything about how effective it ended up being, but it seemed like a
good idea at the time.

I recently started playing DoTA again after stopping for about 2 years and I
have run into a handful of toxic players, but it doesn't seem to be as
frequent or as bad as it used to be. For example, when I stopped playing two
years ago it was basically a 50/50 chance you would be in a game where someone
would say really terrible things about Brazilian or Chinese players for the
entire match.

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SpaceManNabs
It worked and continues to work beautifully.

There was a video recently by Dota Alchemy about how the system applies to
high a penalty if you have an accidental abandon or just raged way too hard
for a few consecutive games, but you can grind up the behavior score quickly
through 10 turbo games.

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user5994461
Quickly? A turbo game is half an hour. That would be a whole evening to get
10. Not to mention that a lot of things could go wrong in that many games.

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de_watcher
Abandon is ruining a match for 9 other players. So 10 looks like about right.

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user5994461
This assumes that the game is not already ruined.

Out of 10 games, how many of them are already ruined because 1 or 2 people
left, or players are just insulting one another with the most awful thing they
can think of. I'd consider quitting to be fair in both cases.

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setr
in LoL, the system didn't penalize you for a game that already had a quitter;
As for the latter issue, you would avoid the penalty by flagging the other
players on exit (and it being accepted). I'd assume Dota has something similar
in place

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spbaar
I'm surprised that Respawn has had so much trouble controlling cheaters in
Apex considering they handled security in Titanfall 1/2 amazingly well. The
f2p barrier probably contributes a lot to the problem.

This isn't a new strategy for them btw. There were similar strategies in place
for Titanfall 1. [https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-03-27-respawn-
locks-...](https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-03-27-respawn-locks-
titanfall-cheaters-into-the-wimbledon-of-aimbot-contests)

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insomniacity
Can someone explain how these strategies aren't standard across online games
by now? They've been around for years, but it's always a big deal when a game
adds them.

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Reedx
Because it's a non-trivial feature to develop, test and maintain. Simply using
a flag (banned = true or false) is lot easier / less complex / fewer potential
side effects.

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socialist_coder
I would disagree with that. When you ban someone, they know. They make a new
account and come back.

When you move them to a cheater queue, they don't know. They keep playing,
none the wiser. It's infinitely better for everyone. The cheater still gets to
play, and the non-cheaters aren't affected as much because the cheater doesn't
just keep coming back.

The complexity in your app is that you need to have multiple matchmaking
queues, which you probably already support due to skill tiers. So is it really
that difficult to add more matchmaking queues for the cheaters?

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afiori
But it is more complex in the sense that you need a lot of fine tuning. If you
just match cheaters with cheaters then it is easy to see too.

You need some kind of dynamic ranking of "toxicity" (in this case cheating)
match user with other of similar toxicity.

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kibwen
Three-factor authentication? What's the third factor? Something you know,
something you own, and... maybe something you are (biometrics)?

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ianferrel
Something you know, something you're pretty sure you wrote down _somewhere_
around here, something you aspire to be.

~~~
tzakrajs
Fourth factor, something you believe in

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edaemon
The reddit post the article references has some more information:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/apexlegends/comments/cciyx6/712_res...](https://www.reddit.com/r/apexlegends/comments/cciyx6/712_respawn_checkin/)

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skocznymroczny
Meh. It's one of those cases in which people will praise the decision and be
like "haha stupid cheaters will cheat on each other". But the reality is, if
you can tell someone is a cheater, you could have banned them. If you make
decisions like this, then you are admitting that your cheat detection code
isn't perfect. As a result, some people with obvious cheats will have this
experience, but many people will have their cheats undetected and nothing will
change.

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phalangion
No cheat detection code is perfect. Banning cheaters encourages the creation
of new cheats (or just new accounts, since it doesn't cost anything to start
playing Apex). Allowing cheaters to continue playing is a win for two reasons:

1\. They don't know they've been quarantined, so cheat makers will get less
feedback about which cheats have been detected. 2\. Cheaters are more likely
to try new cheats, so it gives a sandbox of users that can be used to find
other cheats as they arise.

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siphon22
Reminds me a lot of hacking servers in cs 1.6 back in the day. I was a regular
in some of them. People in these servers would pretty much brag about how much
better their hack was compared to everyone else's(often also claiming that
they programmed it themselves, could be true sometimes but id say most not). I
thought it was fun. Everyone has an aimbot, but the faster, better coded one
will win.

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nsajko
> requiring three-factor authentication in certain regions

I hope obligatory two-factor authentication is not becoming a trend.

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o_p
So they are admiting defeat :^)

This will not stop the subtle cheaters though, in a game like Apex you could
even drop the aimbot and only use the information advantage of a wallhack.
Good times to sell cheats

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yummypaint
Could be a fun revival of the counterstrike "hvh" scene

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ryanmarsh
Someone should tell them about adversarial networks. Fighting each other...
helps.

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just_myles
That is a good idea. Keeps player engagement up.

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sherlock_h
They need to add players with XIM on PS4 to this

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cwkoss
I wish all games allowed botting and just pushed you onto a unique server so
you can't hurt the economy. Such a great playground for developing early
coding skills.

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aznpwnzor
i would have liked this for pokemon go. i started scripting the week it came
out and then was banned in the 2nd or 3rd ban wave. but i would have liked to
continue playing against other scripters

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afiori
Sadly the nature of the game doesn't allow for this, you cannot just spin up
more matches in PoGO.

But on this I am very critical of how Niantic is handling both Pokemon GO and
wizard Unite

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csa
What is your issue with WU? I can’t see scripting really impacting the play of
others (at least not yet).

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afiori
the energy system, it is almost impossible not to periodically end energy and
have to grind at inns to continue playing as everything needs energy in the
game.

In comparison in PoGO if you finish one category of scarce items you still
have many part of the game you can play in (e.g. with no pokéball you can
still fight in gym and raids)

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pgt
Cysports / Cylympics (Cylym?) / Cygma / Cygames

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huhtenberg
Obligatory XKCD - [https://xkcd.com/350/](https://xkcd.com/350/)

