
How Valve Crowdsources the Policing of Cheaters in Counter-Strike: GO - ivank
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/01/how-valve-crowdsources-the-policing-of-cheaters-in-counter-strike-go/
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bnejad
The missing perspective here is Overwatch isn't very effective. Blantant
cheaters are easy to find but anyone with half a brain can use certain types
of cheats to remain easily undetected. The only solution valve has to stop
cheaters is automatic detection through software which they do with VAC.
However, "private" cheats (essentially paid for and only shared with small
few, likely never advertised publicly) are notorious for never being detected.

Both may reduce some cheating but overall CSGO remains one of the most cheater
infested games. The latest approach by valve is something called Prime
matchmaking, where you must verify your identity with a phone number in an
attempt to reduce throw away cheating accounts. This further divides the user
base into smaller groups.

Many of the problems with cheating stem from the data passed between client
and server. Though many of these design choices have advantages for other
client performance/features, they allow cheating to prosper.

As a side note, third party match making such as ESEA use a more extensive and
supposedly more effective anti cheat software. These services are usually paid
as well.

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witty_username
> Many of the problems with cheating stem from the data passed between client
> and server. Though many of these design choices have advantages for other
> client performance/features, they allow cheating to prosper.

Could you tell us more? What is one of these design choices?

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Natsu
Not the OP, but I assume they mean that it sends things like the other
players' locations, which can be found by cheaters to be seen with map hacks
and such.

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ygra
It got a little better a while ago, where they only distribute player
locations to clients that have to be aware of that player due to either line
of sight or being able to hear them. Faceit has a more aggressive system where
player locations are only sent once you see them, which sometimes, in high-
latency scenarios mean you suddenly see then appear somewhere without having
them seen moving there. It's all a trade-off, I guess.

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ue_
Doesn't this also mess with tactics such as being able to hear someone coming?
I don't play CS:GO, but I do play Enemy Territory (id Software, 2003) and
hearing when an enemy is coming is a crucial part of being able to get the
first shot and kill someone.

Of course you could expand the limit of when to send data to the point where
you can hear someone, but that wouldn't defeat short-range wallhacking, which
is just about the only kind of wallhacking that's useful.

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plodman
I spend a lot of time going through Overwatch cases. Simply put, unless the
case is obvious, you really cannot say anything other than innocent.

Also, games where a team has a "full stack" or a lobby of 5 friends all
communicating, a player could easily look like they're wallhacking when
actually their team just has great communication. But, this information is not
conveyed to the reviewer.

But one thing that Overwatch does have is the ability to convict someone of
griefing. I have fallen foul of these once and faced a 6 week ban from the
game. Overwatch does work but the person must be very blatant with their
cheats/griefing.

Personally, I think the single most effective action Valve took against
cheaters was the introduction of "Prime accounts". Players who link their
mobile number to their account can choose to only queue into games with other
players that have done the same.

This almost creates a "low priority" queue. If you find yourself part of this,
it's generally accepted that you may be against hackers and griefers.

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Fej
CS:GO is the most tragically neglected of the major e-sports. It succeeds due
to its source material.

Case in point: Overwatch is neutered. CS:GO competitive servers have a tick
rate of 64 (that is, per second), which is already considered too low by many
players, given that CS is a twitch shooter. Overwatch halves that tick rate to
32. So - investigators use footage at half the resolution (so to speak) of the
actual game. This can both make cases harder to prove _and_ make split-second
decisions look like cheating, since half the data is missing.

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ygra
Overwatch isn't really meant to catch those cheats where your unsure at all.
It is really only for the blatant cases which presumably make up most of the
cheats players encounter in games as well. Things like slightly better aim
would be pretty impossible to prove even with the same tick rate as the game.
Look at the reddit witch hunts against professional players when they are
thought to be cheating. Those accusations are usually false, and also often
based on the raw replay data from the game.

Besides, it can already be hard to detect certain forms of cheating, e.g. if
one player wallhacks and just relays info to their team. Even when watching
the whole team in overwatch, instead of only a single player, this sort of
thing is hard to see. Tick rate won't change that either.

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jasonkostempski
So much junk seems to go into games to make sure people don't cheat. I wonder
how much faster/responsive a network based game could be if it was just
assumed no one is cheating. I'm sure more things could be done client side,
like all player vs AI engagements.

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oakwhiz
Every player could use the same pseudo random number generators with the same
seed and predict the same random result instead of downloading it from the
server.

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StavrosK
Sure, until any player gave any input whatsoever. How are you going to predict
player actions?

