
Playing Dirty: Automating computer game play takes cheating to a new--and profitable--level - ivankirigin
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/dec07/5719
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bayareaguy
Games like World of Warcraft now install spyware on your computer whose
purpose is to try and catch the kinds of programs the guy used in the article.

If I were going to do this, I'd try and find a way to run the games in a
virtual machines and have my hack software run outside it. Since that software
would be free to generate arbitrary memory and i/o state changes, I can't see
that the spyware approach will really work for long.

~~~
derefr
Trying to guard against the general menace of "bots" is a failed endeavor from
the very beginning; it is not the bots themselves that trouble the other
players, but rather their _behavior_. Thus, I would think the best approach
would simply be a Bayesian analysis at the server level of all inputs into the
game (at a slightly higher level than just "right, up, up, TAB"). Indeed, the
end result of the proceeding arms race would be to create bots so human that
other players would be untroubled by them.

------
breily
I remember running autominers in RuneScape that would automatically move your
mouse and click - but I had no idea people were doing stuff like this. Pretty
cool.

