Almost 48 hours ago, Fusen, the Crossfire admin, made the largest cheat bust in ET history, by infiltrating the netCoders website and getting admin access with his ninja hacker skills. Around 20 competitive ET players were busted, some of whom were playing in rather decent clans. I don't think there is much doubt in anyone's mind as to whether these people actually cheat or not, the evidence is quite undisputable. This bust mainly served as a confirmation to many people's niggling suspicions. My purpose for writing this column isn't to talk about cheating, as such, it's to question why there is so little consequence for people caught cheating, and why we don't have a zero tolerance policy.
People are constantly directed to the GamesTV forums to post about cheaters, or suspected cheaters, because it is there that, apparently, various league admins can easily see posts without having to sort through hundreds of posts on xfire, which is like finding a needle in a haystack at the best of times. Seems thoughtful, must be a well organised place where league admins actively review each case and ban those with sufficiet evidence. While planning this column I decided I'd better do a little research, so that I'm not (completely) talking out of my arse, so I decided to visit the GamesTV website in search of these elusive forums, since I didn't have a link to them offhand. My motivation was high, I was going to research the topic and educate myself on the matter before randomly writing a column, but I fell before the first hurdle. I couldn't for the life of me find a link to these forums anywhere on the GamesTV website. I thought to myself that I must be going blind, so I had a second look, and still, I couldn't find any link. I even asked TosspoT for a little help in finding this mysterious forum and he was out of ideas too. He managed to locate them via a Google search, meanwhile I had already asked swine about it, and in a possible attempt at humour he said "top s3cr3t". So I suppose my initial point is rather simple: the forum we're supposed to post in when we want to report a cheater shouldn't be so fucking hard to find.
Upon reaching the promised land of the GamesTV forums, I discovered a rather active forum, despite it's few contributors. There are (almost) daily reports of cheaters, the evidence in each varying. I had a quick scan through the topic names and one jumped out at me, "scooT" I read, now where have I heard that name before. Oh wait, he was one of the bastards who was caught cheating in Fusen's cheater bust. So hold on a second, this "scooT" guy was already at least suspected of cheating, the date of the forum topic being Tuesday, the 12th of December, almost a whole month ago. Why has nothing been done about this asshole? In fact, what about the rest of the guys in these topics, why is nobody actively reviewing these cases? As I previously mentioned, there are almost daily reports of cheaters, a fraction of which are actually dealt with it seems. Obviously you can't just ban someone based on one post on the GamesTV forums, with maybe only a screenshot as evidence, but perhaps this is where the introduction of some sort of probationary period could work. For example, if there wasn't enough evidence to actually ban someone, but there was at least enough that the person in question couldn't be let off the hook without hefty suspicion, then said person had to provide demos of a certain amount of games, for closer scrutiny. This would be an inconvenience I would be willing to live with if it meant that it helped in any way with the war on cheaters.
The main point of this column, however, is that there is simply not enough consequence for a convicted cheater. To the best of my knowledge, the only person who has been banned recently, for cheating, is Allu, and the only punishment he is serving, as far as I know, is a ban from ClanBase, nothing more. I'm tempted to say something bad about ClanBase, such as "fucking ClanBase, <insert rant>", but in truth, it's not just ClanBase who are guilty, it's all the major leagues, even the small ones too, even Crossfire are guilty of being too casual on the issue of cheating, anyone who can do something about this is reponsible. There needs to be a community effort to get rid of these cheaters, not just ban them from ClanBase and that's it, done and dusted. Convicted cheaters should be totally outcast from the community, in any way, shape or form that is available to us. Several of the cheaters who were caught in the recent bust still post actively on Crossfire, and still idle in the Crossfire IRC channel, why is this tolerated? Why were they not instantaneously banned? Leon told me that he played in a 3on3 cup yesterday and one of the teams he came up against featured none other than convicted cheaters Qyz and mize, why is this tolerated? Why is a ClanBase ban the only consequence a cheater can anticipate? There should be zero tolerance towards cheating, no matter if it was a different game, if it was only on a public, if they were just testing it, if it was a roommate or any other random excuse. There should be a lifetime ban for anyone who even tried a cheat, they should be banned from everything, they should be named and shamed and people should avoid playing against them, even in practices. It is then that these dregs of society may think twice before deciding to download a hack. Not that I want to give evan more attention, which is what he wants, but I find it to be too good and example to ignore. He's clanless, if rumours are to be believed, he's looking at a 6 month ban, roughly, meanwhile, he's still actively taking part in the community, chatting in IRC, posting on xfire - as though nothing even happened. Do you really think he gives a flying fuck about his ban? He needs to be hit where it hurts, banned from everything, permanently. Just think about it, an evan-free xfire, he'll be calling a suicide hotline within hours. However, while I do intensely dislike the bastard, this isn't all about him, the same should apply to anyone who has cheated. There needs to be a lot more consequence than a ClanBase ban, and I fail to say how anyone can argue that seriously.
This all relies on ClanBase pulling their finger out of their arse though, as I find it totally unsatisfactory that they try to show they care by banning one guy (eg. Allu) and ignore the countless others. The only explanation I've seen is that there is a new awesome anti-cheat system coming soon, which will solve all our problems, and male pattern baldness! We seem to have been waiting for this new system for an internity, why can't the old one be used until the new one is introduced? Before I continue my ClanBase rant, I suppose I should remind myself once again that it's not just ClanBase who are guilty, it's everyone who can do anything about this. There should be some kind of board which actively reviews each serious case on the phantom GamesTV forums.
I've already made many of these points in comments today, and some of the counter-points were outlining the easyness in circumventing some of these bans. Before someone replies, echoing that, I'll address that point now. Whether these bans are easy to circumvent or not, is not the issue at all. For example, evading an IRC ban is quite easy, but it's the fact that we're showing contempt towards the cheater that counts. He or she must be excluded from the community as much as possible, to show that we do not tolerate cheating at all, not just on ClanBase, but anywhere within our community.
We seriously need to clamp down on cheaters and stop being so relaxed about it, questions need to be asked as to why nothing is being done about cheaters, in all the chaos surrounding Fusen's cheat bust, one rather unfortunate fact remains, that not one of those cheaters has suffered any form of punishment yet.
People are constantly directed to the GamesTV forums to post about cheaters, or suspected cheaters, because it is there that, apparently, various league admins can easily see posts without having to sort through hundreds of posts on xfire, which is like finding a needle in a haystack at the best of times. Seems thoughtful, must be a well organised place where league admins actively review each case and ban those with sufficiet evidence. While planning this column I decided I'd better do a little research, so that I'm not (completely) talking out of my arse, so I decided to visit the GamesTV website in search of these elusive forums, since I didn't have a link to them offhand. My motivation was high, I was going to research the topic and educate myself on the matter before randomly writing a column, but I fell before the first hurdle. I couldn't for the life of me find a link to these forums anywhere on the GamesTV website. I thought to myself that I must be going blind, so I had a second look, and still, I couldn't find any link. I even asked TosspoT for a little help in finding this mysterious forum and he was out of ideas too. He managed to locate them via a Google search, meanwhile I had already asked swine about it, and in a possible attempt at humour he said "top s3cr3t". So I suppose my initial point is rather simple: the forum we're supposed to post in when we want to report a cheater shouldn't be so fucking hard to find.
Upon reaching the promised land of the GamesTV forums, I discovered a rather active forum, despite it's few contributors. There are (almost) daily reports of cheaters, the evidence in each varying. I had a quick scan through the topic names and one jumped out at me, "scooT" I read, now where have I heard that name before. Oh wait, he was one of the bastards who was caught cheating in Fusen's cheater bust. So hold on a second, this "scooT" guy was already at least suspected of cheating, the date of the forum topic being Tuesday, the 12th of December, almost a whole month ago. Why has nothing been done about this asshole? In fact, what about the rest of the guys in these topics, why is nobody actively reviewing these cases? As I previously mentioned, there are almost daily reports of cheaters, a fraction of which are actually dealt with it seems. Obviously you can't just ban someone based on one post on the GamesTV forums, with maybe only a screenshot as evidence, but perhaps this is where the introduction of some sort of probationary period could work. For example, if there wasn't enough evidence to actually ban someone, but there was at least enough that the person in question couldn't be let off the hook without hefty suspicion, then said person had to provide demos of a certain amount of games, for closer scrutiny. This would be an inconvenience I would be willing to live with if it meant that it helped in any way with the war on cheaters.
The main point of this column, however, is that there is simply not enough consequence for a convicted cheater. To the best of my knowledge, the only person who has been banned recently, for cheating, is Allu, and the only punishment he is serving, as far as I know, is a ban from ClanBase, nothing more. I'm tempted to say something bad about ClanBase, such as "fucking ClanBase, <insert rant>", but in truth, it's not just ClanBase who are guilty, it's all the major leagues, even the small ones too, even Crossfire are guilty of being too casual on the issue of cheating, anyone who can do something about this is reponsible. There needs to be a community effort to get rid of these cheaters, not just ban them from ClanBase and that's it, done and dusted. Convicted cheaters should be totally outcast from the community, in any way, shape or form that is available to us. Several of the cheaters who were caught in the recent bust still post actively on Crossfire, and still idle in the Crossfire IRC channel, why is this tolerated? Why were they not instantaneously banned? Leon told me that he played in a 3on3 cup yesterday and one of the teams he came up against featured none other than convicted cheaters Qyz and mize, why is this tolerated? Why is a ClanBase ban the only consequence a cheater can anticipate? There should be zero tolerance towards cheating, no matter if it was a different game, if it was only on a public, if they were just testing it, if it was a roommate or any other random excuse. There should be a lifetime ban for anyone who even tried a cheat, they should be banned from everything, they should be named and shamed and people should avoid playing against them, even in practices. It is then that these dregs of society may think twice before deciding to download a hack. Not that I want to give evan more attention, which is what he wants, but I find it to be too good and example to ignore. He's clanless, if rumours are to be believed, he's looking at a 6 month ban, roughly, meanwhile, he's still actively taking part in the community, chatting in IRC, posting on xfire - as though nothing even happened. Do you really think he gives a flying fuck about his ban? He needs to be hit where it hurts, banned from everything, permanently. Just think about it, an evan-free xfire, he'll be calling a suicide hotline within hours. However, while I do intensely dislike the bastard, this isn't all about him, the same should apply to anyone who has cheated. There needs to be a lot more consequence than a ClanBase ban, and I fail to say how anyone can argue that seriously.
This all relies on ClanBase pulling their finger out of their arse though, as I find it totally unsatisfactory that they try to show they care by banning one guy (eg. Allu) and ignore the countless others. The only explanation I've seen is that there is a new awesome anti-cheat system coming soon, which will solve all our problems, and male pattern baldness! We seem to have been waiting for this new system for an internity, why can't the old one be used until the new one is introduced? Before I continue my ClanBase rant, I suppose I should remind myself once again that it's not just ClanBase who are guilty, it's everyone who can do anything about this. There should be some kind of board which actively reviews each serious case on the phantom GamesTV forums.
I've already made many of these points in comments today, and some of the counter-points were outlining the easyness in circumventing some of these bans. Before someone replies, echoing that, I'll address that point now. Whether these bans are easy to circumvent or not, is not the issue at all. For example, evading an IRC ban is quite easy, but it's the fact that we're showing contempt towards the cheater that counts. He or she must be excluded from the community as much as possible, to show that we do not tolerate cheating at all, not just on ClanBase, but anywhere within our community.
We seriously need to clamp down on cheaters and stop being so relaxed about it, questions need to be asked as to why nothing is being done about cheaters, in all the chaos surrounding Fusen's cheat bust, one rather unfortunate fact remains, that not one of those cheaters has suffered any form of punishment yet.
But CB ET crew is getting the info together.They cant ban by themself... they need to give the info to the CB anti cheat chiefs. That chiefs will do the bans.
in the past ET crew was able to do it by themself but that changed.
I think if the CB.ET crew (doneX, adacore & co) could ban by themself like its used to be they could ban more. And thats one of the reasons that they (CB) aint banning so fast as far as i understand.
In addition, I will act on this (your opinions have been echo'd by many) and ban those found guilty from Crossfire and Crossfire events/competitions.
banning from the page aswell?
www.pbbans.com regularly bans ET players for known cheats but not all servers stream to them.
PBBans, ETpro + maybe xfire need to work 2gether to produce a ban list to steam to all servers
my 2 cents
Also, when you check the ETBot config, you will see a "hardwareban thingy".
If pbbans and punkbusted starts banning on pbguid, IP, ip ranges + ip checks and etpro guid, it can get better slowly with much more todos to make it save.
looks like i was late before he deleted it :[
haha
What we nead is the "big guys" like ec players,cb/esl/warleagues/xfire admins to excluded them
completely and push them aside as much as they can but in many cases this is not the case.
We had a large flame wher 50% of the community flamed cb for baning a player(razz) for using a program so he can look thru trees(4me same as looking thru walls in a game).
Most of his friends kept playing/talking with him as nothing happened.
Iam not saying et community = cheat community but a big part of community accepts cheating as something normal and that will not change imo.
Soz for the bad english (:
j/k <3 you all!
But is it allowed to overclock your system whit programs like Powerstrip and Winfox?
Theres just so much irony in this coming from evan, I could almost right the same sentance today about the cheating subject.
<3 u toss :D
I don't have a clue where that "leet" anti-cheat forum is.
But anyway, I think it should be something like this (when it ain't this already):
All players should be able to know how it works, competitive players and even noobs. So they could all report a cheater whenever they see one. It should state clearly how to report it, what evidence to gather. You can call me a noob, but I don't really know where to pay attention to. I would take a screenshot of his GUID, and record a demo. Perhaps this is enough, perhaps it ain't. Anyway, my point being: we should make it übereasy to report a cheater and everyone should know (noobs too) where to report this, so they can all independently chase down cheaters. The idea of such a threat alone would scare most players to become cheaters. Also, the consequences should be clear and hard. Trying out a hack has to be dealt with the same as using a hack. I don't think cheating in other games has to mean a ban in all games you will ever play, but that's just my opinion.
There should be a team working on this system, actively, like Sol said, a team that is known and respected by the whole community. That team would have the reputation as reliable, strict and up-to-date. That system would release names, ip, emailaddresses, GUIDs from the cheaters, and that list would be seen as the best source you could get. All leagues could use that list then.
Now does this exist? I think not. I hope the core of the Et-community (cfr. league admins, top players and community-site admins such as crossfire etc.) can put this together. This should have a good chance in bringing down the cheaters.
After all, most admins from anywhere (CF, leagues, ...) have plenty of things to worry about, so we can't even know if they have enough time for it.
Maybe a special team should be formed, not a team of ppl who are already admin or something
Your idea is nice though ;)
Now let's put them in the pillory. :-<
LOL xD
you cant forbid cheater's friends to play with him n stuff. its up to them how to behave.
we need better organisation from within to isolate those fucks. serious message must be sent out- keep that shit out of our game!
i sincerely hope that fusens story isn't the end but just a glimpse of things to come
About
Avi shows some 'suspicious' moments Rfki typed out to me of which I afterwards made an .avi for him. Didn't really know how this guy didn't leave an impression to me at all about 3/4 months ago, and then 1 month later playing a 3on3 with him and an old clanmate of him he hit every bullet I saw him shooting and eventually got way more damage and acc than I saw a lan-proof player such as mAus doing :) So it didn't really surprise me he had actually messed with OpenGL in the past and was busted in the ub3rbu57.
But you're right about the whole cheaters thing, look what a cup organisator said about mize yesterday:
[14:30] <Rhand`> can you tell me why mize was allowed to play?
[14:30] <Rhand`> I thought you didnt allow cheaters to play in your cup
[14:35] <FlexCup6|RiXzzZ> oh
[14:35] <FlexCup6|RiXzzZ> ye mize doesnt cheat anymore
I mean, wtf... This isn't acceptable imo.
Still won though =x
Q: Why isn't this murderer still not in prison?
A: Well, he doesnt kill people anymore so it should be alright.
(+`ender`) i'm just gonna translate (in very bad english) what p4h wrote earlyer this day
(+`ender`) remove bans from known cheaters
(+`ender`) or reduce it
(+`ender`) @ cb
(+`ender`) if they say a few names with evidences
(+`ender`) of not busted cheaters
Ok, harsh punishment such as xfire bans, #crossfire bans + cb bans for a long time are all good as long as they last a long time, year min. Now lets tell cheaters their ban can be removed before it they cooperate and give the names of other guys they know that cheat (along with solid proof) I wonder if that would work cause it looks great in teory :)
This is p4h's idea.
futhermore, the suggestion you made about some kind off anticheat tribunal has been proposed before. i think its a great idea. all leagues have to do is input the bans, and if they make a call the whole community has to accept it.
Btw, here's the link to netcoders interview http://shiven.net/forum/thread/3/2801/nc-interview/
"this is our new apporach to trying to gain a little more activity and more fun in the cheat community."
#h$$lich
:DDD these
Edit:
http://netcoders.be/forum/showthread.php?t=5164
=DDDDDDDDD
But lets not forget this. Are we not trying to look at this overall problem without looking at all the causes. Now I am not really in to the whole cheating thing but. Why are there still so many cheaters and why do they do it? (prolly because they don't care or think that no one will catch them with it) Is it still so easy to make cheats for ET and its mods? Is it so buggy.
What I am trying to point out here is this. Several updates have been made for ET it self but still people can cheat. Should this not be a matter to focus more attention on as well as on the fact that we never want to see the recently caught players play ET again.
The previous updates have been made why should it not be possible to make one that will help solve this aspect off the overall problem. PB is of course not amazing and cant do everything. But an update to solve this should do us just as much good as getting rid of the recently caught players.
however, that's ofcourse far from good enough. Currently there's almost 150 (not counting fusens bust) posts that haven't been reviewed yet, and another 20 or so that has been reviewed, but the main anticheat admins on clanbase haven't confirmed the ban yet. These are posts from september and october, and it makes you think why it takes that long.
Furthermore, only 2 of those 9 banned people was reported and reviewed on that forum.. is there another, better way to report these bastards? Maybe everybody should start mailing everything directly to the anticheat admins, so that they know they have work to do...
Edit: It's only 8 banned people. One of them has been banned twice. The idiot registered with a new account using his old guid...
If say I upload a screenshot of my desktop that shows the dynotimer, should every match @ CB be forfeited because dynotimers aren't allowed?
If you hesitating so much on the fact"Did they or did they not use these hacks in officials etc" Then why not focus more on preventing the actual functioning of the hack. Fusen accessed there system and prolly could have gained access to the hacks them selves would have been nice if he somehow collected them and have someone look at it them and make some fix to prevent there functioning maybe i dont know.
Of course ET is not something that works like any other couse the mods and updates are made by ppl with free time and all that and not by any company. But still i think it would be a more efficient way to deal with it
That's not the point.
and thats the problem with cheaters from an unexpected corner (or maybe the expected one) that you just like the guy and still continue to playtalk/hand out with him, tell him everything that has happened within the community and so on.
So it will be hard to COMPLETELY ban one player/cheater from everything that has to do within the gaming community and gaming aspects.
I even have his telephone number !! =o]
So i think this just fucked up the games we played with him, cause when he had done smth important, then you can say:"yeh, but he is a cheater, no wonder he killed the two people defending the objective, he could see or aimbotted us easily". But i still really cant believe that he hacked, being so unnoticed by any of us, the only real time we DID had a presumption was the time nils, lakai, tornis and co. said that vanq was preshooting back ONE time, i checked the demo, and i think i still have the demo and indeed, it was a little bit odd, but i didnt think then: "HEEY, THATS AN OBVIOUS WH".
No i was convinced he didnt hack, cause that was the only weird thing in the whole demo.
And lets face it, people are often careless about saying someone is a cheater, and the fact i played with him for a long time made me believe even stronger that he wasnt a cheater, people often call me a cheater when i do smth weird, you cant judge someone when they do ONE weird movement or find you in a weird place where you thought you couldnt be found in a normal way.
The fact is, that we won many games with a cheater in our line-up, i dont know if he used it all the time or not, and i dont think so, i think he didnt use it in the game versus Noll8, cause he was playing very different, thats why i think we had a hard time beating Noll8 in those games, because when we pracced versus them before, we had a much easier task (not that they got owned SO hard or smth, but everything went normal, the way we always "played").
summing things up: i honestly believe our games dont mean shit anymore with vanq playing in the line-up.
So its hard to just ignore him, cause i played alot with him when there were no players online or wanting to play, spend most my time with him from the clan apart from hype, and it will dramatically change the times i will still play this game.
And other than that, I DO think he is still a great guy.
:/
Like ph4ge said, he lied to you and your team. And not a small thing either (from a gaming perspective anyway).
So i wont hate him for this, maybe you cant understand it, but that doesnt matter, i dont give a shit, cause i do understand it.
I'm not judging you, you seem torn about the issue, which shows you have a conscience and are struggling with it a bit. But perhaps you've allowed the line between the internet and reality to become blurred?
If one of my online gaming friends got busted, I'd say, "you're not dragging me down with you; I want to continue playing the game and not be shunned because of my association with you -- have a nice life, goodbye."
There are plenty of other voices on Ventrilo and screennames in IRC to play video games with.
"There are plenty of other voices on Ventrilo and screennames in IRC to play video games with."
this is completely true, but when you have managed to get all the 15v helium players and other irritating scum and got the other 6-8 players get along wiht each other then, believe me, you will have a lot better games!
This is the reason why imo it's much more desirable to play with friends and other cool guys and let the line between irl and virtual world get blurred!
not only talking about zero tolerance at leagues, but also on community sites
its annoying to see busted/known cheaters on xfire talking about their hacks without any shame
check the comment before.
I don't know how it is in EU, but judging by several comments here I'd guess it's the same as NA, where a major factor in the War on Cheaters is that the community doesn't take it seriously.
Some people blame our leagues, but the truth is that a cheater will be vigorously defended by his old teammates. "I know him, he doesn't hack." As if talking to someone on Ventrilo is "knowing" their heart and soul. Old e-friends help cheaters circumvent their bans, re-alias, and create a new team.
Suddenly, there's an unknown team full of unknown players, raping faces in scrims, raising suspicions, and further demoralizing the community of honest players. After a while, the general attitude degrades to the point that most people just say "who gives a fuck?"
My point is, it starts at home, so-to-speak. Teams need to police their own ranks, and shun teammates who break rules -- even their bestest e-pals. It all comes down to maturity, but that doesn't mean age. You can be young and mature, and you can be old and immature. It seems like most of the ET community (all gaming, really) is incredibly immature.
Each ban they request has to be sent to CB's cheating and abuse department which, in all fairness, is the internet's very own HSBC customer services. Full of clueless foreigners who can better spend their time proving their power than actually acting on the facts presented to them.
There aren't many parts of CB that I'd honestly slag off but C&A (no reference to the clothes chain) is about as helpful as a deaf 999 operator. lunachick, Anaconda, NR even the infamous doneX have presented a bulk of cheat evidence on CB's so-called "anti-cheat" forum. 99.9% of their posts have been met with "There's not enough solid evidence to process this ban." Pushing aside the stuck up reply; what is there more than a ClanBase user IP search matching PB screenshots and a GUID to process a ban?
When Cash stepped in as gamesup and even when doneX stepped in his place; there was so much effort to ban cheaters (and their IPs and/or GUIDs) from ClanBase leagues but it could only go so far. The lack of power given to game supervisors means that Cash, doneX and whoever had to go to "Cheating & Abuse Chiefs" that would probably need Google to get a definition for "ET". Nobody in CB's ET section has the power to ban someone for cheating.
Amen to anything that forces leagues into working together to rid games of cheaters.
sup Stu btw :)
no I'm not kamz etc :D