Cut him some SLAC.

Cut him some SLAC.

The day when SLAC (Speed Link Anti Cheat) will be forced on this community is coming closer. We see countless journals and comments flaming it, saying it's work of devil himself, that it will kill ET community. What's there to kill?

ET has been overtaken by cheaters. There might not be much (or too obvious) in so called highskill community, but once you dive a bit lower that that, it's full of med+ raging polaks, dutchies and other e-heroes ready to boost their accuracy's and headshot count on unsuspecting teams that are there to have fun. It's a real problem. There is no working anticheat as of now, and when it was working, PunkBuster offered little to none at all protection. This was obvious during times of famous fusengate and cheaterlists that followed after that. We were “protected”, yet there were thousands of people who kept playing with their freshly bought private bots. And despite numerous of leaks, they still are playing.

Main reason for all the SLAC-hate (apart that cheating in ET has become somehow acceptable), is integrity of it's coder Chaplja whom as we know is (ex?) cheat coder, just google ph33r.avi to see him at his finest.

I am of no connection to Chaplja, however here I will sum up a few reasons why I think we should (and must) give him a chance.

Being (ex) cheat coder is even a good thing. There are plenty of real life examples when young people, hackers, later on in their life find themselves working for big security companies, governments, banks, et cetera. Having an insight in how cheats work is a huge advantage in developing anti cheat. You have to know your enemy to fight him properly.

One of the main reasons is that everyone are afraid of some kind of backdoor that it will have and will steal all your monies and netcoder account details. From what I know, as of now some anti viruses are detecting SLAC as potential harmful and not allowing it to be used without help of exceptions, while others don't. As far as my understanding of programs goes, it's due to way it is designed to work, which means to be effective it has to be intrusive in other program work, cause cheats obviously are not that simple. I myself had had plenty of false positives, especially from poker clients. I have read somewhere (but I might be wrong) that Chaplja himself stated that he would send SLAC client to problematic anti virus developers to analyze and whitelist it afterward.

On the other hand, while using PunkBuster we have 2 system processes running all the time with administrator rights. Nobody had problems with that. Also some vocal people against SLAC, never did have problems while using private bots, some of whom, indeed had backdoor capabilities.

Then there's argument that SLAC will be the same as AntiPro, never gonna happen syndrome. Opposite to SLAC it was purely personal project by few coders and it failed due to lack of motivation and great amount of work it required. This time with SpeedLink having contract with developer I don't see why this should not succeed.

As we know, developing cheats is much easier than protecting from them and I do believe that for a talented coder having that challenge to beat others, involving monetary gain from what hes doing, is what matters. Chaplja himself has never lied about what his doing, and in a way, his honesty about his work is a huge plus in this business. And what's the worst that could happen? Project dies, and we are back to square one.

Then we have possibility of Chaplja selling cheats for his own anti cheat. That's probably the one thing that scares other cheat providers the most, not that he will sell cheats, but that it will be so good that their own product won't be working. That's why we see for example Blueman who is cheater, and as I understand cheat developer, trying to smear SLAC in every post he makes. Reminds of netcoders crying when their databases were exposed.

Even if worst happens. He sells cheats. What would change from where are we now? It's not like players who didn't cheat would suddenly go beg him for new cheat. Assuming it indeed would stop other private bots, it would be same cheating trash that would come and try to buy this new SLAC cheat and once that happens, someone leaks that Chaplja is selling his own cheats, project will be shut down, simple as that. ET market is not that big to bother with contracts, legal obligations, create delusion of anti cheat and try to sell your own cheat later.

I understand fears of some people that SLAC be indeed be bad thing purely in technical aspect, I myself would be pleased if it had some independent inspection, from “trusted” members of community, but if it won't happen, I'd rather try it, then sink deeper down in this cheater heaven what ET is right now. Call me optimistic if you want.

Good luck Chaplja, Killerboy, and most important, ET community.

P.S As last thing I would like to point out how ironic I find that someone like kamz, whom in past have been cheater himself, have spend days and nights abusing crossfire content system, crashing game servers and overtaking irc channels, have enough courage to open his mouth on this issue.