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The goal of this thread is to discuss how to catch cheaters. I will try to use my best English, but please understand my limits. If I’m too verbose or trivial, my apologies, it’s for completeness sake. If I miss a point I’m sure you will politely correct me with the friendly spirit ESReality users are very fond of…
So, the topic is how to catch cheaters. The controversy here is mainly due to the limited existing tools to get evidences as well as the speculative nature of almost any judgment based on these.
Current Situation
There are various types of cheaters, but not all of them are considered to be a problem. As rule of thumb, the more legit-skills a cheater has the bigger the problem he represents, as not only it is harder to catch him but there are also more changes to see him competing in tournaments, eventually with prizes.
Although we would like Sombra’s case to be the first of long series, this is sadly unlikely. The cheater we are considering is smart enough to avoid stupid demo/screens management mistakes as well as clear overuse of the hack. Sombra’s case however exposes the first big problem of the current witch hunting which is the personal relationship between accused players, inquisition and audience. Not only evidences are usually quite poor, but any judgment is pre filtered by personal feeling about this and that person, which strongly influences the outcome of any scrutiny even against quite convincing proofs.
One urban legend arising around this very concept can be expressed by: “you can find similar things in any legit demo! You see the hack because you want to see it”, a statement that indeed contains a portion of truth and to the least require a bit of investigation.
Unfortunately given the current state of things, we cannot rely on anti hack software such as pb. This is not going to change in the near future, so we can take anti-hack software out of the discussion.
So. in terms of existing tools, the only (yet usually insufficient) evidence one can provide is demo.
As you know the problem with demos is that they do not show exactly what a player sees and hear when he’s playing (this without even considering GTV/spectator demos which are just wrong). As we cannot expect people to put a camera and record their games, demos provided by the players themselves are the best we can get, and within competitions this can be enforced.
Proposal
The trivial requirement of a judgment system is that it should avoid too many false positive/negatives. A judgment system should be able to distinguish between lepic (legit + epic) and hacked shots.
A second point is that personal matters should not influence the judgment at all. Anonymous demos (although complete anonymity is impossible) might be a first step in this sense.
I figure the following fantasy. A central official list of inquisitors is created. Inquisitors will take vision of anonymous demos and will seek consensus to deliberate. Numbers can be discussed.
To become inquisitor a candidate should pass an exam. A selected set of demos is presented to the candidate. Such set might include any number of cheaters (included zero). The candidate is requested to deliberate about each demo, highlighting what is wrong with those he marks as cheat. To pass the candidate must reach a certain number of correct judgments. Exams might be repeated in time to make sure the inquisitors are not degenerating into zealotry.
I know I’m putting it as a joke, but I believe that with id support (regarding anonymous demos + temporary demo uploading) and a bit of participation this could actually work.
What do you think?
So, the topic is how to catch cheaters. The controversy here is mainly due to the limited existing tools to get evidences as well as the speculative nature of almost any judgment based on these.
Current Situation
There are various types of cheaters, but not all of them are considered to be a problem. As rule of thumb, the more legit-skills a cheater has the bigger the problem he represents, as not only it is harder to catch him but there are also more changes to see him competing in tournaments, eventually with prizes.
Although we would like Sombra’s case to be the first of long series, this is sadly unlikely. The cheater we are considering is smart enough to avoid stupid demo/screens management mistakes as well as clear overuse of the hack. Sombra’s case however exposes the first big problem of the current witch hunting which is the personal relationship between accused players, inquisition and audience. Not only evidences are usually quite poor, but any judgment is pre filtered by personal feeling about this and that person, which strongly influences the outcome of any scrutiny even against quite convincing proofs.
One urban legend arising around this very concept can be expressed by: “you can find similar things in any legit demo! You see the hack because you want to see it”, a statement that indeed contains a portion of truth and to the least require a bit of investigation.
Unfortunately given the current state of things, we cannot rely on anti hack software such as pb. This is not going to change in the near future, so we can take anti-hack software out of the discussion.
So. in terms of existing tools, the only (yet usually insufficient) evidence one can provide is demo.
As you know the problem with demos is that they do not show exactly what a player sees and hear when he’s playing (this without even considering GTV/spectator demos which are just wrong). As we cannot expect people to put a camera and record their games, demos provided by the players themselves are the best we can get, and within competitions this can be enforced.
Proposal
The trivial requirement of a judgment system is that it should avoid too many false positive/negatives. A judgment system should be able to distinguish between lepic (legit + epic) and hacked shots.
A second point is that personal matters should not influence the judgment at all. Anonymous demos (although complete anonymity is impossible) might be a first step in this sense.
I figure the following fantasy. A central official list of inquisitors is created. Inquisitors will take vision of anonymous demos and will seek consensus to deliberate. Numbers can be discussed.
To become inquisitor a candidate should pass an exam. A selected set of demos is presented to the candidate. Such set might include any number of cheaters (included zero). The candidate is requested to deliberate about each demo, highlighting what is wrong with those he marks as cheat. To pass the candidate must reach a certain number of correct judgments. Exams might be repeated in time to make sure the inquisitors are not degenerating into zealotry.
I know I’m putting it as a joke, but I believe that with id support (regarding anonymous demos + temporary demo uploading) and a bit of participation this could actually work.
What do you think?
Edited by Memento_Mori at 12:28 CDT, 6 July 2009 - 17749 Hits
