My cheat, delete this stagnant game. Let the cheaters play with themselves and each other until CG shuts down.
By then, McMole and Bulldog will be on to covering something else. They'll have cred as the guys who attempted to look out for their community and will be fine.
The problem I saw with it is he admitted to cheating for 2 months....2 months and and did it on an alt account not wanting to get his main possibly banned for cheating. So then makes a video admitting this and is surprised he got banned? In reference to bulldog not mcmole if the videos did anything today it was make a whole group of new people search out these hacks. So alerting the community is great , but sadly how many are going to get this program they only learned of because of these videos
Absolutely disgusting respomse by CG banning people looking out for the community. Do you know people are hacking your game!!!!
Cg has shown they do absolutely nothing for months but then when its exposed that CG does nothing CG bans the people who exposed CGs failure to act!!!!
Communication sucks,
your new gac is broken beyond belief,
And your PR department has sunk lower than a oceanic rift.
Congratulations on dropping the ball yet again and displaying how inept your team is to attempt handle cheating in the game.
Banning the messenger doesn't silence the message, it become amplified!!!
Streisand effect, martyrdom, look it up because you just made a big problem even bigger.
Also giving McMole a suspension for alerting the community is another crapshoot.
Like seriously? He did a video talking about a problem you knew of but didn’t fix.
It’s like you guys don’t like your customers that spend their time, energy and most importantly our money into this game.
If you are running an effective game and address issues quickly you wouldn’t have to tell content creators to shut up about issues you care not to address. They would be yelling from the mountain tops how amazing this game is! Instead, you made a clear message if someone points out an issue in the game you will get punished. Unbelievable.
I’m not a fan of Bulldog getting banned because he exposed a flaw in your system.
You guys are so clueless you wouldn’t have even known he did it unless he was testing it to show it can be done.
It’s that he alerted the community that it can happen that you lost your minds. Now maybe you need to allocate resources into cheating so maybe you needed a scapegoat I don’t know. But this is a terrible way to handle your PR. Probably another area that needs more resources lol
If they wanted to ban the account bulldog used to cheat as well as his main I'd understand.
The problem I saw with it is he admitted to cheating for 2 months....2 months and and did it on an alt account not wanting to get his main possibly banned for cheating. So then makes a video admitting this and is surprised he got banned? In reference to bulldog not mcmole if the videos did anything today it was make a whole group of new people search out these hacks. So alerting the community is great , but sadly how many are going to get this program they only learned of because of these videos
Sincerily I have no idea what you're thinking.
By your logic we shouldn't inform kids/ppl/population about drugs and addiction, because they might want to explore it and look for it.
We shouldn't inform ppl about illnesses, because they just might want to catch it, just for funzies...
Do you actually realize that information and educating ppl is the only way to promote awareness and making progress in dealing with it ?
Or are you just a blind follower that only does what he is told to ? Well, at least you live a happy and care free life my friend, cheers !
Also giving McMole a suspension for alerting the community is another crapshoot.
Like seriously? He did a video talking about a problem you knew of but didn’t fix.
It’s like you guys don’t like your customers that spend their time, energy and most importantly our money into this game.
If you are running an effective game and address issues quickly you wouldn’t have to tell content creators to shut up about issues you care not to address. They would be yelling from the mountain tops how amazing this game is! Instead, you made a clear message if someone points out an issue in the game you will get punished. Unbelievable.
At least we have a witness protection program in real life. Seems the same concept doesn't apply to virtual world.
You're either with us or against us.
And here everybody thought it can't get worse after Carrie left. Good job CG !
This is a not a secret this hack is around for long months already and only thing is they rely on is others players reports. This truly saddening. They see no interest in fixing as seems it probably very time and money consuming. What is more ridiculous they make most efforts In making this problem not going publicly. Mcmole and bulldog did NOT advertised cheating, they made this **** videos to bring your and player base attention to this problem!
I am very vocal against cg on what they are usually doing,but banning them is their right,even bulldog,mcmole2 acknowledged this,should they do it tho?
I dont know why they keep the pr person still tho,they always seem to make the wrong decision on every single occasion.Guess 400 mil dollars dont make you smart.I blame the ppl who keep spending as well,couse if they dont stop spending,nothing will ever change.
The cheating hack displayed in Mcmole's video seemed to be an offensive hack. I did battle one guy in GA that seemed to have an impossibly powerful CLS team on defence. All other teams seemed legit.
so now my question to this related to GAC.
My last GAC round was a bit weird, i placed my usual solid/strong deff, opponent was a bit stronger than me, but not too much overpowered.
As i started my attack he cleared already my deff, scoring 1919 (!) points, placing some of his best teams, incl. Drevan in deff, i managed to clear his deff also, but with less score (Drevan needed 2 attempts), therefore i knew already i'll loose this one, but the score achieved by him with my deff, made me sceptical.
Also in my best runs, i never managed to score so high points, best where around 1894, where i cleared everything in 1 fight and 1-2 60-points fights.
Now the big question, when, at which score it is getting suspicious (thinking of this cheat thing)?
I guess we need some more tools/information to ensure the fight was fair, or shall we now report every strange behaviour spamming CG?
Swiss Garde Officer, drop me a message if you're interested joining
Am I the only the one wondering why it is that CG haven't implemented something like a SLOC Check that runs whenever the app is run and validates the result against an online value linked to each client release number?
Surely that would prevent people from using in-game manipulation management mods/software which would be altering that total number by adding more lines. So if the app was started with such an alteration in place it would know the user was running it with altered code.
This is the reality: they can’t. There are probably thousands of people cheating, as widespread as this game is.
This hasn’t been going on for “months”. this has been going on for YEARS; at LEAST since mid-2016. Wanna know how I know? Because someone in our shard was repeatedly - repeatedly!!! - reported and subsequently banned for cheating. And they kept coming back. When we were able to finally pin them down and chat with them to stop, they spilled the beans. They stated that because the cheats/mods/hacks whatever you want to call them were client side and not server side, they were undetectable unless they bragged about it or they did something audacious like beating a maxed gear, CLS titan team with g9 clones, which is what this player did. They finally were perma banned, but only because of the audacity of their actions, not because the devs caught them red handed. That’s just one player...
Unlike the crystal scam that was going on, which is server side and trips the the servers anti-hacking notifications, allowing them to pin point exactly happened and who did it (which, being the fact there is a hard price tag on those items, is a felonious offense and can be subject to prosecution, btw) the client side cheat goes virtually undetectable and unnoticed, except by us.
That’s what Bulldog was trying to showcase. Perma-banning him was the worst thing they could have done, especially when he wasn’t trying to do anything malicious. At no time was any info specifically given to show the process to procure and implement the cheat. Only that it existed and why it made lesser teams able to beat meta teams.
You have a game that relies on money to keep it going, yet you’re extinguishing the voices of concerned players and spenders when they try to bring attention to it. Figure something out or run the risk of this collapsing at rate that will take your breath away, because it’s going to be at the forefront of everyone’s mind in every GAC and every TW that starts from here on out.
What needs done:
1: all investigations that determine hacked game files, or fraudulent crystal purchased or any other malicious (affecting growth or other players) activity results in a permanent ban/account deletion. Players found will have a 1 week ban to plead their case before deletion of their account.
2: Replays for players after each round of GAC. Let us watch what happened in the battle to allow players a better more accurate ability to report cheaters. This will likely DECREASE the amount of cheater reports as now anyone who loses will report.
Note: Short term bans handed out to players found reporting everyone as a cheater when they can watch reviews and see legitimate gameplay.
3: A weekly list of banned/deleted accounts posted publicly in the forums.
These changes would sedate most of the player complaints and would really not require a huge investment. #1 is simply a change to punishments, #3 is just posting a logged list once a week.
#2 will take some work but as has been pointed out they dont need videos. The animations are saved on our phones. All we need is the list of commands that were issued, and damage done/recieved to be saved in a log file along with the stats of both teams (which should already be saved by GAC lock).
Then we can watch the replay and see the damage numbers ourselves and compare what we know to what we see.
Yes it will be hard to catch subtle cheaters, but they will at least need to have valid teams and gear to come close. We can see if they mess with cooldowns or turn order or anything.
To those that does not think there is any $$$ in this for GC (and I REALLY do not hope this is news to CG!!!): there is a ton of $$$ in this.
Think of it like this. A lot of players are putting money into the game, most to gain an advantage. If they do not think they can trust to get a return for the money, then they (like me) will stop spending. It's really that simple.
An the darkest of those players will spend money on the cheating software/hack/whatever it is, simply because it's likely a lot cheaper than getting the advantage through crystals.
Turn this around ASAP. Unban Bulldog/McMole2 and thank them, publicly. Tell us that you can detect this form of cheating (if it gets reported, I guess no one reported Bulldog as he constantly lost). Make this a (bi-)weekly post with numbers on bans. Make it easier for us to help catch cheaters (100s of ways to do this have already been mentioned, replay is a very obvious one). Reward people for being whistle blowers and helping you catch cheaters. This is killing the game faster than the Revans, the year of Marquees and even Malak!
Replies
By then, McMole and Bulldog will be on to covering something else. They'll have cred as the guys who attempted to look out for their community and will be fine.
What a PR screwup. I mean seriously guys.
The biggest issue is the lack of new pve content.
Makes me suddenly wonder... how many of the 80 people that defeated the Ackley were actually cheaters...
Cg has shown they do absolutely nothing for months but then when its exposed that CG does nothing CG bans the people who exposed CGs failure to act!!!!
Communication sucks,
your new gac is broken beyond belief,
And your PR department has sunk lower than a oceanic rift.
Congratulations on dropping the ball yet again and displaying how inept your team is to attempt handle cheating in the game.
Banning the messenger doesn't silence the message, it become amplified!!!
Streisand effect, martyrdom, look it up because you just made a big problem even bigger.
Cheaters win. And whistleblowers get banned
Like seriously? He did a video talking about a problem you knew of but didn’t fix.
It’s like you guys don’t like your customers that spend their time, energy and most importantly our money into this game.
If you are running an effective game and address issues quickly you wouldn’t have to tell content creators to shut up about issues you care not to address. They would be yelling from the mountain tops how amazing this game is! Instead, you made a clear message if someone points out an issue in the game you will get punished. Unbelievable.
If they wanted to ban the account bulldog used to cheat as well as his main I'd understand.
Sincerily I have no idea what you're thinking.
By your logic we shouldn't inform kids/ppl/population about drugs and addiction, because they might want to explore it and look for it.
We shouldn't inform ppl about illnesses, because they just might want to catch it, just for funzies...
Do you actually realize that information and educating ppl is the only way to promote awareness and making progress in dealing with it ?
Or are you just a blind follower that only does what he is told to ? Well, at least you live a happy and care free life my friend, cheers !
At least we have a witness protection program in real life. Seems the same concept doesn't apply to virtual world.
You're either with us or against us.
And here everybody thought it can't get worse after Carrie left. Good job CG !
Sounds like a cheater who doesnt want to get caught!
I dont know why they keep the pr person still tho,they always seem to make the wrong decision on every single occasion.Guess 400 mil dollars dont make you smart.I blame the ppl who keep spending as well,couse if they dont stop spending,nothing will ever change.
My last GAC round was a bit weird, i placed my usual solid/strong deff, opponent was a bit stronger than me, but not too much overpowered.
As i started my attack he cleared already my deff, scoring 1919 (!) points, placing some of his best teams, incl. Drevan in deff, i managed to clear his deff also, but with less score (Drevan needed 2 attempts), therefore i knew already i'll loose this one, but the score achieved by him with my deff, made me sceptical.
Also in my best runs, i never managed to score so high points, best where around 1894, where i cleared everything in 1 fight and 1-2 60-points fights.
Now the big question, when, at which score it is getting suspicious (thinking of this cheat thing)?
I guess we need some more tools/information to ensure the fight was fair, or shall we now report every strange behaviour spamming CG?
Surely that would prevent people from using in-game manipulation management mods/software which would be altering that total number by adding more lines. So if the app was started with such an alteration in place it would know the user was running it with altered code.
How hard is that?!
This hasn’t been going on for “months”. this has been going on for YEARS; at LEAST since mid-2016. Wanna know how I know? Because someone in our shard was repeatedly - repeatedly!!! - reported and subsequently banned for cheating. And they kept coming back. When we were able to finally pin them down and chat with them to stop, they spilled the beans. They stated that because the cheats/mods/hacks whatever you want to call them were client side and not server side, they were undetectable unless they bragged about it or they did something audacious like beating a maxed gear, CLS titan team with g9 clones, which is what this player did. They finally were perma banned, but only because of the audacity of their actions, not because the devs caught them red handed. That’s just one player...
Unlike the crystal scam that was going on, which is server side and trips the the servers anti-hacking notifications, allowing them to pin point exactly happened and who did it (which, being the fact there is a hard price tag on those items, is a felonious offense and can be subject to prosecution, btw) the client side cheat goes virtually undetectable and unnoticed, except by us.
That’s what Bulldog was trying to showcase. Perma-banning him was the worst thing they could have done, especially when he wasn’t trying to do anything malicious. At no time was any info specifically given to show the process to procure and implement the cheat. Only that it existed and why it made lesser teams able to beat meta teams.
You have a game that relies on money to keep it going, yet you’re extinguishing the voices of concerned players and spenders when they try to bring attention to it. Figure something out or run the risk of this collapsing at rate that will take your breath away, because it’s going to be at the forefront of everyone’s mind in every GAC and every TW that starts from here on out.
1: all investigations that determine hacked game files, or fraudulent crystal purchased or any other malicious (affecting growth or other players) activity results in a permanent ban/account deletion. Players found will have a 1 week ban to plead their case before deletion of their account.
2: Replays for players after each round of GAC. Let us watch what happened in the battle to allow players a better more accurate ability to report cheaters. This will likely DECREASE the amount of cheater reports as now anyone who loses will report.
Note: Short term bans handed out to players found reporting everyone as a cheater when they can watch reviews and see legitimate gameplay.
3: A weekly list of banned/deleted accounts posted publicly in the forums.
These changes would sedate most of the player complaints and would really not require a huge investment. #1 is simply a change to punishments, #3 is just posting a logged list once a week.
#2 will take some work but as has been pointed out they dont need videos. The animations are saved on our phones. All we need is the list of commands that were issued, and damage done/recieved to be saved in a log file along with the stats of both teams (which should already be saved by GAC lock).
Then we can watch the replay and see the damage numbers ourselves and compare what we know to what we see.
Yes it will be hard to catch subtle cheaters, but they will at least need to have valid teams and gear to come close. We can see if they mess with cooldowns or turn order or anything.
Think of it like this. A lot of players are putting money into the game, most to gain an advantage. If they do not think they can trust to get a return for the money, then they (like me) will stop spending. It's really that simple.
An the darkest of those players will spend money on the cheating software/hack/whatever it is, simply because it's likely a lot cheaper than getting the advantage through crystals.
Turn this around ASAP. Unban Bulldog/McMole2 and thank them, publicly. Tell us that you can detect this form of cheating (if it gets reported, I guess no one reported Bulldog as he constantly lost). Make this a (bi-)weekly post with numbers on bans. Make it easier for us to help catch cheaters (100s of ways to do this have already been mentioned, replay is a very obvious one). Reward people for being whistle blowers and helping you catch cheaters. This is killing the game faster than the Revans, the year of Marquees and even Malak!
Do it now!