It's long past time CG puts an end to cheating

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This subject has been brought up before obviously but the community needs to demand an answer from this company on when they are going to put a stop to cheating. It's something that could be EASILY coded to flag any cheaters and put an end to those accounts... regardless of whether a player is obviously cheating or cheating "smart". I honestly think they look at cheaters as a proxy to drive revenue from legitimate players. It's the only explanation for why this has been allowed to run rampant for so long. It could be ended so easily but they refuse to do it. It should be priority number one.

Why isn't it?

Replies

  • How can it be "EASILY coded?" Feel free to explain at a high level.
  • How can it be "EASILY coded?" Feel free to explain at a high level.

    Other mobile games with smaller budgets seem more capable of accomplishing anti-cheating measures than CG. Are you suggesting a program to detect cheating is impossible for CG to accomplish? Given the bugs in the game atm you might have an argument, but incompetence isn't an excuse to continue to reward cheaters and punish honest players who never see compensation for the cheater stealing rewards from them.
  • How can it be "EASILY coded?" Feel free to explain at a high level.

    Other mobile games with smaller budgets seem more capable of accomplishing anti-cheating measures than CG. Are you suggesting a program to detect cheating is impossible for CG to accomplish? Given the bugs in the game atm you might have an argument, but incompetence isn't an excuse to continue to reward cheaters and punish honest players who never see compensation for the cheater stealing rewards from them.

    I'm taking issue with the phrasing that it can be "easily coded" as gamers who say things like this have zero idea how these programs / games function at a very basic level. Or how the packages (APK) work for "mobile" apps.
  • Ultra
    11449 posts Moderator
    How can it be "EASILY coded?" Feel free to explain at a high level.

    Other mobile games with smaller budgets seem more capable of accomplishing anti-cheating measures than CG. Are you suggesting a program to detect cheating is impossible for CG to accomplish? Given the bugs in the game atm you might have an argument, but incompetence isn't an excuse to continue to reward cheaters and punish honest players who never see compensation for the cheater stealing rewards from them.

    What mobile games with smaller budgets are doing better anti-cheating measures
  • TargetEadu
    1513 posts Member
    They obviously have code that can detect certain things about battles, such as damage output, from Feats. I’m not sure how similar it could be for GAC, but it at least used to have feats too. Shouldn’t be too hard to find the max damage a character can do and if they’re exceeding it look more closely at the teams.
  • Iy4oy4s
    2923 posts Member
    Regardless if it's easy or not, for a game that's made over a billion dollars, not investing some of that money back into developing anti-cheat is disrespectful to the honest players, both FTP and money spenders.
  • Rath_Tarr
    4944 posts Member
    1) enhance client to capture battle logs and send when required by server e.g. if that account is flagged as suspicious
    • units alive at battle start with their health, protection, TM & ability cooldown states
    • RNG seed value for the battle (software RNG is actually a complex number sequence generator so using the same seed value with the same RNG implementation will result in the same number sequence)
    • sequential list of actions: character, ability used, target(s)
    2) develop a server-side battle simulator which can replay the logs and find flaws which would indicate a hacked client
  • Well having worked as a developer for a long time there are numerous ways they could go about it. Their priority should be securing the client side battles... they could also do some research on the tools that are being used to accomplish cheating in conjunction and see where they can tighten their own code up. They may possibly be able to decompile any of these tools though I would suspect they already know exactly how things are being manipulated and why.

    It may be that the easiest way to clean it up would be to send communication back to the servers during battles. They know the rules of their game and what would be outside the bounds of possibility or suspicious. This may not catch smart cheaters though which is why securing their own client code might be more important in catching all cheats. They could have the server drive attacks if they wanted to. It might be more network overhead but is it worth it to clean cheating up in the game? With any server communication this obviously means airplane mode might take a hit... but why not give a message to the player at the end of battles to ask if they want to forfeit or confirm the end of the battle? Players have been using airplane mode for years to get around a constraint of the system that CG obviously deem fair play so why not just let the player confirm at the end of the battle?

    The bottom line is that they can clean cheating up if they really had an interest.
  • DonPuto
    371 posts Member
    Ultra wrote: »
    How can it be "EASILY coded?" Feel free to explain at a high level.

    Other mobile games with smaller budgets seem more capable of accomplishing anti-cheating measures than CG. Are you suggesting a program to detect cheating is impossible for CG to accomplish? Given the bugs in the game atm you might have an argument, but incompetence isn't an excuse to continue to reward cheaters and punish honest players who never see compensation for the cheater stealing rewards from them.

    What mobile games with smaller budgets are doing better anti-cheating measures

    Agree with your question but it raises another. What on earth is CG doing with their game to limit cheating? We've seen extreme examples by other community members and have asked for this to be addressed and it's just crickets from CG. The resulting sentiment is either they don't care or can't do anything about it. Is that fair? Not sure but until it's addressed, that's what we're left with and these posts will continue.
  • Ultra wrote: »
    How can it be "EASILY coded?" Feel free to explain at a high level.

    Other mobile games with smaller budgets seem more capable of accomplishing anti-cheating measures than CG. Are you suggesting a program to detect cheating is impossible for CG to accomplish? Given the bugs in the game atm you might have an argument, but incompetence isn't an excuse to continue to reward cheaters and punish honest players who never see compensation for the cheater stealing rewards from them.

    What mobile games with smaller budgets are doing better anti-cheating measures

    It's very reminiscent of early 90s computer wars.

    "Macs don't get nailed with all the viruses that PCs do!"

    "Because Macs are 1% of the market, and don't run on Enterprise."
  • Ultra wrote: »
    How can it be "EASILY coded?" Feel free to explain at a high level.

    Other mobile games with smaller budgets seem more capable of accomplishing anti-cheating measures than CG. Are you suggesting a program to detect cheating is impossible for CG to accomplish? Given the bugs in the game atm you might have an argument, but incompetence isn't an excuse to continue to reward cheaters and punish honest players who never see compensation for the cheater stealing rewards from them.

    What mobile games with smaller budgets are doing better anti-cheating measures

    I used to play WoW obsessively ages ago. Blizzard built their own anti-cheating software years ago if I'm remembering right. Was it the Glider cheat they went after? I'm spitballing here as I don't fully remember. This was on PC's though. That was earlier in WoW's lifecycle too. CG is on their way to raking in 2B USD with this game. If they can't carve out some of that for the integrity of the game, shame on them.
  • HokieFiend wrote: »
    Ultra wrote: »
    How can it be "EASILY coded?" Feel free to explain at a high level.

    Other mobile games with smaller budgets seem more capable of accomplishing anti-cheating measures than CG. Are you suggesting a program to detect cheating is impossible for CG to accomplish? Given the bugs in the game atm you might have an argument, but incompetence isn't an excuse to continue to reward cheaters and punish honest players who never see compensation for the cheater stealing rewards from them.

    What mobile games with smaller budgets are doing better anti-cheating measures

    I used to play WoW obsessively ages ago. Blizzard built their own anti-cheating software years ago if I'm remembering right. Was it the Glider cheat they went after? I'm spitballing here as I don't fully remember. This was on PC's though. That was earlier in WoW's lifecycle too. CG is on their way to raking in 2B USD with this game. If they can't carve out some of that for the integrity of the game, shame on them.

    Cg. Integrity. Error 404.
  • Magruffin wrote: »
    HokieFiend wrote: »
    Ultra wrote: »
    How can it be "EASILY coded?" Feel free to explain at a high level.

    Other mobile games with smaller budgets seem more capable of accomplishing anti-cheating measures than CG. Are you suggesting a program to detect cheating is impossible for CG to accomplish? Given the bugs in the game atm you might have an argument, but incompetence isn't an excuse to continue to reward cheaters and punish honest players who never see compensation for the cheater stealing rewards from them.

    What mobile games with smaller budgets are doing better anti-cheating measures

    I used to play WoW obsessively ages ago. Blizzard built their own anti-cheating software years ago if I'm remembering right. Was it the Glider cheat they went after? I'm spitballing here as I don't fully remember. This was on PC's though. That was earlier in WoW's lifecycle too. CG is on their way to raking in 2B USD with this game. If they can't carve out some of that for the integrity of the game, shame on them.

    Cg. Integrity. Error 404.

    You are quite right, HK-47. Terminate!

  • There are technical measures that can be coded fairly straightforwardly, but I doubt any overall solution would be easy, for economical reasons. It's easy to send home battle logs, but they will need humans to review, which can quickly become expensive. For every report on an actual cheater out there, there will probably be 50 from players **** off by seemingly impossible defeats. It's mildly harder but still doable to send ongoing battle stats to server for validation, but it would increase the server load many folds, which would also become expensive.
  • Easy…block android users from playing the game. Problem solved
  • MaruMaru
    3338 posts Member
    Fieldgulls wrote: »
    Easy…block android users from playing the game. Problem solved

    Lol no, ios also have emulators you know.
  • Ultra
    11449 posts Moderator
    HokieFiend wrote: »
    Ultra wrote: »
    How can it be "EASILY coded?" Feel free to explain at a high level.

    Other mobile games with smaller budgets seem more capable of accomplishing anti-cheating measures than CG. Are you suggesting a program to detect cheating is impossible for CG to accomplish? Given the bugs in the game atm you might have an argument, but incompetence isn't an excuse to continue to reward cheaters and punish honest players who never see compensation for the cheater stealing rewards from them.

    What mobile games with smaller budgets are doing better anti-cheating measures

    I used to play WoW obsessively ages ago. Blizzard built their own anti-cheating software years ago if I'm remembering right. Was it the Glider cheat they went after? I'm spitballing here as I don't fully remember. This was on PC's though. That was earlier in WoW's lifecycle too. CG is on their way to raking in 2B USD with this game. If they can't carve out some of that for the integrity of the game, shame on them.

    Companies like Blizzard and RIOT have anti-cheat software that is always running on your PC even when you are not playing games, and the programs are very invasive since they are checking your system level, kernal level files to see game modifications taking place outside the game programs (from what I've read)

    A similar example would be CG releasing another app that acts like a spyware checking every single app you are running on your mobile device to catch if you are using any APK program to modify the game

    And obviously, nobody wants that level of invasion for a mobile game
  • Ultra
    11449 posts Moderator
    DonPuto wrote: »
    Ultra wrote: »
    How can it be "EASILY coded?" Feel free to explain at a high level.

    Other mobile games with smaller budgets seem more capable of accomplishing anti-cheating measures than CG. Are you suggesting a program to detect cheating is impossible for CG to accomplish? Given the bugs in the game atm you might have an argument, but incompetence isn't an excuse to continue to reward cheaters and punish honest players who never see compensation for the cheater stealing rewards from them.

    What mobile games with smaller budgets are doing better anti-cheating measures

    Agree with your question but it raises another. What on earth is CG doing with their game to limit cheating? We've seen extreme examples by other community members and have asked for this to be addressed and it's just crickets from CG. The resulting sentiment is either they don't care or can't do anything about it. Is that fair? Not sure but until it's addressed, that's what we're left with and these posts will continue.

    idk

    I used to ask them every week what plans they have to curtail the cheating issue or if any other ways can be introduced to report cheaters
  • mr37hat
    79 posts Member
    Rath_Tarr wrote: »
    1) enhance client to capture battle logs and send when required by server e.g. if that account is flagged as suspicious
    • units alive at battle start with their health, protection, TM & ability cooldown states
    • RNG seed value for the battle (software RNG is actually a complex number sequence generator so using the same seed value with the same RNG implementation will result in the same number sequence)
    • sequential list of actions: character, ability used, target(s)
    2) develop a server-side battle simulator which can replay the logs and find flaws which would indicate a hacked client

    THIS. if they're not already somewhat doing it, it would be very easy to verify the battle log against expected values within some degree and determine if the values fall within an acceptable range.

    I think their biggest problem currently is the assigned man hours manually flagging these accounts and updating their status (I'm guessing for legal purposes they can't do this completely artificially). I think that cheating is even way more rampant than we realize and they are only paying for so many man hours to handle this issue. That is the real bottleneck IMO. But again that's all speculation without real numbers.

    That said, if you expect money for people to be the "tip of the spear", that money should mean something and the level which they seem to be taking it seriously (publicly not taking severe action against whales, etc.) doesn't reflect that trust.
    "ooba... ooba"
  • Ultra wrote: »
    HokieFiend wrote: »
    Ultra wrote: »
    How can it be "EASILY coded?" Feel free to explain at a high level.

    Other mobile games with smaller budgets seem more capable of accomplishing anti-cheating measures than CG. Are you suggesting a program to detect cheating is impossible for CG to accomplish? Given the bugs in the game atm you might have an argument, but incompetence isn't an excuse to continue to reward cheaters and punish honest players who never see compensation for the cheater stealing rewards from them.

    What mobile games with smaller budgets are doing better anti-cheating measures

    I used to play WoW obsessively ages ago. Blizzard built their own anti-cheating software years ago if I'm remembering right. Was it the Glider cheat they went after? I'm spitballing here as I don't fully remember. This was on PC's though. That was earlier in WoW's lifecycle too. CG is on their way to raking in 2B USD with this game. If they can't carve out some of that for the integrity of the game, shame on them.

    Companies like Blizzard and RIOT have anti-cheat software that is always running on your PC even when you are not playing games, and the programs are very invasive since they are checking your system level, kernal level files to see game modifications taking place outside the game programs (from what I've read)

    A similar example would be CG releasing another app that acts like a spyware checking every single app you are running on your mobile device to catch if you are using any APK program to modify the game

    And obviously, nobody wants that level of invasion for a mobile game

    The point is they care about it. If CG wants to turn a blind eye to cheating that's fine but they need to stop pretending that's it's going to be expensive. Those terms don't apply when the game has made going on 2B USD. There are routes they could take that would minimize server overhead.

  • Ultra
    11449 posts Moderator
    There is a lot CG can do, for sure

    Are there other mobile games with smaller budgets doing better? Sounds like someone is making up things to make a point hoping nobody fact checks them

    Is it easy? Hell if I know, but I'm not going to say it is

    Is it hard? I think it is, but that doesn't excuse them for not pursuing it, if its hard, then they need to increase the number of staff working on it and make the effort to do something about it even if it'll take them months

    I don't think it is easy to fix cheating given the client side architecture, throwing around ideas is easy, saying things are easy to implement is easy, as long as you aren't the one doing it

    But I think, even if it is difficult, CG should allocate resources on preventing cheaters, and improving their anti-cheat systems
  • TargetEadu
    1513 posts Member
    I don’t know, I’ve never heard of another mobile game that has a huge cheater problem while looking here on the forums of one specific mobile game.
  • Ultra wrote: »
    There is a lot CG can do, for sure

    Are there other mobile games with smaller budgets doing better? Sounds like someone is making up things to make a point hoping nobody fact checks them

    Is it easy? Hell if I know, but I'm not going to say it is

    Is it hard? I think it is, but that doesn't excuse them for not pursuing it, if its hard, then they need to increase the number of staff working on it and make the effort to do something about it even if it'll take them months

    I don't think it is easy to fix cheating given the client side architecture, throwing around ideas is easy, saying things are easy to implement is easy, as long as you aren't the one doing it

    But I think, even if it is difficult, CG should allocate resources on preventing cheaters, and improving their anti-cheat systems

    I'm not making anything up and there is nothing to "fact check" here. Gaslighting and straw men come up a lot on these forums.

    With a career in development and IT and having to protect systems from "outside interference" I have some insight. I don't blame the developers on this. I'm sure the lot of them want to do something about it and probably know exactly what needs done. I'm sure they are embarrassed about it even if they had nothing to do with writing the initial code framework. This type of thing comes up constantly with legacy systems and it's typically management that holds back any progress. "Just let the whales keep whaling".

    With the amount of money they've made (and continue to make) on this game they could dedicate extra resources on this in order to stay on track with their new releases.
  • PumaK
    301 posts Member
    Yeah, other mobile games
    Ultra wrote: »
    How can it be "EASILY coded?" Feel free to explain at a high level.

    Other mobile games with smaller budgets seem more capable of accomplishing anti-cheating measures than CG. Are you suggesting a program to detect cheating is impossible for CG to accomplish? Given the bugs in the game atm you might have an argument, but incompetence isn't an excuse to continue to reward cheaters and punish honest players who never see compensation for the cheater stealing rewards from them.

    What mobile games with smaller budgets are doing better anti-cheating measures

    -Skullgirls
    -Tap Titans 2 (since tap Titans 1 they dessigned an easy Way to catch cheaters)
    -MMA manager
    -Mario kart tour
    -Iron Maiden Legacy of the Beast

    These are the apps I easily remember that have better anticheat measures, even tap Titans 1 developed it before even starting to make Some money with the app.

    I'm pretty sure there's a 90% of apps on PlayStore with better anticheat system and with a lot less profit than This app from CG.
  • PumaK
    301 posts Member
    Fieldgulls wrote: »
    Easy…block android users from playing the game. Problem solved

    You misspelled emulators, on specific bluestacks.
  • How can it be "EASILY coded?" Feel free to explain at a high level.

    Send a text log of the fight. Only need the units, their stats, the RNG seed, move/target selection, damage values, and results. With that information, battles can be re-run on thir end. If the results don't match the log, busted.
  • How can it be "EASILY coded?" Feel free to explain at a high level.

    Send a text log of the fight. Only need the units, their stats, the RNG seed, move/target selection, damage values, and results. With that information, battles can be re-run on thir end. If the results don't match the log, busted.

    And you'll do this for every user, every battle? Will it be logged in one file, constantly appended to? Or will each event generate a new file? How much storage do you expect that to take per day? How long will each day's data be kept?
  • Ultra
    11449 posts Moderator
    PumaK wrote: »
    Yeah, other mobile games
    Ultra wrote: »
    How can it be "EASILY coded?" Feel free to explain at a high level.

    Other mobile games with smaller budgets seem more capable of accomplishing anti-cheating measures than CG. Are you suggesting a program to detect cheating is impossible for CG to accomplish? Given the bugs in the game atm you might have an argument, but incompetence isn't an excuse to continue to reward cheaters and punish honest players who never see compensation for the cheater stealing rewards from them.

    What mobile games with smaller budgets are doing better anti-cheating measures

    -Skullgirls
    -Tap Titans 2 (since tap Titans 1 they dessigned an easy Way to catch cheaters)
    -MMA manager
    -Mario kart tour
    -Iron Maiden Legacy of the Beast

    These are the apps I easily remember that have better anticheat measures, even tap Titans 1 developed it before even starting to make Some money with the app.

    I'm pretty sure there's a 90% of apps on PlayStore with better anticheat system and with a lot less profit than This app from CG.

    what are the budgets of each of these games

    what’s CG’s budget?
  • cboath7
    455 posts Member
    You would think something like Team GP 60K beating team GP 180K should set off a flag for someone to look at. That would be a good definition of simple. A lot of the cheats fall on the egregious side, so simple in game stuff could be done like that for things to be checked one would think.

    I would never want code to auto ban someone. It should always get looked at. The inference we take as players is no one seems to bet banned so they're not doing anything.

    SWTOR, for example, does hammer people who take advantage of known exploits (code in the game they messed up themselves). If that can be detected, you would think the obvious stuff people refer to could easily checked as well. And, it's quite possible CG has that stuff in the game. It just doesn't seem like they look at it if it exists.

    Is there even a place where they announce <player> has been banned for cheating? That would allay some concerns knowing they're doing something. It'd also send a message to cheaters that they are looking and taking action.
  • Rath_Tarr
    4944 posts Member
    How can it be "EASILY coded?" Feel free to explain at a high level.

    Send a text log of the fight. Only need the units, their stats, the RNG seed, move/target selection, damage values, and results. With that information, battles can be re-run on thir end. If the results don't match the log, busted.

    And you'll do this for every user, every battle?
    Not necessary. Only for accounts flagged as suspicious and only for GAC battles.
    Will it be logged in one file, constantly appended to? Or will each event generate a new file?
    However it makes sense in their Web service infrastructure.
    How much storage do you expect that to take per day?
    Not much. We're talking about a log of integers & alphanumeric GUIDs for a small percentage of battles not video footage for every battle fought.
    How long will each day's data be kept?
    Only as long as needed. If its clean when checked it can be discarded and the checked/clean stats updated. If it's suspect it needs to be kept around and flagged for human review.

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