Players found cheating in Call of Duty games may now find themselves banned from the entire franchise, including all previous games and future titles

[Thunderdolt]

I do not want to see PC gaming turn into the kind of console-ized wasteland where you're banned at the hardware level for even things like piracy, modding etc , but that's exactly what we're going to have if we keep allowing companies to get more and more intrusive and vehement under the guise of "catching cheaters".

It would be cool if the developer offered two play modes: strict and moddable. PUBG, for example, already offers Normal and Ranked play. They could go a step further and enable a tighter level of security for Ranked while allowing less serious players to keep going with Normal.

 

[cybereality]

Yeah, that would be a good idea. Or if they detect you are hacking, they make your computer explode. That will stop them.

 

[Dark12]

A non zero number are not even hackers. This is unacceptable. Again, how do you even know that any hackers are being banned at all. This really could just be a placebo effect hoping you'll stop harassing the devs about hacking if they can post some numbers about bans. We need a hardware solution to stop hacking, not stupid bans. Bans will never work.

You have a loud voice in this thread, but are absolutely clueless about how cheats and bans work.

 

[travm]

You have a loud voice in this thread, but are absolutely clueless about how cheats and bans work.

I'm being loud,
Care to share how false positive bans are a thing? Let me guess, I must have been cheating and am now in denial.

I know how bans don't work,
I don't have a clue how cheats work.

I think you don't understand how anti cheat software works.

 

[Gorankar]

If implemented, they will have a vested interest in fixing any false positive bans. Essentially guaranteeing some non cheater that picked up a false positive never buys another of your games because they are already banned in it is not a good business model. Of course, they may be stupid about it too and just let it ride and wonder all the while why they have an ever shrinking pool of buyers for a franchise.

PB used to ban me all the time. Never figured out why since I never cheated.

 

[Lunas]

That will be a neat trick how will the ban work banning dynamic ip address? Battle.net accounts? So.... Yeah that will work great... Besides when do cheaters care about throw away accounts.
I counter the offer of cheater free multiplayer with...
1. Pirated hacked copies
2. Hacks to circumvent drm

 

[travm]

Of course, they may be stupid about it too and just let it ride and wonder all the while why they have an ever shrinking pool of buyers for a franchise.

You have to know that's how the decision makers in this industry work.

PB used to ban me all the time. Never figured out why since I never cheated.

Yeah, because it's bad software.

 

[Axman]

Care to share how false positive bans are a thing? Let me guess, I must have been cheating and am now in denial.

I mean the obvious thing here is account spoofing.

 

[CaptNumbNutz]

For free to play you are absolutely correct. But for games costing $60, that's a lot to throw away over and over. Cheating should be reduced.

Who said they were using legit credit cards or other means of purchase actually tied to their real name? An enormous amount are purchased with stolen funds.

I work in fraud and I see it ALL DAMN DAY. The idiots just straight purchase onto a steam, origin, blizzard account, etc. in their name using a stolen card number. The average thief will just buy the goods using a throwaway game account with the stolen card number. The smart ones funnel it into some gray market system like a virtual wallet to launder it before spending it using a virtual card number or gift cards. And of course the game account is a throwaway too. By the time the bank and fraud catches up to whatever game account actually bought it which will ban the game account, they've had a good 10-30 days to play like that and probably got a ban from using cheats anyways. Then they rinse and repeat.

 

[travm]

I mean the obvious thing here is account spoofing.

I received the kick from pb. It wasn't an account spoof. It was just bad software

 

[Lunas]

Who said they were using legit credit cards or other means of purchase actually tied to their real name? An enormous amount are purchased with stolen funds.

I work in fraud and I see it ALL DAMN DAY. The idiots just straight purchase onto a steam, origin, blizzard account, etc. in their name using a stolen card number. The average thief will just buy the goods using a throwaway game account with the stolen card number. The smart ones funnel it into some gray market system like a virtual wallet to launder it before spending it using a virtual card number or gift cards. And of course the game account is a throwaway too. By the time the bank and fraud catches up to whatever game account actually bought it which will ban the game account, they've had a good 10-30 days to play like that and probably got a ban from using cheats anyways. Then they rinse and repeat.

That is even if they need to do that most of these games are out on the net days before release with a series of patches and a CD key generator drm is a joke it does nothing but break the rushed spaghetti code most games are shipped with these days. I am positive the latest cod will be no different.

 

[scojer]

That's just the way things generally work in these situations, when there's more financial incentive to break the protection than there is to protect it it will be broken faster than it can be patched and catch some false positives due to the protection being overly aggressive in an attempt to make up for that.

Off Topic: What's with all noob accounts that sound like bots around here lately?

For your off topic comment: https://hardforum.com/threads/the-dead-internet-ai-transhumanism.2014467/

I think the best way to implement cheating countermeasures is to just let people host their own servers, this will create dedicated groups that will monitor their servers, and if someone is caught cheating, they can be banned. Let us police our own, not some AI algorithm or company that'll run it. The cheaters can run their own servers and it'll be a free for all, may the best cheater win.