15 Suspects Arrested and Fined $5.1 Million for Selling PUBG Cheats

rgMekanic

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IGN is reporting that in an their latest Anti-Cheat efforts, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds developer, Bluehole has stated that on April 25th, 15 suspects were arrested for developing and selling hacking/cheating programs for PUBG. It was also confirmed that included in these cheats, was malicious code, including a trojan that would steal user information. The suspects have been fined the equivalent of $5.1 million, with others still under investigation.

Excellent work, 11/10, would not cheat again. Perhaps one day the game will be playable, but you have to wonder if this fine will influence Dell stocks?

"15 major suspects were arrested for developing hack programs, hosting marketplaces for hack programs, and brokering transactions. Currently the suspects have been fined approximately 30mil RNB ($5.1mil USD). Other suspects related to this case are still being investigated. Some hack programs that are being distributed through the internet includes a Huigezi Trojan horse*(Chinese backdoor) virus. It was proven that hack developers used this virus to control users' PC, scan their data, and extract information illegally."
 
What does this have to do with Dell?

*i didn't read the article*
 
I don't want to read. I want you to tell me. :p


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Fine. I read it. Now I know.
 
Well PUBG lost all it's hope when they banned my account - and their support even told that they couldn't lift the ban even if they found it to be false positive.
The only "violation" i did was modifying the mouse sensitivities using the config file. No warnings - just a permanent ban.
Well... they never really told me the reason for the ban. But yea. That happened on january.
So if you consider getting PUBG beware that you may be banned for ANY reason.
 
Well PUBG lost all it's hope when they banned my account - and their support even told that they couldn't lift the ban even if they found it to be false positive.
The only "violation" i did was modifying the mouse sensitivities using the config file. No warnings - just a permanent ban.
Well... they never really told me the reason for the ban. But yea. That happened on january.
So if you consider getting PUBG beware that you may be banned for ANY reason.


not to fuel the fire, but they explicitly stated ALONG time ago that modifying the config files can and will result in a ban...

https://www.playbattlegrounds.com/rulesOfConduct.pu

falls under #9 on the page:

Do not cheat: do not use third party programs, macros, client-side hacks, edited game files or anything else that may give you an unfair advantage in the game. This includes promoting or posting links to websites that provide or promote cheats or hacks.

though that may be vague, it was Explicitly stated in a discussion awhile back by the devs themselves that editing any config files can result in a ban.


.....FWIW.... #13 says: Do not exploit bugs or glitches: If you find a bug or a glitch in the game that provides an unfair advantage, let us know about it instead of using the exploit for your own benefit.

yet I see shroud looking through floors and using it to his advantage on stream.... followed by "ive reported it, if they arnt going to fix it, I'm going to use it"

he still plays... though I believe he's been banned befor (but I'm pretty sure that was for "teaming")
 
edited game files or anything else that may give you an unfair advantage in the game.
Yea. Common sense doesn't really see editing mouse sensitivities as being editing the game files. And does it give any unfair advantage... It's just easier to get the exact sensitivities/ratio by file.
And regardless if it had been stated that it may result in a ban... a perm-ban? when it would literally take like 10min for a programmer to make the file binary instead of plain text anyways.
 
edited game files or anything else that may give you an unfair advantage in the game.
Yea. Common sense doesn't really see editing mouse sensitivities as being editing the game files. And does it give any unfair advantage... It's just easier to get the exact sensitivities/ratio by file.
And regardless if it had been stated that it may result in a ban... a perm-ban? when it would literally take like 10min for a programmer to make the file binary instead of plain text anyways.

well I really cant speak to the ban bit....but editing a file is still editing a file...don't get me wrong, if all you did was edit sensitivity...so be it... but their rules are their rules, and you are to abide by them =\


and don't get me wrong, I get editing config files and sensitivities have been a thing for a very long time, this mostly came about because people were editing their graphics settings to the point where they could see through walls, objects wernt rendering in, ect ect, giving them a advantage, so they took a hardline stance of NOTHING AT ALL.....

and I'm not familiar with hacking, as ive never been one to subscribe to the idea, infact I'm of the mindset that hackers should just be shot on site...fk em.... but that's my opinion, so...means nothing in the long run... that said I wonder how hard it would be to "edit" sensitivity options to just inject aimbot code in instead....

but w/e again I don't know, I just know rules are rules...no matter what your opinion of those are
 
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Yea. But the worst part is that they don't tell me if i got banned for that. Maybe it was some weird driver or anything else. Can't know.
 
Yea. But the worst part is that they don't tell me if i got banned for that. Maybe it was some weird driver or anything else. Can't know.

that I agree with...

but I guess that could be because they don't want people figuring out how they got banned, so they can get around it next time
 
Yea. But the worst part is that they don't tell me if i got banned for that. Maybe it was some weird driver or anything else. Can't know.
As a rule, of course they're not going to tell cheaters what exactly triggered the ban, or the cheaters adapt even quicker.

And they're not banning on a "weird driver". You modified a game file, chalk it up to lesson learned. Though in fairness they shouldn't have config files sitting out in the open if they don't want players to mess with them. That's a little absurd.
 
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I'm glad this is being taken seriously, but I can't help but wonder what jurisdiction has laws against game hacks?

Or were they only arrested for including malware along with their game hacks, and not the game hacks themselves?
 
All the game companies should wake up to the hacking issue and sue the hack makers + ban the cheating players. Online games are losing huge amounts of customers because of some players cheat and ruin the game for others. I for example haven't bothered to even try FPS shooters for a long time knowing they'll just be filled with cheats like before. That's a lot of money lost for the developers because I know I'm not alone.
 
I'm glad this is being taken seriously, but I can't help but wonder what jurisdiction has laws against game hacks?

Or were they only arrested for including malware along with their game hacks, and not the game hacks themselves?

I doubt any country has made cheating illegal but it could be considered a violation of service terms and causing damage to the service. The game companies lose probably millions of real money due to the cheaters driving paying customers away.
 
All the game companies should wake up to the hacking issue and sue the hack makers + ban the cheating players. Online games are losing huge amounts of customers because of some players cheat and ruin the game for others. I for example haven't bothered to even try FPS shooters for a long time knowing they'll just be filled with cheats like before. That's a lot of money lost for the developers because I know I'm not alone.

I have a number of friends that stopped playing FPS online for the same reasons.
 
As a rule, of course they're not going to tell cheaters what exactly triggered the ban, or the cheaters adapt even quicker.

And they're not banning on a "weird driver". You modified a game file, chalk it up to lesson learned. Though in fairness they shouldn't have config files sitting out in the open if they don't want players to mess with them. That's a little absurd.

Umm... Well... Nope. You don't know that. They can ban you even for having spotify open - and never tell you the reason for it. Even spotify can give an unfair advantage ;).
And i highly doubt that i got banned due to the sensitivity setting. So to be safe i won't buy their software cause i would probably get banned and banned again without knowing the reason behind it.
 
Yea. But the worst part is that they don't tell me if i got banned for that. Maybe it was some weird driver or anything else. Can't know.

This has all the markings of a DOTA-style "why did I get banned for being toxic? I'm not toxic!" cue a mod coming on and listing the hundreds or thousands of complaints against that user. My guess, and if I'm wrong here may my soul forever burn in hell, is that you know exactly what you did that got you banned and it had nothing to do with mouse sensitivity.
 
I'm glad this is being taken seriously, but I can't help but wonder what jurisdiction has laws against game hacks?

Or were they only arrested for including malware along with their game hacks, and not the game hacks themselves?
I don't know about China, but in the US they usually get them for violating intellectual property laws. Blizzard successfully sued cheaters last year for violating their copyright protections to the tune of $8.5 million.
 
edited game files or anything else that may give you an unfair advantage in the game.
Yea. Common sense doesn't really see editing mouse sensitivities as being editing the game files. And does it give any unfair advantage... It's just easier to get the exact sensitivities/ratio by file.
And regardless if it had been stated that it may result in a ban... a perm-ban? when it would literally take like 10min for a programmer to make the file binary instead of plain text anyways.

Thats like the entire point of playing CSS back in the day. Dont make it a config file then, make it built in to the game/dll.
 
I've never played PUBG, but I can't help but feel like I'm so late to the game, I couldn't possibly enjoy it. Cheating seems so rampant, I don't think I could even learn how to play before frustration took over.
 
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I've never played PUBG, but I can't help but feel like I'm so late to the game, I couldn't possibly enjoy it. Cheating seems so rampant, I don't think I could even learn how to play before frustration took over.


honestly the whole "THERES TO MANY CHEATERS" is literally blown out of proportion, of my 600+ hours in game, ive ran across maybe 4 FOR SURE cheaters, and maybe 10 "POSSIBLY VERY LIKELY WTF CHEATERS"

now theres two sides to that...

1. either I absolutely suck so bad I'm not being paired with people in my skill range (ie cheaters have surpassed me

2. people just suck, made dumb decisions, get raped, and scream "CHEATER"

don't get me wrong, I know there are cheaters, and they get periodicly banned, but at that point they have made so much money selling items on steam market, they just buy a new copy of game.....

but of all the things that are WORTH bitching about in pubg...this is far from one of them.... from my experience... and ive been playing FPS's since.... well..as far as I remember, doom, duke nukem, AirWarrior (yes it was a combat flight sim, but still I rank it with FPS) quake, ect........ early mid 90's...

by far I would imagine there are far more cheaters in csgo...
 
I've never played PUBG, but I can't help but feel like I'm so late to the game, I couldn't possibly enjoy it. Cheating seems so rampant, I don't think I could even learn how to play before frustration took over.


I played it's bunch late last summer.

It's both a fun game and a frustrating one by it's nature. Back then I don't think there were many Jack's for the game yet, or at least they weren't apoarent.

The frustration is built right in. You spend a ton of time up front coming up with a plan, dropping in the right place hunting for supplies only to have it end in seconds if someone with a good gun spots you before you spot them.

I found the regular game mode to be annoying. The third person view allowed people to hide behind walls and look over or around them without exposing themselves. The game got much better when you could play an first person only mode.

I played a while, got myself 3 or 4 chicken dinners (1 in original game mode, 2 or 3 in First Person mode, can't rememeber) and then I grew tired of it.

I understand there is now more than just one map, which must be nice. I'd go back and give it another try with the new maps, but to your point, with it's reputation for rampant cheating, I'm not sure I want to.

Oh, and if you do decide to play it, do yourself a favor and just disable in game voice chat. This game seems to attract the most obnoxious mic spammers of any game I've played.
 
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I found the regular game mode to be annoying. The third person view allowed people to hide behind walls and look over or around them without exposing themselves. The game got much better when you could play an first person only mode..


couldn't agree more, third person made it to easy to just hide around a corner, but pan your camera so you could look around that corner and see the enemy before you seen them... first person made it so if they wanted to expose themselves to shoot you, you would have a chance to respond back in a reasonable way....
 
honestly the whole "THERES TO MANY CHEATERS" is literally blown out of proportion, of my 600+ hours in game, ive ran across maybe 4 FOR SURE cheaters, and maybe 10 "POSSIBLY VERY LIKELY WTF CHEATERS"

now theres two sides to that...

1. either I absolutely suck so bad I'm not being paired with people in my skill range (ie cheaters have surpassed me

2. people just suck, made dumb decisions, get raped, and scream "CHEATER"

Back when I played BF3 there were suspected cheaters in almost all matches. One day we were playing multiple matches with pretty much same set of players and there was a player I suspected of cheating and I called him out on it. I got pissed off and started taunting him. Other players were defending him and saying to me I'm seeing things, there are no cheaters. After a while he got also pissed off and turned his cheat to full retard, he started headshotting everyone all over in the map as fast as the barrett would reload, snapping 180° in full bot mode. This is just one example. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck...
 
Back when I played BF3 there were suspected cheaters in almost all matches. One day we were playing multiple matches with pretty much same set of players and there was a player I suspected of cheating and I called him out on it. I got pissed off and started taunting him. Other players were defending him and saying to me I'm seeing things, there are no cheaters. After a while he got also pissed off and turned his cheat to full retard, he started headshotting everyone all over in the map as fast as the barrett would reload, snapping 180° in full bot mode. This is just one example. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck...

don't get me wrong I'm not saying there arnt cheaters, I just think the vast majority of people who complain about such things are being outplayed, not cheated....

like I said, ive ran into a few my self, but in the 600 hours I have, and having reached top 1% several times in solo/duo/squad rankings...... I havnt seen enough of them to say its any worse then any other game, and the devs seem to be doing a "OK" job of dealing with it...its just not as fast as people would like.... and cheaters seem to always remain ahead of devs in some way.... but that's just the nature of any game that has skins worth real money.... and large sums of money at that

I have been playing it since pre-release.... ive seen the leader boards flooded with the names look like "QC88AMX8AZLA83321978X"

but it hasn't seemed to be a issue in the last few months

don't think I'm white knighting for the devs.... believe me ive had my fair share of raging speak on discord....
its just usually related to other ridiculous things in the game....

its still a fun game, and I certainly have gotten my monies worth out of it.... its even more fun when playing with friends, not randoms, and competent friends at that :D
 
don't get me wrong I'm not saying there arnt cheaters, I just think the vast majority of people who complain about such things are being outplayed, not cheated....

like I said, ive ran into a few my self, but in the 600 hours I have, and having reached top 1% several times in solo/duo/squad rankings...... I havnt seen enough of them to say its any worse then any other game, and the devs seem to be doing a "OK" job of dealing with it...its just not as fast as people would like.... and cheaters seem to always remain ahead of devs in some way.... but that's just the nature of any game that has skins worth real money.... and large sums of money at that

don't think I'm white knighting for the devs.... believe me ive had my fair share of raging speak on discord....
its just usually related to other ridiculous things in the game....

I got a friend like that. We play call of duty or battlefield and he will do the whole "this guy is hacking! You can't even shoot him" like every other match, usually follows with my smart ass wife saying "he wasn't hard for me to kill" lol.

I feel like I have only encountered a few cheaters lately in games. Used to see a lot back in the original counterstrike days.
 
Back when I played BF3 there were suspected cheaters in almost all matches. One day we were playing multiple matches with pretty much same set of players and there was a player I suspected of cheating and I called him out on it. I got pissed off and started taunting him. Other players were defending him and saying to me I'm seeing things, there are no cheaters. After a while he got also pissed off and turned his cheat to full retard, he started headshotting everyone all over in the map as fast as the barrett would reload, snapping 180° in full bot mode. This is just one example. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck...

15-17 years ago when I was putting way more time into Counter-Strike than anyone ought to out into any game, I was accused of hacking on a semi regular basis, even though I never touched a hack in my life.

This highlights how cheating ruins games.

Even if no one is cheating in a particular game, the fact that it is reasonably common place puts everyone on high alert for it at all times, and causes suspicion even when no one is cheating.

There's always that lingering sense of doubt and frustration. Maybe they beat me, not because they were better but because they were cheating.
 
15-17 years ago when I was putting way more time into Counter-Strike than anyone ought to out into any game, I was accused of hacking on a semi regular basis, even though I never touched a hack in my life.

This highlights how cheating ruins games.

Even if no one is cheating in a particular game, the fact that it is reasonably common place puts everyone on high alert for it at all times, and causes suspicion even when no one is cheating.

There's always that lingering sense of doubt and frustration. Maybe they beat me, not because they were better but because they were cheating.
The recent trend of not having killcams only adds to the frustration.
 
The recent trend of not having killcams only adds to the frustration.

kill cam not working? has worked for me... may want to hope over on their forums and make a post about it, something may have gotten corrupted on your end....

but since you mentioned it ill definitely keep an eye out for it not working on my end.... I just usually check all my kill cams when I die cause I specificly want to know where they were....

I will say, be wary of using killcam anyways, it can produce a lot of...otherwise unsavory results...

not sure if anyone remembers awhile back when players were "aiming at the ground" yet killing someone infront of them... .but I experienced that myself making a test video.... (was in a doorway, and leaning, was being blocked from fully leaning by the door frame or object or whatever..... on my end in game, everything looked normal other then not being able to lean fully... however my killcam showed me snapping to the ground... not sure if that's still a issue)
 
The recent trend of not having killcams only adds to the frustration.

I can see it both ways.

Killcams are a great way to see how you got killed and try to determine if it was sketchy, but on the other hand it can also enable ghosting in games where location is key.
 
There's always that lingering sense of doubt and frustration. Maybe they beat me, not because they were better but because they were cheating.

Or pride? "I can't possibly have been beaten that badly on fair grounds!"

I myself have come to the conclusion I just don't have the reflexes I had when I was young playing CS, UT, Q3A
 
I enjoy my single player games with cheats. So my lifetime sub to cheathappens is a joy to my private gameplay experience.
 
This has all the markings of a DOTA-style "why did I get banned for being toxic? I'm not toxic!" cue a mod coming on and listing the hundreds or thousands of complaints against that user. My guess, and if I'm wrong here may my soul forever burn in hell, is that you know exactly what you did that got you banned and it had nothing to do with mouse sensitivity.
I do have a suspicion on what might have triggered it - but nothing that's against EULA or CODE OF CONDUCT - other than the sensitivity.
And about dota2 - it's report system is like the most braindead thing ever.
 
I do have a suspicion on what might have triggered it - but nothing that's against EULA or CODE OF CONDUCT - other than the sensitivity.
And about dota2 - it's report system is like the most braindead thing ever.

....and the fact you left out what "might have triggered it" is exactly what I'm talking about. Why would you leave out that little bit of information? Sounds like you got banned from DOTA as well.
 
Or pride? "I can't possibly have been beaten that badly on fair grounds!"

I myself have come to the conclusion I just don't have the reflexes I had when I was young playing CS, UT, Q3A

I'm not sure I've lost the reflexes. Maybe I have, but I can still be competitive in these games with enough time for practice.

But that's the problem. Time.

I've got a full time (plus mandatory overtime) professional job, a stepson, a house and a yard to take care of, etc. etc.

I'm lucky if I get a couple of hours a week to spend in a game many weeks.

Compare this to my Counter-Strike days in college when I averaged more than a full time job playing CS. Some weeks it was over 60 hours.

I just can't compete with kids who have an infinite amount of time to practice.

Like everything else, use it or lose it.
 
I enjoy my single player games with cheats. So my lifetime sub to cheathappens is a joy to my private gameplay experience.

I'm not bothered by people who cheat in single player games, as it doesn't affect anyone else.

That being said, I can't help but wonder why this is enjoyable. When you pay for a single player game you are paying for hours worth of a challenge, but if you cheat youremove that challenge.

It would seem to me that when you cheat in a single player game, you are only cheating yourself.
 
I'm not bothered by people who cheat in single player games, as it doesn't affect anyone else.

That being said, I can't help but wonder why this is enjoyable. When you pay for a single player game you are paying for hours worth of a challenge, but if you cheat youremove that challenge.

It would seem to me that when you cheat in a single player game, you are only cheating yourself.

I can respect that view. But the games I like to play, like currently Farcry 5 that I play single player. Same with Assassins Creed Origins. It isn't so much about the challenge. I still PLAY carefully even though I'm functionally invulnerable in the game. (other than the key story points where you are not meant to be of course.) So in some respects I get the challenge but I also play the game to enjoy the story more than the mechanics. Yes I try to clear without being seen. And I try to be sneaky when appropriate. But I also don't want to spend 40 hours trying to do one damn thing. I save that for MMO's. ;)

For me the game is about the story rather than the mechanics. I enjoy them enough to give them credence so the story plays out correctly. But beyond that I don't care.
 
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