Overwatch Cheaters Are Having A Hard Time

H

HardOCP News

[H] News
Joined
Dec 31, 1969
Messages
0
Overwatch cheaters are being named, shamed and banned? What is this madness? You can't cheat in a game you legally purchased? Won't somebody please think of the poor cheaters?

As promised, Blizzard is fanning the hammer at Overwatch cheaters. In China alone, 1572 players have been named, shamed and shown the door. Western cheaters are faring no better. Judging by aggrieved posts on the forums of popular hack providers, Overwatch is proving difficult to fool.
 
well until they have to devote time and resources to other things, I don't think they can keep up the vigilance forever, but I wonder how long it'll last.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Wine
like this
I'd guess most developers would love to do this, the issue is the publisher's legal department. It's nice to see a game do it right from the start. If you squash the cheating before it becomes commonplace, I think you'll cause a lot of people to just go "eh, this one isn't doable" and they'll move on.

For example, from what I understand of Ubisoft, since certain countries passed laws making it difficult to legally ban players, they apply that rule across the board. Hence why their games are so lenient on cheaters. What came out from Massive during The Division issues is that they were issuing 2-day character bans because Ubisoft legal wouldn't allow them to manually ban longer, nor could they ban the key. It took over a month for legal to approve the new system.

The same thing happened with DICE/EA on Battlefield 3. The first few months, things were lenient on cheaters. The slow moving bureaucracy of the publisher's hurt the community and creates a cat/mouse game with the cheaters.

Rockstar had a novel approach to the legal issues, they opted for shadowbanning. Putting cheaters into cheater instances. It solved the "we paid for it, you can't take it away" argument.
 
Last edited:
Steve said:
Overwatch cheaters are being named, shamed and banned? What is this madness? You can't cheat in a game you legally purchased? Won't somebody please think of the poor cheaters?

As promised, Blizzard is fanning the hammer at Overwatch cheaters. In China alone, 1572 players have been named, shamed and shown the door. Western cheaters are faring no better. Judging by aggrieved posts on the forums of popular hack providers, Overwatch is proving difficult to fool.
Click to expand...


One reason I don't play online any more. Too many cheaters
 
Well I heard that the Chinese, in particular, who are not in it for the money cheat because they believe it is within their rights to do so and justify it with the belief that everyone else must cheat.

Good to see Blizzard doing this. Nothing can kill an online community faster than rampant cheating (ohai, The Division).
 
DrDoU said:
One reason I don't play online any more. Too many cheaters
Click to expand...

Sadly same for me. About 6 months ago I finally bought GTA:V with the intent of playing solo. I decided to launch a multi player game to see what it was about. Instantly was met by people cheating, gave up and haven't looked back.

I know cheating is nothing new to PC gaming but it seems exponentially worse now with the tools and availability a few clicks away.
 
What i really don't understand is how cheating in online games is so common. Shouldn't it be possible to just limit all data in from the clients to only things that player characters do within the rules of the game.
 
I wasn't interested in this game due to the play style since I prefer Battlefield. However, Blizzard has earned my respect with this and I will be considering this game now.
 
Quix said:
What i really don't understand is how cheating in online games is so common. Shouldn't it be possible to just limit all data in from the clients to only things that player characters do within the rules of the game.
Click to expand...

Most do. Things like aimbots work entirely within the "rules". It just gives a massively unfair edge since a computer can react much faster and position your crosshairs on the exact spot to get a headshot, every time.
 
Spidey329 said:
I'd guess most developers would love to do this, the issue is the publisher's legal department. It's nice to see a game do it right from the start. If you squash the cheating before it becomes commonplace, I think you'll cause a lot of people to just go "eh, this one isn't doable" and they'll move on.

For example, from what I understand of Ubisoft, since certain countries passed laws making it difficult to legally ban players, they apply that rule across the board. Hence why their games are so lenient on cheaters. What came out from Massive during The Division issues is that they were issuing 2-day character bans because Ubisoft legal wouldn't allow them to manually ban longer, nor could they ban the key. It took over a month for legal to approve the new system.

The same thing happened with DICE/EA on Battlefield 3. The first few months, things were lenient on cheaters. The slow moving bureaucracy of the publisher's hurt the community and creates a cat/mouse game with the cheaters.

Rockstar had a novel approach to the legal issues, they opted for shadowbanning. Putting cheaters into cheater instances. It solved the "we paid for it, you can't take it away" argument.
Click to expand...

If there are shady countries that protect players from being banned although they are ruining others game experience then all major publishers should form a consensus not to sell any games to those countries. In fact I'm still astonished that our broken legal system doesn't allow publishers to sue cheat developers for damages. These guys cause a definite loss in sales and interest in their games when there is rampant cheating going on because of those hacks and it hurts these companies financially in the long run so there should be exceptions made to the laws to be able to prosecute the developers of these hacks for millions of dollars + jail time. If the MPAA/RIAA can get the feds behind them and even other countries to do their dirty work, I don't see why the game industry can't do the same. All it takes is a bit of lobbying and greasing the palms of sleezy politicians.
 
because we should sue gun makes and knife makes when somebody use one of there tools in a wrong way ?

I do however agree that they should stop selling to countries if they can ban a cheater there.
 
Spidey329 said:
I'd guess most developers would love to do this, the issue is the publisher's legal department. It's nice to see a game do it right from the start. If you squash the cheating before it becomes commonplace, I think you'll cause a lot of people to just go "eh, this one isn't doable" and they'll move on.

For example, from what I understand of Ubisoft, since certain countries passed laws making it difficult to legally ban players, they apply that rule across the board. Hence why their games are so lenient on cheaters. What came out from Massive during The Division issues is that they were issuing 2-day character bans because Ubisoft legal wouldn't allow them to manually ban longer, nor could they ban the key. It took over a month for legal to approve the new system.

The same thing happened with DICE/EA on Battlefield 3. The first few months, things were lenient on cheaters. The slow moving bureaucracy of the publisher's hurt the community and creates a cat/mouse game with the cheaters.

Rockstar had a novel approach to the legal issues, they opted for shadowbanning. Putting cheaters into cheater instances. It solved the "we paid for it, you can't take it away" argument.
Click to expand...

Except that Rockstar doesn't actually do a damned thing about the cheating mess that is GTA online. After an update to GTA, you'll be lucky if it goes 2 days without running into cheaters spamming tanks on top of your character and crap within 10 minutes of joining a public game.
 
PhaseNoise said:
Most do. Things like aimbots work entirely within the "rules". It just gives a massively unfair edge since a computer can react much faster and position your crosshairs on the exact spot to get a headshot, every time.
Click to expand...

I'm guessing you've never played GTA V Online, it's very clear that they do not.
 
i dont buy this bs at all. you telling me someone buys the game 4 times after been banned each time? only 1572 people banned for cheating in china?? lots of bs in this article imo.
 
Quix said:
I'm guessing you've never played GTA V Online, it's very clear that they do not.
Click to expand...
LOL, yea the idea that it just gives an "edge" in GTA online is laughable. Even if you just look at the aimbotting, you can have 3 players standing 100 yards apart, and some aimbotter can somehow 1 shot headshot kill all 3 with a pistol in a quarter of a second from 1000 yards away. That's assuming they didn't just spam press the "blow up everyone on the server and blame another player" button, spawn a meteor to fall on your head, attach a lightpost to your butt, and then just spawn clones of your character stuck to you till your game crashes.
 
DrDoU said:
One reason I don't play online any more. Too many cheaters
Click to expand...

I hated playing BF4 because I hated being shot with a .45 from across the map, again and again and again. It wasn't just one time, one server. It was a few. Get on the right server or with the right people, and it's a blast. Get in with a few cheaters and you're toast right from the start.
 
Armenius said:
Well I heard that the Chinese, in particular, who are not in it for the money cheat because they believe it is within their rights to do so and justify it with the belief that everyone else must cheat.
Click to expand...

Yep, cheating is just inherent to the culture. Runs in the blood.
 
Quix said:
I'm guessing you've never played GTA V Online, it's very clear that they do not.
Click to expand...

I don't know anything about GTA V, so I can't comment on that. But let's take an fps. Data needs to be transferred between you and the server. This includes other peoples' locations. You can just intercept that information before the game, and have the cheat decide your position & direction to match up perfectly to where you need to match up. Even if you lock it down to, say, something like the speed of a gamepad turning, the cheat can just turn that slowly. Cheats have evolved from yesteryear, and they don't snap. They appear more natural (well, at least the better ones). The only real way around this would be a one way transfer of data from the player to the server, and for the server to stream the video back to the player. This would be incredibly bandwidth intensive though, and unrealistic for people with slower internet connections.
 
Nytegard said:
I don't know anything about GTA V, so I can't comment on that. But let's take an fps. Data needs to be transferred between you and the server. This includes other peoples' locations. You can just intercept that information before the game, and have the cheat decide your position & direction to match up perfectly to where you need to match up. Even if you lock it down to, say, something like the speed of a gamepad turning, the cheat can just turn that slowly. Cheats have evolved from yesteryear, and they don't snap. They appear more natural (well, at least the better ones). The only real way around this would be a one way transfer of data from the player to the server, and for the server to stream the video back to the player. This would be incredibly bandwidth intensive though, and unrealistic for people with slower internet connections.
Click to expand...

Yes, cheats like that exist. However the cheaters in GTA V do not bother attempting to be that subtle with it. As far as handling everything server side, it's not even just a matter of it being unrealistic for those with slower connections, you're going to have latency issues and of course the most important(and expensive) problem being server load.
 
Merc1138 said:
LOL, yea the idea that it just gives an "edge" in GTA online is laughable. Even if you just look at the aimbotting, you can have 3 players standing 100 yards apart, and some aimbotter can somehow 1 shot headshot kill all 3 with a pistol in a quarter of a second from 1000 yards away. That's assuming they didn't just spam press the "blow up everyone on the server and blame another player" button, spawn a meteor to fall on your head, attach a lightpost to your butt, and then just spawn clones of your character stuck to you till your game crashes.
Click to expand...
man...it hasn't gotten any better. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, Rockstar is probably looking to the next game.
 
This makes me very happy. Nothing worse than cheaters ruining a competitive shooter game. Overwatch is really fun and I've never run into any obvious cheaters in it so far. If they can keep this up I will be playing the game for a long time to come.
 
Silentbob343 said:
man...it hasn't gotten any better. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, Rockstar is probably looking to the next game.
Click to expand...
They never did anything about the proxy server you could connect to on your phone and then do just about whatever you wanted to your vehicles via their ifruit app, so that's broken. At one point you could run a trainer in the game client that added extra zeros to a bounty you set because the server never checked that it wasn't acceptable to set a $1,000,000,000 bounty on another player, and would then pay the person who claimed the bounty that much money(the cap is supposed to be 10k), they eventually had to disable the whole paying insurance costs for blowing up other players cars, because the cheaters would spawn in vehicles with erroneous in-game values and blow them up over your head multiple times a second(putting the blame on you) and draining your bank account(they had to take action since it affected shark card sales) aka the "insurance fraud" hack. The in-game chat is just full of kids asking if there are any cheaters online and begging for millions. It's utterly absurd.

The funniest part about the bad sport pool(the lobby you end up in for blowing up hundreds of player cars, and as a first offense for cheating)? There was a cheat at one point that let you clear the bad sport status from your character and you could go right back to a regular public session.

I'm happy Blizzard has put their foot down on this crap early on. It isn't going to eliminate cheaters, but it'll make the bulk of the kids think twice before attempting it.
 
Silentbob343 said:
man...it hasn't gotten any better. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, Rockstar is probably looking to the next game.
Click to expand...
I actually have been playing on and off and haven't had an issue with cheaters in the past couple of months...maybe I'm just lucky.
 
Guy buys the game 4 times? Uh.... huh? At what point do you simply state your case to Blizzard and say "give me my money back" (yeah I know probably some ToS violation)... but that's dedication to buy the game 4 times, must be quite addictive :D
 
Since Blizzard is essentially a MMOBGP who is consistently profitable, I wonder how long before someone files a class action lawsuit. Citing, of course, common practice among other FPS games.

Also, if a cheater is banned, is it product-based or account-based?
 
Last edited:
Even if you reinstalled windows you still are banned with a new account and game. Sounds like blizzard is banning based on hardware strings. Every board, cpu, gpu has a unique ID for each one and that is what sounds like they are using.
 
ZLoth said:
Since Blizzard is essentially a MMOBGP who is consistently profitable, I wonder how long before someone files a class action lawsuit. Citing, of course, common practice among other FPS games.
Click to expand...
That'd be ridiculous, but ...... it might happen. I'm sure someone somewhere is thinking it's a good idea to try.
 
bertkelmer said:
TF2 FTW
Click to expand...
You mean the game whose cheating problem is so prolific, that the winning UGC teams from the silver, gold and platinum divisions ALL had their snipers VAC banned some weeks ago? The game that has seen a $20 hack run rampant for years while Valve sat around with it's thumb in it's ass?

All the accounts that were caught up in the Vac ban wave last month were accounts with thousands of hours and years of activity. For years, Valve couldn't be bothered to update it's anti-cheat signature database. Blizzard is taking action within days of Overwatch being released.

If you think TF2 has less cheaters than Overwatch, I have a bridge to sell you.
 
Arbit3r said:
Even if you reinstalled windows you still are banned with a new account and game. Sounds like blizzard is banning based on hardware strings. Every board, cpu, gpu has a unique ID for each one and that is what sounds like they are using.
Click to expand...
Yup reading that to and that I don't agree with this. The problem is how do they prove that the person who just purchased a second hand pc isn't the one who cheated, while I love them screwing over cheaters auto banning new or different accounts based solely on saved hwid leaves way to much potential to screw innocent people with no real way to appeal.
 
crusty_juggler said:
You mean the game whose cheating problem is so prolific, that the winning UGC teams from the silver, gold and platinum divisions ALL had their snipers VAC banned some weeks ago? The game that has seen a $20 hack run rampant for years while Valve sat around with it's thumb in it's ass?

All the accounts that were caught up in the Vac ban wave last month were accounts with thousands of hours and years of activity. For years, Valve couldn't be bothered to update it's anti-cheat signature database. Blizzard is taking action within days of Overwatch being released.

If you think TF2 has less cheaters than Overwatch, I have a bridge to sell you.
Click to expand...

GET GUD, GET LMAOBOX!

Never a week that goes by that I don't see that spam. Why Valve doesn't auto VAC ban when that gets spammed is beyond me.
 
Ragenrok said:
Yup reading that to and that I don't agree with this. The problem is how do they prove that the person who just purchased a second hand pc isn't the one who cheated, while I love them screwing over cheaters auto banning new or different accounts based solely on saved hwid leaves way to much potential to screw innocent people with no real way to appeal.
Click to expand...

Oh yes, who weeps for the extreme fringe exception cases of someone buying a second hand PC from a cheater, LMAO.

Bust out the little violins ladies and gentlemen.
 
SvenBent said:
because we should sue gun makes and knife makes when somebody use one of there tools in a wrong way ?

I do however agree that they should stop selling to countries if they can ban a cheater there.
Click to expand...

So, ban every country is what you're saying, cause guess what. Cheaters exist everywhere.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top