Ubisoft Says They’re Cracking Down On The Division Cheaters

[HardOCP News]

Tom Clancy’s The Division is plagued with cheaters and, until now, no one new exactly what Ubisoft planned to do about the rampant cheating. The company finally made a post on the game's official blog today stating that they are taking the matter seriously and have already implemented some fixes to help detect and ban cheaters.

First, we have implemented new cheat detection methods that have allowed us to identify many more players currently using cheat engines in the game. We have already caught more cheaters in the last few days than we had in total during the previous weeks. As a result, we will be handing out the biggest wave of suspensions and bans to date over the course of the next few days. Second, when cheaters are caught, we will now apply a suspension of 14 days on first offense (instead of the previous 3 day initial suspension). Second offense will always be a permanent ban. We anticipate these two changes will noticeably improve your experience. New upgrades on cheat detection are underway.

 

[MongGrel]

It's a bit surprising to me if they actually do that.

So many MMO's have allowed bots in for so long I haven't bothered gaming these days at all, is just a thing.

I do not even know if that is an MMORPG, just an assumption I guess.

 

[tetris42]

Good luck, according to this, cheating verification is done client-side:

Gaffer on Games | Never Trust the Client

 

[Spidey329]

Good luck, according to this, cheating verification is done client-side:

Gaffer on Games | Never Trust the Client

Not cheating verification, that's client side is trusted which allows the cheats to occur.

Verification can be done either by admins or via algorithms to see if a player does something outside of the games mechanics. Such as if a player's coordinates passed to the server are outside of the ability of a player to run that distance.

It's not known what method they're using. A server-side method simply makes it harder for the cheat to happen (besides an aimbot doing machine vision on the client). Where-as the client-side makes it more of a reactive method. Someone has to cheat for them to be detected.

 

[Ragenrok]

To little to late for me, I played the game because it was cheap but cheating got to much. I got my monies worth just hitting max level, ho early I've given up on all computer fps games due to game ckmoanies not being able to keep pace with the cheat community. All my shooters and racing games are now Xbox one/ps4, my pc is basicly good single player games and mmo's

 

[Arbit3r]

It can be done server side as well since there is certain things that and be setup as a threshold. Like rate of fire for guns and how fast a player can run.

Good luck, according to this, cheating verification is done client-side:

Gaffer on Games | Never Trust the Client

Well i am sure it will also work with people reporting cheaters as well via their site Reporting Cheaters FAQ

I have 7 videos of hackers in game i have reported so far, i will add more to them if someone wants to pull that crap with me.

 

[leeleatherwood]

People openly cheat in this game on twitch. The fact alone that they literally made EVERYTHING client side (because its easier) means they just dont give a fuck. This was widely known in both of the betas and widely reported.

Shitty console port is shitty, anyone who bought this game on PC is a direct contributor to the problem of shitty console ports.

 

[leeleatherwood]

To little to late for me, I played the game because it was cheap but cheating got to much. I got my monies worth just hitting max level, ho early I've given up on all computer fps games due to game ckmoanies not being able to keep pace with the cheat community. All my shooters and racing games are now Xbox one/ps4, my pc is basicly good single player games and mmo's

You bought a shitty console port with known cheating problems before it was even released.

YOU are the problem, why would AAA companies spend money making a better game when they know for a 100% fact that people like you will buy it anyways, bitch about it and then buy next one.

 

[Yakk]

"Taking the matter seriously" ? Sounds like all PR bark no bite... LOL...

Watched a few minutes on twitch for fun and ... Yeah... cheating is the new normal in this game...

 

[whrswoldo]

I was killed by cheaters at least twice tonight (I.e. I had pulsed another player and I saw him shooting me through a wall)

 

[AK0tA]

To me this just looks like a very fake attempt to make it appear they care just so more people purchase the game. Nope, not gonna happen until Steam Christmas sale clearance then its for single layer part only.

 

[spaceman]

Stop buying client side games. Rainbow 6 anyone?

 

[kinjo]

What they ought to do is the one thing no company ever has the balls to do and actually allow other player to call the cheater out on their forums. You know start a black list of known cheaters. every MMO I have ever played has the same policy NO "NAMING AND SHAMING" ON THE FORUM but public shaming and ostracizing of these people is the only way to get it to stop. no need to publish all their personal info just their in game handle and email if possible.

 

[Yakk]

Good'ol public virtual lynching YEAH!



What could possibly go wrong?

 

[DPI]

What they ought to do is the one thing no company ever has the balls to do and actually allow other player to call the cheater out on their forums. You know start a black list of known cheaters. every MMO I have ever played has the same policy NO "NAMING AND SHAMING" ON THE FORUM but public shaming and ostracizing of these people is the only way to get it to stop. no need to publish all their personal info just their in game handle and email if possible.

Facepalm

 

[THUMPer]

I wonder if the Developers actually play this game online with other players.

 

[Ragenrok]

You bought a shitty console port with known cheating problems before it was even released.

YOU are the problem, why would AAA companies spend money making a better game when they know for a 100% fact that people like you will buy it anyways, bitch about it and then buy next one.

Sure did! Played $27 for it after launch for the missions/pve and got my monies worth from it. It's just really to bad as the multiplayer could of been good.

 

[kinjo]

Good'ol public virtual lynching YEAH!



What could possibly go wrong?

Hey the cheaters could always not cheat and then it wouldn't be an issue. This attitude right here is why people get away with all the BS they do.

 

[kinjo]

Facepalm

Again people like you are part of the problem. Years of Psychological studies have shown that public shaming is one of the most effective tools for reforming behavior.


Oh and BTW in case you are thinking well if you publish the info for these people people will take justice in to their own hands.

1. I am only advocating for the release of their online handle and email

2. Here in the US in most states criminal convictions (you know for people who have done even more serious things) are a matter of public record but we don't have any significant amount of vigilante justice. ... hmm wonder why that is oh right because no one is actually going to hurt anyone just because they are exposed as a wrong doer and the people who claim otherwise are alarmist idiots.

 

[kinjo]

"Taking the matter seriously" ? Sounds like all PR bark no bite... LOL...

Watched a few minutes on twitch for fun and ... Yeah... cheating is the new normal in this game...

See this right here is exactly the problem you don't believe the developer will take the problem seriously but you don't want them to do anything that would actually fix it. Just like every other online game account bans don't do dick the cheaters will just buy another copy of the game. the best thing Ubisoft could do is post known cheater on the front page of the games news site call it the wall of no skill losers. take all of the fun out of cheating and make the people who do it fell like the human garbage they are.

And for the people bitching about the developers use of a trusted client model guess what there is no way to have real time action in an online game without client trust that's why most MMO's have bland boring push a button and then later something remotely related to that button press happens ala World of Warcraft. so you know maybe try developing an online game yourself before you criticize.

Oh and as a final note before you dismiss this as not a serious issue or dismiss the idea of needing real life consequences for cheating in a video game. Please bear in mind that the cheating already has a very real cost for the game developer.

For example

1.developer makes an awesome online game. which costs a lot of money to make

2. assholes cheat ruining the game and driving away legitimate players

3. developer loses a ton of revenue and has to make cuts

4. A bunch of decent hard working people lose their jobs.

 

[Spewn]

See this right here is exactly the problem you don't believe the developer will take the problem seriously but you don't want them to do anything that would actually fix it. Just like every other online game account bans don't do dick the cheaters will just buy another copy of the game. the best thing Ubisoft could do is post known cheater on the front page of the games news site call it the wall of no skill losers. take all of the fun out of cheating and make the people who do it fell like the human garbage they are.

APB used to do this, it didn't make any difference whatsoever. The best, and really only, solution to catching cheaters is active admins who understand how to spot cheaters combined with a robust(and UP TO DATE) suite of anti-cheat software.

Posting people's emails is an asinine suggestion that not only violates corporate privacy policies but also the law in many places where these games are sold.

 

[EvilWays]

Too little, too late Ubisoft. I already gave up on your game because of issues that were not addressed or were poorly addressed.

 

[SvenBent]

What they ought to do is the one thing no company ever has the balls to do and actually allow other player to call the cheater out on their forums. You know start a black list of known cheaters. every MMO I have ever played has the same policy NO "NAMING AND SHAMING" ON THE FORUM but public shaming and ostracizing of these people is the only way to get it to stop. no need to publish all their personal info just their in game handle and email if possible.

Kinjo is a cheater please band him....



Clearly you must be able to see just a bit on how retarded your suggestion is beside the fact this doesn't prevent cheating at all it just dealing with conseqvenses, even IF it was working 100% correct. Which it will not.
You are soo far off your mark.

 

[leeleatherwood]

And for the people bitching about the developers use of a trusted client model guess what there is no way to have real time action in an online game without client trust that's why most MMO's have bland boring push a button and then later something remotely related to that button press happens ala World of Warcraft. so you know maybe try developing an online game yourself before you criticize.

As an actual game developer with experience in networking and netcode itself, I can firmly state that you have no clue what you are talking about.

 

[kinjo]

As an actual game developer with experience in networking and netcode itself, I can firmly state that you have no clue what you are talking about.

As a real developer myself I can tell that you are a liar (or the greatest netcode developer in history ?). you cannot realistically have a large scale real time action game without a trusted client model! It's to much proccessing work for the server. Unless you kepp the number of clients really low (like 8 or less) ot you can guarantee that everyone has a Gigabit connection running direct to your server there's no feasible way to have the server crunch all the numbers on things like player positioning, hit detection ETC. for more than a small handful of players without introducing so much latency that it destroys the game play.

That's why every single game on the market today with competitive online multiplayer falls in to one of four categories

1. Games with turn based play that may or may not be masked by cool animations to give the appearance of happening in mealtime (I.E. Games like World of Warcraft and most other MMO's that process player actions in Huge batches based on set time intervals)

2. Games with simple combat and damage models with low players caps, this is where most of your MOBA'S like LOL and DOTA fall in (and even in this best case scenario Latency is a giant issue which is why companies like riot have spent tons of money moving their servers to more central locations)

3. Games that actually try to process everything server side hard to find examples of this but one notable one is Star Citizen if you want to see how much fun it is to play a game with no client trust next time they have a free trial week or whatever they call them try actually playing in their "Persistent Universe" realize that hit detection is terrible and that you are locked at 20-30 FPS because otherwise you would go out of sync with the sever which can't keep up with the crushing demand of everything that it is being asked to process; and then realize that even they are capped at 24 players.

4. Game with realtime combat lots of players..... and shit tons of rampant cheating I.E The Division, COD, Every single fucking Battlefield and yeah pretty much every competitive shooter in the last 20 years.


But hey if you have singlehandedly managed to figure out a solution that Infinity Ward, DICE, Treyarch, Ubisoft and countless others couldn't please please by all means share that information not with us but with alll those developers because clearly you are a development genius, a coding ninja, you are the messiah of netcode development and we need you to save us with your grace and wisdom and usher us in to a new age of cheat free real time online gaming free of latency and fake workaround fixes so please please stop holding back the secret and share...

 

[leeleatherwood]

As a real developer myself I can tell that you are a liar (or the greatest netcode developer in history ?). you cannot realistically have a large scale real time action game without a trusted client model! It's to much proccessing work for the server. Unless you kepp the number of clients really low (like 8 or less) ot you can guarantee that everyone has a Gigabit connection running direct to your server there's no feasible way to have the server crunch all the numbers on things like player positioning, hit detection ETC. for more than a small handful of players without introducing so much latency that it destroys the game play.

That's why every single game on the market today with competitive online multiplayer falls in to one of four categories

1. Games with turn based play that may or may not be masked by cool animations to give the appearance of happening in mealtime (I.E. Games like World of Warcraft and most other MMO's that process player actions in Huge batches based on set time intervals)

2. Games with simple combat and damage models with low players caps, this is where most of your MOBA'S like LOL and DOTA fall in (and even in this best case scenario Latency is a giant issue which is why companies like riot have spent tons of money moving their servers to more central locations)

3. Games that actually try to process everything server side hard to find examples of this but one notable one is Star Citizen if you want to see how much fun it is to play a game with no client trust next time they have a free trial week or whatever they call them try actually playing in their "Persistent Universe" realize that hit detection is terrible and that you are locked at 20-30 FPS because otherwise you would go out of sync with the sever which can't keep up with the crushing demand of everything that it is being asked to process; and then realize that even they are capped at 24 players.

4. Game with realtime combat lots of players..... and shit tons of rampant cheating I.E The Division, COD, Every single fucking Battlefield and yeah pretty much every competitive shooter in the last 20 years.


But hey if you have singlehandedly managed to figure out a solution that Infinity Ward, DICE, Treyarch, Ubisoft and countless others couldn't please please by all means share that information not with us but with alll those developers because clearly you are a development genius, a coding ninja, you are the messiah of netcode development and we need you to save us with your grace and wisdom and usher us in to a new age of cheat free real time online gaming free of latency and fake workaround fixes so please please stop holding back the secret and share...

Yeah this post is so full of misinformation and general lack of knowledge that I am not going to bother with a proper response.

8 players... ROFL!

lol, too funny man.

 

[kinjo]

Yeah this post is so full of misinformation and general lack of knowledge that I am not going to bother with a proper response.

8 players... ROFL!

lol, too funny man.

So what your saying is you just ran your mouth and can't counter my points because you don't know jack. I have defended my point of view you have not defended yours. game, set, match friend