Valve tricks Dota 2 cheaters and then bans 40,000 of them

Quoting: GuestDota is free so all 40 thousands cheaters came back the same day on new account. In the old days punkbuster was giving hardware bans instead. Wikipedia says hardware GUID can be spoofed so it might be the reason why it's not in use anymore. I don't think this ban wave will change anything.

You could use payment info as a "hardware" ID instead. People spoofing credit cards have much bigger problems than being beaten in video games.

Yay!

When people play a game, we call them Players. When people purposefully break a game in order to harass, bully, and deceive Players, we call them cheaters.

Ban them. Or, iirc, do like GTA-V did and exile them to a special server full of all the other cheaters. Or, my final idea, bury them at the high tide mark and let the crabs have 'em.


Last edited by Nanobang on 23 February 2023 at 6:42 pm UTC

Well done, Valve. Those people need to be banned from all online gaming, not just DOTA. I hope they share their info with other online games so they can get banned there as well.

While i actually developed cheating software (wallhacks, aimbots etc.), I never released any to the public and never really used them besides testing them.

It was a technical challenge, and actually a very interesting one for me in my younger years (was about 14-16 years old back then, since that the cheating software and anti cheat came a long way and it would be a lot more complicated today). Yes, we still learned assembler and learned how memory actually works back in the days :D.

Using them isn't fun though, not today and wasn't back then (besides that they worked, that they did work actually was fun to me as a proof of concept :D). Multiplayer is about measuring your skills against others, having an unfair advantage isn't a challenge, and isn't actually fun.

But I guess some people just want to be on the scores lacking skills and don't mind. I am rather happy to celebrate any good play I do fairly than using cheats. Even though, getting fewer by the year, I'm close to my 40th birthday and those youngsters just .. have very fast reactions. Compared to me anyway :D. I soon will need "i'm a dad" opponents to come out on top. Are there leagues for that? :D.


Last edited by STiAT on 23 February 2023 at 6:47 pm UTC

Quoting: tuxerman

Quoting: GuestDota is free so all 40 thousands cheaters came back the same day on new account. In the old days punkbuster was giving hardware bans instead. Wikipedia says hardware GUID can be spoofed so it might be the reason why it's not in use anymore. I don't think this ban wave will change anything.

You could use payment info as a "hardware" ID instead. People spoofing credit cards have much bigger problems than being beaten in video games.

Prepaid cards, gift cards, etc... Changing payment info is trivial. Limiting payment options removes a large chunk of the player base (not everyone everywhere has access to credit cards).

Not to mention this game is free, so no payment is needed in the first place.

Quoting: STiATWhile i actually developed cheating software (wallhacks, aimbots etc.), I never released any to the public and never really used them besides testing them.

It was a technical challenge, and actually a very interesting one for me in my younger years (was about 14-16 years old back then, since that the cheating software and anti cheat came a long way and it would be a lot more complicated today). Yes, we still learned assembler and learned how memory actually works back in the days :D.

Using them isn't fun though, not today and wasn't back then (besides that they worked, that they did work actually was fun to me as a proof of concept :D). Multiplayer is about measuring your skills against others, having an unfair advantage isn't a challenge, and isn't actually fun.

But I guess some people just want to be on the scores lacking skills and don't mind. I am rather happy to celebrate any good play I do fairly than using cheats. Even though, getting fewer by the year, I'm close to my 40th birthday and those youngsters just .. have very fast reactions. Compared to me anyway :D. I soon will need "i'm a dad" opponents to come out on top. Are there leagues for that? :D.

I fully understand the challenge also the other way around, when I had a CS:S server (for 8 years) me and a friend developed a ton of plugins to manage and blacklist cheaters and make their life a nightmare by monitoring them. We also had a remote client console with alerts when nobody from the team was playing. It was fun too see them rage quit because everything was logged so when reconnecting with the same IP or SteamId everything was put back (K/D ratio, money, names), network stats were also monitored when choke and latency where out of thresholds the player was slowed down automatically.

Quoting: BogomipsI fully understand the challenge also the other way around, when I had a CS:S server (for 8 years) me and a friend developed a ton of plugins to manage and blacklist cheaters and make their life a nightmare by monitoring them. We also had a remote client console with alerts when nobody from the team was playing. It was fun too see them rage quit because everything was logged so when reconnecting with the same IP or SteamId everything was put back (K/D ratio, money, names), network stats were also monitored when choke and latency where out of thresholds the player was slowed down automatically.

Fun part is, when I turned 18 I actually started to work for a server provider and took the other route as well. We provided customers with tools to monitor players and know who they watch when they're online. Without client side tools it's damn hard to accurately detect them though without a human watching. We had automatic ban too, but that failed a few times too. I had an example of a really good player which I got the proof by watching him play. He really played as if he'd see and aim through walls, though it was his playstyle to start attacking through corners by sound, and sometimes by chance since he knew players would camp there and sniper through walls. He was just a really good player, but I can confirm - the performance he had was not because of cheats because I watched him play live on a LAN, my software identified him as a cheater though.

Software can fail as much as people can. Unless you're on the client as Valve seems to have managed. Then you can be pretty accurate if you know what you're targeting.


Last edited by STiAT on 23 February 2023 at 7:48 pm UTC

Quoting: IzaicMy concern is that this tactic may not work again because now it's public.

Might have become known to the cheaters whether they went public with what they did or not. But it might be difficult to avoid, too--sounds like it works based off one of the fundamental "cheaty" things to do, and not even the mechanics of it but just the raw ability to see things you're not supposed to. So it doesn't matter what method cheaters are using, if they can see things others can't and you put some stuff others can't see, they'll react to it differently unless they spend so much time second-guessing everything they see that they'd be better off not cheating . . .

Quoting: STiATHe really played as if he'd see and aim through walls, though it was his playstyle to start attacking through corners by sound, and sometimes by chance since he knew players would cam there and sniper through walls.

I've never been good at any FPS, but I once was called a cheater because I knew where and when I needed to jump and throw a grenade at the very beginning of a round to catch the one guy who sure was running into a certain direction from the start of the level. Fun. :)

Quoting: Eike

Quoting: STiATHe really played as if he'd see and aim through walls, though it was his playstyle to start attacking through corners by sound, and sometimes by chance since he knew players would cam there and sniper through walls.

I've never been good at any FPS, but I once was called a cheater because I knew where and when I needed to jump and throw a grenade at the very beginning of a round to catch the one guy who sure was running into a certain direction from the start of the level. Fun. :)

Neither was I. It's fun, but I'm terrible at those kind of games :D. Except for MOHAA and CS 1.6 as a Sniper.. no idea why, but there I was really good. Nowdays, I just have too bad reactions for that. I was known to melee-sniper... I'm dead now before I think on trying.


Last edited by STiAT on 23 February 2023 at 7:54 pm UTC