Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
I think you are completely wrong, actually. Your logic is, if you remove cheaters, you get less subscribers. I would argue, that its quite the opposite. Less cheaters in games, gets a population based on the games quality. Cheaters makes people quit. Ofcource developers have a margin of thats acceptable, for the amount of cheaters. They cant catch 100%.
Cheaters are not just a fustration, they are game killers. Its seem before, especially in shooters. Tons of people flock to the game, if cheaters run amok, the game dies before it ever gets to anything good. It happened in several games, actually. Cant remember the names, but you can se it in steam reviews for one.
If you got research that says, that people do not quit because of cheaters, but instead start to play more, og "pays money" to whatever end that is, then please... I would love to read it. I know tons of players that quits game because of cheaters, which is a big form of fustration - my self included.
I don't provide links in discussions on these forums (feel free to ask around), I prefer to let people discover things themselves.
What I will say is - the entire point I bought up about frustration in games was basically a paraphrase of a talk from the owner of Escape from Tarkov - years before Tarkov was released. That game was basically built on the notion that players play and pay more when frustrated. Feel free to find it - I believe it is still availabe on YouTube.
I have never heard of any game failing due to cheating. The game that has the most obvious cheating that I am aware of is Escape from Tarkov - that same game from above. The cheating in that game is insane - and yet the more publicity that cheating gets, the more popular the game gets.
The game pubishes a leaderboard of it's top 100 players every so often, and only do ban waves after that is published. A month or two after it's published, that leaderboard has as much as 90% of it's player banned - but they keep the leaderboard up.
What they are saying to players is "come play this game, cheat your way to the top of the leaderboard, we won't ban you until after we have published that". It is basically an invitation to come and cheat - which players do. When these players get banned, they just get another account and do it again.
While it isn't this overt with a company like EA, the same basic thinking applies.
It is money that matters, not happy customers. Happy customers only matter if it means they spend more - but if your customers are buying any steaming pile of shit you release anyway, you don't need to worry about them being happy.
And maybe I missed something huge happening but, isn't Intrepid going without having to answer to some other publisher and their shareholders?
This is basically Stevens passion project, that we get invited to when its done.
So if he wants to, he can take the lost income, to keep his project cheat free
And doesn't need to install Kernel level malware on my machine to do it?
Some Devs from Tarkov, is not really "the research". Tarkov is actually taking a dump in active players, BTW. Not saying that cheating or not. Probably that insane 250 dollars update. I never cared much for Tarkov.
Some extraction shooter on Steam just failed, due to cheating. Almost 0 players. Just cant remember the name just now. When I say failed because of cheating, I mean, that tons of reviews in steam says, that there is blatent cheating, and they wont recommend it.
Small game publishers - even those that have shareholders - have to act differently.
If you are releasing multiple games in a year, you need those games to be released within specific time frames. Since you know you will sell many copies of these games regardless of quality, the release date of these games becomes more important than the release quality of these games.
On the other hand, if you are only releasing one game every few years, you need that game to have sustained sales - which means the game needs to be a great experience for players.
I did not state anything at all about "some devs from Tarkov".
Don't turn in to one of those posters that reads a post, and then literally substitutes in their own words in place of those that were typed.
I specifically said "owner", not dev. That is a massive difference.
This is an interesting statement, and gives me something to work with.
In the last 5 years, there have only been two extraction shooters gain enough popularity at launch to be able to say they failed due to cheating as opposed to failed due to just not being good enough. Of those two games, only one is on Steam.
That game is hunt: Showdown. As of typing this, it has 8,951 players online - so for a game that is 5 years old, that is far from failing.
Now, you may be getting confused here. You may be thinking about the other extraction shooter that has gained some popularity over the last 5 years - the one that isn't on Steam.
That game is Escape from Tarkov.
They did just have a drop in population, which is why I think this may be the game you were thinking about. However, that drop in population wasn't due to cheating - even though cheating in that game is rampant and obvious. The drop in population was due to changes they made to their monetization strategy (they had a game purchase that claimed you would have access to everything in the game forever, and then created a higher tier without making everything available to those that previously bought the pack that said they had access to everything).
I'm not sure which mix-up it is you have made here, but I assume it to be either talking about an extraction shooter that never gained enough popularity to pinpoint it's failure on cheating, or are talking about Tarkov but don't quite have all the information to hand and are getting multiple Tarkov issues confused.
This is you. How is that not "The devs" ?. I will look for the name at a later time, I am at work atm.
A games does not need to be big and fail, for cheaters to kill it. If cheaters are in mass, the game will never take off. I see that as killing it, with cheating.
When talking about computer games, "the devs" is a specific term for the people that work on the actual game, the people that physically make the game. It is not the people that hire the people that make the game, unless that person is also working on creating the game.
The term "developer" also doesn't apply to someone that is designing a game - unless they are also implementing that design. Basically, if you are not creating assets or code that is going in to a game, you are not a developer of that game (and even some people that do these tasks are not considered developers).
This is the same thing as how not everyone that works at a Lawyers office is a lawyer.
Even if you ignore all of this and just consider anyone working at a game developer studio to be "a dev", that doesn't explain how you got confused when I specifically said "the owner". That is not an ambiguous term at all.
My point here is - don't substitute words with what other people say, different words have different meanings. Read the words that person choses to use, and if you need clarification, ask for it. Don't substitute yourself.
It kind of does.
If a game never has much of a population, especially in the genre you are talking about here, it is going to fail really quickly anyway. You can't blame a handful of people cheating for causing the failure of a game that was already in the process of failing.
The owner is not a developer!?. Anyways, owner, developer, whatever. My point is - its an anekdote. Give me the science.
Is the owner of a resturant a chef? Is the owner of a sports team an athlete? Is the owner of a newspaper a reporter?
These things "can" be true, but aren't inherently true. You don't want the science, you want a condensed version of the findings.
I've told you that I don't just give links to things, I prefer people to find it themselves (gives more credibility to what they find). I've already told you where to look to find what it is I am talking about.
To be fair, it never really was.
It was a speed bump, not a deterrent.
Now it's barely even a speedbump.
So, we are just arguing semantics at this point? Sure, I do want the science. All you give me is some guys opinion. You are making a big deal about disproving my say so on the matter, but you want me to disprove myself? I am confused. Why even go into it with me then? Why not just let my opinion slide away in the darkness?
I gave you information to be able to look up what I was talking about. If you try to search up comments from Tarkov developers, you'll never find anything. If you look up comments from the owner of Tarkov, you should.
This is why reading the words that are actually written is really important. I said "owner" specifically. No you don't - because it is literally a google search away.
You could search frustration purchases and read the science behind how people making purchases while frustrated are more likely to be happy with that purchase, or you could google gaming frustration and form your own opinion on what needs based frustration is, how it relates to the situation we are talking about, and perhaps do a deep dive in to how anger and rage in gaming is linked to frustration rather than violent tendencies. Of you could google about how need frustration in MMORPG's could be related to problem gaming (ie, people spending too long gaming, neglecting other aspects of their life). Or you could google...
The point here is - there is no barrier to that reading, if you want to do it. If you are not willing to do a google search to find it, you certainly aren't willing to read hundreds (or thousands) of pages in order to understand it.
So no, you do not want the science, you want the summary of that science.
That is what I pointed you towards right at the start when I said the comments from the owner of Tarkov from a few years before that games release are what you probably want to listen to - as that is a summary of those hundreds (or thousands) of pages, and put in the conext of online gaming.
And again, that is why I tried to point out the blatantly obvious to you that an owner is not a developer - and when someone says owner, that is probably what they mean. I've been trying to drum that in to you so that if you ever feel like actually learning something, and want to look up what I am talking about, you will know where to look.
You think you have the one true truth, in your deck of cards. That you got off some dudes opinion. Lets leave it here, we will never come to any agreement, other than the fact, that we are miles apart on this issue.
You are complaining that some companies do something you can't explain. I am simply offering up a reason for you as to why some companies do those things.
It seems you would rather just atribute the behavior of multi-billion dollar companies to either complete incompotence, or perhaps just RNG, rather than accepting that maybe there are actually a number of logical reasons that these companies may act in a manner other than how you would want.
But sure, I am trying to present something as "the one truth". I'm sure you thinking that makes it easier for you to be blissfully unaware of why these companies act in ways you can't explain.
I'm not going to pretend I know how these kernals work, but so many things now a day and bad actors are trying to get our stuff.
It's a tough topic for sure.
I would love to hear if their are any other ways they might go?
It seems they've been putting in systems to identify unusual action IE: large amounts of gold transferred and so on, so I will give them the benefit of the doubt this is a very large issue for them and they're doing what they can without being to invasive.
In fact, even if you were using anti-cheat software, you still need to have everything else in place anyway. Anti-cheat software is only every a small part of the protection against cheating - it just happens to be the part that adds a massive vulnrability.
I want to make it clear that my original position is not pro-cheater (I know you aren't accusing me of this, I just want it to be known).
There are a ton of different anti-cheat solutions. The problem is that none of them are 100% effective. No matter which solution is implemented, whether it's kernel or user level, there will always be cheaters. Kernel-level anti-cheat used to be much more effective back when it was first introduced, but it's widely known that Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC), which Ashes plans to use, isn't very effective at all anyways (look at games like Hunt: Showdown, 7 Days to Die, Apex Legends, Fortnite, etc.).
My stance is simply:
If we are going to have to deal with cheaters anyways, then I don't want to install a rootkit on my pc. I'd much rather the game utilize user-level anti-cheat solutions in combination with a dedicated staff to police players.
I know there's a lot of factors that go into the decision to use an anti-cheat...I just wish companies would prioritize the safety/privacy of the players. While, again, I am NOT pro-cheaters, if I had to decide between having to deal with cheaters in a game vs granting a third party such extensive access to my personal device - I'd choose the cheaters every time.
Edit:
I'm sorry @TheHiddenDaggerInn, I don't think I answered your question effectively enough. You had asked if these are the only two solutions and I simply said "there are a ton of different anti-cheat solutions."
I'd like to take a moment to list some of the options that exist out there. Note, in order for a game to effectively combat cheaters it must combine/integrate many of these options.
1. Client-side anti-cheat:
- Kernel-level anti-cheat
- User-level anti-cheat
- File integrity checks (i.e., file hashing, digital signatures)
- Memory scanning (i.e., signature-based detection, heuristic analysis)
2. Server-side anti-cheat:
- Behavior analysis (i.e., unusual movement patterns, abnormal kill ratios)
- Server-side validation (i.e., hit registration validation, position verification)
- Statistical analysis (i.e. performance metrics, win/loss ratios)
3. Network-based anti-cheat:
- Packet analysis (i.e. packet encryption, sequence validation)
- Latency monitoring (i.e. ping spikes, packet loss)
4. Hardware-based anti-cheat:
- Hardware ID bans (i.e. MAC address bans, hardware fingerprinting)
- Trusted Platform Module (TPM) (i.e., Secure boot, firmware checks)
5. Hybrid anti-cheat:
- Combination approach (i.e. combining client-side and server-side checks)
- Multi-layer defense (i.e. real-time monitoring, periodic audits)
6. Community-driven anti-cheat:
- Reporting systems (i.e. in-game reporting tools, external reporting websites)
- Crowd-sourced data (i.e. Crowdsourced ban lists, community watch programs)
7. Machine learning anti-cheat:
- Machine learning models (i.e. Neural networks, anomaly detection algorithms)
- Predictive analytics (i.e. predictive modeling, tend analysis)
8. Behavioral and psychological techniques:
- Honeypots (i.e. fake cheats, decoy exploits)
- Social engineering (i.e. fear tactics, public shaming)
I think I've said enough, but the list can go on and on. I hope this helped answer your question @TheHiddenDaggerInn
Edit 2:
(corrected typos)
You guys def have a fair point, but I am straight the other way. Go deep on my ass, as long as it keeps cheaters away. Especially in FPS. MMORPGs is a bit harder to cheat in, or rather, they are easier to find.
But it doesn't.
Not even going to touch that one
Not sure why, it is the objective truth.
I'm simply talking about what I know from the perspective of an observer, read a few posts from Dulcibel (specifically the most recent in this thread), as they are a professional in this field.
They will tell you the same thing I have - just with more detail.