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Niantic vows to ban 'Pokémon Go' cheaters
Niantic is trying to make Pokémon Go more fair for its millions of players across the globe, this week officially confirming that it will ban any account that appears to be cheating. "After reviewing many reports of in-game cheating, we have started taking action against players taking unfair advantage of and abusing Pokémon Go. Moving forward, we will continue to terminate accounts that show clear signs of cheating," Niantic said.
Capcom plans harsher punishments for 'Street Fighter' quitters
Capcom has been combating quitters in Street Fighter V since the game's debut. And tomorrow, the publisher/developer is apparently making the penalties for disconnecting before a match ends even more harsh. Like before, cowards will have League Points docked, and will also be locked out of matchmaking for an ambiguous period of time, according to a post on Capcom Unity. It sound exactly like what's in place currently, but that's supposedly working pretty well. There's more comprehensive update coming, too.
Riot Games is suing a huge 'League of Legends' cheat service
Cheating ruins online games. Full stop. Valve has cracked down on folks running amok in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and League of Legends developer Riot Games is doing the same. Specifically, Riot is suing the owners of "Leaguesharp" (L#) which charges between $15 and $50 a month for services that grant the ability to "see hidden information; 'automate' gameplay to perform with enhanced or inhuman accuracy; and accumulate levels, experience and items at a rate this is not possible for a normal human player," according to the lawsuit papers obtained by Rift Herald.
Blizzard sues an 'Overwatch' cheat developer
Blizzard has about as much interest in stamping out cheaters as you do, and it's willing to go to court to keep things clean. The company has filed a US lawsuit against Bossland, a German developer whose Watchover Tyrant app is designed solely to help unscrupulous Overwatch players. The software allegedly violates copyright law, including the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's anti-circumvention measures. More importantly, Blizzard claims that Watchover hurts both legitimate players and the bottom line. The developer may be losing "tens of millions of dollars" in sales to gamers put off by the thought that cheaters are running rampant.
Teen responds to 'Overwatch' naysayers with a live skill display
If you're good enough at a video game for people to claim that you're cheating, what do you do? Shrug it off? Talk smack in return? If you're Gegury, a 17-year-old Korean pro gamer, you prove you're clean to the whole world. When two rivals accused her of using hacks to dominate Overwatch, she didn't just get her name cleared by Blizzard. She went to game broadcaster Inven and livestreamed an hour-plus play session demonstrating that, yes, she's just that skilled.
Blizzard will permaban 'Overwatch' cheaters
Overwatch's massively popular beta might be over, but the game's cadre of developers at Blizzard are already making plans of how to deal with cheaters ahead of launch: Banning them. Permanently. No three strikes rule. No cool down. Just an outright permaban. And that's awesome. Writing on the forums, community manager Lylirra says that if a player is using hacks, bots or anything that gives her or him and unfair advantage, the banhammer will strike swiftly. If you spot someone cheating come the game's May 24th release, send any and all information regarding such to hacks@blizzard.com.
Valve will ban Steam cheaters via their linked phone numbers
Valve knows that players cheating on Steam is a serious problem, and it's taking action to address that in a few new ways. One is offering a matchmaking service for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive that's only for folks who've linked their phone number to their Steam account, for two-factor authentication purposes, dubbed "Prime." Any cheating inside that space will result in your number being banned. The next step takes the previous one further and goes platform-wide. Because cheaters tend to have multiple Steam accounts (but typically one phone number), any account associated with a phone number flagged for by Valve Anti-Cheat will be banned for three months. Boom.
Cyclist banned for six years after racing with a hidden motor
A professional cyclist has been banned for six years after it was discovered she was racing with a hidden electric motor. Femke Van den Driessche was caught at the UCI Cyclocross World Championships in January, during an inspection of her pit area. A magnetic resonance scan, which Road.cc reports was conducted with a tablet, allowed officials to spot a battery and Vivax motor in the seat tube. Van den Driessche could have activated it using a Bluetooth switch concealed under her handlebar tape. She denied the allegations at the time, claiming the bike was given to her by mistake.
Guile is coming to 'Street Fighter V' this month
It still feels weird that Street Fighter V launched without Guile, one of the series' most iconic characters, but developer Capcom is fixing that. Later this month, the well-coiffed world warrior will be a free download until the Zenny store (uses real money and currency earned from playing the game) fully launches. His Air Force base stage will be available for 70,000 in-game credits as the first post-launch arena, but if you ponied up for the season pass you'll get it for free, along with an alternate costume for Guile.
Ubisoft breaks out the banhammer for 'The Division' cheaters
Ubisoft knows that cheating is running rampant in Tom Clancy's The Division and it's out to change that. Between hacks where enemy bullets can travel through walls to homing bullets, trying to enjoy the game the way its meant to be played is a bit fraught at the moment. But come the game's April 12th update, PC players, at least, will have platform-specific tools at their disposal to report the jerks according to a Ubisoft Twitch stream.
'Street Fighter' cheating means dropped ranks and lost points
Last week Capcom asked for your help catching Street Fighter V rage quitters in the act. Using the evidence the community provided, the publisher/developer was able to cross-reference it with internal data to find the folks with 80 - 90 percent disconnect rates and "unrealistic win rates," and punish the jerks.
Cycling officials find motor hidden inside competition bike
"Doped bikes" that use hidden motors to give riders a boost have long been suspected but never seen. However, officials accused 19-year-old Belgian star Femke Van den Driesshe (above) of "technological fraud" at the cyclocross World Championships on Saturday. "It was no secret that a motor was found. We believe that it was indeed technological doping," said Brian Cookson, the president of the Union Cycliste International (UCI). He added that "we've been [testing] new methods of detection but you'll understand why I don't want to go into details."
Recon's HUD mask transfers your gaming skills to paintball
Recon Instruments and Empire Paintball's paintball mask is fun to wear — and I didn't even get to shoot anyone. The Empire EVS houses Recon's Snow2 heads-up display in bottom-right of the goggles, running on Android, with nine-axis sensors, Bluetooth, WiFi and GPS, while the helmet itself looks like a color-saturated Darth Vader pretender -- and I mean that in the best possible way. Slipping into it is easy, and an armband control unit with directional buttons makes navigation through menus (as well as zooming in and out of maps) hard to screw up. The mask itself, coming from paintball equipment maker Empire has UVA/UVB radiation protection and doesn't fog up inside when the action picks up and your breathing gets heavy. The heads-up display (HUD) can also talk with action cams like the GoPro, which you can mount on your paintball gun to peek around corners and, as one Engadget editor calls it: "cheat".
VW's 2016 diesels have a different device that may dupe emissions tests
Just when you thought the Volkswagen emissions scandal couldn't get any worse, it might do just that. The automaker revealed to US regulators last week that its 2016 diesel models may have a different device that could help those vehicles earn higher marks on the government's emissions tests. The tech in question is "auxiliary emissions control device" separate from the software on automobiles made between 2009-2015 that was first disclosed last month. This new software heats the pollution control catalyst quicker, boosting the performance of the components responsible for separating harmful nitrogen dioxide into nitrogen and oxygen.[Image credit: Matt Cardy/Getty Images]
Ashley Madison insists that real women use its affair service
That Gizmodo investigation of leaked data suggesting that most of the women on Ashley Madison's affair-seeking service were fake? Completely bogus... if you ask Ashley Madison. It claims that there are plenty of real live women on the site -- the ratio of paying men to active women (who get to use it for free) is reportedly 1.2 to 1, and women sent 2.8 million messages just in the past week. Gizmodo made "incorrect assumptions" about what some of the data fields meant, Ashley Madison says. Whether or not that's true, you'll want to keep the data in context. The service isn't outlining the ratio of real to fake women, so it's not clear whether real women are bountiful or needles in the proverbial haystack.
Drone catches cheating students in 'world's toughest exam'
If students want to cheat their way through one of China's most difficult exams, they'll now need to thwart a patrolling drone. The National Higher Education Entrance Exam, known as "gaokao," is held each year and determines whether youngsters will get into the top universities. It's been described as the "world's toughest exam" and can be stressful, even traumatic for students trying to achieve higher grades. Some entrants, ingeniously, try to cheat by capturing their test questions and sending them to someone on the outside, before receiving the answers via an earpiece. Unsurprisingly, China wants to crack down on the practise, so one province is now using a drone to monitor radio activity. When a disturbance is detected, it can alert the invigilators and help determine the culprit's location. The penalties for cheating are fierce, so authorities are hoping the threat alone will be enough to encourage would-be cheaters to spend their free time cramming instead.
Schools ban watches from exams to keep cheating off wrists
If you think your school is overly cautious when it makes you ditch your phone before a big test, you haven't seen anything yet. BuzzFeed News has learned that multiple universities have issued blanket bans on all watches during exams in case students are wearing smartwatches they could use to cheat. According to London's City University, it "wouldn't be practical" to have proctors checking every watch to make sure it's analog -- it's easier to make you write with bare arms. The move is unfortunate if you're used to glancing at your watch to gauge your progress, but it does make sense given how easy it is to get memos, text messages and other unfair advantages on your wrist. Whether or not you think smartwatch cheating represents a major problem, it's probably a good idea to leave that Pebble or ZenWatch at home during your mid-terms.
Path of Exile unholsters the banhammer for cheaters
The team behind Path of Exile has been pretty forgiving up to this point. Players have been a bit more commonly warned that there will be penalties if they're cheating. But that's over now. The latest race season has finished, and players who were found to have cheated have been given a grand total of no rewards even if they were technically eligible. Nearly 4,000 players will log in to find a warning to disable any cheats they have running before they get banned. From this point forward, any incidents with cheating software will result in a ban, end of discussion. This is true even if the player in question argues that the cheat was being used for quality-of-life purposes; those issues will be addressed in the future and don't justify cheating. Players are reminded that they are allowed to run tools that don't require the client to be running and single-action hotkeys without a problem, so don't worry about being punished just for having Fraps in the background. Just... don't cheat.
Blizzard issues thousands (more) Hearthstone bot bans
Good news, Hearthstone players. If you've been using a bot to automate your gameplay, you'll log in today to find a shiny new prize! Specifically, that shiny new prize is not being able to log in because you've been banned. Your prize was being banned. Blizzard has awarded this prize to "several thousand" Hearthstone accounts using third-party tools to automate gameplay; the bans are permanent, so no need to worry about losing them at the end of the season. Players who have not been botting and violating the game's TOS will also log in to find a shiny new prize, which is a play environment with far fewer bots. Isn't that nice? The official post reminds players to report suspicious behavior by emailing the development team so that in the future another group of cheaters can wake up to find a brand-new lifetime ban locking them out of the game. Those of you who can still log in may also want to take the opportunity to vote on the next teaser for the Goblins vs. Gnomes expansion. [Thanks to Dengar for the tip!]
Blizzard gives thousands of Hearthstone bots the boot
"Several thousand" bots have been banned from Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft recently, Blizzard revealed in a Battle.net blog. The developer found that the accounts were associated with third-party programs that automate actions within the game, and they will now be banned from the game until 2015. "As we've stated, fair play is at the core of the Hearthstone experience, and cheating and botting will not be tolerated," the developer said. "From this point on, accounts found to be cheating will be permanently closed without warning." Hearthstone players that believe they've encountered an exploitative account in the game are encouraged to report it to the developer at hacks@blizzard.com. The popular digital card game will reach Android tablets by the end of the year with Android smartphones and iPhone following in early 2015. [Image: Blizzard]
