cheating
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Walk through walls, get infinite ammo in The Evil Within on PC
Bethesda doesn't support players using debug console commands to cheat their way through The Evil Within, but the publisher sure is making it easy to do so. In a post on the Evil Within forums, Bethesda outlines how to access the game's debug console via Steam and enable cheats such as god mode, infinite ammo, walking through walls, and a handy FPS lock. Perhaps these cheats will make The Evil Within more fun, or at least not as supremely disappointing. Curious gore lovers, see Bethesda's instructions below.
Here's some of the exploiting currently happening in ArcheAge
How's Trion's war against ArcheAge botters, exploiters, and cheaters currently going? Not so well if a recently released player video is an accurate barometer. A YouTuber named EraChanZ published a four-minute clip showing players abusing a teleport exploit to appear inside of a specialty workbench before crafting their trade packs and teleporting out again, presumably to deliver the packs far quicker than usual and make a lot of gold in the process. Click past the cut to watch the full clip.
APB shames cheaters, talks usage and purchasing stats
APB Reloaded's latest dev blog post details the implementation of cheat detector FairFight into the MMO shooter. The update also reveals some pretty interesting stats related to cheaters as well as the game's overall performance. "The number of cheaters who log in to the game stayed pretty constant around 1.2 percent of all players (some of which were re-rolls)," wrote GamersFirst's Bjorn Book-Larsson. Surprisingly, 60 percent of those cheaters were paying players. Book-Larsson says that only about 10 percent of APB's monthly unique players make new purchases in a given month, while 30 percent of players have made a purchase at some point during their account history. Book-Larsson goes on to say that APB is the 19th most-played game in the history of Steam, just ahead of Borderlands 2 and just behind Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Finally, GamersFirst has publicized a list of banned cheaters for the month of July, complete with player and clan names and various other account statistics.
Hackers break Mario Kart 8, vow to not aid cheaters
The most basic premise of console multiplayer is the idea that everyone has a level technological playing field, but as the above video demonstrates, Mario Kart 8 is no longer the untouched, pristine walled garden its creators intended. Though this clip is described as "very basic stuff" and "a proof of concept," YouTube user MrBean35000vr is able to alter the game's soundtrack, rename tracks and alter the Wii U system's menu font. According to the video's description, all of this is possible thanks to a recently-discovered browser exploit combined with new code that allows the user to alter any data the game places into the Wii U's memory. Though this hack allows for a huge amount of control over Mario Kart 8, and may even have potential as an online cheating method, MrBean35000vr claims fans of Nintendo's latest mascot racer have nothing to fear. "None of this is in any state to be released at present, and it's unlikely that we ever will in the interest of preventing cheaters," reads a notice in the video's description, which is followed by an emoticon with its tongue hanging out - the hallmark of online sincerity. [Image: Nintendo]
DreamHack Hearthstone tournament plagued by cheating allegations
Did he or didn't he cheat? That's the controversial question surrounding a Hearthstone tournament winner this week. At the DreamHack Hearthstone tournament, Radu Dima won 3-0 in the final round and was rewarded with a $10,000 check. However, during the second game Dima received a message on Battle.net revealing the details of his opponent's hand. Dima reported the message after the match, and the officials declared that the information would not have helped him and said that he could keep playing. But this prompted viewers to go back to look at earlier Battle.net messages that some are saying contain coded hints about opponents' cards. The organizers of the tournament have yet to comment on the situation. Dima declared on Reddit this morning that he won fair and square.
Working As Intended: The forgotten fields of Green Acres
My first trip to Ultima Online's Green Acres was in 1998. The first guild I'd ever joined had just split up into a bunch of... let's call them "philosophically incompatible" groups, and I was still hanging out with some of the shadier types because I was a clueless teenager in my first MMO and wanted desperately to fit in and hadn't yet figured out where I belonged. "Hit this rune," my new guild leader commanded. His favorite murderin' weapon was a poisoned warfork. He was not a nice man. "I'm being evicted from my safehouse in Green Acres. Help me move my crap."
WoW Archivist: The Martin Fury incident
WoW Archivist is a biweekly column by WoW Insider's Scott Andrews, who explores the secrets of World of Warcraft's past. What did the game look like years ago? Who is etched into WoW's history? What secrets does the game still hold? It first appeared on our sister site on April 25th and is included here by permission. Almost exactly five years ago today, WoW Insider broke the news about one of the craziest stories in WoW's history. Some called it a "scandal," but I disagree with the term. Everyone involved, I believe, acted without malice. The entire affair was a matter of one colossal blunder, followed by a series of unfortunate assumptions and, ultimately, heavy-handed repercussions. The real victims here, after all, were the bosses. But the event is a fascinating and unique one: one player, given the kind of unlimited power that only a game master or developer was meant to wield. How did it all go down?
Titanfall cheaters pool live on PC now, here's how it works
Titanfall's anti-cheating system, FairFight, is now active on PC, and it places all cheaters in the same pool to play with each other – and only each other. As Respawn puts it, "You can play with other banned players in something that will resemble the Wimbledon of aimbot contests. Hopefully the aimbot cheat you paid for really is the best, or these all-cheater matches could be frustrating for you. Good luck." If you're not banned and invite a banned friend into your party, you'll all end up playing in the all-cheater pool. Respawn promises that playing with cheaters won't raise your risk of getting banned. Only cheating can do that. If you think you've been unfairly banned, Respawn says to hit up anticheat@respawn.com.
Benchmarking the new HTC One: less cheating, better performance
There are actually two "Ones" that launched this week. The star attraction is undoubtedly the HTC One, but let's not forget the brand-new Snapdragon 801 running under its hood: a cutting-edge processor that will also power the Sony Xperia Z2 and the Samsung Galaxy S5, but which happens to have reached the market first in HTC's flagship phone. This chip represents a significant upgrade over the Snapdragon 600 in the old One, promising a hat trick of better all-round performance, more fluid gaming and longer battery life, and these are precisely the claims we're about to explore using a combo of benchmarking apps and real-world tests. At the same time, HTC has suddenly decided to come clean on the issue of benchmark cheating, which makes it a bit easier for us to trust what the numbers are telling us.
PBS Game/Show offers a defense of cheating, even in multiplayer
No stranger to courting controversy, the latest episode of PBS' thought-provoking YouTube series Game/Show posits the idea that maybe cheating in video games isn't such a bad thing after all. First, the video draws a distinction between those who repeatedly flout the rules to ruin a game for others, and those who exploit a game simply to enhance their own enjoyment. The former group is commonly known as "griefers," and the video makes no attempt to defend what they do. However, it argues that the remainder are people attempting to create "optimal strategies" for the game, which then contributes to the overall evolution of said game. As an example, the video highlights the practice of quick-scoping in first-person multiplayer shooters. While this exploit allows practiced snipers to use their high-powered rifles with the same speed and accuracy as a pistol, the video points out that quick-scoping has become so prevalent that it is now regarded as just part of the game. Though once decried by fans, the technique has become ingrained and altered the way the game is played on a fundamental level, much like the slam dunk in professional basketball. Watch the video, see what you think, then leave your thoughts in the comments below. Alternately, skip the video, leave a comment anyway, then smugly pat yourself on the back for cheating on this video about cheating. [Image: PBS]
Rust punches more than 4,000 cheaters right in the cheat codes
Proving the old adage that "violence always solves everything," - or something like that - Facepunch Studios has implemented a new anti-cheating system, dubbed "CheatPunch," in their first-person survival game Rust. During its initial run over last weekend, a total of 4,621 people were banned. Facepunch, CheatPunch ... is there any problem that can't be solved by punching? Developer Garry Newman noted on the game's site that he expects cheats will be found that can circumvent the anti-cheating measure, but players should nonetheless be wary: "If you get kicked from the official servers with the message that you've been banned then you have been caught," Newman wrote. "You're a naughty boy. You know what you have done. You won't get unbanned. We know it was your 9 year old cousin. We know your computer got hijacked. We know that the CIA is getting you banned from all your games on Steam so you will join them in the hunt for aliens." As a famous dynamic duo would say: POW! [Image: Facepunch Studios]
Rockstar targets GTA Online cheaters after latest update
Announcing that it has completed today's scheduled maintenance, Rockstar revealed that it is removing counterfeit in-game currency distributed within Grand Theft Auto Online over the last several weeks. The studio is now taking corrective measures to punish players who actively engaged in cheating and other balance-breaking exploits. Rockstar assures that players who did not actively exploit the game's progression system will not be targeted during its search for cheaters. Counterfeit GTA$ received from others will be removed from player accounts, and all previously purchased items will remain available for use. Players who purposefully cheated the system, however, are subject to punitive actions ranging from assignment to cheater-specific player pools to full bans from Grand Theft Auto Online.
The Guild Counsel: All's fair in love, war, and MMOs
When we're playing MMOs, we're in a virtual world, but we're also playing a game, and as in all games, there are rules to follow. It's one thing for an individual player to break the rules, but when that player is part of a guild, it can have a ripple effect that affects every other member. Guild leaders are in a tough position when it comes to rule-breaking because knowingly allowing someone to exploit could make the guild complicit in the process. And when the banhammer strikes, it could come down hard on the entire guild. How much responsibility should a guild leader have over players who bend or break the game rules? Let's consider a few points in this week's Guild Counsel.
EVE Evolved: Three exploitable game features
If there's one thing EVE Online players are good at, it's finding ways to get an advantage over each other. The hyper-competitive PvP sandbox breeds players with an investigative streak who will constantly figure out ways to bend and abuse new features to make ISK or get an edge over other players in combat. The most obvious cases include abusing bugs, as happened in 2009's starbase exploit that corporations used to generate valuable tech 2 materials out of thin air and 2010's MonkeySphere exploit that let players hide themselves from the local chat channel and sneak up on unsuspecting victims. Most cases of abusing features for profit or advantage aren't as clear-cut as these obvious exploits, as some have negative consequences but still use completely legitimate game mechanics. When players figured out how to abuse Faction Warfare's kill LP rewards to farm five trillion ISK, for example, they did so using in-game mechanics that just hadn't really been thought through. Many more subtle cases of broken game mechanics that undermine EVE's core design ethos still exist, some of which have been recently introduced and others that have managed to remain unchallenged for years because there isn't really a good alternative. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at three features in EVE Online that I think fundamentally break the design ethos of the game but don't have very clear solutions.
Major benchmarking service delists Samsung and HTC phones it suspects of cheating
Oh yes, things are really starting to kick off in the arcane world of smartphone benchmarking. First, there came clear evidence of phone makers manipulating scores in apps like AnTuTu and GFXBench, and now a more mainstream benchmarking company, Futuremark, has publicly delisted specific Samsung and HTC phones that it suspects of cheating. Futuremark says that the devices in question -- including the Galaxy Note 3, HTC One and HTC One Mini -- fail to adhere to the fairness policy, which requires that a device treats its 3DMark app just as it would treat any other app, with no tailor-made bursts of performance designed to achieve artificially high scores. Clearly, this bad behavior is just as endemic as we originally feared, so benchmark apps either need to toughen up, as Futuremark appears to be doing, or they need to find entirely new ways of measuring performance.
Final Fantasy XIV producer letter talks classes, cheating, and housing
A hefty two-and-a-half hour live Final Fantasy XIV producer's letter has tackled a wide range of questions from the community, including issues regarding class balance, anti-cheating efforts, and housing details. While free company housing is coming soon, the producer said that it will be another half-year or so before individual housing arrives. One of the big topics of the day was how the team is dealing with the disagreeable elements arising from the use of the duty finder. Square-Enix is considering changes to add a bulletin board-style system for more specific groups, better communication options for group participants, and an MVP voting system that will allow players to give points to good teammates that can be later spent on rewards. Executive Producer Naoki Yoshida also addressed the question of whether the game's subscriber numbers are decreasing: "As FFXIV:ARR is a subscription-based business model, naturally there will be players who will not play anymore once they finish the main scenario. MMORPGs that launched after 2008 with a subscription based model retained a maximum of 35% of their users during the first month of subscriptions. However, FFXIV:ARR has surpassed this number by a wide margin." There's a lot covered for Final Fantasy XIV players who want to be in the know, so check it out!
Apple clamps down on high-score cheaters with Game Center update
Believe it or not, there are some people in this world who think that faking a high score to be top dog on the global Game Center leaderboard is both big and clever. Of course, most of us know better, so it's with a great deal of relief that Apple's latest developer-facing update is looking to deal with the problem. The company is letting app developers manage the top 100 tables for their games themselves, so if they spot a faker, they can delete it without having to refer the problem to Apple. Now we'll all just have to knuckle down and earn those bragging rights the old-fashioned way.
Over 6100 accounts banned for cheating in Final Fantasy XIV
It's been hard to miss the spam in Final Fantasy XIV lately. You can't walk into a major city without seeing several dozen people shouting repeatedly about selling in-game currency, which has resulted in a lot of people getting to really kick their blacklists into overtime. But Square-Enix isn't ignoring the problem, and as of today we've been informed that a lot of players are out of the game for cheating. If you can really call them "players." 6,154 accounts have been removed from the game for advertising RMT services, while another 156 have been removed for "illicit activity." The game has also undergone a bit of maintenance to help eliminate the (unspecified) methods of item use that contributed to the problem. Whether or not this will eliminate the shouting spam that plagues the major cities remains to be seen, but it's certainly worth hoping, and it's always good to see the RMT crowd get what's coming to them. [Thanks to Scott for the tip!]
Behind the scenes as a [REDACTED] Game Master
Once upon a time, I worked as a game master for a very popular MMORPG. My duties were relatively simple: help players out of sticky situations and enforce the rules of the game when it came to cheating, harassment, and general player behavior. A game master's role is to protect the player from any and all potential game dangers, up to and including the player himself. In my work as a GM, I saw many amazing things. I saw guild members contact support staff because they were worried about another player's real-life wellbeing. I saw incredibly complex scams across multiple players and accounts that, while infuriating and exceptionally against the rules, were astonishing in their genius. And of course, I saw lots and lots of cybering.
Trion responds to Defiance cheating reports
Trion has responded to reports of cheating in its new Defiance MMO shooter. Community manager Mathew "Sledgehammer70" Everett says that the firm's "anti-cheat measures are both client-side and server-side" and that Trion is "beefing up on all aspects around this." He goes on to explain how the community cheat-reporting has been helpful to the developers, and that "in most cases these players are truly cheating." You can contact Trion's customer support if you want to report suspicious in-game activity, and be sure to check Sledgehammer's full post on Reddit. [Thanks Robert!]
