Otz and problems with anti-cheat
Who agrees that the problems Otz raises in his video are the problems that should be the prime focus of the developer team at BHVR?
Best Answer
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I know it's not the story you want to hear, but developing an anti-cheat costs millions of $, and is always guaranteed to be a losing battle as long as the hackers are motivated enough. The way CPUs and software work is just not well suited to prevent hacking. On Amazon there are even PCIe devices that hackers can attach to their RAM so that the cheat software runs on a physically different machine than the one where the anticheat runs. I've read how Easy Anti Cheat works and I think it's a very smart anti cheat, if some hackers can bypass it in its current state, I don't think it's possible to "improve it".
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I think they're a massive problem for streamers and a very small problem for everyone else.
Definitely worthy of attention, but solo queue buffs should be top priority.
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I do think it should be near the top of priorities alongside solo buffs. The thing is the longer they wait or sit on this topic the worse it'll get. It may seem only to be affecting streamers but what happens when the top streamers get fend up with the cheaters in their lobbies and do what otz is saying and start playing other games more? Those cheaters aren't going to stop they just keep cheating with no real target and non-streamers will have to deal with them also. That is why I do think it should be their top priority.
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I think there's a myth that fighting cheating isn't a high priority for Behaviour. The issue isn't prioritization, it's the difficulty of actually coming up with technical solutions to stop cheating.
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EAC is famous for can't do **** in every game that use it for anti-cheat purpose.btw the vanguard for varlorant is actually something I'm looking for (the anti-cheat perspective)
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Game balance issue is only a problem when game is actually playable, which isn't the case for cheaters.
So, absolutely not top priority.
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Valorant's anticheat is not a good example, because it is very intrusive, basically as intrusive as a software can get. It only accepts to run if it is the very first thing that was loaded on your CPU, not just before Windows is even loaded, but even before your drivers, monitor. etc. There is barely any failsafe during this phase so if there is any bug in Vanguard software it will make your whole system instable, it is an extremely hardcore method of fighting cheats that comes with a lot of downsides (and likely this is the reason why Valorant isn't working on consoles).
With an anticheat like this, Vanguard dev team is probably spending more time debugging why countless innocent people have X or Y not working on their machine, rather than actually trying to detect cheaters. Of course Valorant can afford it because a large part of their marketing campaign is based on this anticheat, but I don't think other game studios are willing to make such sacrifices.
And I doubt even Vanguard anticheat is enough to fight motivated hackers like the PCIe device thing I mentioned.
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Whatever they're currently doing clearly isn't enough. We all know its a constant war between cheaters and developers, but from the sound of some of the interviews with hackers by Choy, they're still rampant.
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cool, thanks for the correction, I do have many that level of computer science knowledge, it is just personal feelings, such as when I play a game with EAC like a battlefield, war thunder apex. tbh the chance that I met a cheater is not that low, and sometimes it is very hard to distinguish rather a player is a cheater or not. And looks like the only "official "way to do this is to report all of them when you feel like they are cheating. I'm very curious did anyone who reports a cheater get feedback from the dev to say that the cheater is banned or something?
For the cheaters that steam snipe, they leave the video evidence, (surely steamer will report that cheaters), and did the cheater get banned?
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I'm not saying it isn't important and shouldn't be addressed, I am saying that it is only a serious problem for a tiny percentage of the community. These people want visibility, so like 95% of the playerbase aren't high priority targets here. If you're one of the affected, yeah, I'm sure it feels bad.
Cheating should absolutely be addressed, but the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few when it comes to priority.
All that said, we don't really know what BHVR is doing behind the scenes. I am pretty sure they aren't just ignoring it, and they are capable of doing more than one thing at a time, I'm sure.
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Yeah, I'm sure a lot of it is my own perception. If you're someone who has had multiple games hijacked, I'm sure it feels like a big problem. I play a lot of DBD, and I can count the times I was sure there was a cheater in one of my matches on my hands.
Now subtle cheaters? Hard to say. Impossible, really. Maybe a whole lot. But I don't feel like it is the biggest issue in the game.
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I know nothing of the technical issues behind it, but people always state that its a server/client sided problem, ie because the servers aren't dedicated to do all the calculating stuff, the players can basically tell their client whats about to happen inside their game.
Couldn't they at the very least set a few hard caps and boundaries? Typing this I can already see that there would be issues with this ... Like healing, the hardcap in healing speed should be all healing stuff that you could conceivable gather combined, but I have seen videos of people stacking each and everything and it was some sub 1s heals. Also there is "For the People" which is basically a 0s heal by default.
Or give hard caps to gen repair speed, so that they can't just repair them by the press of a button ... but 4 BNP would still work, so this is again tricky.
And stuff like hard cap on falling time, so that the cheaters can`t fly around like mad, but the fall from coal tower is pretty long.
Travel Speed is also a thing, but I think most transport abilities in the game, like Dredges teleport or Demogorgons Upside down portals, just increase their "walking" speed by a whole lot.
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People don't give BHVR enough of a hard time. This isn't an impossible arms race. You know why you can get held hostage? Because BHVR doesn't offload the game logic onto servers and still pretty much does everything on the client same way they did as a peer to peer game in 2016.
It's why you won't see fly hacking or speed hacking in CS:GO. It's not the anticheat,please stop.
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As others have said it, cheating and preventing it is an arms race and even the best of games and best of developers will never write code that is 100% unbeatable.
However.
The fact that a year after the DDOS debacle exploded, people can still access your IP address is inexcusable. We have dedicated servers, there's exactly zero reason why player 1 should have access in any capacity to player 2's IP address. This is the one thing that is completely on BHVR for not being fixed, forcing me and others to use VPN in order to play their game. I can look past the myriad of technical issues, the lack of any balancing whatsoever, occasional cheaters, but that is the one thing for which they have no defense and I have no patience to be nice about.
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The arms race between hackers and devs is one thing, but it seems like they have put zero effort into common sense solutions that, for example, can at least avoid players being held hostage.
What legitimate game of DBD has ever gone over 30 mins? Far, far less than 1%. So why is there still a disconnection penalty when a game has gone on that long? As far as I know, no cheater can block you from disconnecting. So why are we forcing players to wait TWO HOURS for the server to shut down when they can just add a way for the penalty to sunset after a game has gone on for a certain number of minutes after the trial starts?
I don't want BHVR to start their own cybersecurity division. I just want them to add ways around the most common ways cheaters make people miserable. Even if cheaters eventually find ways around these efforts, the community at least needs to see that the devs are trying something.
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what's the point of buffing one side or another when data about balance are compromised by cheaters? this should be the MAIN priority for bhvr, not stupid skins, even the game balance can wait when you have cheaters in your matches most of the time...
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What percentage of matches do you think are affected by cheaters? Balance issues affect every match. 100% of them.
I mean if every match had a cheater in it, you'd have a case for saying that addressing cheating should priority one. But I'd be surprised if even 5% of matches have cheaters.
Is there data on how prevalent cheating is? I mean not just reports, because people report all manner of nonsense.
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you can't be always sure when someone cheat or not, especially now since there are various perks that improve the ms (prolonged BT and hope for example) or the genspeed (generators with toolboxes, stake out and hyperfocus can be done in 46 seconds), but from my personal experience i know when something isn't right, especially when you chase a normal guy and a speed hacker in the same zone, with the same tiles available (the normal guy will receive a hit if he'll try to leave that zone for another while you are destroying a pallet to reach his position, the subdule speed hacker will reach the next zone even without throwing down pallets or going fast enough to reach that zone and stunning you, even with bloodlust). keep in mind that most of my matches were with this kind of players, hence why took a break from the game
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You underestimate streamers' contribution to the game. They attract tons of new players and inspire old players to keep playing.
I'm not a streamer and I didn't see much cheaters or streamsnipers in my games so I can't share Otz' problem. But my real problem is that my favorite dbd content creator leaving the game. I like dbd and probably I will keep playing for a while. But who knows how long I will play without inspiration from good streamers and youtubers.
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I play mainly as a survivor. In my killer matches there were no detectable cheaters, but situations that seemed as if it was not regular. Even after watching the match several times and knowing what perks the survivor had, actions were inexplicable for me.
However, since I mostly play as a survivor, I couldn't see secret cheats from teammates. In one game, a Dwight cheated very obviously. He lay down on the floor and crawled to me in a flash. I let the killer kill me and watched the Dwight. What I saw there was unbelievable and makes angry on BHVR.
What BHVR could do would be to make games end after 45 minutes instead of 120. That way streamers would not get hold hostage for 120 minutes. And the server would have to check for actions that are impossible, automatically archive the match and put players on autoban. That would relax the situation for now, secret cheats would still be possible. But you have to start somewhere.
An anticheat system that is purely client based is not enough. There must also be checks on the server.
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Its not about the anticheat though... Any anti-cheat can be bluffed as it works on client side.
The issue is how bad game is designed.
Why is there 2 hours time limit? It can be shortened easily to 20min... So even if streamer like Otz will be caught by cheater and held hostage it will be only 20minutes not 120.
Next is report system does not work in dbd. From what I heard they only have pre- and post- game statistics and does not know what happens during the match.
It would he so easy to catch cheater using speed hack or any other crap hack.
IP leak is the worst though. I assume DBD code is a very big spaghetti then.
But what impresses me the most is how little Behavior does on their behalf. They ban cheaters after few weeks , they let their own Fog Whisperers and other very committed streamers to get their game ruined and decide to don't see the obvious.
If they don't care about their dedicated group of players what do you think they do with the rest of us... or this forum?
Shame...
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I agree with you on this!
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Well, an ingame action verification system might be a good start, dont you think?
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there should be checks and balances at the very least
Players shouldnt be able to move faster than x% speed
Players shouldnt be able to reach x Height
Players shouldnt be able to be in the air for x time
Stun times should be limited to x seconds
Blinds should be limited to x seconds
Gen speeds should be limited to x charges per second
No more than one killer can be in the match
If you do this, what is a hacker gonna do?
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You have to understand that a computer is basically a calculator where the computer works for you. All it does it flip the switches with 1s and 0s and that's basically it. What anti-cheat software does is calculate and see if at the end that the numbers aren't incorrect. This can be easily bypassed if you understand how it works, deceiving the software into thinking that you're legitimately playing a online video game. I can't explain you all of this here because it most likely will get me permabanned from the forums because I'm exchanging sensitive information.
All I can say it's very easy to cheat, even on console with a customized USB stick you could basically use that USB as a medium and turn it into an aimbot machine. (Cronus Zen for example)
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I agree that if the game, for instance, had a way to double check for example that someone isn’t moving at impossible speeds it wouldn’t be useful, but I have no idea if something like that isn’t already in place to some extent but subtle cheats can still get around it or if its something that is so difficult to program in the existing engine that it becomes unfeasible to do. I do know Behaviour has mentioned very vaguely having some systems in place to flag certain things for review and then they do ban waves based on cheats they detect that way, but obviously we have no way of knowing the details. 🤷♂️
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I recall a distributor of cheats once claiming that, by their estimate, roughly 10% of DBD players run cheats. That's one in ten players. With 5 players in every match, that comes down to half of all matches being corrupted by cheats.
But outside of that, what do you think cheating does to considerations of balance?
If someone loses a match of DBD, is that a balance problem, or was someone cheating?
If all survivors were to take on subtle cheats and boost their movespeed to 105%, and the kill rate for killers plummets as a result, is that a balance issue?
You can make balance changes, but if the problem is cheaters, you make the game -less- balanced, AND you don't deal with the cheaters.
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Again, cheating is definitely a problem. A very visible, and when it happens, very annoying problem. But is it the problem? I don't know.
I definitely think that it's more than a bit melodramatic to say cheating is so prevalent than there's no point in balancing the game until it is fixed.
And a cheat distributor is going to give the highest plausible number because they want people to feel like they need to be using their cheats too. Not saying that 10% absolutely isn't accurate, but consider the source.
I think one of the most insidious aspects of the cheating is the paranoia is engenders. You start seeing it where it isn't more than where it is. I'm not immune to this, either, I am constantly having to reign in my suspicion, but I also try to maintain a high proof threshold and give the benefit of the doubt until it's clear there is cheating.
Maybe it's too high, who knows.
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SpookyLoopz also put out a statement agreeing with Otz, all while being held hostage for over an hour by a cheater. I quit playing after cheaters and overall toxic messages I received after each match. Not worth the stress.
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aaron duke aswell has now addressed this. Not like it is going to matter, I'm extremely pessemistic when it comes to this situation bhvr has known for months and hasn't done anything about it.
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How was that distasteful? He acknowledge it needs looking at and objectively stated it's a big problem to a small percent of the total player base. This is factual, not opinion.
You even acknowledge you "Don't know why BUT..."
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The issue isn't the Anti-Cheat. It's not a good line of defence anyway.
The issue is that, although we play through severs, there is no validation on these servers about the data sent to them.
Simply keeping track of the players sates (position, perks, actions ...) for inconsistencies (various speeds, states, end game collapse not ending ...) should cull a good portion of the filth polluting the matches.
But it's likely the servers are actually mindless proxies gobbing everything sent to them.
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I hate to play devils advocate but there are several things which make what you posted incorrect.
Vanguard is signed not only by Riot's certification team (which ensures it works properly without bugs), its also further certified with Microsoft's kernel certification process. All of these processes with Microsoft specifically scan for malware, bugs, hardware compatibility tests, and multiple extended validation tests.
Any quick google search will tell you what vanguard does, as well as the processes behind that.
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I don't know how Microsoft certifications work but I can tell you that they certainly don't guarantee that your software has no bug, because there is no process in the world to guarantee that. There have been exploits found in drivers that millions of people used, and at the time these drivers were definitely certified too, until someone publicly revealed the exploit...
Anyway, I don't see how that contradicts my post. Even if Riot were able to prove that Vanguard had no exploit still shipping an anti-cheat that is permanently loaded comes with so many constraints that likely no game will be willing to use it besides extremely competitive titles. The game studio will have to multiply their technical support team size by 2x because now users are wondering why since they installed the game X or Y does not work anymore on the machine only to find out that the anticheat blocked it even though the game was not launched. For example I just did a google search and there is a person whose touch screen stopped working after they installed Valorant. Bugs like that.
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This doesnt only effect streamers, it also effects long term players as well. This should be extreme first priority on top of the list.
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This would flag blatant cheaters, but the subtle ones are the real problem. All this would do is turn every blatant cheater into a subtle cheater to avoid being banned, making a bad situation worse.
The real problem is the lack of a streamlined report system. The current report system is just awful. It's time-consuming and requires a basic competency for video capture and editing to submit clips of the match.
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The question is far beyond is bhvr doing anything to limit the hackers. The question is is my hardware and ip safe while playing this videogame?
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At least the subtle ones don't hold you hostage for two hours.
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Hardware? Most likely safe.
IP? No and it's not really safe anyways.
If you play on Console and have played multiplayer games, there are sites that have logged your IP for the expressed purpose of knocking you off.
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Correct, they don't.
They make you question your own skill, slowly driving you crazy through the course of the match, which is substantially less pleasant.
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I would rather get rid of the obvious cheaters who are holding people hostage and buy time to work on the subtle one's.
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i still have to find blatant cheaters that will keep you in a match from more than 2 hours, i still personally found a lot more irritating the subtle ones
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They're not a small problem at all to me and I definitely ain't a streamer. I can't play 10 consecutives matches as killer (20 or so as survivor) without getting a cheater. And I'm only talking about blatant ones, obviously.
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I wonder if BHVR already tried to take the CHEAT SELLERS sites to court. I remember Destiny 2 and Valorant did this last year, not sure how it went. But yes, this would be the most logical thing to do. As long as ppl can just google for cheats, the barrier is low to do so. Make it harder and more complicated and you'll see way less cheaters aswell.
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I often meet cheaters, im not that high mmr, and im not streaming.
And i really dont play that much (because of the cheaters i meet).
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The game needs to move to full server authority, which is the fairest and most objective approach. We should also get console only cross play so console players can avoid all of the PC cheaters that are running rampant these days.
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Instead of being time-based, it could be tied to EGC. I would say any killer game against a cheater (as long as its not a full lobby of them) will eventually get to EGC being activated (the legitimate survivors want to get out of the game as well). With the cheaters somehow preventing to be sacrificed by the entity when the timer runs out.
The proper solution to this would be for the server to force the end of game when the timer runs out. But since that someone does not happen, DCing should be possible without penalties when EGC is active (imo you could even keep your earned BP). So a killer being held hostage in EGC could just safely DC without repercussions.
For the edge case of a full cheater lobby holding the killer hostage (or multiple survivors hiding all the time), there could be an additional trigger for activating EGC (and subsequentially DCing without penalty), under control of the killer. Something like the killer being able to trigger EGC from his basement when no gen was finished for like 5 minutes / after a total of 15 minutes into the game.
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You make it sound so simple. It's almost as if it is that simple. :^)
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After 20 minutes, DC penalties should be turned off. The Leave Game button would have a 20 minute timer, so everyone would know when it’s safe to leave the game.
If 20 minutes isn’t long enough then make it 30 minutes.
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