http://dbd.game/killswitch
Idea to solve a big part of the cheater problem
As we know most cheaters have an unlimited number of sock accounts thanks to the epic giveaway.
BHVR should lock every EPIC Account that were giving out for free so the users have to buy the base game to re-unlock the game. As compensation for the honest players which got the game for free and which now had to buy the game BHVR should give them Auric Cells in value of the price they had to pay to re-unlock the game.
- So cheaters will lose the ability to get new accounts for free
- honest players will get their money back in form of Auric Cells
Don't know if this is possible or even legal but that would help alot against the cheater problem.
Comments
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As much as I would love to cut down on cheaters, I think the genie is out of the bottle with the free epic accounts.
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Wouldn't that be a solid way to get the genie back into the bottle?
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I understand the viewpoint but the amount of backlash for this would be crazy and some people may not be able to buy the game again if they don't have enough money.
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No backlash from sane people.
It would demonstrate an integrity rare in modern game companies and a commitment to competition over profit.
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The implementation of cheat protection would solve this problem sustainably
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They use Easy anticheat. This product, it is awesome, it often bans me from servers I set games up on, simply the best product for inducing murderous rage from a second party vendor. Ever.
Anyways, when they get serious they can try wiping all the epic games accounts, it might help, but they'd likely need their own internal group to police balance and fairness, you know the things a game needs to be healthy.
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The only thing that system protects is the illusion of control.
I trust Dead by Daylight’s anti-cheat as much as I trust a screen door on a submarine.10 -
Another solution would be to lock out Epic accounts from the general player pool, and force the crossplay option to always be off for them.
It sucks for those who play legit on Epic, but that is the only real option to combat cheating, thanks to the hundreds of thousands of free accounts that were made when this was available.
Granted, there are cheaters on the Steam version as well, but it is not as widespread as it is on Epic, since the game has never been free on Steam.4 -
Cheaters create hundreds of free accounts and keep them in holding. They don't automatically set cheats up on all of them. When one account gets banned, they fall back on a different one. So technically, a single cheater could be sitting on a hundred "honest" accounts, and giving those accounts auric cells just rewards cheaters in the long run. Good thinking but I can't see it happening.
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It wouldn't solve anything, before Epic there were also cheaters galore. They just made it easier for them by giving the game away for free. They probably lose a lot of money with this, because even the most discreet ones inject their accounts and don't pay for a single DLC or cosmetics.
They should probably increase the ban waves by doing a periodic account check. I don't think a new anticheat is the right thing to do either, I don't want the typical kernel level invasive anticheat that there is no way to uninstall properly and that surely won't solve the problem either.
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To clarify before I say what I'm about to while I dislike cheaters I feel like this avenue is not the best to resolve the issue
but
Wouldn't the proper way to do this specifically for Epic accounts to be to check which accounts have been active and which accounts have not? For example for accounts that redeemed the game for free within a month of the giveaway but have been dormant up to this point wouldn't deactivating those seem like the more straight forward solution rather than blanket banning all users which may include honest innocent players?
I am assuming BHVR is able to keep track of that information but I feel more checks on actual account contents based on content users own is the proper thing to start with. A lot of cheaters can bypass hardware bans very quickly (At least to my knowledge this was an issue about a year ago) however I'm pretty sure cheaters tend to give theirself access to cosmetics and DLC they do not own frequently. Wouldn't a server check on this first be the correct thing to do?
I don't know how DBD works under the hood so I assume this is something they already combat and I know we're not going to get a solid answer on this topic so it's all going to be speculation from most of us on this thread.
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I’m not sure that would even do anything. In some countries, the game costs a fraction of our prices. They can just buy the game in bulk there.
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Would be a solid lawsuit.
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I'm not sure if they can do this, but any Epic copy that hasn't been used at this point is disabled. Any that they have backed up in their "pool" is useless.
Sure, cheaters may have several that they've primed for cheating, and those will still get through, but it's better than the THOUSANDS they have queued up. They can't possibly manually get to them all. Let them try.
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Making the game free on epic really set them back years in regards to preventing cheating
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Wouldn't help hackers can inject themselves into any lobby, regardless of platforms or even CrossPlay on or off.
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They made themselves a forever problem sadly
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Don't know if this is possible or even legal but that would help alot against the cheater problem.The fact that BHVR almost certainly doesn't have the legal right to do this kind of trumps everything else.
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It would be great if we could get an explanation from the devs on this one. Deactivating any unused free accounts from that Epic giveaway a long time ago seems like a very common-sense solution. Why hasn’t this been done yet? Is it because there’s no way to do it because of the complications of dealing with Epic, or is it possible but BHVR is simply choosing not to do it? If it’s the former, then we can’t blame current decision-makers for it now and unfortunately we have to live with this decision to give away free accounts that in hindsight was a terrible one. If it’s the latter, then whatever BHVR says about “taking cheating seriously” is meaningless.
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I mean they could play it for free for years… it's not that they have much rights to play it when they haven't paid a single dime for the basegame.
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Why would that benefit cheaters? You have to pay money to (re-)unlock accounts. Cheaters are neither interested in Auric Cells (they can cheat any cosmetic) nor in paying money to (re-)unlock accounts.
Cheaters can't create free accounts anymore since the game will never be free anymore (except limited time free but these accounts will lock too). We just have to get rid of the many accounts bots created during the time of the free EPIC giveways.0 -
@Dustin Sounds fine to me too! Probably an even better idea.
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I don't think you have any rights to claim when you got the game FOR FREE.
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Unless there was something in the terms of service, of course you do. Just because something was given as a promotional offer does not mean it wasn't given.
I bought DbD on sale, some people paid full price, some people got it for free, but we all have the same license.
I'm surprised people are entertaining this as if its an idea that's even remotely possible.
This also wouldn't be an explanation from a Dev, this would be an explanation from BHVR's lawyers, and I doubt they are on the forums. At best you would have this relayed by a community manager.
The EULA that people agree to gives them a license to use the game. Within that license are a lot of conditions where the license may be revoked (19 specified ones, plus a few general, plus what happens if the game shuts down), but 'failure to use the product' is not one of those conditions.
And even if there was a condition, there's also the issue of whether the EULA would be enforceable over such an issue (just because you agree to something in a contract does not mean its binding if the laws of the country disagree) and BHVR would be potentially facing lawsuits from any country in the world over the issue.
This is on top of damaging their reputation with Epic Games who likely wouldn't take kindly to the idea of a company back tracking on an agreement to give the product away.
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Receiving the game for free just to have it pulled from you and can't get it back unless you pay, is extortion. Could also be viewed as false pretenses or fraud.
The game was advertised as free, not a free trial.
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Its amazing how poorly thought out that promotion was, and how we're still paying for it years later. Sadly pandora's box is open, and there's no (legal/moral/ethical/etc) way to close it. The closest thing they could do would be hardware id banning, but thats a pretty extreme response that would still affect innocent people. All they can do is play whack a mole with each account that "awakens" and chooses violence.
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Yeah, and if Epic let BHVR do this, then I think it would open a Pandora's box of other companies wanting to do it for their games as well. Epic gives away free games to try to bring in more customers, but the possibility of being forced to pay after the fact would certainly chase potential customers away.
I would personally never buy anything on Epic because they don't sell gift cards. I've never given Steam or any of the consoles I play on my credit card info; I always go to a local store and buy a gift card to use. I can't be the only person who feels that way and so would never purchase DbD through Epic.
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It's important to note that free or easily accessible accounts aren’t inherently the problem — plenty of other games like League of Legends and Valorant offer unlimited account creation too, but they don’t suffer from the same overwhelming cheater issues.
The real issue lies in how Dead by Daylight handles cheat detection and enforcement. Without proper behavioral analysis, active in-game monitoring, or meaningful deterrents, even a paid account system wouldn't stop cheaters — it would just slow them down.
A strong anti-cheat system makes free accounts irrelevant to the discussion. If the protection is solid, sock accounts are just wasted effort for cheaters. If the protection is weak, even paid accounts won’t help.
So before trying to patch the surface by limiting accounts, the foundation — the actual anti-cheat infrastructure — needs serious work.
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This is absolutely true, but the sheer stockpiles of sock accounts compound that issue. If the epic giveaway never happened, having to continuously repurchase the game would have been a more effective consequence to each ban, even if it only slows them down. No disagreement otherwise, especially in terms of what BHVR should prioritize about the situation.
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I do not believe that requiring a small payment will deter individuals who are intent on hacking. In today’s world, there are countless ways to generate income, and even individuals without formal employment can afford to purchase multiple copies of Dead by Daylight.
And if they possess sufficient skill, they may still find ways to acquire the game without spending any of their own money.
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BHVR actually does hardware ban Hackers but the problem is that Hackers have programs to generate false Hardware ID's (i think it's called spoofing). So hardware bans won't actually ban their real hardware.
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Damn. I know they don't discuss much about their banning process (nor should they) so I try not to speculate much both due to not knowing the details and understanding why they wouldn't want to share them. I'll refrain from anything further on that aspect of the topic.
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I think it would be far simpler to require Epic accounts to do a passive "test" to prove they are human when logging in. Worst case scenario- even if it would take a while, altering the game to have some non-client side checks that are run consistently in the background over the course of a game to ensure nothing is tampering with the program could work. For example, a small program/system keeping track of what perks and abilities are brought to the match. Each client is only allowed certain effects based on their perks, items, and (more relevant for killers, but it would also prevent survivor → Killer changes by hackers) character selected. Everything that happens clientside has to be sent to the admin end, and then is "checked" with how the game would properly run with all of the "relevant variables" in that situation. Any inconsistency gets flagged. If any of those variables change or an effect not associated with that specific perk/ability and also not "approved" by the admin side of the connection (such as for events or chaos shuffle), then that could be another flag for the system. When the client-side reports something that is inconsistent with what the Admin side reported in the past, then the admin side takes note of which client did so and what was different. It could also COMPARE client side changes to further ensure no funny business. Survivor A reported having a certain perk effect from Surviovr B? Check if survivor B is meant to have said perk and if it was available to use.
TLDR: just having the info be required to be sent to behavior's side of things alone would allow for them to "check" for anything that wouldn't make sense without hacking. They wouldn't need to know "how or why" the person is hacking, just that what they are doing doesn't make sense from the perspective of the code/normal mechanics.
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