Should Accounts w/ VAC Ban Be Allowed to Play DBD?
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You do realise that a VAC ban would then be extended to every online game, which would mean the account just cannot play online games anymore?
Like, you’re entertaining the possibility of someone ‘reforming’, but then propose that they shouldn’t even be given the chance.
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No, I think Valve was just lazy about implementation in their own games and they don't want to go back to 15+ year old titles to sort them out individually. Since they only work on things they want to, more or less, it ain't happening.
The shared bans are in things similar enough (note that it isn't ban on one Valve game = on all Valve games, the shared engine is key) it's likely due to shared codebase as much as a design choice, and they outright say to not do cross-game bans or bans based on VAC status. Are they hypocritical? Maybe. Doesn't matter, their stated position is in line with what I was saying.
If you read the rest of article that was linked you would see that there are in fact negative global consequences for receiving a VAC ban. You can no longer share VAC games. The article doesn't say this is associated with AppID so it's probably all VAC games that are unsharable. This is a global VAC banlist from sharing.
This is a page directed at partners, not users. I think that's saying that if you gift someone a free game copy (for reviews or whatever) and they get a VAC ban, you're not allowed to gift games to people again. Nothing about user restrictions.
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Regarding the issue of alt accounts, I agree it is a problem.
Mobile authentication has been suggested as a solution. Such that, mobile authenticated players will can opt in to only match with only other mobile authenticated players. Creating a more trusted playerbase because of the increased requirements for access.
Yes, I agree that most habitual cheaters who have played the game for a decent length of time have probably already been caught and banned. The gate is still open for other habitual cheaters to join though. VAC bans are occurring on a regular basis. My suggestion is to close the gate.
Yes, I agree there will be false positives. All I am saying is that there should be an acceptable rate of false positives. I think 0.18% is an acceptable rate. I used the higher end of the data provided by Riot for when cheating as at its highest. If we took the average over the time period it would be even lower around half. Even lower than false incarcerations in U.S. prisons. In fact, it is a couple orders of magnitude lower, around 200x lower. If this false rate is unacceptable, why should the prison rate be acceptable especially since the consequences are significantly more severe?
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Yes. I am aware. This is my proposal. Ideally, a ban for cheating would extend to every online game. There would be an appeals process. There would be some time limit at which the ban expires.
Basically, you cheat in a game you are permanently banned from it. You are also banned from other online games for a year.
The possibility of reform is small. They have a year to get their act together. They should use this time wisely.
The functionality is provided by the API. It is associated with AppID. They made the system. They could make it so game bans are specific to the game. But they didn't. Not even for newer games, not just 15+ year old games. This is disingenuous.
We know it's a possibility, because it is already being done by other devs.
Their stated position is not line with what you are saying. You are against cross game bans period. You have not once expressed support for it. You have stated that nothing would change your mind. By all available evidence, you are against this.
I notice you once again failed to answer any of my questions. Good job, as that would point out the contradictions in what you are saying.
Also, it appears you didn't read the end of the article. The information I included is taken directly from this section which talks about the user. What is your point and why did you include this? Why don't you read the article?
Q: How does a VAC ban or Game Ban impact the user?
A: When a user is banned via either one of our anti-cheat services, the following happens:
- The account cannot join secure servers for the AppIDs they are banned.
- The ban is publicly displayed on their Steam Community profile.
- The account can no longer share VAC enabled games.
- If the user is borrowing the game via Family Library Sharing, the ban is also applied to the actual owner of the game.
Please answer my questions. I am attempting to engage with you in good faith. Your outright refusal to answer any of my questions, accuse me of asking irrelevant questions with no explanation, and general misconstruing or outright falsehoods is annoying and derailing the discussion.
EDIT: Since it always seem to come to this, answer these questions explictly if you want me to take you seriously.
Should a ban in Unreal Engine be applied to all other Unreal Engine games? What if they are from the same company and are in the same genre?
If the answer is yes to either you contradict yourself. What is the crux of the contradiction? Is it something I am missing?
If the answer is no to either you don't agree with Valve. Why do you keep bringing this up? Is this some sort of appeal to authority? Why is Valve an authority?
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Ah, I thought you were referring to this part:
Both VAC and Game Ban enabled games can either be bought for your own account, or gifted immediately. If you directly gift a game to someone who gets permanently banned, you won’t be able to gift that game again.
Yes, they stop you from sharing any VAC game if you have a VAC ban. That isn't a ban from playing them, it's a blatantly obvious fix for people trying to use shared games to avoid getting banned while cheating again (also the reverse family sharing thing)
Should a ban in Unreal Engine be applied to all other Unreal Engine games? What if they are from the same company and are in the same genre?
No, maybe, probably yes if it's the same series.
The functionality is provided by the API. It is associated with AppID. They made the system. They could make it so game bans are specific to the game. But they didn't. Not even for newer games, not just 15+ year old games. This is disingenuous.
Since the AppID is part of the HTTP request for VAC status, it seems that there's some game-specific component going on. But the docs are pretty barebones, it's kind of annoying to tell. Does suggest they're not being lazy, although that makes it anyone's guess why their cross-game bans are restricted by engine. Could be they're not using the API properly, would not be the laziest thing I've seen developed.
Basically, you cheat in a game you are permanently banned from it. You are also banned from other online games for a year.
It's really good you're not in charge of anything related to game infrastructure, because that's ridiculously draconian. "You cheat in one game, you can't do multiplayer anything for a year and we have to institute some centralised appeals process". Disproportionate response, much?
Which of course excludes false positives and every form of hacking or impersonation, because that leads to "no, you now need to go through a bureaucratic process to play minecraft on a construction server because your system's RGB software upset an FPS game".
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So more effort on hacker's side, while requiring no additional effort to 99% of usual person.
Good deal I'd say.
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Thank you for attempting to answer my questions.
Regarding the VAC ban on sharing. Yes, it isn't a ban from playing. It is a ban from sharing. It is still a global banlist. Thus, we have acknowledged the existence of global banlists from VAC and acknowledged the existence of a denial of functionality based on behavior in unrelated areas (playing a game vs sharing a game). Do you take issue with this? Based on your comment you seem to agree.
If not, I do not think it is that far fetched of a proposal to acknowledge the possibility of denying functionality based on behavior in related areas (playing a game). This would seemingly contradict your position that my argument is illogical.
"No, maybe, probably yes"
Wow. Okay well you covered all the bases. Just about every possible answer was given here.
These seems to contradict your previous point which was made numerous times that game bans should only apply to the game that they are in and only at the moment the cheater is caught. Can you clarify your position with a sentence or two? Do you think that game bans should not carry over at all? Only in some cases? What is the difference?
I don't think it is possible to maintain the position that cross game bans shouldn't be possible at all, and then say cross game bans should be possible in certain circumstances. So again, please clarify any misinterpretations I have made or the obvious contradictions that are present.
I have no idea what you're talking about regarding the AppID and GET request. Certainly, AppID is a parameter for some requests. So what? Why does this matter when Valve does cross game bans?
What information is missing that you would like to make the resource less "barebones"? I think the documentation is pretty good. Much better than most documentation than I've seen even in internal professional environments.
To be honest, it seems like you didn't even read it after the last falsity involving account sharing bans.
Valve does cross game bans. Just acknowledge this already and it's different from your proposition that no cross game bans take place. What is so hard about this? Why are you so ideologically entrenched in this position?
No, I don't think it is a draconian response. Cheat in one online game, it is highly likely you will cheat in another. They can play single player games for a year while they are on timeout. They can still host their own private servers or join private servers with permission. They are just separated from the general populace.
False positives are low. I've already given a comparison about false convictions and false positives in gaming. Look it up. I don't think you actually care about false positives, as if you did you would be against the criminal justice system and would want radical reform to reduce the false conviction rate.
So, are you against the criminal justice system in its current form and want radical reform? In the interim, do you want the whole process just done away with?
Again, please address the points I made in bold. Thank you.
EDIT: I know you think my posts are too long but it wouldn't be this way if you were logically consistent, avoided fallacies, avoided contradictions, avoid misconstruing what is being said, actually reviewed cited information, and avoided the common "because I said so" argument. Half of my text is asking you questions or setting up to ask questions so I can get to the point.
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It's quite ridiculous to talk about reforms or false positives, It's not like those things doesn't matter for a single game.
There is no difference in those matters whether it's all games or single game, either way reforms can happen and false positives do exists, but there is literally no anti-cheat systems that consider those factor.
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I think the point where you're asking if I want to reform the entire justice system (with the added bonus of not specifying which country) clearly marks the end of the possibility for anything productive. This is a single-purpose forum, the state of political systems in the world is way out of scope.
You keep bringing up fallacies and logical contradictions, but your own posts resemble nothing less than a gish gallop. Well, a close relative in forum discussions I refuse to have anything to do with any more; responding to every point in a post with multiple points until it's impossible to follow.
And no, I'm not inconsistent. You ban people for cheating in a game, not for being a high risk of cheating based on prior actions. I am willing to extend the benefit of the doubt to very closely related games, but that's it. The endless "but what about" does not change that answer.
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Okay well stop derailing my thread then. Just leave it and be done.
You have lied repeatedly and engaged in bad faith repeatedly.
- You're original position was that nothing would change your mind. Okay fine. Maybe you know something I don't. It is clear that is not that case and what you actually do know is completely unknown.
- The false premise in which you created a story and assumed that no one was cheating and then came to the conclusion that.... no one was cheating. This is indisputable.
- You didn't read the Steamworks article provided. You either lied or were entirely ignorant about its implications. This is indisputable.
- You outright lied when you said Valve agrees with you. You are against cross game bans. Valve actually does cross game bans. You never addressed this difference, just moved the goal post which generated more contradictions. Your quote "Are they hypocritical? Maybe. Doesn't matter, their stated position is in line with what I was saying" is blatantly false. Valves position is to do cross game bans. That is not in line with what you are saying.
- You gave every possible answer to a yes or no question. Contradicting your original position, your position at the time, and your conclusion. It makes no sense.
- You refuse to give a percentage of false positives that would be acceptable. Thus, I assume you will not tolerate any false positives. Hence the criminal justice scenario. You give no comment on this. Bad faith.
- You outright refuse to answer my questions that would demonstrate your contradictions.
- You consistently engage in "because I said so" arguments, and immediately drop the argument when called on it. What happened to the "lazy Steamworks documentation"? You didn't even read it.
- Yes, you are being inconsistent. You just said you should "probably yes" ban people who cheat in games that share engine, genre, and developers. For the final time (thank goodness) this is inconsistent with your opinion that no cross game bans should occur.
- You state that I am committing logical fallacies. You provide no evidence or reasoning. You don't even point them out when they occur. Yet another example of bad faith, inconsistency, and a bad attitude. Here I am pointing out the things you've done so far. With explanations. You criticize me for being too long with my posts. If you hadn't been in bad faith and could communicate effectively they wouldn't have needed to be so long.
Goodbye. You are blocked. Stop lying and engaging in bad faith in my thread.
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It would appear that Riot uses data analysis to make determinations about cheating. Whether its performing abnormally well in ranked match that far defies statistical probability, determines a threat rating based on known associations between users who cheat, or assign different weights for accounts who spam the report button it does seem like there is some system in place.
Whether this is part of the anti-cheat system itself seems to be more of a matter of semantics. I agree with you that I wouldn't classify it as anti-cheat system specifically, but I would say it falls under the anti-cheat umbrella designed to reduce cheating and possible avenues.
Thus, it would make sense to disqualify a subset of players who have a disproportionately high rate of offending and are often the most problematic part of a community. The exact terms used to disqualify them can be a matter of debate, but I have no doubt that a disqualification in totality will reduce the absolute amount of cheating.
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Yes, i have read your whole post, but i am not a native speaker, so maybe i did understand something wrong. But still, you only have statements, not statistics.
With demographic i mean that we do know form behavioural science that children and young teenager tend to cheat way more in games than adults do (although the studys i do know were about boardgames, but i think it is comparable).
Also, the consequences of cheating in a f2p game is next to nonexistent (since you can always create a new f2p account). So it would be interesting to see what age groups are those cheaters. I would suspect most are teenagers, and thus, a lot of them will actually grow out of cheating. You see it here in the thread, people telling that they did cheat way back, but just dont do it anymore. I think that is plausible.
So the time aspect is related, because i think if you watch the habbits of cheaters for 1 year while they are still 13, it might be way different if you watch it for 10 years and they have grown into adults.
Sure, there are adults that cheat too, and they might not be that easily reformable, but since we dont have any knowledge about the demographic, we dont know if those people are 5% or 50%, and i would think knowing this would be a prequisite for taking action.
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