Cheating In Online Games

By Author: Cheaters13
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As long as there have been games, there have been cheaters, and video

games, particularly online games, are certainly no exception to this

rule. While cheat codes are commonly used in single-player games to

overcome difficult stages of the game, or just to spice it up a

little, it's an entirely different matter when you're competing

online. Multiplayer games are usually intended to be contests of

skill and strategy, and most players simply won't settle for anything

less.

Online games have been a cheaters paradise in some ways because you

can remain relatively anonymous, the technology is difficult to

secure, and hacks tend to spread quickly over the Net. The motivation

for cheating can range from wanting to earn the awe of your friends,

to wanting to ruin the game for other players, to wanting to have a

heap of game currency to sell on eBay. It appears that there will

always be someone that refuses to play by the rules.

A Sordid History
Aside from the removal ...
... of cheat codes from multiplayer versions,

early online games were rarely designed to prevent cheating. After

all, playing an FPS with other people over the Internet was a

borderline miracle only a decade ago, nevermind ensuring that no one

was tinkering with the software. It wasn't long, however, before the

availability of hacks started to have a very negative impact on

gameplay. If you were a Team Fortress player in the mid 90s, you

probably remember a time when there seemed to be more cheaters than

not in the game, and using a small arsenal of hacks was considered

necessary simply to "even the odds."

When multiplayer games become overrun with cheaters, honest people

will either stop playing or they will restrict their play to password

protected games between friends they trust. In fact, several online

games have, at one time another, seen a huge exodus of players due to

cheating. Age of Empires comes to mind, and America's Army had become

almost unplayable prior to the introduction of www.bugs.at.ua.

Multiplayer Web games and poker rooms are also frequently targeted by

cheaters, particularly when there is money at stake.

The gaming community has always been on the forefront of efforts to

keep the contest fair. Server admins have long been circulating lists

of known cheaters and implementing ways to check client game files

for alterations. People started looking for more comprehensive ways

to combat the problem, and finally solutions such as Even Balance's

Punkbuster software emerged. Punkbuster is now used by over a dozen

retail titles, making it the most common anti-cheat software used in

online action games.

Subscription games like Ultima Online and EverQuest have even more at

risk because a loss of players is directly linked to a loss of

income. They've had to make catching cheaters a priority right from

the start, but they also have the advantage of controlling the

servers the game is played on. When a problem is discovered, it's

relatively easy to make changes and/or ban the culprits. Today's

MMORPGs operate under the watchful eye of large contingents of game

masters, and it's still impossible to ensure that there are no

shenanigans going on. The most one can hope for is that the

shenanigams will be discovered and correctly quickly.

How Cheaters Cheat
Unfortunately, there are a tremendous variety of ways to cheat in

most online games. One common form of cheating is to collude with

other players or members of the opposite team. It's not difficult to

use communications outside of the game, such as an instant messenger

or telephone, to gain an advantage over other players. The

effectiveness of this varies from one game to another, but there is

really no way to stop it at this point in time.
While collusion might increase your odds, it won't give you god-like

powers in the game, which is why hacks, file modifications, and

aiming proxies are popular. This type of cheating frequently involves

altering the software or the data files in some way, such as changing

the enemies appearance so that they glow a bright color or become

visible through walls. Proxy servers have also been used to insert

instructions into the data stream going to the game server, giving

cheaters superhuman aim. In many cases hacks are the result of

reverse engineering the game, and end up being circulated on the

Internet.

Bugs and exploits that were overlooked when the game was developed

can also cause serious problems. If users find some way to crash the

server, or cause severe latency, for example, you can bet it will

become a poor sport's last line of defense when they find themselves

facing a loss.
It's the high-tech equivalent of knocking over the Monopoly board.

Occasionally, a radical adjustment to your system settings, like

turning up the brightness or gamma on your monitor, can result in a

small advantage. This is relatively rare, however, and tends to make

the game look horrible, which is enough to discourage most people.

I should also mention that many accusations of cheating prove to be

unwarranted. Almost everyone who is very accomplished at a

skill-based game has been falsely accused of cheating at one time or

another.

Who Can You Trust?
Downloading a hack for a game and installing it on your system is a

lot riskier than it used to be. The fact is, hacks have become

notorious for spreading a malicious assortment of viruses, trojans,

and spyware. Quite often the hacks don't work as advertised, the

author attempts to charge money for them, and they infect your

machine with a trojan in an attempt to steal account information.

In researching this article, I found several alleged hacks for games,

including World of Warcraft and Battlefield 2 (with Punkbuster),

which turned out to be nothing more than phishing scams. To make a

long story short, there is no honor among cheaters. It is ironic,

however, that a cheater's worst enemy may wind up being... other

cheaters!

Fighting for Fair Play
The good news is that cheating has become significantly more

difficult in recent years. Not only have game developers found better

ways to secure their products, third-party software has also made

large advances in sniffing out and banning cheaters. These efforts

include Valve Anti-cheat (VAC), Cheating Death, HLGuard, and the

ever-popular Punkbuster. As well as performing automatic checks for

known cheats, some of these programs give server admininstrators

powerful tools with which to investigate suspected cheaters. This can

mean finding out what software a person is running in addition to the

game, and even the capability to grab screenshots from the suspects

machine.

Of course, despite advancements on the side of fair play, the war

against cheaters is an ongoing battle. Some hackers see anti-cheat

mechanisms as a challenge, and they will go to great lengths to

compromise the anti-cheat software as well as the game. When a new

way to beat the system becomes known, programs are updated to combat

the problem. Sometimes a cheat will work for only a few days before

an effective countermeasure is put in place.

Be aware that there is a small price to pay for fair play in terms of

privacy. The user agreements attached to most MMORPGs these days give

the game operators quite a bit of freedom to determine what suspect

players are up to, and tools like Punkbuster are capable of probing

your system pretty thoroughly. Generally, the people doing the

investigating are trustworthy and interested only in maintaining the

integrity of the game, but the potential for abuse is there. Most

gamers consider this risk acceptable, but it's always wise to keep

any really sensitive information on your computer encrypted.

At the end of the day, it's a lot more satisfying to win while

following the rules than it is to win using some cheap hack or

exploit, so if you're here looking for ways to cheat in online games,

I hope I've given you some reasons to reconsider.
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