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Games Your Rights Online

Top Counter-Strike Players Embroiled In Hacking Scandal 224

Posted by timothy from the people-actually-get-excited dept.
An anonymous reader writes Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is one of the world's fastest growing eSports, but the community has been rocked by scandal in the last week, with several top players being banned by Valve for using various hacking tools to improve their performance. With the huge Dreamhack Winter tournament taking place this weekend, the purge could not have come at a worse time for the game, and fans are now poring over the archives for other signs of foul play in top tier games — be sure to look out for these tell tale signs while playing.
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Top Counter-Strike Players Embroiled In Hacking Scandal More

Top Counter-Strike Players Embroiled In Hacking Scandal

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  • It's half the reason I stopped playing it 15 years ago.

    • Counter Strike: Global Offensive is about two years old. (pedantic I know)

      • A rose by another name... You act as if most of these shooters weren't so similar that it takes "true mastery" to even find any kind of difference.

    • It's half the reason I stopped playing it 15 years ago.

      Yep. One friend of mine had a hack that added large rings around each player that you could see nearly all the way across the board, which penetrated walls, etc b/c they were not suppose to be there - simple hack by just replacing the character profile information to include it.

      Of course he claimed it was as much a hinderance as an advantage b/c even though the rings were blue/red (to tell you which team) he had a hard time telling which team so would often kill his own team mates too.

      Needless to say,

      • Valve has done a huge job in getting rid of those sorts of hacks. But this is and has always been a big arms race.

        VAC did defeat most of this crud for quite a while, but there will always be people willing to create new hacks as long as there is money or 'lulz' involved.

        Best we can really do is be vigilant and weed out those who ruin the game for the rest. Be it with hacks or just general asshatesque behavior.

  • I don't play video games but I'm an obsessed chess fan. There was recently a scandal with a player being banned for cheating. They never found the device, but it was assumed he was using a computer to help him win tournaments (and money).

    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06... [nytimes.com]

  • I am unfamiliar with E-sports so please bear with me. Do you mean to say the players play from home on their own computers via the internet? Like regular gamers?

    And anyone is surprised that people hacked?

    I was under the impression that E-sports was like regular sports (NFL, etc) and that players got together in real life in the same location and played on identical computers provided by event organizers. I guess this is this not the case?

    • In most tournaments that have a significant prize pool, there is usually an online qualifying followed by an in-person elimination round. This gives the best of both worlds: the tournament is able to invite a larger number of teams than logistics would allow if all games were in-person. But the actual prize money is won at the 2-3 day "main event," where the tournament is able to closely supervise the players.

      For example, in Dota 2 the Starladder tournament that is going on right now, based in Kiev, invit

  • Reminds me of Chessmaster cheating (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 25, 2014 @02:07PM (#48459861)

    I used to play people in online chess, but would mirror the games using the game Chessmaster. That way my opponent would not be playing me, but rather Chessmaster. Eventually I got a really high rank and someone beat me. I congratulated him for beating Chessmaster, the game, on the hardest difficulty. He told me that he too was using Chessmaster. His version was higher than mine.

    I found that pretty much all the top ranked players were using Chessmaster or some variation to win. In conclusion, all the top ranked players cheat at games if they can get away with it.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Was that any fun? I can't image how it would be unless you were that obsessed with winning. Maybe you learn a little something seeing how the program responds to opponents, but there's got to be better ways to improve your chess game.

      At least in FPS cheating you have to do something, you move your player around and let the aimbot do it's work or you get the advantage of seeing/shooting through walls. I guess I can at least see how that's fun, I mean kids still like riding bikes with training wheels right

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        For psychopaths cheating is part of winning ie "hah hah sucker I am smarter because I beat you by cheating". This in spite of the fact that cheating proves inferior ability. So psychopaths routinely cheat as proof of their superior ability, at lying, cheating and stealing (killing as well so watch out). They basically play computer games the exact way they play all other 'games'. Politics, corporations, medical services, police, military, all games they seek to win, where personal advantage is victory and

    • Why?

  • cheating? (Score:3)

    by steak ( 145650 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2014 @02:08PM (#48459875) Homepage Journal

    ...in counter strike?

    The hell you say.

  • Inescapable fact of FPS games (Score:3)

    by dave562 ( 969951 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2014 @02:09PM (#48459887) Journal

    I keep hoping and praying that one day someone will come out with a way to effectively deal with this, but the reality is that the problem is here to stay. The way this pans out is that you get a day or two of hack free game play when the publisher updates their anti-cheat code. Then the hackers come out with new binaries that cannot be detected and the game sucks again.

    I like FPS games and I really like FPS games on the computer where I can use a keyboard and mouse. Hackers just kill the game though. On a hacker free BF4 server, I will go 3:1 or 4:1 frequently. Yet my overall ratio for the game is down around 0.8:1. That gives some sense of how often the hacks are going undetected.

    I do not understand why companies like EA, Valve, etc do not just subscribe to the hacks themselves and update the detection routines as soon as they come out. They have proven that they have technology that will catch the large majority of them. It just seems like they are too lazy to stay on top of it. The cynical side of me thinks that they are have only been aggressive with the BF4 hackers in the last week or two due to Hardline coming out soon.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

      So they don't ban hackers?.. Or put them only with other hackers. What do they generally do?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dave562 ( 969951 )

        They ban them, but I think it is a limited time ban. As someone else commented, those hackers are paying customers. They do not want to cut off the revenue stream.

        I think that they should let them play on hacker only servers. Let the trolls all roll around in the muck with each other and leave the rest of the community alone.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mjwx ( 966435 )

      I do not understand why companies like EA, Valve, etc do not just subscribe to the hacks themselves and update the detection routines as soon as they come out. They have proven that they have technology that will catch the large majority of them.

      Its not quite that easy.

      Much like Valve, EA, et al.. the cheating software has it's own form of DRM to prevent reverse engineering. So it would be difficult to tell how the hack is affecting the game because they have little to no visibility on the hack.

      Detecting cheaters server side is relatively easy in comparison. What I'd like to see is some software that would degrade the experience of cheaters, I.E. when a cheater is detected using an aimbot, decrease their accuracy or make 3 out of every 4 shot

  • and... (Score:2)

    by kuzb ( 724081 )

    ...nothing of value was lost.

  • This article is terrible. First it says it's going to tell you how to spot hacks, then it goes on to give the names of those hacks and what they do... as if that's going to help you spot anything. At best this is going to result it more false hacking allegations. Which are a far worse problem than the actual hacking.

    I'll be playing an FPS, have 5x the score of anyone else on the map, and there'll be this heated argument over some other guy hacking. If he's hacking... why does his score suck so bad? Why hasn

  • if opp_score >= my_score opp cheats, otherwise, they're playing fair!

  • CS players cheat? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by slashmydots ( 2189826 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2014 @02:24PM (#48460045)
    Take the number of cheaters in all major cycling tournaments, multiply it by the number of cheaters at every major magic the gathering tournament, and multiply it by 10,000 and you've got the number of people who cheat at Counterstrike.

    By the way, there is so much wrong with this article I don't know where to start. Reporting people is a fucking joke. It does NOTHING. Going over logs to see who cheated just tells you who cheated. Nothing happens. There is nothing the user can do about it. Until companies get serious about cheating, nobody will play their completely ruined games.

    In MW3 for the PC, it became unplayable after about 3 months. You literally cannot play one single online round without someone floating through the air and firing at you with zero recoil. That's a $100 million+ game. They just don't give a flying fuck about cheating.

    Here's THE answer. Google [name of game] hacks. Download the hacking utilities that everyone else is using. Look at what directory it installs to or what DLLs go where. Have the game check for those files in the next patch. Permanently ban everyone with the hack installed and ban them from Steam so basically those cheating pieces of shit aren't allowed to play video games anymore.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dow ( 7718 )

      You can't permanently band people from Steam when all you need to create a new account is an e-mail address. People will just use a new throwaway account for hacking. Hackers already are known to setup perhaps 10 new Steam accounts when the game they enjoy hacking the most is on sale, and buy 10 copies. I've seen hackers get banned and then brag to people laughing at them getting banned that they have half a dozen more copies and they are going to enjoy getting them all banned but until they do they are goi

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

        I thought steam looked at hardware IDs?

      • You can't permanently band people from Steam when all you need to create a new account is an e-mail address. People will just use a new throwaway account for hacking

        So what? It still magnifies the cost substantially.

        The way to go is to make getting a pass to play online painfully difficult.

        I don't think even Valve can get away with that.

    • There is a far simpler solution, simply treat the clients as untrusted and keep any information that would give an advantage on the server.

      • That is what League of Legends does. The fact that servers send the client more information than it strictly needs is just silly.
        Though generating 3d sound from players client-side would require positional data.. so it is a bit tricky

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      Here's THE answer. Google [name of game] hacks. Download the hacking utilities that everyone else is using. Look at what directory it installs to or what DLLs go where. Have the game check for those files in the next patch. Permanently ban everyone with the hack installed and ban them from Steam so basically those cheating pieces of shit aren't allowed to play video games anymore.

      Trust me, those things aren't static. And I'm sure Valve already does that - they purchase the cheats (cheats at this level are s

  • Pretty surge a purge of cheaters and revelation of what tools to look for is the BEST THING to happen just before a serious tournament. Probably a week earlier would have been ideal.

  • Take place on third party computers with cameras and spectators watching your every move, both digitally and in real life.
  • people on counter strike cheating cheating no way. theirs a reason i call it cheater strike.and thats way back on the orignal.

  • Part of the problem is that it is very difficult to tell a player using hacks from a player who is simply good at playing the game. I remember, a long time ago (10+ years) my brother was a counter-strike player who specialized in head shots. He was very good at it, but standing behind him while he played there were numerous occasions where he got kicked off a server due to players thinking he was cheating. He wasn't. I was standing right there behind him.

    I think the only real solution is to video yourse

  • This has been going on since what, 1999?

    I sucked so bad at CS that in the 00s I went to LAN parties to wire up, run the hackpot, and distribute 'clean' USB mice, monitor the LAN, and cycle the overhead monitor showing leaders and their screens to the gallery. This before Valve got serious about the hax0rs.

    Yeah, wireframe and autoaim hacks, way fun. Cheating bastids all of them, anything to score.

    I got free pizza and beer. And played Avatar over an OC-3. woot. rockin dayz.

  • To eliminate the competition in an upcoming tournament:
    1) Hack into your competitors' computers and install online game cheats.
    2) Wait for VAC to catch the "cheaters"
    3) See your competitors banned from the tourney
    4) Profit!!!
  • There are two ways of dealing with this and neither has been done. Everyone does the cat and mouse game of chasing down constantly mutating hacks that never works. You have to either lock down the system or add a system that looks for the behavior the cheats present (not the cheats themselves).

    A behavior analysis program based off data could very easily do this with little to no false positives. Essentially it's doing what everyone else is already doing, which is looking for the behavior of cheaters. There

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