How GOA deals with cheating

[brite]

>Recently you requested personal assistance from our on-line support
>center. Below is a summary of your request and our response. We will
>assume your issue has been resolved if we do not hear from you within
>48 hours. Thank you for allowing us to be of service to you.
>
>
>Subject
>---------------------------------------------------------------
>Account terminated for using speed hack cheat program
>
>
>Discussion Thread
>---------------------------------------------------------------
>Response (CS) - 05/07/2003 04:23 PM
>Greetings,
>
>We received many cheat reports about your account. After investigation,
>you
>were caught red-handed using speed hack cheat program on Wednesday 7th of
>May 2003. This kind of action is NOT tolerated on our servers.
>
>As a direct result of this, your account is now permanently suspended.
>Account: XXXXXX
>
>
>
>When starting the game on the European servers of Dark Age of Camelot,
>you
>agreed to the terms of the End User License Agreement (EULA) and the rules
>established by the Code of Conduct.
>
>- Article in the EULA:
>
>6. Hacks, Modifications and/or Changes to the Game
>You may not use any third party software to modify the Game to change
>Game
>play. You may not use intellectual property rights contained in the Game or
>the Software to create or provide any other means through which the Game
>may be played by others, as through server emulators. You may not take any
>action which imposes an unreasonable or disproportionately large load on
>our infrastructure.
>
>- Article in the Rules of Conduct
>
>Legality
>No illegal activity is permitted within the Dark Age of Camelot, on its
>site or more generally in the environment connected with the game. The
>encouragement of such activities or the supply of means by which such
>activities could be practised will not be tolerated.
>It is forbidden to supply the means of access to software of an illegal
>and/or harmful nature (such as viruses or hacking/pirating programs).
>
>
>- Article in the General Condictions:
>
>GOA reserves the right to temporarily suspend or definitively terminate
>your subscription, effective immediately, in the event of:
>- insolvability or expiry of your credit card. GOA wishes to point out that
>your account may be suspended or closed if we are unable to invoice your
>card if it has expired on the date you renew your subscription,;
>- inability of GOA to check or authenticate the information provided at the
>time of subscription ;
>- failure to meet any of your obligations under the present general
>subscription conditions;
>- breach of intellectual property rights; In this respect, you acknowledge
>that the DAOC game contains elements protected by intellectual property
>rights and that GOA and/or any other supplier of its content remain the
>full owners of the relevant contents of the DAOC game and that you do not
>become the owner of these rights by downloading DAOC or by accessing your
>Player Account ;
>- failure to respect the provisions of the DAOC Behaviour Charter,
>available to consult at the address http://www.camelot-europe.com.
>- and more generally in the event of behaviour that GOA, at its entire
>discretion, judges harmful to its interests or to those of DAOC users.
>In the event of the suspension of your Player Account or in the event of
>termination of the account by GOA for one of the reasons stated above, you
>lose the right to access your Player Account and the data contained in it
>and you will not be entitled to any reimbursement, in whole or in part.
>
>
>
>Cheating is NOT tolerated in an online game and is not accepted on the
>servers of Dark Age of Camelot
>
>Yours sincerely,
>---------------------------------------------
>European Dark Age of Camelot Customer Support
>
>
>If your issue remains unresolved, please update this question at
>
>
>
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>



They don't prevent it, they only ban people when players report it

 

[Sabu]

Whats the problem? they banned a cheater?

BAN ALL the CHEATERS !!!!

go go GOA

 

[Garaen]

Caught red handed, i don't see the problem.

 

[old.windforce]

cheaters should die irl

ban is to mild

 

[old.job]

Maybe it's his little confessional.

 

[old.Belorfyn]

I don't understand this thread but apparently cheater got banned, looks good to me
I'm glad they give permanent ban for first offence (as long as they're 100% sure of course).

As for preventing, that's up to Mythic and I'm sure if there was easy way to prevent speedhacking, they'd done it already..
I've understood it's possible to speed hack in many online games, perhaps it's hard to make stop to it.
I don't know, I don't program or hack online games
While waiting for fix.. Go go GOA

 

[Giljotine]

Don't get it why ppl even bader using hacks.

After a while it takes away all the fun and then what will you do?

Try a new game? And look for new hacks?

So you can get bored again?

It's good GOA suspend the hackers they notice or get msg about.

 

[brite]

No it wasn't me that got banned

what i am trying to say is the only way of detecting cheaters is if players report them, and if you thinks thats good......

 

[Nonnier]

how else can they do it?

i guess if there was a way to detect a hacker easily and quicky (and cost effective) it would have been put in already.

not that i understand the world of programming so i dunno if it easy to do or not.

 

[Cybwyn]

What better way to catch cheaters though?

Player A sees Player B using a speed hack (or other cheat). Player A sends a report to GOA. GOA observe Player B. Player B gets banned.

Simple.

 

[brite]

Player A cheats his way to 50 solo un seen by anybody else

 

[Belsameth]

yes, unfortunatly the only way they could do it otherwise was to break a few laws and monitor each and every keystroke on your PC, and log each and every program running.
sorry hun, if there was another way then reporting I'm sure it would've been implemented already, seeing how both GOA and Mythic have a fairly agressive stance on cheating

 

[Driwen]

I dont exactly see how this proves that goa doesnt check cheaters without them getting reported?
I know that through cheats it is possible to get one mithril, however by doing so mythic knows you cheated and bans you. There isnt a single report going on there.

But it is hard for goa to see wether or not one of the 20k people online is cheating. They will probably try and watch suspicious behaviour, but they also read reports and that does make it easier to single out suspicious behaviour.

Btw belsameth is it illegal to run a script (if its possible to make one) that watches if anyone is doing the same set of commands with same set of intervals, in other words if anyone on the server is using a macro?

 

[-fwapp-]

Originally posted by brite
>Thank you for allowing us to be of service to you.

>Yours sincerely,
>---------------------------------------------
>European Dark Age of Camelot Customer Support

"thanks for coming and fking up our game and making people hate us"....

 

[uma_thurman]

Yay! Once I can get back into rightnow I'm gonna post them a screenie showing a fg of cheaters.

When these guys get banned, their characters should be seen hanging from some gallows in a very public place to warn others not to copy them

 

[Draylor]

Originally posted by driwen
Btw belsameth is it illegal to run a script (if its possible to make one) that watches if anyone is doing the same set of commands with same set of intervals, in other words if anyone on the server is using a macro?

Of course its possible, the difficult bit would be doing it in a way that didnt add alot of extra processor overhead on the servers. The last thing Mythic want to do is introduce more server-side lag by trying to catch folks cheating.

And anyway as soon as that was introduced people would find a way around it - they always do.

 

[Roo Stercogburn]

Since everything is logged anyway, the data has to be stored, as well as the various char and live zone info.
Its not unreasonable to expect it to be on a different server (or cluster) to the actual servers that run the different realms. (Each 'server' such as Prydwen is not a single server anyway from what I've gleaned, there is at least one physical machine per realm).

You don't need to run a security checking procedure on the same server as the data, you could quite easily set up a separate server with access to the data server and run the process from there. That would have zero impact on server performance, though obviously would create a bit of network traffic as it trawled the data. You'd have to check the performance of the data server itself too.

Another reason for running this on another server would be that you have to make sure the rate it is able to check at is equal to, or faster than, the rate that data is created, which given the nature of the DAoC servers, means a fairly meaty machine and some efficient code behind the security checking and nothing running on it to interfere with it.

Nothing to stop you sticking it on a separate network segment and this pretty much eliminates the chance of much interference with the network, you just have to make sure the data server has access to both segments.After you have the setup, its just a case of deciding what you want to check for in the logs.

There isn't a computer scenario that can't be created and solved if the resources are there. Resources are usually the limiting factor in my experience, not the technology.

 

[Shaki/Aeis]

Originally posted by Giljotine
Don't get it why ppl even bader using hacks.

I would guess it is only the bad players who need third party programs to be able to compete.

 

[Gewny]

Hmm a scipt would be possible (even if it would relly expensive, not only the hardware but the manhours to maintain and upgrade, yes the script would need continuous upgrades to compete with the development of hacks)

But one problem for Goa is : Witch laws are they folloing ? All european or French only ? Cuz I am pretty sure there are major differances.

 

[~Mobius~]

Prawned!

 

[Giljotine]

Would like to see Umas screenie though
A full group using hack (ouch)

 

[Sard-Nair]

rofl, GOA have finally done somthing right!

 

[astriix]

Cheaterz shuld be displayed, hanging high up from baskets attached to ropes, dangling jus above Jordheims gates, for all to see, and shoot arrows at..while they die slowly, from lack of food n water....yyeessss dat be v gud..

Wot GOA did was totali right, i wuld i done the same fing..

GO GO GGOOAA

 

[bigchief]

Originally posted by brite
[BThey don't prevent it, they only ban people when players report it [/B]

There was something mentioned in a grab bag or whatever the other day that said character movement speed is controlled client side not server. So its alot harder to monitor and alot easier to hack.

 

[Arnor]

@ goa

 

[Driwen]

Originally posted by Draylor
Of course its possible, the difficult bit would be doing it in a way that didnt add alot of extra processor overhead on the servers. The last thing Mythic want to do is introduce more server-side lag by trying to catch folks cheating.

I know its possible to program, but dont know if it was possible lag wise. Besides that the real question was if it was legal to do so as belsameth mentioned that it might be against privacy laws?

 

[pihlss]

owell I wouldnt mind get some better speed at my warrior
without doing some hacks.. :-/

- I would have a hard time to se a speed hack as Im not into wathing other ass in game.

 

[-fwapp-]

how do they check for radar? dont they put up false signals in deserted areas like mmg hadrians?

 

[The Real Redi]

From what i can gather, and from a thread here eeeaars ago about a guy whining about being (unfairly?) banned for using Radar, to catch cheaters they do indeed "honeypot" them, which is illegal in some form in the UK (think its only police cannot obtain a conviction if the offender is lead or something)

This guy was being accused of using radar, so they parked one of their spies inside a tree or something, way out of his clip range in the frontier, and he lead his group to it. They did it a few times, and along with screenies and complaints on Rightnow, they banned him.

Seems with cheats that have a visible effect on players (speed hack, lag tricks, radar etc) they will "tempt" the offender into commiting the crime where they can record it for propserity.

With the slightly more covert hacks (and whether any of these are actual or made up i dont know - all i have seen referred to at one time or another) like loot and XP boosters, cash hacks, zoning hacks, RP boosters etc. must be much harder to detect, and often can only be stumbled upon by chance (or spotted over someones shoulder in a internet cafe )

 

[old.Glendower]

Originally posted by The Real Redi
From what i can gather, and from a thread here eeeaars ago about a guy whining about being (unfairly?) banned for using Radar, to catch cheaters they do indeed "honeypot" them, which is illegal in some form in the UK (think its only police cannot obtain a conviction if the offender is lead or something)

Here in the US, that is referred to as "entrapment", and only applies if the police induce someone to commit a crime when they otherwise would not have. Merely offerring an OPPORTUNITY to commit the crime (i.e. an officer dressed as a drunk and pretending to be unconcious while lying in a ditch with 100$ bills hanging out of his shirt pocket and waiting to see if anyone tries to take them) is not entrapment.