Talk:Cheating in online games/Archive 1

Ongoing edits
I'm going to be editing this article to improve its prose and structure over the next week or two. I'll put a quick summary of what I do in each edit here, please direct your comments here as well. --Ignignot 14:53, 28 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Put the definition first, which is the normal Wiki format. Rewrote the introduction to better prose. Relabeled the sections because of their awkward names. --Ignignot 19:50, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Camping and other unsportsmanlike stuff
I appreciate it's not technnically cheating, but should this article either mention, or link to a summary page of, the various kinds of "unsportsmanlike conduct" (e.g. Camping (computer gaming)) that are found in online games? -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 17:14, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Please Comment on External Links
Here is my proposal for a guideline for the External Links Section:


 * 1) We should look for one good site that explains cheats, with as little commercial crap added as possible.
 * 2) All edits from anons which only add to external links should be reverted as an advertisement.

Looking back on edits, external links for cheat sites have almost always been added by anons. This makes me suspect that it is a form of advertising because these sites derive their revenue from advertising. At the same time, it does make sense to put links to sites which detail cheating. Unlike a recent editor who removed some links (which I will not put back), I do not feel that distributing information on cheating is particularly bad. Then again I am rather libertarian with my views on the subject - I think of cheaters as pathetic but I also think that community forces tend to keep them away from the level of play that I am usually at. I want to hear what other editors have to say about the subject though. --Ignignot 22:21, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

So perhaps what's really needed are links to anti-cheat sites? Such as truthscape.com, which details cheating in Runescape? 12.28.15.70 (talk) 07:06, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Second paragraph
As true as it probably is, I find "Cheating exists in all multiplayer, online computer games." a somewhat silly argument and sentence. Is there any source for this? --213.169.3.181 12:02, 29 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Instead of proving that all games have cheats, why not prove that any one popular game does NOT have cheating? Every game has cheaters...fact -superkala

Somtimes in games they let you cheat like in the sims 2 if you type motherload you get lots of cash.

Instead of making an unprovable statement, -- disprovable, yes; provable, no -- this should say something more like, "Cheating in some form or other can be found in ANY MMO." 12.28.15.70 (talk) 10:02, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Trojan horses and keyloggers and such?
Would it be approriate to mention in this article that, as a result of the spread of cheating, often there will be fake "hack" sites which claim to generate ingame currency, or make you invincible, or any other number of claims, that are actually keyloggers or trojans, intended solely to steal a given player's account information? Errick 14:52, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, i agree. Someone should put that in. RocketMaster (talk) 14:50, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

MMORPG Article Text Dump
Sorry to dump this work on you, the watchers of this article, but I felt that this content over at MMORPG was not really within the scope of that article and should be placed in here (or in its own article). --Beefnut 02:55, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Cheating in online games

Cheating is a major challenge for game developers and legitimate players. Cheating is not only limited to MMORPG, but to any major online games as well. Exploiting is a form of cheating involving the use of a flaw in the game mechanics to gain unfair advantages. Depending on the nature of the exploit, developers can address the exploits within a short time through patches and updates. Even when fixed, exploiting can still be an issue, as exploiters may still have the advantage or items they gained before the patch was released. Depending on the nature of the exploit, a rollback may be needed just to counter the effects. Twinking may also be seen as another form of cheating.

Third-party programs may be used to automate in-game actions, often with such efficiency that it gives users a huge advantage. Botting is a term for a player using a script that could automate progress through the game without them actually playing the game. Farmers, if they are unable to use exploits, will use such methods to harvest ingame currency or materials from the game world around the clock. They often sell the currency and items they earn via eBay or other commerce sites, thus possibly unbalancing the game's economy. This gives players a chance to make their way into the upper tiers of the system without following the logic originally intended by the designers.

Some third party programs are released with code in them to capture and relay account details back to the author, enabling them to steal virtual possessions from the account or impersonate the rightful owner to perpetrate confidence tricks and other scams. These are often packaged, trojan-like, with seemingly-innocuous software tools for easier distribution amongst unsuspecting users.

Even more subtle methods are known to be used to cheat; depending on the way the game handles certain aspects of gameplay the client can be modified, either on disk, directly in memory, or on the wire as data passes between the client and server. So far as the server does not verify the veracity of client data or, ideally, take care of important calculations server-side, this can be used to modify values such as character health or armor, speed up movement, or change other aspects of the game to the cheater's advantage. There are programs that have been designed to prevent external programs from running during a game, such as GameGuard. The integrity of client files can also be checked each time the game is loaded, although of course there are usually methods to disable these protection programs.

Other cheats: sandbagging. multiple accounts, pushing
The cheat list should probably include (my prose sucks - better rewording, grammar, and terms needed):

Sandbagging: widespread and considered cheating in online board games, especially these with auto-ranking systems. Achieving (by various means) a nominal rank lower than the correct one can be rewarding for a player because it leads to match against weaker opponents, but it unbalances the ranking system and annoys the unsuspecting opponents. (examples: IGS, KGS - there is probably more).

Multiple accounts: the cheating player creates fake accounts (using fake identities) and plays them uniquely to give an advantage to his own real account.

Pushing: a much stronger player, usually playing by a longer time, helps a much weaker player, usually with a new account, by giving him virtual resources without anything in return. This is considered cheating in many systems because it gives to the pushed player an unfair fast start. The problem is that, in many system, due to the exponential growth of player stats, the same amount of virtual resources is at the same time negligible for the strong player and enormous for the weak one (examples: Travian, where this behavior leads to banning).

--193.206.170.151 23:27, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Also missed are hardware-cheats (Maybe one should separate console-gaming from pc-gaming in the first place and mention that consoles are far more saver against cheating)i.g. like special- or macro-boards. The Razer mouse driver is able to set any demanded mouse-speed although the game doesn't support this and "on the fly sensitivity" which changes the mouse-speed in the game instandly between two pre-adjusted settings through a button(after all it's a very well distributed device). Multiple devices like two mouses or multi-screening are hardware-cheats too. A wide-screen is a cheat if it is running per third party drivers in unsupported game resolutions. Summed up there is a growing industry which sells devices or techniques to give the player an unfair advantage. In addition, the culture of selling products or operating systems through games is a big problem at all to the gaming-community because it is a good reason for many people to cheat a game if they can't win it by hardware, this is the price we all pay for this behavior. The common rule is: the fastest box wins, the second is the cheater, the third the player. This should somehow in the introduction or the finish and also, that from a certain time, online-gaming was never what is was before because of cheating and the willingness to cheat grows and grows. I would say it was about the time when sites like www.fpscheats.com or www.msxsecurity.com started and cheats went fully commercial. Today it is just cheating hell on public servers and anyone who wants to know something about multiplayer-cheats on wikipedia should know this, because in this case the one don't know by himself. If someone here has another opinion about this then: sorry, but you are naive or got no clue. I think this is very important to submit and the sites I named are no secret anymore for anyone who plays a while and looks in an official forum sometimes.

84.63.254.23 17:26, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Oh, hardware cheats are mentioned indeed but it's not detailed enough, I guess you know what I mean.

84.63.254.23 17:34, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

And what about things like botting and invicibility? Or auto-HP/MP replenishing? Skyezx (talk) 22:18, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Resized3.JPG
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Very poor article, complete rewrite?
I think the overall quality of the article is bad. Its not documented well, its unencyclopedic, its got weasel words, the introduction paragraph contains a very big claim which isnt backed up by and evidence etc etc etc.

Frankly it needs to be completely rewritten, especially because its linked from quite a few other articles (I believe?)

Thoughts? I probably am not the person to rewrite it (haven't used hacks, don't intend to, even for the purpose of this article), so maybe someone with more detailed knowledge of common hacks could? Tehniobium (talk) 18:36, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Servers That Encourage Cheating?
There are servers that encourage cheating in order to be humorous or avant-garde, right? Sort of like the All-Drug Olympics. There should be a section on that if those kind of servers exist. 72.152.77.78 (talk) 20:04, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Back in the day there used to be Netrek servers that encouraged people to pit their aim-bots against each other. APL (talk) 19:20, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Citation style
I added the citationstyle param to the articleissues on this page because I wanted to add cleanup-link rot, but there was no param for that. In short: use cite web for this page's refs instead of bare urls. -- Thin boy  00  @043, i.e. 00:02, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Hacking
just want to say, most hacking can't be done online, as the code is in the server, not the users computer (this is true for Cheat Engine anyway). should this be mentioned? 81.109.245.76 (talk) 19:23, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia sources itself?
One of the references in this article is another Wikipedia article. I doubt that is acceptable. Theusernameiwantedisalreadyinuse (talk) 21:19, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Correct! It seems to have been deleted since, though. --McGeddon (talk) 13:54, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

RAGE QUITTING
It most definitely is not leaving just so you death doesnt get recorded or w/e Its getting mad and leaving anything just because your playing like shit or your team sucks...
 * Remember to sign on talk pages! Also, the article is about cheating in online games, not just things that piss people off. Rage quitting is sometimes considered cheating if it's done so as not to harm one's score. Otherwise, it might still piss people off, but it's generally not considered cheating. Theusernameiwantedisalreadyinuse (talk) 01:43, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Twinking
It appears that the twinking section of this article is being subject to an edit war started by McGeddon and I believe he has a sock puppet named Bonadea. They're changing the section of the article to a longer "detailed" version which is 100% pure POV. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.242.88.119 (talk) 09:57, 28 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Looking at the history, an IP replaced a detailed section about twinking with a shorter and hard-to-understand "[twinking is] exploiting a design flaw in a game's gearing mechanics in order to appear better than you actually are followed up by griefing newer players due to a massive gear advantage". I checked the source and copyedited it to match, just now - I hadn't realised this was the same paragraph I reverted yesterday.
 * So I'll restore the original and detailed version. It looks okay to me, but if you can explain the problems you have with it more clearly than "100% pure POV", I'm sure we can reach a compromise. Thanks. --McGeddon (talk) 14:12, 28 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree that McGeddon's edit warring is unacceptable and that his version is POV. He sounds like a bias twinking supporter.  If he continues to edit war, i'll file a complaint and propose a ban.  24.247.235.115 (talk) 08:38, 29 July 2010 (UTC)
 * So is your only issue that you feel twinking shouldn't be described as "not technically cheating", and you think we should mention PVP? That seems fine. --McGeddon (talk) 09:01, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Is twinking actually cheating? The section details hacks and cheats. However, using gear that you can normally get in a game that is the best for your level is on par with using a aimbot? The source is a blog as well. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.139.218.199 (talk) 06:05, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Re-write
I hope you lot don't mind, I've tried to organize it all a bit.. I think that elements needs more of a complete re-write, but I've tried to make it a little easier to read/digest by re-organizing it.

Something I'd maybe suggest is perhaps have "Common Cheats in FPS Games", "Common Cheats in MMORPG's", then Then "Common Cheats in RTS"?, and "Other Cheats"?

Then again, that could bulk out the entire article to an unweildly level, especially if we have to take into account PC&Mac Vs Console. Miles 2397 (talk) 22:38, 14 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Hello. Your edit in Cheating in online games accidentally broke the interwiki links within. I've fixed that, but please be careful next time. --210.240.195.212 (talk) 04:03, 20 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Urk, my bad. Am still pretty new at this game. Will watch out for that next time, my apologies. Miles 2397 (talk) 23:26, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Wallhack / Wallhacks
Can someone more knowledgeable than me please add an explanation of exactly what a Wallhack is. Wallhack and Wallhacks both redirect to this page, the page itself makes several references to WallHacks even describing some cheats as being like a wallhack while WallHack itself remains undefined in the page! Sjoa (talk) 03:41, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Good point, looks like somebody deleted it without explanation last month. I've added it back. --McGeddon (talk) 08:18, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

There used to be an article on wallhacking, but someone didn't like it. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wallhacking&oldid=327763268

Orbs - Not Really cheating?
"Orbs Orbs are mainly used in Roblox and are only accessible if the player has a certain tool. They allow the player to temporarily ban, kick, loopkill, or kill someone. It can give the player tools to kill someone. The player needs certain scripts to make an orb. This is considered really minor hacking." As a former ROBLOX player, I've seen a few games which employ tools named orbs as weapons. ROBLOX is a game that centers around player created content. The mentioned "scripts" may not have been created by the cheater, but instead a creation of the place (user-created games in roblox are called places) owner in the built Lua scripting language. This allows players to essentially program tools, vehicles and what have you. Additionally, the sentence mentioning "...[giving] the player tools to kill someone." may have simply been an "Insert tool" making use of the InsertService function found in ROBLOX's implementation of Lua. To me, this paragraph sounds like it was added by someone who joined a game, saw someone holding an orb (possibly rogue moderator of the server) abusing moderator powers. Additionally, I skimmed the sources and didn't find any mention of these orbs. Correct me if I'm wrong. Thank you. KalebOfTyto (talk) 00:10, 6 August 2011 (UTC)
 * You're right, it shouldn't be here, especially since it seems to be specific to one game. I've removed it. - MrOllie (talk) 00:35, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

Wait, wut?
however, changing player models or textures, increasing the field view,and modifying the brightness are considered cheating. Seriously? Brightness/gamma/contrast adjustments are available in a vast majority of games. Some FPS's allow you to set a "default skin" for enemies/friendlies which causes everyone to appear as X model regardless of individual settings. Same with FOV adjustments, some games directly allow it through options or leave it adjustable through config editing. To be unbiased it should say "however, in some games, changing..." Trogdoor (talk) 17:36, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

working on cleanup
Hi I'm FockeWulf FW 190

I'm working on getting this article improved so that it may reach good article or featured status. There's a ton of content that needs to be cleaned up and content which needs citations added. If anyone is interested in a collaboration to get this to good article status feel free to leave a comment on my talk page.

FockeWulf FW 190 (talk) 17:33, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

Throwing is cheating
This article is helpful and informative, but not as neutral as it could be. There are no categories for throwing, spamming, modified controllers, button remaps, or DDoS attacks. Some people consider everything to be cheating; others consider nothing to be cheating. There could be a section explaining the need for authority figures to determine the rules, and limits on their ability to enforce their version of the rules. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.91.17.5 (talk) 23:21, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
 * If you can find reliable sources to corroborate your theories - please add them. Chaheel Riens (talk) 14:56, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

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Satistics
This page lacks numbers! Quantities! Out-of-tens! I'm going to do some research to see if I can find any decent sources that have realistic statistics that quantify the cheating problem, and start a new section accordingly. If you disagree, start objectin', otherwise, see if you can help prevent me from putting outlandish numbers up here (i.e. find some good webcites - pun intended). Also, someone mentioned up the line a bit about a section that highlights unsportsmanlike behaviour that isn't necessarily cheating (such as camping). I am hereby also advocating this section and may create it if no one objects. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fluck (talk • contribs) 19:44, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Citation Quality
Can anyone find a better source for "Some manufacturers have taken counter measures to bypass or trick this detector." than the cited article? It does not back up the claim and isn't a reputable source since it's a lag switch seller. I found the Sony patent that says they do this, but no evidence that they actually do. Yousef Amar (talk) 07:53, 30 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Further, the Sony patent doesn't actually talk of any hardware solutions as far as I can tell, just software. Yousef Amar (talk) 09:00, 30 May 2019 (UTC)

Sandboxing?
The Sandboxing section says that: Sandboxing a software process can protect against potentially malicious actions such as code injection and memory modifications that would otherwise tamper with the game. One of the key benefits of sandboxing is that it can effectively prevent the underlying cheat mechanisms from working, and thereby can avoid the need for banning game community members as cheats simply don't work. Sandboxing a process generally has the opposite effect: it doesn't prevent other processes from manipulating the sandboxed process, but rather prevents the sandboxed process from accessing or manipulating the rest of the system. If it were the cheat process that was sandboxed, then that would prevent it from accessing the game, but that's something that would be done when first loading the cheat, which obviously wouldn't be done by any system designed to prevent cheating. And the citation given mentions "put[ting] a wall around [the] game client", which sounds more like the game client is what's being "sandboxed". Though as the wall is designed to protect, rather than confine, the game process—that is, to keep cheats out, rather than keep the game in—it wouldn't be considered a sandbox, from my understanding. (It's also worth noting that the word "sandbox" doesn't appear anywhere on that page.)

Besides the semantics of the word "sandbox" and whether or not the right word is being used, this article (this one, on Wikipedia) seems to suggest in the part I quoted that this is a 100% effective method at preventing cheating. Which is a very questionable claim, as unless the entire game is running on a machine to which the player has no physical access (e.g. a streaming service like Stadia) it will always be possible to develop a way around whatever anti-cheat mechanism is put in place, without the need of finding and exploiting a bug in any code. (To be fair, on consoles, doing so without an exploit would require specialized skills and equipment that make it impractical for virtually any cheater, but this isn't referring to console games.) No citation is given for this part.

 flarn 2006  [u t c] time: 16:39, 18 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Generally agree. Sandboxing can make cheating more difficult (if you imagine implementing a thin VM under a game engine as to not allow the game code to touch the OS directly, tampering the game can be harder because one also has to understand this new layer), but I don't see how it would prevent it. I support that this section needs some form of "intervention". BernardoSulzbach (talk) 14:15, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 7 January 2021
86.171.193.1 (talk) 18:20, 7 January 2021 (UTC) Aimbot
 * We have a section about that. Do you have a specific request? Alyo  (chat·edits) 18:43, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 20 April 2021
About the lagswitch, you can also connect wirelessly and connect the ethernet port to the wifi. In short, you connect the wifi to itself to slow down wifi to a near 0 mbps speed without detection. It makes a ton of requests so it turns into a DoS attack by the wifi itself. 112.198.169.156 (talk) 05:01, 20 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 12:10, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

Should this article have a section on Hacker vs. Hacker (HvH)?
I'm newer to Wikipedia editing so I don't know if this is necessary however in many online games (specifically Counter-Strike), there is a community of cheaters having duels using cheats.

Again, I don't know if there's enough sources on this or if it should even be mentioned, but I feel it's an important part of online game cheating history

Kjonaas (talk) 13:28, 15 March 2022 (UTC) kjc
 * Hello, do you know of any reliable sources that discuss HvH'ing? Without a source discussing hacker duels we cannot add that to the article, but if someone has covered that I agree that it's relevant. Alyo  (chat·edits) 14:34, 15 March 2022 (UTC)
 * I don't think there's any real sources outside of the HvH community itself discussing what it is. It's mentioned on Glossary of video game terms under 'H' here on Wikipedia, but info on HvH itself appears to be limited to the communities dedicated to it.
 * Kjonaas (talk) 15:19, 15 March 2022 (UTC) kjc
 * Yes, that's what I'm worried about as well. I think it may have been mentioned in some exposés on the scene, so I'll see if I can turn anything up. Alyo  (chat·edits) 17:03, 15 March 2022 (UTC)