Rant: People Cheating in Online Games
Every year on Twitch.tv there is a channel called Games Done Quick which challenges players to load up classic games (mostly Nintendo base) and attempt to beat them as fast as they possibly can. The streams run for people’s entertainment and the primary goal is to raise money for selected charities.
As neat as it is to watch these players run through the game in crazy speeds, there are some situations that annoy me. They cheat.
They find game exploits that better their speed; that better their advancement in the game; that allow them to skip or essentially bypass difficult zones.
I started gaming on the Nintendo N64 where I played all of the popular LAN and single player games. As fun as that was, it surely wasn’t as memorable as the original Xbox and Microsoft’s, new at the time, Xbox Live service.
Halo 2 was one of the most popular multiplayer games of its time. It gave millions of players access to a way to battle each other on a massive online battleground. As that progressed, those who didn’t want to spend the time to improve their skills found new ways to beat their competition. They cheat.
There are two subjects in my rant today that I want to cover:
1. Why don’t game publishers take a bigger action against cheaters?
2. Why do people cheat to begin with?
I want to start with number two and attempt to answer the question of why people feel the need to cheat in online video games.
It has happened since the release of multiplayer games. Jumping a little ahead to my early memory of it, Call of Duty 4 and Halo 3 on the Xbox 360 were filled with cheaters. As early YouTube video showed, you could modify your Xbox files to give you an electronic aid that guaranteed you a perfect shot, every shot.
Take a look at Grand Theft Auto V for another example. This game is one of Rockstar’s greatest achievements, allowing the company to take in millions upon millions of dollars thanks to their in-game purchases of skins, vehicles, homes, cars, and other game-related activities.
At launch, GTA V was such a blast to play; especially online! The online functionality allowed you to play in that GTA-style way while also having competition against other players. You didn’t have to just keep your eye out for the in-game police, but other-real-life-thinking-players. It was intense and a lot of fun.
With the game aging, people quickly started to discover mods and cheats for the game that gave them invulnerability, infinite money, teleportation and flying god-like powers, and the ability to kill your player no matter where you were on the map.
Why and how is that fun? Where does the enjoyment come from cheating your way through the online experience with other players?
At first, I thought it might have to do with bragging rights. In games such as Call of Duty, you could show off to your friends and pretend that you are a great player with a great profile. High win percentage, lots of kills, little deaths, etc.. But that just doesn’t work, does it?
As a cheater, you can’t show off your skills. Visiting a friend’s house, streaming on Twitch, or posting on YouTube would all oust you as cheater and a fraud. So that can’t be the primary reason people cheat.
In addition to not being able to put the money where your mouth is, profiles that seem ‘too good’ are often seen as cheaters anyway. So, cheating doesn’t seem to really be about bragging rights either.
Age? I do believe that has something to do with it. Younger kids just want the satisfaction of cheating and killing everything in their sight. They don’t care about whether or not you know they are cheating because they only care about the victory screen.
Back in the Halo 3 days, it became so annoying that I even tried it. I had a friend give me a modified Xbox 360 controller which had buttons on the back. Pressing the buttons allowed one pull of the trigger to act as three pulls. Allowing you to fire much faster.
I will say, at a younger age I didn’t really care. It was nice to always get that headshot, but it quickly became not fun to play. Knowing you would win a game decreased the amount of joy that came with winning and eventually I just went back to playing how it was intended. Even if others would cheat.
The reason people cheat is that they don’t want to try. Cheaters don’t want to try, think, or get better at the game they are playing. They need the electronic advantage over others because they lose out on the desire of bettering themselves and receive enjoyment from the rage that comes from other players.
If you disagree, please leave a comment, but the number of cheaters I’ve seen over the plethora of games over the years all are the same type of person. Those who enjoy when you call them out and those who are just sitting at a computer mindlessly clicking down on their mouse just because they can. Plain and simple.
The next big question is why aren’t game publishers doing more to battle cheating?
I have two great examples for this section. Let’s start with the bad.
A game that I love playing is World of Tanks. The game is published by Wargaming. World of Tanks, or WoT for short, has millions of players peaking at 9 million worldwide back in 2011.
With most of those players residing in the North and South American servers and as time progresses with more players often leaving than joining the game, let’s assume the total player base today is around 6 million. A generous drop from the peak in 2011 and I’m assuming the player base has dropped some bit.
Then on the NA and SA servers, lets assume there are about 4 million players of the suspected 6 million globally. Wargaming recently released statement that they took a ‘massive’ ban against cheaters. A ban that included only 135 players.
Let me tell you that the game has far more cheating players than this. Wargaming has even said publicly at how the hacking system, Black WOT, used to be allowed by them and to stop the hackers they would need to completely rewrite the entire game’s base code.
With millions of players in this game and with enough cheaters to make a noticeable impact, why doesn’t Wargaming take stronger action? The same goes for other game publishes such as Ubisoft and the horrendous hacking in their first-person shooter, Rainbow 6 Siege.
The reason I believe they don’t take action is because why should they? Hackers buy in game content, pump up their player counts, and attempt to bring in more players (hacking or not).
As long as the number of hackers doesn’t increase a specific threshold to push legitimate people away a few upset gamers is just the general gist of business and a good shrug of the shoulders on the publisher’s side.
In addition to that thought, I don’t believe the publishers bother to put in anti-cheat systems because they require development time and money to create. It’s easier to just patch code rather than rewrite it.
If we take a look at a good publisher, Blizzard, we find a plethora of their games where hacking is almost nonexistent.
Blizzard uses an in-house created system called The Warden. The Warden is a watchdog that monitor’s the game’s code and looks for changes. If there’s a change, it attempts to detect if it’s being manipulated and actions are taken against that player.
It’s worked for decades, dating back to Diablo 2 and Warcraft 3. It gives players a well knowing feeling that the player they are versing online is giving it their absolute skill without any electronic aid. Plus, it also means those games feel better when you win and you’ll want to keep coming back to their platform.
All in all, as long as there is a way to cheat and hack people are going to do it. They, unfortunately, can’t be fully stopped because if you get banned, you can always buy the game again or make a new account and keep going.
What we can do though is make sure that you always use the in-game reporting system against cheaters and hackers. Make sure to call them out on it too! Even if they get enjoyment out of it, never let it slide.
Also stand up and complain to the publisher. Put it on notice that you will leave the platform or game if nothing is done. It’s time game publishers actually cared about their gamers.
© 2020 Justin Vendette