Improvement to Cheat Detection (and Consequent Bans)

[Saltypatra]

I just sat down at my desk with a coffee in order to read how this thread has progressed since yesterday, and it’s definitely interesting.

A lot of points were raised about ethics, and the motivations behind cheating. I believe that it was summed up well in the TV argument. Just because someone else steals something, doesn’t mean you should. If the police showed up, and you said you were taking a TV because you saw other people doing it, you will still be held accountable for your actions. The actions of the person before you change nothing, and both parties will be held responsible for stealing a TV. I personally believe this to be fair, but everyone has different opinion on morals and ethics.

However, this is also the view we take as a company, and we have terms of service for a reason. We are well within our rights to act on these issues, as they are outlined in the agreement players enter into when choosing to play Gems of War.

Also, banning cheaters isn’t really in our best interest. A lot of the cheaters we ban are players that have made purchases in game. If we were only worried about the bottom line, it’s not something we would feel as strongly about. However, we do want the game to be fair, which is why we have been working on our cheat detection for some time, and are now acting on a lot of the information it has gathered.

I really feel like everything that needs to be said has been said. If a player feels like they were unfairly banned they are welcome to contact our support team to discuss the issue further.

[RiverSong]

“I resorted to cheating out of despair because it was the only way I could compete” is a bogus, straw man argument. Either you play by the rules or you don’t play. And it doesn’t matter if you wanted that orb of power more, Rocket. It’s still cheating and you should be held accountable for it.

[Rojo1]

Someone said a VIP 20 should be banned. I find it highly unlikely a VIP 20 is cheating. I find it more likely FTP people cheat because they do not want to spend the money as others do. Why in the world would a VIP 20 cheat when they probably have every troop or heck a VIP 10 even. Someone said that xbox doesn’t seem to get bans but I remember the free gems people got and I think many on every platform got a ban.

[Bossfrogs]

@Rojo1

Why in the world would a VIP 20 cheat when they probably have every troop or heck a VIP 10 even.

i’m sure there are a lot of honest high VIP people out there but at the same time, you’d have to be competitive to the extreme in order to shell out the amount of money that lvl 20 VIP requires. i could easily see that competitive edge compelling some of those same people to cheat to bring their superiority to the next level. just a thought though, what do i know?

[Slypenslyde]

I know you’re trying to be philosophical here but let me assure you, any decent ethical scholar would note you’re drawing a false equivalence.

So like, the thing that comes to mind that we do consider somewhat acceptable is when a starving man steals food. This puts our mores in conflict: we believe that life should be preserved, but we also believe theft is wrong. The kinds of ideas that this creates are what leads to ideas like Universal Basic Income. Even when people agree “this was OK”, that’s an oversimplification. What people usually mean is, “Theft is always wrong, but in this case if it were not allowed something worse would happen, so we will accept the lesser wrong.”

But that scenario has a lot of variants. Sometimes the starving man goes about stealing something extravagant like lobster and we consider his motives less pure. Sometimes he hurts a person in a way we think he could have avoided. There are a thousand different ways we might still be upset with the starving man.

And even so, people who have sympathy for the man often agree he should try obtaining food without stealing it. Very few people believe theft is ever so justified it should be the first option.

This is a far cry from your TV situation. Nobody needs a TV under any circumstances. It doesn’t matter if they’re priced so out of reach a person can never buy one. There are lots of things I know I can never afford, that doesn’t allow me to steal them. I know where a Lamborghini is parked. No matter how strongly I feel I can never achieve that, no jury will ever agree stealing it is justified. I’ve never seen a serious philosophical discussion in support of theft of non-essential items. It’s just not a defensible position.

It’s not even a good analogy to this game. Nothing in it is permanent. Nobody “owns” anything. Everything is dust. Yet there are people who are paid to create that dust, and we are expected to occasionally exchange money for the dust at whatever rate we deem appropriate. We’re free to decide we don’t want to pay money for the dust. In return, we have no recourse when it blows away in the wind.

So it’s all ego. But that still matters, in an ethical sense. Everyone is competing to play the game and be awarded with various amounts of dust. The competition relies upon fair play. When a person cheats, it hurts everyone else who is competing. Rampant cheating can shake player faith enough to cause players to quit if they think the competition is invalid. So the devs’ best interests include aggressively removing cheaters from the game, and there’s very little player sympathy for cheating.

We sometimes like to discuss whether a particular action constitutes cheating. We sometimes like to squabble about if some forms of cheating are more harmful than others. But one of the few things most GoW players agree on is that cheating is worthy of punishment.

[vanyel]

@Rojo1

I find it highly unlikely a VIP 20 is cheating. I find it more likely FTP people cheat because they do not want to spend the money as others do. Why in the world would a VIP 20 cheat when they probably have every troop or heck a VIP 10 even.

If a VIP player who wanted to speed up their progression pays real money to do so, seems perfectly logical they’d resort to cheating to speed it up even more.

And a lot of FTP players are more than willing to take more time to progress slower in order to not pay anything and are happy doing so.

Your statements are disingenuous stereotyping.

Why do billionaires steal things when they can clearly buy the stuff themselves without even batting an eye and an impoverished person would give their shirt off their back?

[Rojo1]

I’m not saying people that spend money don’t cheat I said Vip 20. That’s 8 grand. They get several Gem keys every day so like I said it’s highly unlikely they cheat. I’m wasn’t saying all ftp chest either. I just think it’s more likely they are cheating then a VIP 20.

[Graeme]

Cheaters get caught.

Banned for good if they don’t appeal and the devs know they won’t spend a considerable amount of money in the game if the ban is permanent.

Not calling anyone out here but seen it happen recently

Otherwise they are back playing 2 weeks later,

[Svetlana]

hi, @Saltypatra ! what about the tools which are used to extract game data for statistic purposes? like guild donations, log in of users and so on. there are such data tools by Taran. are they considered cheating as well?

[Turtleman]

They Did it because of GREED ! Or EGO . GREED fits the bill better though .

[Fourdottwoone]

@Rojo1

I’m not saying people that spend money don’t cheat I said Vip 20. That’s 8 grand. They get several Gem keys every day so like I said it’s highly unlikely they cheat. I’m wasn’t saying all ftp chest either. I just think it’s more likely they are cheating then a VIP 20.

That’s like saying whoever has a pile of treasure maps is unlikely to cheat. Players don’t cheat to get things they have an excess of, players cheat to get things they don’t have an excess of. Hero levels is a prominent example, you can’t just outright buy those, you need to actively play the game. Money spent is really a poor indicator of who might be liable to cheat or not whenever the only accepted currency is elbow grease.

[FeelTheBern]

As a player of consoles for my entire life
This whole thing is just weird to me
If ur gonna “cheat”, make a product like game genie for everyone Lol
#gemgenie

[LastGrim]

@Saltypatra

I really feel like everything that needs to be said has been said. If a player feels like they were unfairly banned they are welcome to contact our support team to discuss the issue further.

Thanks for your point of view. It was really interesting.

@Slypenslyde

We sometimes like to discuss whether a particular action constitutes cheating. We sometimes like to squabble about if some forms of cheating are more harmful than others. But one of the few things most GoW players agree on is that cheating is worthy of punishment.

Fair. But I had to simplify to respond quickly enough. I also agree that you should be punished for cheating. My main idea was that the punishment system should be flexible.

Cruelty creates cruelty. I have seen many times how the waves of bans only led to the updating of cheats. Yes, in a year they will also be caught, but no one thought how to break this vicious circle?

It seems I have nothing more to add.

[Kbam]

I agree there should be a sliding scale. Treating someone who alters the game code or data stream to their advantage is not the same as someone who programs their mouse to click and collect tributes every hour. The worst offenders should be banned while less serious offenses should be suspended for a week or two with a 1-strike warning against doing so in the future.

[awryan]

@Kbam

I agree there should be a sliding scale. Treating someone who alters the game code or data stream to their advantage is not the same as someone who programs their mouse to click and collect tributes every hour. The worst offenders should be banned while less serious offenses should be suspended for a week or two with a 1-strike warning against doing so in the future.

Cheating is a black and white issue. Even tributes. One human being can’t collect tribute 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Therefore, those who use programs to do it are gaining an unfair edge over those who don’t.
That simple.
Do the players who cheated or some how sympathize with cheating while not giving a frank about the players you/they screw over?
Those people don’t get a “sliding scale” of rewards sent back to their accounts when players are banned.
Cheaters cause a dominoe effect that wastes others time, resources, and possibly money.
Lastly, this is for every cheating db that reads this:

IF YOU’RE SMART ENOUGH TO WRITE A CODE OR HACK THE GAME. THEN YOU’RE SMART ENOUGH TO KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN RIGHT AND WRONG.

Spare me the insult of thinking anyone here is dumb enough to have any sympathy for you. You are literally the worst kind of people.

[Koromac]

@awryan

IF YOU’RE SMART ENOUGH TO WRITE A CODE OR HACK THE GAME. THEN YOU’RE SMART ENOUGH TO KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN RIGHT AND WRONG.

Well said. 100% true.

[BelethS]

The problem with second chances is that it will snowball.
People will want a third chancr after the second chance, and a fourth chance after the third.
And once you open the door for exceptions, it’s hard to close it again.

[Voq]

Devil’s advocate… some cheating would only need someone to know auto-clickers exist. No programming or “hacking” involved.

[Nonsheep]

Let them stay, strip ALL their cards to common with no traits. Strip ALL weapons tempering & remove all trait stones & ingots & gems & gold & bonuses from their account & then let them play.

[Koromac]

Devil’s advocate? What are you talking about?
Cheating is cheating. It doesn’t matter what methods or means are used or employed.

I’ll give you a perfect example to show how this matter is clear to me.

If you have 5.000.000 gold, and if you script or alter something just to get just 1 extra gold, like 5.000.001 gold in the end, you deserve to be banned for life. Same goes for everything else!