On Reporting Hackers ~ The Best Way to Report Hackers

(MissMurder) #101

Sorry guys :frowning: I know it’s really not ideal right now. The report a player function can’t come soon enough. It is being tested and worked on as we speak so we thank you for the patience. As for a new anticheat- that will happen even sooner.

(MTLMortis) #102

They do, it’s just not something that they can publicize other than gross numbers. Video evidence is a big help, but not everyone can easily do that. It’s very important to include their steam profile when reporting.

You can locate this by pressing TAB to see the scoreboard, then RIGHT-clicking to get a cursor and then LEFT-clicking on their name to get the menu with the STEAM PROFILE. As long as you have the steam overlay enabled it will load up their profile. Cut and paste the URL in the top field to notepad or your report. Their original in-game name is also useful.

(Yackamov) #103

Can I ask why name-shame is considered a no-no? Is it because of potential false positives? I’ve been accused of being a hacker many times. Doesn’t make me cry. Data analysis would show that I’m not. But when a hacker is caught, why is name shaming not OK? When a guy admits to being a hacker, why is sharing the video of him doing it not OK? When people do something wrong, shouldn’t they feel shame? And have to live up to that shame?

(bwort110) #104

I just can repeat for comp matches, there are no more cheater in my (!) games i played the last days.

(Ardez1) #105

@Yackamov [quote=“CC_FANG;50271”]Naming and shaming players promotes negativity in the community. People will chime in and argue, and it only results in a lot of hate and negative behavior.

Simply posting an accusation, even with evidence, means you have a lot of unregulated finger-pointing going on. If you play FPS, you know how much any game is riddled with people who see hacks around every corner. Bringing that to the forums can’t possibly be anyone’s idea of positive community interaction.

And unless it’s confirmed by a GM, that’s all it is – an accusation. GMs are the only official source in this game that can declare someone to be cheating. Instead of having to search through the forums, it is best the evidence is sent to them via the ticket system, where those of us who value fair play have the best chance of having those cheaters removed from the game.

And let’s face it – some people believe everything they read. If I posted saying I saw you cheating in game and you had a really good score and look – your name proves you’re hacking, there are people who would believe it.

It’s got to be an all-or-nothing type policy. It’s really for the best.[/quote]

Just pasting this here. This is a topic that has received a lot of attention and I think this response is best.

(Amerika) #106

Think of it this way. If you’re a good player you will get a hackusation thrown at you pretty regularly. Then if you have a forum that allows people to throw up threads non-stop with those same hackusations, despite the fact that you aren’t cheating, the forum will get really spammy and have very little quality to the conversation. But you’ll end up with an extremely negative environment that nobody will want to visit. I personally want to see this forum remain spam free and not a place for people to vent their rage and instead promote intelligent conversation amongst the community.

Not to mention it’s pretty easy to change your name and get people falsely accused. Naming and shaming usually leads to mob mentality which none of us need since it doesn’t fix anything.

(Yackamov) #107

Don’t know that I can agree with the mob mentality statement as there are no examples to show that provided. My experience gaming says that is not a true statement because I haven’t personally witnessed that happening. I’ve seen people who run around accusing all the time get ignored because they can’t provide evidence. And the faking name thing is resolved through steam profile. So no, I can’t change my name to “Amerika”, go cheat, and have someone post a video that would cause you any damage unless they were able to right click and show the steam profile.

I understand the concern, and I’ve had these discussions with others in the gaming industry. Originally (at least with EpicGames ~12 years ago) it came as a request from legal that it may expose the company to liability, so they just enacted it. Others followed suit. Now the reasoning has morphed into what you’re stating above. I don’t know what’s true anymore, but it doesn’t seem acceptable that someone proven to be a cheater gets to escape “shame”.

(bwort110) #108

On the other hand i think many will just abuse the report function. Good players will just be reported when the oppenent is angry and toxic. There is no perfect solution.

(MTLMortis) #109
  1. No name and shame policies are pretty much industry wide
  2. Cyber-bullying, which is what it is, is bad regardless of their behavior. Let’s not start that up, our community is small enough.
(Yackamov) #110

That’s not a fair statement. That’s a couple of different logical fallacies rolled into a single sentence. It is no more cyber-bullying than reporting a convicted criminal’s name online is cyber-bullying. Yes, cyber-bullying is bad. Reporting people who got caught cheating is not cyber-bullying.

Any guesses as to why the community is small and apparently getting smaller?

Anyways, this is just an interesting conversation to have. Nothing is going to change here as this forum isn’t interested in changing its policy. Competitive forums will continue to call out the cheaters that matter (competitions versus pubs). But pubs for this game are getting really bad.

(Dirmagnos) #111

Public reporting worked just fine for years. And now, suddenly its a no-go for some ridiculous reasons, while history shows none of those “reasons” have any basis to them.

(Amerika) #112

Exactly what do you gain when constant forum threads are made that claim somebody is cheating? When no proof is required and there isn’t a good way to prove somebody’s identity? What happens when somebody starts going around cheating with your username and screenshots and videos suddenly fill a forum and there isn’t any sort of policy in place that protects them? You think that community is actually getting smaller because naming and shaming isn’t allowed on almost any serious community forum?

It’s one thing to have actual proof of a person cheating and publish that. What’s ironic about this conversation is that I’ve been the one who has posted names in the past. I was the head of CAL Anti-Cheat and myself and a number of others worked with people all over the planet to get evidence so that people were properly identified and removed from competitive play.

You’re confusing people like me putting up a list of banned people who had a ton of evidence against them with allowing people to post a screenshot and say a person was cheating without any serious collection or vetting of evidence.

I’m all for having a list of people banned in competitive play. But I am also a big believer in making sure I’m not doing something that is fanning the flames or getting a person wrongly accused. Despite you stating that you haven’t witnessed communities become tainted by this, well, I have. Many times. Watching people get out their pitchforks out against people is kind of disturbing and reminds me of quite a few events in history that started out with similar reasoning and ended rather poorly for a lot of people.

And yes, this is simply a conversation about the subject as no rules will be changed for obvious legal reasons and I guess less obvious ethical reasons. I’m fine with discussing the topic though even if I am somewhat disturbed by the mentality behind it and confused by what you think can be accomplished.

(libidoknievel) #113

to chip in my 2 cents, there are quite a few hackers who hack to get a reaction, to ruin someones game.

you going to the effort to write an article on a public forum,calling them out on them being cheats just adds to the kick they get from hacking. the fact of the matter is the bigger the reaction you give these people the more theyll do it. just do your best to get them kicked and file a ban report.

(Amerika) #114

Yup, that too. There is whole trolling communities that want that type of reaction. A few years ago I made a friend in WoW who was an ex-member of one and the crap he showed me that people would do in games, on social media and anywhere else they could get away with it was pretty disgusting. All to grief people, to get a rise out of people and to get recognition from their peers.

(libidoknievel) #115

replace “WoW” with any other game name and it still applies. The sad truth of multiplayer games.

(Yackamov) #116

In any community I’ve been a part of, proof is always required. Without it, the threads are simply locked or the original poster becomes a bit of a pariah that nobody bothers to listen to. However, when proof is provided, the community analyzes fairly and rally around an action.

But yes, not much you can do about griefers. Those people exist to mess with people (at least until personally exposed and then they tend to disappear really quick). But when game scenes are mature, I tend to stick to the competitive servers and deal with a smaller group of people. Those are the cheaters that people wind up being more concerned about. Griefers are normally just quickly banned and not an overall issue. Making it easy for community to kick people takes care of that. There’s a votekick system here, but I haven’t seen it work very well.

(libidoknievel) #117

I think the biggest problem with the votekick system is the team restriction in place at the moment. by this i mean the lack of a report system mean theres only two ways to deal with hackers, out of game reports and votekicks. not being able to call a votekick on a hacker on the opposing team while the report feature is not in place seems crazy to me, due to the fact that the opposition does not have to call a votekick.

It makes more sense to me personally to have it be open for anyone to call votekick on anyone, however have an extended cooldown period before they can call another (eg 5 minutes to prevent abuse of the system), until the report system is in place.

(Mister__Wiggles) #118

To be clear, I’m all against the naming and shaming I just want it too be easier to report a cheat. As miss murder said there is something on the way and that’s fine, until then though it’s more work to report someone than it is for them to make another account.

(Dirmagnos) #119

[quote=“Amerika;67127”]Exactly what do you gain when constant forum threads are made that claim somebody is cheating? When no proof is required and there isn’t a good way to prove somebody’s identity?
[/quote]

Its called common sense. You simply discard them.
Its kinda self-explanatory that proof must be added, or report is being simply closed and buried.

What happens when somebody starts going around cheating with your username and screenshots and videos suddenly fill a forum and there isn’t any sort of policy in place that protects them? You think that community is actually getting smaller because naming and shaming isn’t allowed on almost any serious community forum?

You counterargument is based on SDs inability to control own game, not player attitude towards other players.
And we are not talking about community size, however, taking again example of Combat Arms, they had a whole section on the forum, that were receiving dozens of reports pretty much every hour, dedicated purely to reporting. Its was a norm. And no1 was complaining. Quite the contrary, since there were an ACTUAL ruleset in the game(not this generic shit “we deal with each report personally”) and any type of spamming were strictly forbidden, to the point of banning, it made reporting fast and easy, not to mention raising awareness of the community.
But nowadays publishers prefers to just ignore issues that they dont want to deal with and “no naming and shaming” policy is an excellent way to do that. Its easy to make promises and its far far far harder to actually act up on them. “Yeah yeah, were dealing with it, fuck off, let me get back to my tea.”

I’m all for having a list of people banned in competitive play. But I am also a big believer in making sure I’m not doing something that is fanning the flames or getting a person wrongly accused. Despite you stating that you haven’t witnessed communities become tainted by this, well, I have. Many times. Watching people get out their pitchforks out against people is kind of disturbing and reminds me of quite a few events in history that started out with similar reasoning and ended rather poorly for a lot of people.

Honestly, never seen a mob on a witchhunt… on any of the numerous forums ive frequented. Sure, there are ragers, but generally, since they have no proof, they are either laughed at or their threads simply fall into obscurity, since they pose no interest to any1.
But i have seen a lot, and i mean A LOT, of instances of a mob, where clear exploiter or cheater get covered by buddies among staffers(or some similar abuses of power or examples of negligence), even if there is a clear evidence of bannable offenses. A sh!tstorm that is a beauty to behold arises.

And yes, this is simply a conversation about the subject as no rules will be changed for obvious legal reasons and I guess less obvious ethical reasons.

There is no legal reason, not to mention ethical ones, for this rule. Only “legal” reason that it may be is TOU, that are subject to change at publishers convenience.

(MTLMortis) #120

[quote=“Dirmagnos;67348”][quote=“Amerika;67127”]Exactly what do you gain when constant forum threads are made that claim somebody is cheating? When no proof is required and there isn’t a good way to prove somebody’s identity?
[/quote]

Its called common sense. You simply discard them.
Its kinda self-explanatory that proof must be added, or report is being simply closed and buried.
[/quote]

That would be a full time job in and of itself.

Yes, would love to see some actual cited examples of this. I think I remember one…from about 1997

[quote=“Dirmagnos;67348”]
There is no legal reason, not to mention ethical ones, for this rule. Only “legal” reason that it may be is TOU, that are subject to change at publishers convenience.[/quote]

You are quite unknowledgeable of the law then. Most countries have cyberstalking, bullying and harassment laws where the only criteria to be charged is that the victim feels fear. There have been suicides over this sort of harassment and no one wants to be even remotely implicated in a tragedy like that or named in a lawsuit.