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Rev0verDrive's avatar
Rev0verDrive
5 years ago

Re: No matter how good the next BF looks, you need to really nail anti-cheat

@poohty_t
EA/DICE do invest a lot of time and money into anti-cheat. Yet, there isn't a silver bullet fix all. Anti-Cheat is a 24/7 process of detection, refactor, patch. The cheat developers will always be 10 steps ahead of the anti-cheat devs.

Cheats work by modifying/reading local client data. EA/DICE, nor even Microsoft (Windows OS) can prevent that with current tech. All you need to understand on this issue is DKOM. Look it up. If you can write an application that uses DKOM efficiently you can go undetected. If DICE cannot detect a cheat it cannot ban for cheat usage.

PubG's report system is heavily flawed. AND you don't send a video clip with your report. The Server records a Demo of the match entirety. Your report denotes the player ID and in some cases a demo time reference. PubG's dev team download the match demo and review it. These demos are not video. They are Game Data that's used to 99.999% accurately replicate all player actions, inputs in engine. This is also what PubG's replay and death cam are. Death cams are n seconds of data stored in memory (RAM). Replays are data buffered in memory then written to disk.

Also note that reporting in game can result in players being "temp banned". All it takes is a few players (3-4) in a match to falsely report a player for this to happen. This is why it's flawed.

Shadow Banning Won't Work in Battlefield.
BF typically has a server browser which lets players choose which server they play on. If shadow banned you won't be able to join preferred servers, thus you'd know your shadow banned. It would only work on quick match type setups.

16 Replies

  • cso7777's avatar
    cso7777
    Seasoned Ace
    5 years ago

    @Rev0verDriveEA has spoken about developing a new in-house anti-cheat, this was perhaps a year ago. They even "hired" a former cheat-programmer.

    We can hope this will be an improvement to the existing FF-system and introduced with BF6 (Apex Legends could perhaps benefit from it as well).

    I play a lot of BF4 and while there are probably still some undetected wall-hacking, but obvious hackers are almost non-existent, due to many RSP-servers having active admins.

    But active admins on public servers are probably not a viable solution for EA (financially)...

  • OskooI_007's avatar
    OskooI_007
    Seasoned Ace
    5 years ago

    I'm switching from PC to PS5 and disabling crossplay. I have zero faith in PC anti-cheat, especially EA's.

    I played BF1 this Friday and reported around 20 cheaters. Some of them I reported months ago.

    But I keep filing reports...

  • Rev0verDrive's avatar
    Rev0verDrive
    5 years ago
    @cso7777
    Everybody is doing some level of in-house anti-cheat. They are typically no better than enterprise level applications. Look at PubG. They have 3 Anti-cheats running. BattlEye, EasyAC, and one other I can't remember the name of off hand. They also have in-game reporting, and there's PubG shield ( https://discord.com/channels/207018395139309569/747756393041231873). Game is lit with cheats and they are constantly banning.

    Cheating is an industry wide issue. No game is untouched by it.

    The best anyone could do is implement server-side anti-cheat. Validate input and action before executing it. ESP/Wallhacking will always be an issue. Nothing you can do about that really. There was a cheat last year that was offloading player positions and displaying them on other devices. Simply reading these positions from memory.
  • Pimp_SWE's avatar
    Pimp_SWE
    Rising Traveler
    5 years ago

    So even with a hired cheater they were not able to detect a reported cheater with 144/0 KD using MG?

  • poohty_t's avatar
    poohty_t
    5 years ago
    @Rev0verDrive


    Well whatever they have been spending on it is not enough clearly. Just look at how many people complain about cheaters in BF V and Firestorm. It seems they are still largely lacking in this area.



    As for the PUBG comment. What i stated about it sending a 1 minute video clip was actually told to me by a Community Manager. So Ill take his word on it over someone who does not work for PUBG Corp.



    While on one hand as you say in game reporting can cause incorrect "temp bans" , there are ways they can program around that to fix that. However if the only way to report someone is to capture video ones self and then upload video, go to a specific website and submit a ticket on it .....there is no way to code around and fix the fact that most will not take the time and effort to do that. Thus you have many cheaters going by often not reported at all. While i would agree that is lazy on those people's part, it does not change the fact that is the results of only having that as the only way to report someone. Im still amazed at how many people do not know how to save quick clips of gameplay on ps4-ps5s ( or xbox counterparts) but it does not change the fact many still have no clue.



    At the end of the day , as my post said , no matter how nice the game looks,if cheaters are not dealt with quickly and harshly from the start, it will for sure hurt the longevity of this game and its potential. None of us want to see that. EA has the money. I know its not an easy fix but that does not mean they can not do all they can from the very start and stay on top of it.
  • cso7777's avatar
    cso7777
    Seasoned Ace
    5 years ago

    @Rev0verDriveI don't think EA will do better than other AC-products, but any improvements to FF is welcome.

    Unless MS does something within the OS itself (running games in VMs etc), it will probably be very hard to remove cheating.

    One big problem is that everybody "hates" MS, and if they did something drastic, then it will give a lot of problems with all kinds of applications (Afterburner etc etc).

    Antivirus-like solutions are the only way at the moment and this will always be a race of detecting the latest cheat-software. But perhaps normal anti-virus-products (Defender, BitDefender etc) should begin detecting cheat-software, at least they have a lot of experience in detecting (unwanted) software.

  • OskooI_007's avatar
    OskooI_007
    Seasoned Ace
    5 years ago

    Well this is interesting. Emails in the Epic Games v. Apple case reveal that Sony requires game developers to have an option to turn off cross-play on PlayStation.

    TheVerge.com wrote:

    Sony also stipulates in the policy that publishers can’t transfer virtual currency to or from PlayStation, and that there must be a setting to disable all cross-platform interactions.

    https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/3/22417560/sony-ps4-cross-play-confidential-documents-epic-games-agreements

    Guess this explains why PlayStation games have the option to disable cross-play, but Xbox games don't. Definitely getting BF6 on PS5 now.

  • Rev0verDrive's avatar
    Rev0verDrive
    5 years ago
    @Pimp_SWE You need to detect the method of cheating in code on the players PC. That requires a significant amount of access to said PC.

    Dude could be using DKOM which if done right isn't detectable without OS Ring 0 kernel access privilege's.
  • cso7777's avatar
    cso7777
    Seasoned Ace
    5 years ago

    @Rev0verDriveThe problem is that people are willing to let cheat-software run at any possible privilege.

    Unless MS can make the games memory and network-communication private to the game (hidden from the OS), cheat software will always be possible. This is not an easy task as making memory unreadable for other processes, brings a lot of possibilities for running really bad spyware/virus-products as well.

    Whitelisting programs could be an option, but this would involve having MS to whitelist games/programs (there are a lot of legitimate software on windows, programs, drivers etc etc) and OS-whitelisting could probably get 'hacked' as well (cheaters will do anything possible).

    The real solutions in using some kind of VM-technology, but this again brings a lot of issues (performance being one of them).

  • Rev0verDrive's avatar
    Rev0verDrive
    5 years ago
    @cso7777 Only 100% way of preventing cheats is a Stadia type setup. The server does all processing and sends a rendered frame image to the client to display. Clients would only be a high framerate image flipbook with a UI.

    For it to be a truly viable option for shooter games you'd need quantum internet... 0 ping/lag.

    The next best thing is 100% server-side validation on all user input/actions. Zero client-side prediction, 100% lock-step. For it to be worth playing you'd want a sub 15ms ping and at very high server tick rate. Even then you're still vulnerable to ESP. But that's pretty much it.
  • CyberDyme's avatar
    CyberDyme
    5 years ago

    Indeed @OskooI_007 ,

    Sony has no interest in sharing their player population with their direct competitor MSFT, if they can avoid it and loose their current absolute control!

    All while MSFT wants to gamble on both horses, as they win no matter if their players are on Xbox or on a Windows PC.

    Now lets see how the next battlefield game will implement that function, as if all Windows MnK-jockeys (incl the wall hackers, punkbuster escapists, etc etc) they are blasting all console players out of the way in the game, then guess where the next generation of BF gamers wants to be?

    The whole point of the consoles was exactly to serve as a level playing field, where it was not the player who could afford the most overpowered PC and sinister hacks that would necessarily win the match...

  • VOLBANKER_PC's avatar
    VOLBANKER_PC
    Seasoned Ace
    5 years ago
    @CyberDyme If BF6 comes with forced crossplay for PC and Xbox, I’m switching from my Xbox Series X to PS5, whenever supply is available again.

    I specifically quit PC gaming and switched to console to avoid playing with “super players” :/
  • Trokey66's avatar
    Trokey66
    Seasoned Ace
    5 years ago
    @VOLBANKER_PC wrote:
    @CyberDymeIf BF6 comes with forced crossplay for PC and Xbox, I’m switching from my Xbox Series X to PS5, whenever supply is available again.

    I specifically quit PC gaming and switched to console to avoid playing with “super players” :/

    Do it anyway....... 😜 

  • GVlXxf's avatar
    GVlXxf
    5 years ago

    @VOLBANKER_PCthere was cheatin way on console, it's no any different at all, what platform u are playin. for console, u don't think some can hit over 50, but most can't , it's not a player who are using controller cheat device?come on, in statistics, this is called so rare, like than 5% chance. but u can see them every server,every day, every hr... dont' want to say much, if u can't detect it, it is wasting the time to tell u how to detect them in cheatin.

    swtiching to PS5,wouldn't change anything. i hear even game on mobile phone can have cheatin

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