Title says it all basically. Adding mobile authenticators would be very beneficial for the game. Currently a banned player will just create a new account and get right back to cheating. With mobile authenticators they would have to provide a new working phone number each time they get banned. I think that would already be enough to stop 80% of the cheaters, since that's way too much hassle to go through each time you get banned.Also other games like CS:GO are good examples of this system reducing the amount cheaters by a lot.

The system in CSGO reduced the hackers, but there are still tons of them. Authenticators doesnt help at all. Hacker will always find a way around it.Its kinda funny to see Apex Legends hacker count vs other free games. xDNever saw such an amount of hackers in a game since COD MW3. xDI played Fortnite for a long time and came across a hacker ONCE, in Apex you only need to start a game and you are almost garanted to get a hacker. LMAO

Like my name, it's a pile of *... Your bans happen once a week.Two chinese players on a random team of mine... Total cheating. zzyy1994 was his name. I watched him head shot every single player. His aim locked on everyones head. All he could do was laugh at me and speak in chinese.Your game is broken on the PC front because you have no mobile authentication.

@Kuro466 You are sadly miss informed. I have friends banned from Blizzard games and they can no longer use the same mobile number as an authenticator for the account. Btw depends how each company uses the authenticator. Blizzard just notifies you when someone logs in with your account and when that happens it sends you a secure code to log into the game (that is how it works now in 2019) but it did not work the same way back in 2012 when they heavily promoted it.R6S has an authenticator that does not allow you to even login to the account unless you type the code they send you in text message to your mobile. That authenticator literally will block the whole mobile if you cheat (the DEVICE NOT JUST THE NUMBER). That is why when you apply for it they explain it very clearly that in case of theft you have to use 4 specific codes and send them in the exact order you received them to an email address (along with other form of identification) in order to "release" your mobile device from their logs so that you can be able to re-use the same service and play the game. They keep the IMEI of the phone on their servers, not just the number.CS:GO Prime did reduce the cheaters, because cheaters do not use mobile number to authenticate the account, because if they get banned they also ban their mobile number and device along with their email etc.It is different for every company and depends how they use it, but it can be used 100% for reducing cheaters as it has been by Valve and R6S coming this year (2019). It is actually great at getting rid of noob script kiddies which are probably the majority of the cheaters anyways. That combined with hardware id bans, region lock and lawsuits against the cheaters will decrease the cheating dramatically.Anything that reduces the cheating is better than doing nothing.

To increase the security of your EA account we have Login Verification which will send a code to you via email, text, or by logging in with an authentication code. More information on that can be found below. We're not aware of any intentions to require players to have a phone to play Apex Legends. Login Verification https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/account/origin-login-verification-information/ This was from the recent Respawn Check-In on 3.8.2019 https://answers.ea.com/t5/News-Game-Updates/Respawn-Check-In-3-8-2019/m-p/7653687#M17 CHEATERS As of today we’ve banned over 355K players on PC through Easy-Anti-Cheat. The service works but the fight against cheaters is an ongoing war that we’ll need to continue to adapt to and be very vigilant about fighting. We take cheating very seriously and care deeply about the health of Apex Legends for all players. We are working on improvements to combat cheaters and we’re going to have to be pretty secretive about our plans. Cheaters are crafty and we don’t want them to see us coming. With that said, we can share some high levels things we’re doing: We are reaching out and working directly with experts, both within and outside of EA, in this area that we can learn from. Scaling up our anti-cheat team so we have more dedicated resources. We are adding a report feature on PC to report cheaters in game that goes directly to Easy-Anti-Cheat.

That has nothing to do with what the OP is talking about blueberry. The idea is that you don't queue people together unless they've verified their phone number.

Mobile authenticators to stop cheating

15 Replies

Kuro466
7 years ago
@Karsot ...and what blizzard service do they stop you from using if you don't have a valid blizzard authenticator?
Both mobile numbers and IMEI (phone ID) can be changed and spoofed. Banning mobile numbers is a long term nightmare, because future customers get re-issued banned numbers. In theory this could happen with a spoofed IMEI also.
The most reliable and effective means of making a cheater ban effective is to make sure the account that's banned cost money, so their is a financial punishment for the ban. This means they need to put accounts that reach a minimum spend level into a "premium queue". Which unfortunately can be percieved as unfair to legitimate free-to-play players, but that's just the way it is.
RichAC
7 years ago
@Cipax wrote:
My R6 authenticator runs from my desktop so I don't even need a mobile phone.
And what are you saying. its free? Twilio sure isn't. what service do you use? ALot of them are ad spyware that ruin your pc too. Then we have to hear about you coming on here complaining your game is crashing. They can easily block the handful of popular ones with eac. Some of them you have to use every single day to keep it active. Some you need a phone just to register for them lol.

Most won't bother and will stop cheating.
RichAC
7 years ago
@Kuro466 wrote:
@Karsot ...and what blizzard service do they stop you from using if you don't have a valid blizzard authenticator?
Both mobile numbers and IMEI (phone ID) can be changed and spoofed. Banning mobile numbers is a long term nightmare, because future customers get re-issued banned numbers. In theory this could happen with a spoofed IMEI also.
The most reliable and effective means of making a cheater ban effective is to make sure the account that's banned cost money, so their is a financial punishment for the ban. This means they need to put accounts that reach a minimum spend level into a "premium queue". Which unfortunately can be percieved as unfair to legitimate free-to-play players, but that's just the way it is.
You must be young. Do you not remember how Russian spammers were ruining the internet with emails years ago before phone authentication? Spambots even seems to be a problem in this game. Can't convince me otherwise lol.

SO easy to change huh...lol Future customers get reissued banned numbers? With the same exact account information? no I don't think so.... ANd this doesn't seem to be a problem in games that use it. rainbow six, cs:go, apparenlty blizzard games, GOOGLE EMAIL!!! come on now. You guys seem scared they will implement this lol.

Is it perfect? of course not, nothing is, but its better then anything else. And makes a DRASTIC change.
Karsot
7 years ago
@Kuro466
You cannot gift sub to others, you cannot gift store items to others, you cannot authenticate your account which leaves you exposed to the acocunt being stolen, you have to go through hell to change nicknames, paying method etc.
Sadly for you IMEI cannot be spoofed by the average user, that is why Police uses the IMEI to track down stolen devices once they connect to the network. The IMEI in order to be spoofed you need to have access to root in the android and i am 99% certain you cannot even access the root in Apple phones.Changing the IMEI number is illegal both in US and Europe and in China. That means all the areas this game is widely popular at. Changing the IMEI locks your SIM and notifies the network provider that you have changed the IMEI and then they can choose to call the police on you. You want a police squad with guns on your *? Be my guess change the IMEI, i will read on the news the rest of the story. Also which sane person will choose to commit a real crime by chaning the IMEI on their own in order to cheat in Apex?????
So it is a very effective method.The most effective way to stop cheating is to combine 3-4 methods against cheaters and right now the best methods are HWID ban, mobile authenticator, better anti-cheat program and lawsuit to poverty the cheaters.
Your proposal of the account costing moeny has been tested and has failed across all games. R6S had that and guess what? People were buying cheap accounts from China for less than 1 dollar and conitnued to cheat or people would get stolen accounts for cheap from cheating sites. One method alone does not work.
Finally friend you don't even know what IMEI is. IMEI = International Mobile Equipment Identity IMEI =/ = Device ID. Device ID is the name people see when searching for your device via BT in a network and can be changed from within the settings in any mobile phone. You might want to change the name of your phone from Samsung Galaxy to Blueberry or to Jack. Useually Device ID is created the first time the phone is "online" on a network. IMEI is created when the install your operating system on your phone while the phone is still in the factory it is being produced at.
The IMEI is how the provider and the satellites see your phone on the network. Too very different things.
Kuro466
7 years ago
@Karsot lol? you think cheaters are gifting sub to others? or concerned about their account being stolen?
It is illegal to spoof an IMEI -- on a cellular network, for the purpose of impersonating a device.. Cheaters can easily fire up an android emulator, put in any IMEI they want, connect it via normal internet, and it does not break any laws. Which means cheaters only have to convince the authenticator to run on an emulator and they can easily make as many IMEIs as they want.
And this is sidestepping the primary problem that few game companies want to "require" second-factor for their users if they fear it will have a chance of decreasing revenues.
In the end, it's really really hard to stop cheaters. Google just announced their Stadia game-streaming platform, and game streaming has some serious latency issues to tackle, so I'm doubtful it'll be successful. However, one big benefit is that when the client also runs in the cloud there is no way to install cheats. So maybe there is a far off future where we can get really low latency no-cheat gaming using game streaming.

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Mobile authenticators to stop cheating

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