Pokemon Go Decides To Troll Cheaters Instead Of Banning Them

from the trollkemon dept

Remember when Pokemon Go was the thing? What once was a legitimate craze has certainly died down from that level, but it's not as though the augmented reality game has simply gone away into oblivion. It still has a dedicated following pumping significant dollars into it. And, as with anything in the gaming space that has reached this level of popularity, the game has its fair share of cheaters looking to automate the game for better rewards. Much like the game's Pokemon evolve as a matter of its ethos, so too is the strategy that those behind the app are employing to combat those trying to cheat the game's system.

In the midst of the craze last summer, the developer, Niantic, had instituted a mass ban of players using automated systems and geo-spoofing techniques to crawl the game's landscape in search of critters to collect. The impetus for doing this is pretty clear: doing this sort of thing allowed players to route around the challenge of the game entirely and, therefore, avoid the reasons for making in-game purchases. But more recently, Niantic appears to be trying to have some fun at the expense of the cheaters instead of banning them.

As detailed by Pokémon Go enthusiast subreddit The Silph Road, a recent Pokémon Go update targets players who use bots to trawl the globe for valuable Pokémon. In case you forgot how Pokémon Go works, it’s an artificial reality game that forces players to move around in the actual real physical world to find and capture Pokémon. People who automate that process with a bot suck the fun out of the game. As of last week, many of those lazybones found popular spawning spots populated not by high-value monsters, but by boring Pidgeys and such. In practice, it’s like hunting for lions and finding nothing but squirrels.

When effective, this sort of tactic works on multiple levels. First off, hey, this is legitimately funny! Second, it also allows Niantic to avoid the appearance of escalation of the conflict between app and cheater. Cheaters want to work around the system through automation to find rare Pokemon? Well, the response is to simply drown them in common critters instead of banning them outright. It feels far more tit for tat than an outright ban.

Which brings us to the third way this is effective: Niantic doesn't come off as the bad guy here. There's no real PR hit to take here. Nobody likes cheaters in the system, but heavy-handed bans can cause everyone's eyes to narrow even when there isn't collateral damage, which there almost always is. Even the media coverage of this tactic looks at it as good fun.

And though yes, it’s mostly just silly fun that Niantic has started feeding its Pokémon Go gluttons a strict sawdust diet, it’s also a reminder that while the game has faded from its initial frenzy, it’s still a very big business.

Regardless, it's always nice to see game makers try to get more creative to combat cheating than simply whipping out the ban-hammer.

Filed Under: cheaters, pokemon go, trolling
Companies: niantic

Valve Announces It's Handing Its Banning-Keys Over To Game Developers

from the trust-us dept

In the wake of the recent flop that was Valve's attempt to create a platform for paid game mods, you'd have thought that the company would be on its digital toes when it comes to being gamer-friendly. I have no interest in piling on Valve or the Steam platform, given what a great example of how game developers can make money in the digital age, but I was a bit surprised to learn that the company just announced it won't be in charge of banning gamers from games any longer. Instead, it's turning the keys to banning gamers over to the game developers themselves.

Because nobody likes playing with cheaters. Playing games should be fun. In order to ensure the best possible online multiplayer experience, Valve allows developers to implement their own systems that detect and permanently ban any disruptive players, such as those using cheats. Game developers inform Valve when a disruptive player has been detected in their game, and Valve applies the game ban to the account. The game developer is solely responsible for the decision to apply a game ban. Valve only enforces the game ban as instructed by the game developer. For more information about a game ban in a specific game, please contact the developer of that game.

Now, when anyone, including the Steam announcement above, talks about reasons to ban gamers from games, cheating is always brought up. And, indeed, nobody would be wrong to suggest that gamers cheating in online games reduce the fun-factor for the rest of the gaming community. Would it be better to exclude cheaters from games? Yes, no doubt. Is Valve's announced plans above to turn the responsibility for banning games from its platform make for a good way to go about this? Hell no.

Why? Well, because giving that kind of control over to the game developers shifts the balance of power when it comes to being banned from games and the reasons why a player might be banned. The nice thing about Steam is that it has two sets of customers: both the gamers themselves and the game developers on its service. Therefore, when Steam is the one administering the ban-button, it essentially serves as an arbiter. It might be an imperfect arbiter, sure, but having all the power to ban customers from games residing in the hands of developers takes us from imperfect to completely broken. Whatever the developers say goes.

And developers haven't always proven that they can be trusted with lesser forms of this power. Imagine Derek Smart in this scenario, no longer having the power to simply blanket-ban gamers from the Steam forums over negative reviews and comments, but now also being able to ban them from his games. Other developers have already attempted to ban players from their own single-player games over forum issues, so imagine what's going to happen now that there is no "trying", only "doing" when it comes to bans.

Steam made its mark by being fairly friendly to gamers in a myriad of ways. Giving this much power over bans to game developers is a step in the opposite direction. It would be a strange decision at any time, but now it seems particularly odd.

Filed Under: banning, cheaters, developers, gamers, steam, video games
Companies: valve

Blizzard Still Twisting And Distorting Copyright To Go After Cheaters

from the paved-with-good-intentions dept

The road to Hell, as they say, is paved with good intentions. The lesson in that axiom is that one should always be wary of the potentially adverse consequences of actions intended to be good. Blizzard, unfortunately, appears to be something of a performance art piece on this concept. For many years now it has, under the auspices of protecting the larger portion of its customers' gaming experience, gone after hackers and cheaters in its games by twisting copyright law into a tortured pretzel. It began with Starcraft and then transitioned into World of Warcraft, both relying on a morose entwining of copyright law and terms of service. That combination essentially creates a cascade of faulty nonsense, starting with the concept that software is only licensed and not sold to customers, that ToS agreements are so binding that breaking them breaks the license, and finally that breaking the license negates the ability for fleeting copying that the software employs, creating a copyright infringement. If your head is spinning, you aren't alone.

Yet, Blizzard continues on, now going back into the Starcraft realm to sue "hackers" for copyright infringement in the name of protecting the larger audience of the game.

Blizzard filed papers in a California court on May 19th alleging that an unidentified group of programmers infringed on the publisher's StarCraft II copyright with a series of cheats and in-game exploits collectively known as the "ValiantChaos MapHack." Designed to give StarCraft II players any number of competitive advantages when playing the game online, the MapHack was made available online through the ValiantChaos forum—provided that forum members paid $62.50 for access to its VIP section. The complaint Blizzard filed says that the company is taking action against the programmers in order to "protect the sanctity of the StarCraft II experience" against "hacks, mods or any other unauthorized third-party software" that undermines the competition central to the game's online multiplayer.

It would be quite easy for any Starcraft 2 player to cheer Blizzard on at this point. I don't play this particular game, but I've wished all manner of ill in the past on those that were obviously using cheats and hacks in online games in the past. Counter Strike, in particular, did more to teach me how much I hate cheaters than any other single experience in my entire life. That said, we still have the same problems as before.

Blizzard's filing again lays out its view that its software is licensed, rather than sold in the traditional meaning -- and that a violation of its ToS and EULA agreements nullifies that license. In addition, it claims both that the hacks created by the hackers (even if their copies were purchased legitimately) constituted a modified end-product, or illegal derivative work, and that this resulted in both direct and contributory infringement in the instance of every copy of the hack they provided, used or sold. It also, of course, argues that anti-circumvention clauses of the DMCA apply.

The problem with all of this is that it still relies on the twisted assumptions that Blizzard customers don't actually own what they bought and that ToS and EULA agreements are so binding that violation of them negates the license that the company insists was all that was purchased. As I mentioned, this may be done in a valiant effort to keep most of its customers as happy as possible, but that doesn't make it right. The wider implications of these rulings is horrifying. There simply will be unintended consequences in this that will prove to be far more harmful than any annoying game-hackers can create with their irritating products.

This may seem crappy, but the best course for everyone involved would be for Blizzard to simply jump back into the arms race with these cheaters and hackers and try its best to keep them off the company's servers. Going the legal nuclear option and twisting copyright into the mix may only amplify the amount of harm being done all around.

Filed Under: cheaters, copyright, games, hackers, license, sales, software, starcraft
Companies: blizzard

DailyDirt: Cheaters Sometimes Prosper...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

If you're going to commit a crime, there's a certain amount of logic to trying to pull off the biggest crime you can. Why risk going to jail over a relatively small amount of money? If you can get away with a multi-milion dollar heist, you only have to do it once (if you're not too greedy). And if you get caught, you might have the resources to escape the authorities. Here are just a few examples of some scams that might have demonstrated that crime can pay.

• In 2012, Italian police arrested 8 people related to a scheme involving $6 trillion (yes, trillion) in fake US Treasury bonds. According to US authorities, these kinds of documents are part of a growing trend of "fictitious instrument fraud" where fake securities are used as collateral in a scam aimed at unwitting investors. [url]
• How often do traders misplace a decimal point on purpose? David Miller would have made a killing buying 1.625 million shares of AAPL (instead of 1,625 shares!) if the stock beat its estimates, but Apple's shares actually fell... oops. [url]
• The London interbank offered rate (aka Libor) is a global benchmark for financial instruments worth over $300 trillion -- and it's part of one of the largest and longest-running banking scams in history. Traders at several large banks colluded to manipulate Libor for years... because bankers were trusted to report honest numbers. hmm. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Filed Under: banking, cheaters, crime, fraud, libor, scams
Companies: apple

DailyDirt: Mostly Harmless Scams...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

There's cheating, and then there's cheating. There are obviously bad scams that hurt people or involve the loss of significant amounts of money or property, but some scams are hurtful on a much smaller scale. Here are just a few notable examples of some cheaters who were caught red-handed.

• Now that computers are better than humans at playing chess, it shouldn't be too surprising that chess engines are being caught in use in human vs human tournaments. One teenager was found using the Fritz chess engine during competition, and it could mean future chess tournaments will be held without any kind of technology near the competitors. [url]
• A mid-40s software developer was caught outsourcing his job to a team of programmers in China (for about a fifth of his annual salary). And he would have gotten away with it, too, if he'd just covered his tracks a bit better. [url]
• Prof T. Mills Kelly taught a class at George Mason University that encouraged undergraduates to enter fake information into Wikipedia. Don't believe everything you read, kids... [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Filed Under: cheaters, chess, fritz, outsourcing, scams, t. mills kelly, wikipedia
Companies: george mason university