Cheating is never good. Looking for a shortcut or a trick to avoid defeat, in life as in video games, does no one credit. Yet, since the dawn of gaming, tricks and codes, or cheats, have always been an integral part of gaming culture, complete with dedicated magazines full of key combinations with which secure infinite money or ammunition. It was one thing to do it within the confines of your room, becoming invincible or getting a very powerful weapon that shouldn’t have been found before the seventh level. Another thing is when we no longer talk about tricks, but about refined software used in online matches against other real players or even in tournaments where there is real money and glory at stake.
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Fifa 22 and the ban of over 30 thousand players
A concrete example is offered by the recent measures adopted by Electronic Arts per Fifa 22, one of the most played football video games in the world. In a tweet, the company explained that it had identified and suspended more than 30 thousand players for a week, preventing them from participating in the Fut Champions Finals. The reason? They exploited a glitch, a software anomaly, which prevented them from losing (more precisely, from making the defeat result). The 4-0 would have been taken anyway, but the failure to count in competitive modes like that has nothing to do with pride: in this specific case there is a limit to start (there are 20), within a limited time frame (the weekend, in fact until last year we were talking about Weekend League). The more you win, the more you get points, game items (currency and packages) and favorable placement. And with the currency you can buy stronger players to field, while some of those points are needed to qualify for national and international tournaments organized by Electronic Arts, with prizes up for grabs at 4 and 5 zeros. Those who use these tricks will hardly last long in a group full of professional players, but it is useless to reiterate how such actions have a not insignificant impact on the entire ecosystem of Fifa. From there, Ea’s request not to use the “no loss glitch”, under penalty of 7 days of suspension and a round of points and in-game currency lost.
The plague of cheat-codes
Cheating is a plague that has plagued the video game industry for years. Last year, The Verge has dedicated a substantial article to the topic, recounting how many clever ones manage to turn a serene gaming session into a festival of frustration for anyone in a (virtual) room with them. The specialized newspaper Pc Gamer did a similar job even in 2014.
And it’s not always the fault of the developers: it often happens that users exploit programming errors to their advantage, perhaps crossing a wall and reaching a hidden point on the map in which to lurk and eliminate opponents without being seen or hit. But, mainly in multiplayer video games on computers, software has started to circulate, free or paid (or even with a monthly subscription), designed to exploit those flaws in an almost scientific way or to automate some actions:
- there are aimbot who take aim alone;
- i wallhack that show the position of the opponents by nullifying the tactics of those who play honestly;
- i lag switch, very useful in football games, which block the action for a few seconds by distracting the other player or leaving the field free and in shooting especially allow you to become impregnable.
The problem it’s not just about the world of esports and the actual injustice of having the chance to enter tournaments stifled (and therefore losing money, or salary and jobs, for professionals). There is also the frustration factor of ordinary players, who in the long run stop devoting themselves to their favorite game due to the presence of cheaters, and in the future, to buy new titles from this or that company that has not been able to keep them away. .
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Drastic measures
The ban of all those users (who are many, but very few in relation to the millions of copies of Fifa sold every year), is only one of the measures adopted by companies to combat the phenomenon. In the past there are those who have implemented programs designed to combat cheaters (like BattlEye), however requiring players to install extra software and going to burden or compromise the experience, due to the control processes running in the background during the games. Riot, the company of League of Legends (the most popular Moba in the world) e Valuing, came under attack because its systems were far too invasive: as they are kernel-level drivers that are perpetually running who monitored every action of the player to ensure that he did not start cheating programs, posed a risk to privacy.
There are those who have even set up a real anti-cheat department, with squadrons of people who went to infiltrate the cheater communities to unmask them and report their accounts, like the Overwatch Police Department for the Activision Blizzard game of the same name.
Speaking of Activision, striking is the case with Call of Duty: after banning more than 200,000 accounts last summer, the company announced the implementation of a system called Ricochet Anti-Cheat, which combined with the enhancement of server security should create many problems for whoever tries to cheat is in Call of Duty: Warzone, the popular (and free) wartime battle royale, both in Call of Duty: Vanguard, the new chapter of the saga to be released on November 5th. The system will also implement a kernel-level driver, but it will only work when they are started.
A real declaration of war, complete with gauntlet launched via social media and a clear and strong message: you are not welcome. An act due in light of the numerous controversies related to cheaters and their disruptive activity at matches. Controversy culminated this summer with a hashtag, #FIXWARZONEita, which went trending on Twitter: the popular content creator first used it and Italian professional player Giorgio “POW3R” Calandrelli, a symbol of the Italian and international community, but has since moved away from the Activision saga also due to the way in which the issue was addressed. We will see if the system will work.
Certainly, a few days after the announcement, some developers of the cheating software seem to have taken possession of Ricochet, thus starting to study it and find ways to circumvent it, but according to internal Vice sources, it’s all part of Activision’s plan herself, almost as if she wanted to play cat with mouse. Sounds like a bit of a spy story, right?
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