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Rockstar Creates 'Cheaters Pool' For Game Hackers 228

Posted by timothy
from the we-call-this-area-d-block dept.
itwbennett writes "Rockstar Games announced yesterday in a newswire post that the company has created a 'cheater's pool' (sort of like the populating of Australia with criminals) where players who have hacked the game to give themselves advantages will only be able to play against other cheaters. Although, Ars Technica points out that players may actually prefer the 'special' world."

Rockstar Creates 'Cheaters Pool' For Game Hackers

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  • stop and RTFA first (Score:5, Informative)

    by Eponymous Hero (2090636) on Thursday June 14, 2012 @03:02PM (#40327517)
    there's no idyllic haven for cheaters like the headline and summary imply. they put all the cheaters together and then see if they cheat again, and when they do they get the ban hammer. the only way to stay in the cheaters pool, and the game itself, is to stop cheating. even ars technica missed this important bit of info.
  • WoW (Score:2, Informative)

    by Triv (181010) on Thursday June 14, 2012 @03:05PM (#40327551) Journal

    Blizzard tried this in WoW, sort of, in a super-clever way.

    Battlegrounds used to provide no XP when in them, so it was possible to hit the top level of a bracket through quests and such, outfit yourself with the best gear for that level you could find, and just sit at that level decimating all the normal players you'd end up fighting against. "Twinking."

    But Blizzard turned on XP gains in battlegrounds, so if you did that, you would eventually level out of that bracket and into the next one. BUT. They also put in the ability to turn off your XP gain, effectively a "twinking switch." BUT, if you did that, you would only be matched up against other twinked out players in battlegrounds.

    The result? Twinking pretty much died off. Why? Because it isn't as much fun when you can't just ROFLSTOMP the competition, and fighting fair isn't fun.

    Working pretty much as intended, in my opinion.


  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14, 2012 @03:09PM (#40327603)

    Looks like you misread the article.
    Cheaters can be forgiven and reenter normal play after the first offence. After the second offence, they're permanently 'banished' - to the cheaters pool, not banned from the game.

  • Re:WoW (Score:5, Informative)

    by cfalcon (779563) on Thursday June 14, 2012 @03:18PM (#40327753)

    Twinking was never cheating, is the difference. The correct comparisons would be teleport hacks, which normally result in perma-bans.

    Throwing all the twinks in the same BGs hasn't stopped it- it just forced them to organize so they can have their twink time. A twinked character is far more powerful than a regular one, but it is all within the confines of game stats- a cheating FPS player has any number of bizarre advantages that create essentially an entirely different game.

    That being said, you still can't cheat in the cheater pool, or you get kicked out, so it is nothing like twinking in the twink pool (which was the whole point of the twink pool).

  • by Samantha Wright (1324923) on Thursday June 14, 2012 @03:19PM (#40327759) Homepage Journal

    And now a Political Correctness moment, brought to you by your local public radio:

    At no point in its history was the majority of Australia's population comprised of convicts. []

    I do believe we owe the editors some reheated "ignorant Americans!" comments.

  • Re:Interesting (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anubis IV (1279820) on Thursday June 14, 2012 @03:22PM (#40327819)

    I remember back in the early 2000s when I was playing Medal of Honor: Allied Assault that I was using various exploits to wall hack and have no recoil. I also found a server that was permissive of cheating. Some of the most fun I had was on that server, since the best players there figured out how to exploit the cheats against the cheaters.

    For instance, one person could draw attention through a wall while someone else came up from behind, effectively allowing you to use bait without ever endangering yourself. Or you could leverage the fact that everyone with wall hacks "pre-fires" at corners when they see enemies about to round them. Just run headlong at all corners and suddenly stop before turning them. The enemy will generally waste some ammo or will even need to reload, giving you a chance to engage them on your terms. You might even exploit the fact that the other player doesn't know how many walls are between the two of you to get them to leave themselves vulnerable. For instance, if you know they're aiming a rocket in your direction, put a wall between yourself and a window that they can see, pretend that you're crouched under the window, then stand up suddenly. As often as not, they'll launch the rocket prematurely, leaving you safe and them open for easy retaliation.

    There's still a lot of room for fun, experimentation, and even skill when you have everyone on a level playing field, even if that field is different than the one most people are playing on.

  • Re:Interesting (Score:5, Informative)

    by SuricouRaven (1897204) on Thursday June 14, 2012 @03:27PM (#40327887)
    Aimbots are actually FPS cheats, not RPG. They intercept data from the game in order to track the position of all players and obsticles, and the very instant that a valid shot can be made by the user's character they will supply the appropriate movement data to turn and fire with perfect mathematical precision. They were for a time the bane of Counterstrike - an aimbot-using player with was effectively invincible, as anyone who had a potential shot at him would be instantly killed by the aimbot. Many different anti-cheating measures were incorporated into CS in order to defeat the use of these aimbots.

    Other helpful cheater programs included modifying the client to make all walls translucent, thus allowing the cheater to see enemies lurking in wait behind cover, and changing the field of view and control response so that any weapon could be used for sniping, even a pistol.
  • Re:Interesting (Score:5, Informative)

    by girlintraining (1395911) on Thursday June 14, 2012 @03:29PM (#40327941)

    I find this idea rather interesting, but I worry what might happen to someone who was placed in this pool by mistake?

    If you read the terms of the EULA, you'll find out: You can beg for mercy, and perhaps Caesar will grant you a reprieve. Maybe. If he doesn't have gas that day from eating at Taco Bell. You have no rights to the aforementioned virtual world... you can be removed for any reason or no reason, and if you paid money, well tough nuts. You were informed by psychic eminations of the terms when you handed them your credit card, which was a binding and unappealable legal arrangement, and you can't return the product for a refund once you've opened it, you know, in order to read the terms. -_-

    This is why I don't pay for software for personal use anymore; If a company can take away what's mine on a whim, then it wasn't really mine to begin with, and I don't spend money on things I don't get to keep.

  • Re:Interesting (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14, 2012 @05:29PM (#40329413)

    most of the pistols couldn't shoot through walls, the deagle being the exception. same for the shotguns/submachine guns. most of the rifles could shoot through one entity (wall/person) and the awp could only shoot through two.

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