Cheating in online games

While some countries include laws that prohibit and punish cheating, video game companies have a history of citing copyright infringement in lawsuits against cheaters.

Cheat suites may incorporate these in addition to other features, including adjustments to extrasensory perception, move speed, ammo count, and player radar.

In the peer-to-peer gaming model, lagging is what happens when the stream of data between one or more players gets slowed or interrupted, causing movement to stutter and making opponents appear to behave erratically.

The goal is to gain advantage over another player without reciprocation; opponents slow down or stop moving, allowing the lag switch user to easily outmaneuver them.

[9][better source needed] This can also be achieved by simply unplugging the Ethernet cord going to the client, causing a disruption in the player's internet connection.

World-hacking is a method or third-party program that enables a user to exploit bugs and to view more of a level than intended by the developer.

The advantage gained can be substantial, especially for the average real-time strategy games that rely on the rock paper scissors dynamic to balance out individual objects' varying strengths and weaknesses.

World-hacking may also allow a player to see through solid or opaque objects and/or manipulate or remove textures, to know in advance when an opponent is about to come into targeting range from an occluded area.

World-hacking relies on the fact that an FPS server usually sends raw positional information for all players in the game, and leaves it up to the client's 3D renderer to hide opponents behind walls, in plant foliage, or in dark shadows.

Asus released wireframe display drivers in 2001 that enabled players to use wallhacks, announcing the settings as "special weapons" that users could employ in multiplayer games.

In addition to modifying a console or its controller, it is possible to achieve a similar effect on the PC by binding the firing button to the scroll wheel of a mouse, or by using a macro setting that will simulate rapid key presses automatically.

[further explanation needed] The term farming may refer to the practice of garnering achievements or virtual property for the purpose of real-money-trading.

[12] With rare exception, this has no direct effect on the gaming experience of other players; instead, it is a violation of most EULAs and could devalue the virtual property being farmed.

A script may give the user unusually fast firing rate, unobtainable otherwise, or may perform seemingly trivial tasks such as reloading.

The server will be very fast, but any wallhack program will reveal where all the players in the game are, what team they are on, and what state they are in — health, weapon, ammo etc.

The security of game software can be circumvented by intercepting and/or manipulating data (divided into "packets") in real-time while in transit from the client to the server or vice versa (i.e. a man-in-the-middle attack).

[ambiguous] Some computer and console devices sold under the guise of "accessibility peripherals" have been used to gain unfair advantages over other players of games, such as eliminating recoil completely and boosting aim assistance, and some may even include additionally downloadable macros.

It can do this by sending the parts of the world state needed for immediate display, which can result in client lag under bandwidth constraints, or sending the player the entire world state, which results in faster display for the player under the same bandwidth constraints, but exposes that data to interception or manipulation—a trade-off between security and efficiency.

[citation needed] Additionally to storing data in non-standard formats, some games also utilize runtime protection through software protectors.

[26] In this approach the encrypted code runs on a virtual CPU that can be markedly different from generic x86 and x64 CPUs as the command set can be unique for each protected file.

Experience has shown that keeping detection-based systems up to date is relatively slow and labor-intensive as one needs to constantly track down cheats and update detection patterns.

[28] Sandboxing a software process can protect against potentially malicious actions such as code injection and memory modifications that would otherwise tamper with the game.

As a result, they are a common source of incompatibilities with newer versions of operating systems and security measures as well as alternative OS API implementations such as Wine.

[30] For example, Windows enables Hypervisor-protected Code Integrity (HVCI) by default in every market except Chinese and Korean installations due to anti-cheat compatibility issues.

Consequently, cheaters may develop ways of getting around these bans, by either playing through proxy or VPN servers, or spoofing or changing their hardware configuration.

[35] Some companies and leagues ban suspected cheaters by blacklisting specific installation or serial keys, or user accounts, meaning that the player is effectively prevented from playing the game online.

Temporary bans may also be utilized in case a violation cannot be fully proven, as is common with anti-cheating methods based on supervision or statistical detection.

Such a system provides the power to self-regulate and effectively get rid of abusive players without depending on supervision or other anti-cheat methods.

Anti-cheat experts have argued that it is particularly important to take legal steps against entities who profit from making and selling cheats.

[44][45] Blizzard Entertainment sued Bossland GMBH for distributing software hacks for several of its games, and was awarded $8.5 million in damages.