Anti-Cheat Discussion

[Sakebee 2270]

Hey everyone,

 

We have continued to hear concerns from various parts of the community about bans and that BE isn't working as well as EAC. We take these comments seriously. So as an experiment, we pulled the previous 10 months of stats from EAC before we switched and the last couple months of BE for comparison. We tried to think of meaningful ways we could compare them, and while I don't think these data are definitive proof of anything, I figured I would talk a little bit about what we found.

 

Before I jump in, it is worth noting that when we first cut over to BE, we had a bug that prevented bans from happening properly. This meant that, early on, we had a lot more cheaters than normal after the transition. That bug did eventually get fixed, but it is fair to point out that we got off to a bit of a bumpy start. Also, knowing that we haven't been running BE as along as we had been running EAC, we had to come up with comparisons that wouldn't be skewed.

 

First, we compared total monthly average bans between EAC and BE. Without giving specific numbers, I can say that BE bans players over 4x more than EAC. Second, we looked at the highest amount of bans in a single month, and BE still banned players 2x more times than EAC.

 

This data indicates to us that in the first few months of the transition, we have had many more players trying to test the new system (thinking they can get away with things) who were then caught successfully. Furthermore, while it is too early to state definitively with only a few months under our belt, those ban numbers are already appearing to trend downward, meaning this initial surge may be tapering off. New cheats can and do pop up, and those players may get away with it for a while, but BE has methods of detecting, and eventually they get caught.

 

Hopefully players will continue to settle as we provide improvements to the engine and the core gameplay, but either way we remain committed to improving player experience in APB and doing what we can to ensure a fair play environment.

 

As players, the best way you can help is to play and enjoy the game. If you come across something you think is suspicious, use the report function or submit a ticket with the evidence you have. That will help our team investigate as necessary, and it is much more productive than whispering at players or trying to accost them directly. Let's all do our part to make APB a great place to play.

 

Thanks guys!

 

 Sakebee

[vsb 6171]

16 minutes ago, Sakebee said:

Furthermore, while it is too early to state definitively with only a few months under our belt, those ban numbers are already appearing to trend downward, meaning this initial surge may be tapering off.

playing the devil's advocate, this could mean that BE is simply becoming less effective as more and more people manage to bypass it - is there a comparable trend after EAC implementation?

[Frosi 722]

While I want to say that those numbers are indeed impressive I also want to mention that APB has rarely ever had an issue with blatant cheating (Shaw copters) outside of a hand full of time periods such as when a certain cheat went public and for everyone to download. 

 

APB's real issue with cheating lies in the closeting area with people running their cheats on very low settings that still let them compete / consistently beat the top 1% of players through means of narrow FoV aimbots, smooth aim and silent aim. It is this type of cheating that has become more common with the switch to BE again, same goes for basic Triggerbots and Macroing, both have seen a noticable increase and even at the most blatant level of triggerbotting / macroing these players are getting away with what appears no problems at all. I've personally seen multiple dodgy and one extremely blatant example of triggerbotting players that are playing daily and have not been banned under BattlEye even tho they've been going since it was implemented and I am sure there are many many more.

 

If you want to stick with BE moving forward it is this type of cheating that has to be combated as the idea of being a good player and wanting to play on a high level starts to mean less and less, eventually getting back to a point where you simply do not know who is cheating and who isn't anymore, this was the case after FF was made automated. 

Edited August 21, 2020 by Frosi

[Ketog 1032]

5 minutes ago, Frosi said:

While I want to say that those numbers are indeed impressive I also want to mention that APB has rarely ever had an issue with blatant cheating (Shaw copters) outside of a hand full of time period such as when a certain cheat went public and for everyone to download. 

 

APB's real issue with cheating lies in the closeting area with people running their cheats on very low settings that still let them compete / consistently beat the top 1% of players through means of narrow FoV aimbots, smooth aim and silent aim. It is this type of cheating that has become more common with the switch to BE again, same goes for basic Triggerbots and Macroing, both have seen a noticable increase and even at the most blatant level of triggerbotting / macroing these players are getting away with what appears no problems at all. I've personally seen multiple dodgy and one extremely blatant example of triggerbotting players that are playing daily and have not been banned under BattlEye even tho they've been going since it was implemented and I am sure there are many many more.

 

If you wan't to stick with BE moving forward it is this type of cheating that has to be combated as the idea of being a good player and wanting to play on a high level starts to mean less and less, eventually getting back to a point where you simply do not know who is cheating and who isn't anymore, this was the case after FF was made automated. 

Thank you for being one of the rare people to not just say "hurr durr, cheaters everywhere, they killed me when i was in bronze district >:(((((((((((" )

In my opinion, APB doesn't has as much cheaters as people say, due to one, the game having a low population, cheaters and coders loose interest pretty fast (im not saying there's none)

The biggest issue is players themselves closeting like Frosi said above, with macros etc,or players pushing the limits of the grey zone as far as possible (configs with close to unfair advantages, macros to "help", shaders,,, and more edits)

None of them alone are a big deal, but all of them combined can sometimes be very unfair for one side, (well that's not really cheating but more like game modifications...)

Anyway, is it possible that we see those ban stats, but anonymised (if that's a word?), im quite curious about the numbers of weekly/monthly bans in APB.

[Sakebee 2270]

2 minutes ago, 404 said:

playing the devil's advocate, this could mean that BE is simply becoming less effective as more and more people manage to bypass it - is there a comparable trend after EAC implementation?

Sort of. Anti-cheat numbers are tricky because it is a bit of a red-queen problem. On average you tend to see sinewaves in the data as bad actors attempt to bypass, are caught, and then a new strategy is attempted.

 

I don't want to dive too deep into the numbers because I don't think a running commentary on the statistics themselves help make for better community interaction. Inevitably they will be too low or too high depending on where people stand on the issue in APB, but I felt a small glimpse might be helpful for those worrying about the change. 

 

Ultimately, it is an ongoing process, but my hope is that by talking about it we can address some of the worry and rumors flying about, as well as encourage people to deal with cheating concerns in a way that helps the game as a whole (submitting a report rather than accusing players in game - something which might be cathartic for the accuser, but is ultimately unproductive and makes for a worse game experience if they happen to be wrong).

[Motorola 107]

ive seen less cheaters after you changed to EAC and a group of 4 players who were playing daily and that we suspected of cheating have been banned. it feels like BE completely shutdown the triggerbotting that alot of cheaters were abusing.

[Deadliest 385]

not bad not bad.

 

still like EAC better. reasons below.

 

Spoiler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TrRnY9v8os

 

we got em boyz

Edited August 21, 2020 by Deadliest

[MonkaS 215]

1 hour ago, Sakebee said:

Sort of. Anti-cheat numbers are tricky because it is a bit of a red-queen problem. On average you tend to see sinewaves in the data as bad actors attempt to bypass, are caught, and then a new strategy is attempted.

 

I don't want to dive too deep into the numbers because I don't think a running commentary on the statistics themselves help make for better community interaction. Inevitably they will be too low or too high depending on where people stand on the issue in APB, but I felt a small glimpse might be helpful for those worrying about the change. 

 

Ultimately, it is an ongoing process, but my hope is that by talking about it we can address some of the worry and rumors flying about, as well as encourage people to deal with cheating concerns in a way that helps the game as a whole (submitting a report rather than accusing players in game - something which might be cathartic for the accuser, but is ultimately unproductive and makes for a worse game experience if they happen to be wrong).

There's no "new" strategy its the same bypass method almost every time its just battleye needs to flag whatever driver they are using. Bypassing anti-cheats like battleye and eac are so well documented. There are even public methods out right now that will last a few months without a bans being issued. The only way to stop most cheating is with a client based anti-cheat like batttleye and/or eac and something like fairfight.

[Fortune Runner 796]

not intending to say there are no cheaters , because we all know there are some , however I get accused of cheating for he  dumbest of reasons at times by  people who see cheaters everywhere and lately some are self proclaimed experts, and some of those have never been gold , nor have  a good framerate etc , so take it with a grain of salt.

 

once again we all know there are some cheaters or there would be no market for anti cheats.

[LilyRain 674]

1 hour ago, Sakebee said:

This data indicates to us that in the first few months of the transition, we have had many more players trying to test the new system (thinking they can get away with things) who were then caught successfully.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Good to hear the bug has been fixed and that BattlEye now functions as intended.

 

The real concern is that any progress done on BattlEye or any other anti-cheat won't fix the two root causes of cheaters in APB:

1- There is a talented person out there who unfortunately, uses their talent to produce cheats for games, APB included. Them cheats will then get distributed among Cheaters. Sadly, there is no stopping this.

2- The process of making a new account is simply too convenient and lenient.. Cheaters will either test cheats on new accounts or blatantly just cheat on these accounts because their entertainment lies in cheating. They don't really care about account-progression and thus, fixing & improving BattlEye is nothing but too much work to induce a small delay to their entertainment.

 

While it is virtually impossible to prevent Cheaters from working around to cheat more, it is still possible to make a portion of them consider cheating in another game via adding actual inconveniences to making new accounts that will affect Cheaters and Cheaters only. For example, require new accounts from this point onward to submit a working phone-number for verification by SMS that can only be used once. Yes, SIM cards are cheap, but they still require payment unlike new E-mails. Some countries also require presenting ID-cards and other information before acquiring a new SIM & will add fees. There are games that started doing this and nothing wrong with APB doing the same. Cheaters complained about those games implementing this and it was nothing short of a spectacular sight.

 

Little Orbit must take further measures than just making an anti-cheat detect cheats. If it drives some Cheaters away, that's good riddance & a success.

[Salvick 248]

I'd dare to say that people getting hackusated for dumb reasons might be mainly because they play against dumbest players. The dangerous ones are those who, as Frosti said, remain playing as if they were legit and use the cheats to get that slight advantage that grants them a win, even ensuring that they remain below the top scores. I've been a cheater myself in a different games like yeeeaaaars ago and I remember how easy and how long you can last without being detected and even becoming friend with the admins and top players, that's all I'm gonna say.

[a Pair of Socks 126]

3 hours ago, Sakebee said:

As players, the best way you can help is to play and enjoy the game. If you come across something you think is suspicious, use the report function or submit a ticket with the evidence you have. That will help our team investigate as necessary, and it is much more productive than whispering at players or trying to accost them directly. Let's all do our part to make APB a great place to play.

Thanks guys!

 

 Sakebee

And then wait 4 months for a reply to of which a player very blatantly breaking Multiple ToS doesnt get banned.  OK

[vsb 6171]

32 minutes ago, Katryoshka said:

And then wait 4 months for a reply to of which a player very blatantly breaking Multiple ToS doesnt get banned.  OK

support response time is down to as low as 10 minutes at this point, so you won't have to wait too long for your report to be ignored

[a Pair of Socks 126]

Just now, 404 said:

support response time is down to as low as 10 minutes at this point, so you won't have to wait too long for your report to be ignored

Whatever keeps your hope up for the game I guess

[Flaws 1033]

13 hours ago, Frosi said:

While I want to say that those numbers are indeed impressive I also want to mention that APB has rarely ever had an issue with blatant cheating (Shaw copters) outside of a hand full of time periods such as when a certain cheat went public and for everyone to download. 

 

APB's real issue with cheating lies in the closeting area with people running their cheats on very low settings that still let them compete / consistently beat the top 1% of players through means of narrow FoV aimbots, smooth aim and silent aim. It is this type of cheating that has become more common with the switch to BE again, same goes for basic Triggerbots and Macroing, both have seen a noticable increase and even at the most blatant level of triggerbotting / macroing these players are getting away with what appears no problems at all. I've personally seen multiple dodgy and one extremely blatant example of triggerbotting players that are playing daily and have not been banned under BattlEye even tho they've been going since it was implemented and I am sure there are many many more.

 

If you want to stick with BE moving forward it is this type of cheating that has to be combated as the idea of being a good player and wanting to play on a high level starts to mean less and less, eventually getting back to a point where you simply do not know who is cheating and who isn't anymore, this was the case after FF was made automated. 

Basically this.

 

Numbers of bans on cheat makers who make dummy throwaway accounts to inject and see if its undetected under BE don't really matter. Its all about the end results of active existing closet cheaters that roam the game in full force and some are even being supported and reinforced by small portions of the community that don't know any better. Especially ones that had even managed to cheat under EAC undetected for months. I think that we need a strong server-side solution to work side by side with whatever client side we're using.

 

Also, after reading some of the other replies here I have to note that many players still want to come out with "but I'm bronze and I get hackusated for the dumbest reasons". Yeah, by other bronze players you do. We're mostly experienced veteran high skill players, some of us with a decade of experience under our belt, who understand the mechanics of the game in-depth. You getting hackusated in the bronze district does not play a role in the actual BE cheater problem discussion. Those are two completely different things. You need to keep in mind who the person making accusations is and what their experience is with the game (and maybe even with cheats or cheat-making).

Edited August 22, 2020 by Flaws
typo

[Esurient 17]

We're comparing the number of bans and detections between both anti-cheats.

 

This just catches the blatant cheaters who make new accounts all the time.

 

Why don't we compare data like the turn over of players during the BE to EAC switch? As well as pop increase/decrease. If you want to get specific you could even target a mass audience of people who only played whilst BE was active and decided to "take a break" whilst EAC was put into effect.

[wHisHi 206]

I agree with Frosi, right now you cannot tell deffirence between veteran and cheater, line is just too small.

Keep in mind, if many of us say that we deffinetly see cheaters increase, maybe there is really something bad about BE? You moved from BE to EAC also for a reason.

People say it only takes to shut down BE in task manager to by pass it - that sounds horrible.

I am not pro, I tend to loose many games but while I was playing with EAC, I simply didn’t question opposition gameplay 99% of the time, EVEN how good they were playing.

[Todesklinge 143]

Why not stop cheaters before they can play APB?

Remove the status of free to play and make it Buy to Play for 9,99$/€

Give the Game Package one account wide Gun of choose and some G1C and this is the best deal. +1x 50% discount for the next G1C purchase (limited to the account without a time restriction).

 

If a cheater gets banned, he can create a new account for free = cheaters can try to find not dedecting cheats by trial and error.

This makes no sense!

 

If a banned cheater need to pay 10$/€ each account, many of them can keep it back!

 

 

You can add the best anti cheat tool on the world, this can not stop the flooting free cheater accounts!

Edited August 22, 2020 by Todesklinge

[VanilleKeks 737]

These numbers are something to be looked at with a good pinch of salt. There are a lot of factors missing here. Without knowing what type of accounts get banned it seems unclear to how effective it really is.

You could argue that the swap back to BE has encouraged more active development on cheats again and therefore many throwaways are getting banned. Even if we say BE is the better software, the problem we really have is that there are no other levels of security.

 

The stuff that does get through stays undectected for ages. Other games use seperate mechanisms that work together, such as server side solutions. Even Systems like CSGOs Overwatch are helpful. No System is going to be perfect but we certainly need something else. I hate to formulate it like this, but playing within the top threats has been awful since BE. Sure, everyone faces cheaters but this is the level where the closets stay at.

 

There are also several twitch clips of blatant triggerbot display and these people are still playing daily. Certainly it shouldn't be your job to go through twitch clips, but this shows the state we are in. Relying on player reports to catch cheaters after they bypass BE is not going to give great results. We need another system.

[Kysali 1]

I mean, its been stated before. Its hard to actually tell if someone is hacking or just has been playing the game for a decade. The player skill makes a huge difference.
And yea, you will be called a cheater all the time, that is just part of FPS culture, The current setup of the playerbase doesnt really help that either. As you have mainly veterans with tens of thousands of hours in the game and newbies.
I am more of the latter. But I get called cheater just as often as I feel that someone is cheating.
Fact of the matter is, usually, the issue is dethreating, and the server population causing you to be in extremely unbalanced fights.
That isnt helped, by the fact, that a lot of veterans also create smurfs, which then leads to you getting killed ten times in a mission by a bronze R10 player, just cause they are better.
Perhaps in some cases, there are also Macros at play, which... well neither EAC nor BE can reliably detect (as almost no anti-cheat can)

But of course it quickly seems like hacks.

To be honest though... higher ban numbers mean nothing. How many of those are false positives? How many bans are actually handed out in total?
Switching to a new Anti cheat will always result in more bans, because of course, you for one catch people, that didnt get the memo, and cheat without protection from the new anti-cheat, people who create throwaway accounts, to create new cheats, but also, because bugs in the new anti-cheat will result in more false positives, which means people get banned, that did do nothing wrong.
So kinda important to know, if the amount of people who are texting support to get their falsely banned accounts back also increased in that time.
Not to mention of course, if you had a sudden influx of "new players" that then ended up getting banned, or if those bans were handed out to accounts with a lot of playtime.

Ultimately, the tool used doesnt matter as much as how it is used. Any anti-cheat will have ways to be circumvented. As any anti-cheat, just as any anti-virus can only look for specific methods and programs, and monitor specific files and behaviors. If it did more, it would either infringe in privacy, or become so resource heavy, it wouldnt be viable to be run alongside a game anymore.
And just as any anti-virus, any anti-cheat will usually have more false positives than correct hits.

I cant say, if people actually get banned for hacking. Heck I cant even say if there are any actual hackers in the game.
What I can say though, is that I have game crashes that result in redownloading of files, most likely due to the anti-cheat at least once a week, and that a friend of mine, got kicked for cheating, when they absolutely werent.
That stuff is kinda annoying, noone likes getting a CTD in the middle of a mission or a kick in the middle of a mission, due to the anti-cheat not working correctly.

I am with Todesklinge, having a paywall, even if just a minor one, would be a vastly better protection against cheaters, than any anti-cheat.

[Queen of Love 453]

Maybe the problem is the free2cheat account machine?
Let's see how many cheater will rest after a solid 5 dollar/account entry.

100% of legits will pay it.  

100% of closets ,cheaters and griefers will complain.  

 

Less cheaters= more population happy.
More population happy = profit.

Edited August 22, 2020 by Queen of Love
10 dollahs :D

[Todesklinge 143]

26 minutes ago, Queen of Love said:

Maybe the problem is the free2cheat account machine?
Let's see how many cheater will rest after a solid 5 dollar/account entry.

100% of legits will pay it.  

100% of closets ,cheaters and griefers will complain.  

 

Less cheaters= more population happy.
More population happy = profit.

1.000.000 banned cheaters = 10.000.000 $ Profit ^^

= more employers to add features in the game to avoid cheating.

[VanilleKeks 737]

Imagine new players paying 10 bucks to get steamrolled by max ranks. Then again we can't have any cheaters if no one plays the gamer = )

[HighSociety 148]

13 minutes ago, VanilleKeks said:

Imagine new players paying 10 bucks to get steamrolled by max ranks. Then again we can't have any cheaters if no one plays the gamer = )

Imagine new players taking the time to learn the game, mechanics, weapons and map.

Then again they are just crying and complaining cuz they want to get carried by every game.

Edited August 22, 2020 by HighSociety

[Shui 225]

14 hours ago, Frosi said:

APB's real issue with cheating lies in the closeting area with people running their cheats on very low settings that still let them compete / consistently beat the top 1% of players through means of narrow FoV aimbots, smooth aim and silent aim.

Question: Do you think you are part of the top 1%?