Curse you Valve

[Stormthorn]

...and your cheating playerbase!

I went months playing TF2 (on 360) without meeting serious cheaters. You know, those who spawn objects and give themselves infinate health.

In the last three weeks i have encountered perhaps half a dozen of them. I just got out of back-to-back games with the bastards.

One of them was kind enough to explain to me how, since Valve doesnt seem to mind this, he doesnt have to modify his Xbox the same way he would to hack gamesthat dont condone cheating. He hasnt violated his Terms of Use and thus i free to *uck with my online experiance all he wants.

Thanks Valve.

[Raroy]

I don't think you should be angry at the company so much at that the players them selfs. Sure, Valve should be enforcing rules but, remember that the players are the one doing the action.

[Innis Cabal]

Show me a FPS game that you can play with others and i'll show you a game where there are cheaters everywhere. You knew what you were getting into when you started, no need to be upset

[Myatar_Panwar]

? I've played quite a few games on console where you could do some serious cheating without having to hack your console or anything (gears of war and its sequel come to mind). Not sure how this is different.

And I doubt that Valve is just fine with this happening. Though I wouldn't expect a patch anytime soon. Their love is the PC, not the console. In fact I dont think you guys got the upgrades for quite a few months after we did.

Though I think alot of that had to do with Microsoft forcing them to make players pay for the updates or something, totally against their policy.

[Zeful]

One of them was kind enough to explain to me how, since Valve doesnt seem to mind this, he doesnt have to modify his Xbox the same way he would to hack gamesthat dont condone cheating. He hasnt violated his Terms of Use and thus i free to *uck with my online experiance all he wants.

The appropriate response is: "So not getting caught makes it legal? So then we're wrongfully persecuting serial killers, after all, they weren't caught killing people, and that makes it alright. Same with speeding right? If they don't catch you it's not a crime? You realize how insultingly stupid your logic is when applied to reality?"

This is why I believe all games should either have A) brutal punishments for hackers; something in the range of formatting the disk it's on to overloading the processor and memory. Or B) a background system that simply tells the maker the status of the program at all times, and when changed, permanently kicks the associated program from it's severs.

[onasuma]

...and your cheating playerbase!

I went months playing TF2 (on 360) without meeting serious cheaters. You know, those who spawn objects and give themselves infinate health.

In the last three weeks i have encountered perhaps half a dozen of them. I just got out of back-to-back games with the bastards.

One of them was kind enough to explain to me how, since Valve doesnt seem to mind this, he doesnt have to modify his Xbox the same way he would to hack gamesthat dont condone cheating. He hasnt violated his Terms of Use and thus i free to *uck with my online experiance all he wants.

Thanks Valve.

Find better servers. sv_cheats 0's are easy enough to find.

[Joran]

Valve does not condone cheating; in fact, in Steam, Valve has an embedded anti-cheat system called VAC for their games. It detects cheats and bans them.

As for consoles, there's basically nothing they can do until the next patch, which takes forever on consoles for various annoying reasons. For future reference, Valve games tend to have a much better experience on the PC. For those who have the PS3 versions... I weep for you.

P.S. Don't hate the game, hate the players.

[Neo]

aye, as has been stated several times its not the company's fault that some people work on methods to break it for player advantage.

Also 6 people out of how many thousands of people that play TF2 is hardly enough evidence for saying it has a cheating playerbase.

[Mc. Lovin']

In a recent blog post they said they were working on fixing this

[Phase]

In a recent blog post, a character from the game admonished the cheaters and punished them. Valve are awesome, the players suck, sometimes.

[RMS Oceanic]

Valve does not condone cheating; in fact, in Steam, Valve has an embedded anti-cheat system called VAC for their games. It detects cheats and bans them.

As for consoles, there's basically nothing they can do until the next patch, which takes forever on consoles for various annoying reasons. For future reference, Valve games tend to have a much better experience on the PC. For those who have the PS3 versions... I weep for you.

P.S. Don't hate the game, hate the players.

This. If you want to curse Valve, curse them for no new information about Portal 2 or Half Life 2: Episode Three.

[chiasaur11]

This. If you want to curse Valve, curse them for no new information about Portal 2 or Half Life 2: Episode Three.

Or Minerva: Out of Time.

As Adam Foster now works for Valve, his mods are their responsibility.

[MCerberus]

Apparently microsoft is making it difficult for valve to get patches out, so they're saving their efforts on a gigantic patch once they work around some RAM issues. Supposedly there will be a code patch before it comes out, so just wait for 1 day before the apocalypse.

Yes, some xbox players can be "fun". Yesterday I snuck up on a sniper and started meleeing. After about 6 seconds of eating pyro axe to the gut (including a crit), the guy turns around and kills me with a single non-crit body shot. A few seconds later my friend's sentry was hit by one of those sappers you can't remove.

[Stormthorn]

Find better servers. sv_cheats 0's are easy enough to find.

Not on an Xbox.


I just wish they didnt make it so easy for people to get ahold of cheats. All you need is a few programs. They have the cheats on the disk, available to any script kiddie, and its perfectly freaking legal. Valve wants this to happen. I was listening in as some cheaters talked about how in some recent update they took it to the next level, something about files that tell you how to cheat actualy in the game (i think it was Left 4 Dead) or something.


Also 6 people out of how many thousands of people that play TF2 is hardly enough evidence for saying it has a cheating playerbase.
But six people out of a few dozen is a lot.


Its sooo simple im tempted to cheat so i can wreck the games of any other cheaters i find. Look how simple it is. All i need to get started are these three lines added to the disks code in the Config file.
bind "A_BUTTON" "sv_cheats 1"
bind "B_BUTTON" "noclip"
bind "X_BUTTON" "hurtme -100000"

[Illiterate Scribe]

Its sooo simple im tempted to cheat so i can wreck the games of any other cheaters i find. Look how simple it is. All i need to get started are these three lines added to the disks code in the Config file.
bind "A_BUTTON" "sv_cheats 1"
bind "B_BUTTON" "noclip"
bind "X_BUTTON" "hurtme -100000"

Wow! Sounds like a great idea! You'll show those cheaters a piece of your mind by cheating against them!

Think - is that really the right way of approaching the issue?

[Myatar_Panwar]

I just wish they didnt make it so easy for people to get ahold of cheats. All you need is a few programs. They have the cheats on the disk, available to any script kiddie, and its perfectly freaking legal. Valve wants this to happen.


You cannot be serious.

Also, can you go more in depth on how these guys are cheating? How are they using "programs" without modding their 360 or disk? Either of which will get you banned from live.

And if you are getting all of your "Its totally Legal!" and "Valve supports us!" crap from the cheaters, you are doing it wrong.

[1dominator]

The fault is not with valve, their primary anti-cheat software is VAC, which is not available without steam, so not available on the 360. No doubt they would have fixed this with updates, however as previously mentioned Microsoft has been giving them trouble with getting updates out, so if you want to blame anyone, blame Microsoft and their money grabbing tactics.

[Rogue 7]

I'm just bugged that Steam isn't an option for Macs. I love my macbook, but there are a lot of games I'd play from Steam.

[Lord of Rapture]

I'm just bugged that Steam isn't an option for Macs. I love my macbook, but there are a lot of games I'd play from Steam.

See? This is why I step in line with my dear overlords at Microsoft. When they take over the world, I will have my rewards.

[Joran]

They have the cheats on the disk, available to any script kiddie, and its perfectly freaking legal. Valve wants this to happen.
Directly from the TF2 official blog: http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=2394


The XBox 360 update is still being worked on. If you're wondering what's taking so long, since the content is "done" on the PC already, it's mostly been around fitting it all onto the XBox. The original version of TF2 in the Orange Box was very close to the XBox's memory limit, and all the additional TF2 content we've produced has pushed well beyond it. We've found a couple of nifty ways to get back a bunch of that memory, but it's turned out to be a lot of work, and that's what most of our time is being spent on. In the meantime, we're going to get a code update out to address the server cheating that's going on.

Read the last sentence. They're fixing it. Stop whining.

[chiasaur11]

Directly from the TF2 official blog: http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=2394



Read the last sentence. They're fixing it. Stop whining.

Also: Gabe Newell is awesome.

Valve is pretty much made of win and awesome.

[Stormthorn]

Wow! Sounds like a great idea! You'll show those cheaters a piece of your mind by cheating against them!

Think - is that really the right way of approaching the issue?

It is the only tactic that will bring me satisfaction. Reporting them does nothing. Leaving the game means they wasted my time. Playing in the game means i have to dance like a puppet for them.

This way at least they also have their own time wasted. I say we let the punishment fit the crime!

[Zeful]

This way at least they also have their own time wasted. I say we let the punishment fit the crime!

Wasting their time in no way fits the crime. Forcing them to admit to Microsoft that they were cheating and then getting banned from Live fits the crime.

[RS14]

This is why I believe all games should either have A) brutal punishments for hackers; something in the range of formatting the disk it's on to overloading the processor and memory. Or B) a background system that simply tells the maker the status of the program at all times, and when changed, permanently kicks the associated program from it's severs.
:smallconfused::smallannoyed::smallyuk:
You can't be serious. Show me an anti-cheating system that doesn't ever suffer false positives. The first time you format someone's drive, regardless of whether or not they were actually cheating, it's going to show up on Slashdot, Digg, and Reddit that innocent John Doe had his computer trashed by [$publisher]'s software. People won't question what he was doing. There will be boycotts. People will tell their family and friends that [$publisher] is contemptible. People will want blood. Voodoo dolls will be sold.

Currently, you at most risk losing the software, or possibly your optical drive if it uses SecuROM. That angers people enough, as demonstrated by the campaign to sink Spore's rating on Amazon. When you deliberately screw with these people, they will not react any better.

I, for one, absolutely refuse to purchase any software that I may later be denied the use of.

[Zeful]

:smallconfused::smallannoyed::smallyuk:
You can't be serious. Show me an anti-cheating system that doesn't ever suffer false positives. The first time you format someone's drive, regardless of whether or not they were actually cheating, it's going to show up on Slashdot, Digg, and Reddit that innocent John Doe had his computer trashed by [$publisher]'s software. People won't question what he was doing. There will be boycotts. People will tell their family and friends that [$publisher] is contemptible. People will want blood. Voodoo dolls will be sold.

Currently, you at most risk losing the software, or possibly your optical drive if it uses SecuROM. That angers people enough, as demonstrated by the campaign to sink Spore's rating on Amazon. When you deliberately screw with these people, they will not react any better.

I, for one, absolutely refuse to purchase any software that I may later be denied the use of.

So? I have no sympathy for Joe User, messing around in game files he has No Business Being In. Whatever consequences that has are his own fault at that point. I have no problem denying service to those that abuse it, whether through the use of a kill-code that make that copy of the game useless, or a piece of code that fries your processor. After all gaming is not a right, it's a privilege that you pay for, and like all other privileges has rules for your continued participation therein all neatly outlined in the Terms of Use. Violating them should have consequences.

[Myatar_Panwar]

I'm not entirely sure you read his second sentence there. The anti-piracy program messes up, and now theres trouble.

[Lord of Rapture]

So? I have no sympathy for Joe User, messing around in game files he has No Business Being In. Whatever consequences that has are his own fault at that point. I have no problem denying service to those that abuse it, whether through the use of a kill-code that make that copy of the game useless, or a piece of code that fries your processor. After all gaming is not a right, it's a privilege that you pay for, and like all other privileges has rules for your continued participation therein all neatly outlined in the Terms of Use. Violating them should have consequences.

I think he's talking about people who are just minding their own business who get penalizaed by faulty anti-piracy software. After all, there are people who get afflicted by that stuff without doing anything to provoke it.

[Zeful]

I think he's talking about people who are just minding their own business who get penalizaed by faulty anti-piracy software. After all, there are people who get afflicted by that stuff without doing anything to provoke it.

And I'm referring to this:

a background system that simply tells the maker the status of the program at all times, and when changed, permanently kicks the associated program from it's severs.
I'm talking about a background process that just reads the game code and compares it to the server's copy. The margin for error is very small. The only way to trip it would to modify the game code yourself. Sure viruses could be involved, but it's impossible to tell a legitimate claim from a hacker just trying to break the system, so you just hand out free replacements, and track how many errors come from which IP.

I'm not talking about anti-piracy software, that's a whole nother ballpark. I'm talking about ways to frustrate hackers into giving up.