8 Matching Annotations
  1. Aug 2017
    1. The system should be tuned such that the fastest generally available computer would not be powerful enough to emulate the slowest computer that would be allowed to run the game. Depending on the pace of progress of computer technology and the lifespan of the game, it might eventually be necessary to change these requirements and force the users of the slowest computers to upgrade their hardware if they want to continue playing the game. While this would be frustrating for these players, I don't have a problem with it as long as there is a contract between the players and the game company that both agree to and are bound by - it would be part of the cost of playing without cheaters. Though I would hope that independent servers without these restrictions would also be available if there is demand for them.

      In this article, the author thinks hardware limitation is rather a good thing, since game emulation is based on super powerful computers. This idea is apparently opposite to one of my previous resources that claims that hardware improvement is the key to get a huge progress on cheating prevention.

    1. The apparent legal threats that took down these paid hacking tools can be seen as a similar method to fix the game's cheating problem through non-technial means. And while keeping hackers out is important to the interests of fair play, GTA Online's use of microtransactions means hacks that can generate infinite in-game money impact a market that's reportedly worth half a billion dollars to Take Two.

      Hack is everywhere, GTA's case shows how online game hacks can directly cause a big amount of loss of money. Not only economic loss, the impression of the game on players are also worsened. So we can see for huge online game, it is super urgent to minimize cheating as much as possible.

    1. Cheating also appears to be infectious. The likelihood of a fair player becoming labelled as a cheater in future is directly correlated with this person’s number of friends who are cheaters. So if you know cheaters you are more likely to become one yourself. Cheating spreads like flu through this community.

      Infectiousness is cheating's another property, also the most bothering thing about cheating. Since cheating is infectious and people are easy affected by cheaters around them, cheating seems to be a unsolvable issue.

    2. Their idea is to use the structure of the network to predict the likelihood that a given player will become a cheat in future. In other words, the number of friends who are cheats determine how likely this player is to becoming infected with the ‘cheating virus’ in future, so to speak. They say they expect to do more work on this in future.

      This idea sounds reasonable, but still kind of ridiculous. Just because a player meets many cheaters, does not mean he or she is going to be a cheater under that influence. In this case, they cannot let those honest players take responsibilities.

    3. So gaming communities invest significant resources into finding and stopping cheaters. In the Steam Community, for instance, which has some 30 million users, cheats are clearly labelled so that other users can see them and so that servers can prevent them playing games from which they are banned (although they can play other games).

      The cheating issue has drawn a lot of attentions of game companies, they have been investing lots of resources on catching and limiting cheaters.

    1. If you frequent the Overwatch sub-Reddit, or any forum that regularly discuses the game, you will have no doubt ran into many reports of players getting abused by others during matches, especially in Competitive Play.

      Finally game companies figured out reporting system to decrease cheating. However, some inevitable problems are still no ignorable. Although reporting system has made cheating detection more accurate and effective, there could also be some malicious reports that can have honest players be banned. So each solution has its advantages and disadvantages and both of them would be deadly.

    1. Cheating is an issue in online games, and Blizzard is anticipating that cheaters may inevitably be an issue that they have to deal with in their upcoming team-based FPS, Overwatch. In a forum post written today, the developer talked about the penalties it’s imposing towards those who choose to cheat in the game.

      This is a news that Blizzard has done corresponding actions for cheating behaviors. Looks like being permanently banned is what most game platforms would like to do. Also there will be reporting system for players to supervise each other. We can see that game companies are trying best to prevent cheating behavior in different aspects. But still, their attention probably can never get loose.

  2. Jul 2017
    1. This is true with many service jobs such as nurses and attorneys, and my knowledge of the dilemma was drawn from a teaching internship earlier this year: working with an intense winter program as a teaching assistant, I had to update assignments every night, with each piece due in a couple days after announcement.

      Argument from personal experience might not be authentic enough to consolidate the point.