Question - what the heck right does a game developer have to tell you what you can and cannot run on your PC? If the game clearly says on the front cover - 'You will be banned if using 3rd party apps'. then fine, don't buy it. But I certainly hope they will be providing refunds.

Angel_Rex:

Question - what the heck right does a game developer have to tell you what you can and cannot run on your PC? If the game clearly says on the front cover - 'You will be banned if using 3rd party apps'. then fine, don't buy it. But I certainly hope they will be providing refunds.

They have every right to ban cheaters. The PC platform is flooded with them. So Its for tools that pose a threat to the shared ecosystem of the game not overlays or performance tools, including Discord, Xsplit, OBS, RTSS, etc

WhiteLightning:

They have every right to ban cheaters. The PC platform is flooded with them. So Its for tools that pose a threat to the shared ecosystem of the game not overlays or performance tools, including Discord, Xsplit, OBS, RTSS, etc

Having CE run in the background for example does not automatically imply/mean that you're attempting to mess with Destiny itself. Additionally I'd question the legal legitimacy of a game checking/scanning what's running in the background assuming that none of these processes (in)directly attached themselves to the game's executable files or allocated memory. Anti-Cheating measures are all fine and dandy, if they work that is.

moeppel:

Having CE run in the background for example does not automatically imply/mean that you're attempting to mess with Destiny itself..

Sorry but i find that a weak excuse. If cheat engine runs in the background, its running for a purpose. Its not like it is autorun by windows on boot. I hope it works well and we dont get to see any cheaters because of it. cheaters ruined online mp experience on pc,

WhiteLightning:

They have every right to ban cheaters. The PC platform is flooded with them. So Its for tools that pose a threat to the shared ecosystem of the game not overlays or performance tools, including Discord, Xsplit, OBS, RTSS, etc

If you do not want overlays tools, you just set the proper values in the creation of the swap-chain.... Anyway, the ability to alter the swap-chain alone is completely useless for cheating systems. If you want to protect your application for external tools you have to protect and black-box other things.. If Bungie and other companies want to stop cheating in multi-players game they have first to look at their employers which are selling cheat themselves immediately at every game update, sometimes the updated cheats are available even before the game updates are released to the public.

WhiteLightning:

Sorry but i find that a weak excuse. If cheat engine runs in the background, its running for a purpose. Its not like it is autorun by windows on boot. I hope it works well and we dont get to see any cheaters because of it. cheaters ruined online mp experience on pc,

It's not even an excuse, but a principle. Maybe you've played a single player game you love to hack to the crap out of prior to launching Destiny and have not shut down CE. That's not even an uncommon occurence for those using CE frequently I'd bet. Moving to the abstraction of it, though: Pre-emptive bans will not work and would likely not hold up legally, too. Cheaters can only be banned after the fact, not before. Banning based on background process scans on one hand likely violates privacy rights (all the more so if telemetriks are involved) and it'll likely lead to plentiful false positives, which in turn causes a PR meltdown as seen here (especially if these background processes have been in no way attached to Desinty and its run time). Arguably OllyDB/VS Debugger could be considered a threat if that's how you go about things. No matter how you spin it, the developer/publisher is always going to lose if they move on such slippery slopes. Typically, if anything, gameguards (X-Trap, etc.) are used for pre-emtpive meassures. I don't doubt in the least that PC multiplayer hacking is fairly rampant but at the same time I fortunately don't have to care either, for I've not played any such games in decades and likely won't ever again. It should be clear however that such an approach is inevitably going to wind up in self-harm more than anything else.

Alessio1989:

If you do not want overlays tools, you just set the proper values in the creation of the swap-chain.... Anyway, the ability to alter the swap-chain alone is completely useless for cheating systems. If you want to protect your application for external tools you have to protect and black-box other things.. If Bungie and other companies want to stop cheating in multi-players game they have first to look at their employers which are selling cheat themselves immediately at every game update, sometimes the updated cheats are available even before the game updates are released to the public.

Seems you are quit familiar with online cheating. Saying that bungie's employers are the one that sell the cheats.

moeppel:

It's not even an excuse, but a principle. Maybe you've played a single player game you love to hack to the crap out of prior to launching Destiny and have not shut down CE. That's not even an uncommon occurence for those using CE frequently I'd bet. Moving to the abstraction of it, though: Pre-emptive bans will not work and would likely not hold up legally, too. Cheaters can only be banned after the fact, not before. Banning based on background process scans on one hand likely violates privacy rights (all the more so if telemetriks are involved) and it'll likely lead to plentiful false positives, which in turn causes a PR meltdown as seen here (especially if these background processes have been in no way attached to Desinty and its run time). Arguably OllyDB/VS Debugger could be considered a threat if that's how you go about things. No matter how you spin it, the developer/publisher is always going to lose if they move on such slippery slopes. Typically, if anything, gameguards (X-Trap, etc.) are used for pre-emtpive meassures. I don't doubt in the least that PC multiplayer hacking is fairly rampant but at the same time I fortunately don't have to care either, for I've not played any such games in decades and likely won't ever again. It should be clear however that such an approach is inevitably going to wind up in self-harm more than anything else.

When it comes to online cheaters the time for principles are quite over for what im concerned. If people still have cheat engine running while playing destiny they are just plain stupid. They will probably will get their account unbanned when they send a support ticked to bungie as well. so its a good warning at the time of the ban. Remember they wont ban everything, its a selection of things which are known as cheat software. I dont like the idea of running 'Im not cheating untill i actually press the button to cheat'. That way it will be harder to detect the cheaters. I have heard this arguments many times before when i was involved building a anti cheat thingy. scan memory is violation of privacy , blah blah blah. but mostly it was the cheaters that were complaining about that. Once the server was cheat free, people were quite happy with it. people cant be trusted online when it comes to cheating, because they are liars as well. You would be surpisedjsut how popular cheating is on the PC platform. from about every game you can find video's on youtube of people cheating. And this has been going on for many years. Its one of the reasons why I and my friends dont play in multiplayer games anymore, unless its a co-op thing with people we know. I welcome their idea, especially for a game such as this with many different kind of weapons and armour sets where people have to play hundreds of hours for. Really dont want to see a guy with level 5 with the most exquisity stuff running around. If anything , a game with a lot of cheaters will harm their publicity and will keep people away. That would be a massive hit for a game which should last for years and years.

I think basic monitoring stuff should be provided default in online games, at least fps counter, latency meter. But It could be useful to have additional info like gpu usage, performance related parameters, ready to give to the devs if they need, to troubleshoot the issues someone could be affected with in less time and more efficiently. Noone would need to use 3rd party application to monitor fps and latency in this way. So if a dev doesn't want people to mess with his game with third party monitoring apps, just provide the monitoring stuff ingame and problem easily solved

Angel_Rex:

Question - what the heck right does a game developer have to tell you what you can and cannot run on your PC?

Every right, actually. It's their game, you only buy a license to play it, and you have to agree to the license agreements to play.

Angel_Rex:

Question - what the heck right does a game developer have to tell you what you can and cannot run on your PC? If the game clearly says on the front cover - 'You will be banned if using 3rd party apps'. then fine, don't buy it. But I certainly hope they will be providing refunds.

The ones who care about their game and don't want a bunch of kids to ruin it for everyone. When you buy a game you also gave to agree on a contract, witch no one reads, of fair use. If you don't use the game as intended, get a ban and f*** off.

WhiteLightning:

Sorry but i find that a weak excuse. If cheat engine runs in the background, its running for a purpose. Its not like it is autorun by windows on boot. I hope it works well and we dont get to see any cheaters because of it. cheaters ruined online mp experience on pc,

I can't play online games normal anymore, I don't know when it's skill beating me or a cheat! It's taken all the fun out for me. That's why I don't buy competitive games anymore. If detecting cheats was easy, there would be none online. The only way is to block anything that tries to temper with game code. I agree it sucks, but it's better than having cheaters imo.

WhiteLightning:

Seems you are quit familiar with online cheating. Saying that bungie's employers are the one that sell the cheats.

I am quite familiar with intermediate 3d graphics programming. How a swap-chain works is the "ABC" of 3d graphics programming, even before annoying geometry lessons (trigonometry and quaternions at first). Used to play CSS and CSGO just for fun with a couple of friends. Stopped for two reasons: annoying valve policy about guards (that only increase the "smurfs" issue while just a check-up on the balance of the teams could fix most of the issues), the mobile sign-in (that only caused issues at every mobile OS update), and for an anti-cheat software (that crap called "VAC") that works very slowly and never in the correct way. It's not about competitive mode etc, having people that ruins games even on community servers using a Kim-Trump super-uba-powa sets of cheat that even blind people could notice it is really annoying, it's like playing with team-killers childish assholes... Developers that sell - obviously illegally - online cheats its clear since there is a huge history of cheats already ready to the last update before those updates where available on the download servers... After all, online cheats is a multi-million dollar business. Interfere with 3d party overlay software that operate simply using what the platform (the windows SDK) expose to everyone will NEVER stop cheating: a simple trick would just use another presentation buffer on another virtual device.. If developers want to blackbox their presentation buffer they are free to do that without causing issues to harmless people.

Who this is the beginning of the end for making game videos i see it now. To be fair the have all the right to say you can reproduce on software. They didnt really say what was causing the bans.

Get used to the idea because Windows is about to make everyone use their new software TruePlay. "Gaming is more fun when everybody plays fairly. We'll share system info with games using TruePlay to make sure everything runs the way it's meant to. Turning this off may limit the games you can play". I understand we all want rid of cheaters/hackers but i'm not sure this is the way to do it.

Alessio1989:

Interfere with 3d party overlay software that operate simply using what the platform (the windows SDK) expose to everyone will NEVER stop cheating: a simple trick would just use another presentation buffer on another virtual device.. If developers want to blackbox their presentation buffer they are free to do that without causing issues to harmless people.

You get the things wrong, it is nothing about blackboxing their presentation buffer. It is about blackboxing the game process and locking it for any third party DLL modules injection. And it does make cheating a bit more troublesome (but not impossible).

Reddoguk:

Get used to the idea because Windows is about to make everyone use their new software TruePlay. "Gaming is more fun when everybody plays fairly. We'll share system info with games using TruePlay to make sure everything runs the way it's meant to. Turning this off may limit the games you can play". I understand we all want rid of cheaters/hackers but i'm not sure this is the way to do it.

I think it's not a horrible idea, only because I think we do need one standardized protected tool to do this. But I don't think Microsoft is going to accomplish correctly.

The ones who care about their game and don't want a bunch of kids to ruin it for everyone. When you buy a game you also gave to agree on a contract, witch no one reads, of fair use. If you don't use the game as intended, get a ban and f*** off.

The issue here is that their is a difference between being banned for ACTUALLY cheating, a factor that you have signed up for and being banned because you happen to have software that COULD be used for cheating. The current argument being that you have the software ergo you are a cheater lets ban you even though we have no proof that you actually used the software to cheat vs here you are total and utter proof that you have been caught cheating and we have banned you. The developers are using the link that because someone was stabbed in your house and you own a knife it was you that stabbed them. This issue has caused quite a large outrage in the GTA community in which Rcokstars anti cheat system has pinged players on PC (a community that has been overrun by money spawners) as having in correct values in their bank account (usually players who have quite large sums of cash) and then stripped them of the cash simply because it wasn't the value that they expected. The theory kicking about being that it compares the value to factors listed on your social club account even though though those factors have been proven to not include all forms of legitimately earned money. A lot of players have requested Rcokstar return their cash, many of whom have provided screenshots proving how they obtained the money, which is far more than any of these developers will provide back to you. If you're lucky you'll get a generic bot message saying that you have been banned or caught cheating and why. The very basic level of service these companies should be providing is a human rep to answer requests who in turn should be providing ACTUAL proof as to the cause of the ban and when it comes to games were microtransactions are a factor and players can be banned or have account adjustments based around microtransaction factors it should be a mandatory legal requirement that bans are only issued if the developer can provide actual evidence of the crime. Not to continue with GTA the fact that many of the people that had their in game cash 'corrected' by Rcokstar's cheat engine then started to receive in game adverts on their load screen for Shark Card discounts only added to the players anger.

The Laughing Ma:

The issue here is that their is a difference between being banned for ACTUALLY cheating, a factor that you have signed up for and being banned because you happen to have software that COULD be used for cheating. The current argument being that you have the software ergo you are a cheater lets ban you even though we have no proof that you actually used the software to cheat vs here you are total and utter proof that you have been caught cheating and we have banned you. The developers are using the link that because someone was stabbed in your house and you own a knife it was you that stabbed them.

So what you are saying is that it's OK for me to buy a cheat program, have it running while playing the game, just not activate the cheat? There's only one reason why someone buys a cheat program.

WhiteLightning:

Sorry but i find that a weak excuse. If cheat engine runs in the background, its running for a purpose. Its not like it is autorun by windows on boot. I hope it works well and we dont get to see any cheaters because of it. cheaters ruined online mp experience on pc,

Ppl were banned for using discord.. so yeah so much for your rationale

zero_cool:

Ppl were banned for using discord.. so yeah so much for your rationale

This article is about them reversing that isnt it ? It takes time to tune this.

Unwinder:

You get the things wrong, it is nothing about blackboxing their presentation buffer. It is about blackboxing the game process and locking it for any third party DLL modules injection. And it does make cheating a bit more troublesome (but not impossible).

Unwinder:

You get the things wrong, it is nothing about blackboxing their presentation buffer. It is about blackboxing the game process and locking it for any third party DLL modules injection. And it does make cheating a bit more troublesome (but not impossible).

Black-boxing the application requires a hyper-visor layer, like in the XB1 console (not sure about the specific technology of the PS4 but it should be similar). Current hardware could allow this with very small overhead, however it would cause tons of issues with 3rd party drivers (I am not speaking about GPUs, but about input devices and sound cards) and software. Protecting the back-buffer swap-chain would prevent automatically third party overlays to work without causing all this kind of issues Bungie caused to legit players and without noticeable performance impact. Of course protecting the swap-chain will not block most of cheating hacks.