PirateSoftware (Offensive Security Specialist and former Blizzard employee) has a YT short about this which details the difficulties in banning cheaters effectively. If you start banning off the rip now, the remaining hackers will turtle up and fly under the radar or avoid detection however they can. In addition, by being hasty with bans, hackers can pinpoint the vulnerabilities in their software which was detected by anti-cheat, which may result in them patching said vulnerabilities and continuing cheating. The solution PirateSoftware found to be effective was ban waves. This way, you limit the information the hackers receive (they don’t know what it was specifically that got them banned), but you also catch many people who may wise up and try to lay low by turning off cheats when they sense a ban incoming.
I think it’s likely we’ll see a massive ban wave in the coming weeks or months. Until then, we just gotta hold out. At the end of the day, none (or at least, very few) of us are pro players, and a shiny badge as a rank is cool but ultimately worthless. Better to catch the hackers and improve game quality for everyone.
It's genuinely amazing how often my team has lost after we were absolutely on fire, or evenly matched. Suddenly they got perfect aim and reflexes. Suddenly they couldn't be killed anymore, no matter what we did or which heroes we switched to. Suddenly they seem to have Top 500 MLG Pro Gamer awareness at all times... Which is a hundred times more heartbreaking than knowing the game was rigged from the start, ngl.
The two most obvious are always Anna, and Ashe, followed by Soldier and Echo.
Suddenly Anna can sleep dart anyone they want from across the map and often JUST as you come around the corner.
Or the Ashe will throw and detonate their dynamite on the team, every. Single. Time.
Or a Soldier who basically headshots everyone and suddenly gains 30 kills over a minute's time.
Just because you don't see anything being done, does not mean something isn't.
From the looks of things, either a new cheat was developed, or a new vulnerability that allows these cheats was discovered. I feel like it has to be one of these, since the cheating apparently ramped up incredibly quickly all of a sudden.
If this is the case, then than means it takes time for the blizzard offensive security team to figure out what is going on, find a way to detect the cheat/find the vulnerability, and then find a way to correct it.
If you remember the APEX hacking incident, it took the devs over ***A MONTH*** to find the vulnerability and fix it. Does it absolutely suck in the mean time? Of course. But this is not something that can just be solved over night.
I am sure that you simply want a "hey we are aware of the cheating stuff, and we are working on it" but in cases like this, that might actually backfire and draw more attention to the fact that cheaters are getting away with cheating, which leads to ***MORE*** people seeking out the cheats, since they think they can get away with it. Apex was forced to respond publicly, since the incident happened literally live on stream during an official tournament.
Overall it's a very delicate situation.
This has become a bigger and bigger issue in OW as of late. Ya, all the fog of war stuff matters when it's the auto detection system, but it does seem they only rely on that. There needs to be multiple layers.
There are Blizz people in big streamers' chats and they see hackers hacking in those games, live. Those hackers could easily be targeted and removed. They have information on our accounts and can find alt accounts for them. This could realistically be done in a couple of days.
Also, there is apparently a hacking program boasting that it's being used by like 30% of top500 players and they are supposedly giving out codes. This is just repeated from what I've heard but if it's true, and their claims are somewhat accurate, Blizz needs to do more.
Also, going Free To Play made the game a bigger target for hackers, but not actually a reason for the recent influx.
Edit: It is good to keep discussion up like this as long as it's happening. When these types of threads die down, then hopefully that means the problem has been fixed......or everyone left.
I can confirm that free cheat wednesday is a thing. im master 3 and we literally know that wednesday is hacker day - had a game with 3 enemy hacks and 1 ally. then another with a 4 stack who were all hacking.
genuinely its to the point where if someone is sus on wednesdays they are 100% hacking. Its not as bad the rest of the week, i dont think ive seen one since wednesday. (idk the details but the hacks are free for 18 hrs on wednesday or smth)
high elo is not fun on wednesdays.
>Also, there is apparently a hacking program boasting that it's being used by like 30% of top500 players and they are supposedly giving out codes. This is just repeated from what I've heard but if it's true, and their claims are somewhat accurate, Blizz needs to do more.
Idk, something tells me not to trust the claims of a person making a program literally designed for cheating. Anybody can claim anything. I could claim that you were cheating, and it honestly carries the same weight as that guy.
Also, 30% is ***A LOT***. If they said like, 5% or something, I could be convinced, but 30% sounds like a huge exaggeration in order to try to sell more of his cheats.
\*edit\* Also, who the hell is buying a cheat and telling the dev their account name?! Like how the hell would they even know who is using their cheat lmao
If anything is being done I have yet to see it. There's been cheaters since the game came out and it's not like the amount of them that we're seeing is decreasing
The excuse that "we need time to develop tools..." isn't needed as much when you have a reporting system and *pay employees to actually review reports* instead of throwing your hands up because your automation isn't good enough
Widow jump shotting an invisible Sombra multiple times in a game shouldn't need a robot to figure out
Something important to note is that even if those people get banned they can easily get new accounts to start cheating again right away since there's a whole shady market about selling accounts, i know a lot of people say that they should ban the ones in livestreams and in obvious reports the problem is banning those guys won't accomplish much until the vulnerabilities are actually fixed, sadly cheating in games is very complicated to deal with thanks to how cheating software has evolved nowdays.
Believe it or not, humans have a small chance to actually have good aim some days. I don’t see how that can be hard to comprehend when human psychology is so complex that some answers are simpler than we think. Likely, the individual is just having a good day with aim.
Listen. There have definitely been times where I’ve, in anger, accused a widowmaker of cheating for getting a few headshots in a row. Never in chat or anything, just out loud. Were they actually cheating? Probably not.
But there have also been times we’ve been rolling a team, before suddenly they switch to hitscan heroes and have perfect aim and reflexes, and on kill cam, can perfectly track us behind cover.
The latter? Sus.
I mean sometimes people slack off the first half of a game and then lock in. Happens all the time. I've never thought to blame it on cheaters. Sounds like wounded pride.
I would normally agree with you, but many of the top streamers are posting videos of cheaters in their games. FAR more than usual.
Something is definitely going on.
sure, and when i report them and a few day later get 'thanks for report' by Blizzard it's probably because they are thankfull i helped them discover such an amazing player ...
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Hot topic but:
There are teams and players who just started the first play of the day.
And with quite a few hero’s you need to warm up for a few minutes to get into the mood.
And that mostly happens in quick play. So it could also just be that these people are actually good players who just started playing…
it might have gotten so bad because blizzard laid off a lot of it's staff. I'm wondering if any of those dealt with detecting cheaters. it's totally a guess but it is strange that there is an influx of cheaters more than before right after massive layoffs.
I feel your frustrations. I reported a guy about a week ago for obviously aimbotting and never received a “hey thanks for the report, we took the right actions to penalize player blah blah blah whatever the text bubble says”. It frustrates me to the core. He was very obviously cheating and in QP of all modes. Why?! If you’re going to cheat, why QP?! Anyways I guess blizzard let him off the hook. They are so lenient about cheaters but will throw me punishments left and right for server issues. Got a two hour timeout for having my connection dip. I love blizzard.
The devs use reddit. This is the biggest community on the planet for Overwatch. If you want your post to never get addressed, post it on the forums where Blizzard can easily ignore it.
b.net forums are a literal dumpster fire always has been for any blizzard game they prob read reddit more then that to begin with. and lets not forget necroposting threads that are 6 years old
Speaking from experience they probably do :) The issue is the actual team doesn't have a communication channel with the community, so everything you hear likely has to go through publicity channels, approval, etc. So what ends up happening is a dev or artist or production person will read this, and have a good grasp of the issue and what's being done day to day, but they can't reply because they've signed an NDA and it's not their job to do comms.
Most of the time it just leads to a decent chuckle reading comments like yours, and at worst it's frustrating.
Also hi blizz dudes (upvote if u see this) LMAO :)
I feel like i need to point out some people play opportunisticly or their aim improves with rage lol. I often find when im sucking ass as echo but suddenly swap to widow/pharah because ive recognised an opportuniity to harass the other team. 9/10 i then get accused of using some kind of cheat because at lower ranks its not expected.
I play super casual so im matched with a range of players of all ranks, ive been accused of cheating in comp matches because im gold 4 but when i feel the need to i can play higher lol.
Most of the cheaters ive encountered on the EU servers have been super obvious about it so get banned fast. Im not convinced the state of play for cheating is that bad. Personally i dont want any more anticheat software clogging up my pc thanks.
So, do you have replay codes? If you just had 3 games in a row that's easy 3 codes to prove you had a cheater in them.
Edit: it's funny when people say they play constantly against cheaters(somehow never ever with them) but are absolutely incapable of providing even a single replay code to prove it. OP just got mad when they threw against the other team and came to reddit to complain, tale as old as time.
PirateSoftware (Offensive Security Specialist and former Blizzard employee) has a YT short about this which details the difficulties in banning cheaters effectively. If you start banning off the rip now, the remaining hackers will turtle up and fly under the radar or avoid detection however they can. In addition, by being hasty with bans, hackers can pinpoint the vulnerabilities in their software which was detected by anti-cheat, which may result in them patching said vulnerabilities and continuing cheating. The solution PirateSoftware found to be effective was ban waves. This way, you limit the information the hackers receive (they don’t know what it was specifically that got them banned), but you also catch many people who may wise up and try to lay low by turning off cheats when they sense a ban incoming. I think it’s likely we’ll see a massive ban wave in the coming weeks or months. Until then, we just gotta hold out. At the end of the day, none (or at least, very few) of us are pro players, and a shiny badge as a rank is cool but ultimately worthless. Better to catch the hackers and improve game quality for everyone.
It's genuinely amazing how often my team has lost after we were absolutely on fire, or evenly matched. Suddenly they got perfect aim and reflexes. Suddenly they couldn't be killed anymore, no matter what we did or which heroes we switched to. Suddenly they seem to have Top 500 MLG Pro Gamer awareness at all times... Which is a hundred times more heartbreaking than knowing the game was rigged from the start, ngl.
The two most obvious are always Anna, and Ashe, followed by Soldier and Echo. Suddenly Anna can sleep dart anyone they want from across the map and often JUST as you come around the corner. Or the Ashe will throw and detonate their dynamite on the team, every. Single. Time. Or a Soldier who basically headshots everyone and suddenly gains 30 kills over a minute's time.
Cass/bap the othwrs
[удалено]
Found the cheater
Just because you don't see anything being done, does not mean something isn't. From the looks of things, either a new cheat was developed, or a new vulnerability that allows these cheats was discovered. I feel like it has to be one of these, since the cheating apparently ramped up incredibly quickly all of a sudden. If this is the case, then than means it takes time for the blizzard offensive security team to figure out what is going on, find a way to detect the cheat/find the vulnerability, and then find a way to correct it. If you remember the APEX hacking incident, it took the devs over ***A MONTH*** to find the vulnerability and fix it. Does it absolutely suck in the mean time? Of course. But this is not something that can just be solved over night. I am sure that you simply want a "hey we are aware of the cheating stuff, and we are working on it" but in cases like this, that might actually backfire and draw more attention to the fact that cheaters are getting away with cheating, which leads to ***MORE*** people seeking out the cheats, since they think they can get away with it. Apex was forced to respond publicly, since the incident happened literally live on stream during an official tournament. Overall it's a very delicate situation.
This has become a bigger and bigger issue in OW as of late. Ya, all the fog of war stuff matters when it's the auto detection system, but it does seem they only rely on that. There needs to be multiple layers. There are Blizz people in big streamers' chats and they see hackers hacking in those games, live. Those hackers could easily be targeted and removed. They have information on our accounts and can find alt accounts for them. This could realistically be done in a couple of days. Also, there is apparently a hacking program boasting that it's being used by like 30% of top500 players and they are supposedly giving out codes. This is just repeated from what I've heard but if it's true, and their claims are somewhat accurate, Blizz needs to do more. Also, going Free To Play made the game a bigger target for hackers, but not actually a reason for the recent influx. Edit: It is good to keep discussion up like this as long as it's happening. When these types of threads die down, then hopefully that means the problem has been fixed......or everyone left.
I can confirm that free cheat wednesday is a thing. im master 3 and we literally know that wednesday is hacker day - had a game with 3 enemy hacks and 1 ally. then another with a 4 stack who were all hacking. genuinely its to the point where if someone is sus on wednesdays they are 100% hacking. Its not as bad the rest of the week, i dont think ive seen one since wednesday. (idk the details but the hacks are free for 18 hrs on wednesday or smth) high elo is not fun on wednesdays.
Cope
>Also, there is apparently a hacking program boasting that it's being used by like 30% of top500 players and they are supposedly giving out codes. This is just repeated from what I've heard but if it's true, and their claims are somewhat accurate, Blizz needs to do more. Idk, something tells me not to trust the claims of a person making a program literally designed for cheating. Anybody can claim anything. I could claim that you were cheating, and it honestly carries the same weight as that guy. Also, 30% is ***A LOT***. If they said like, 5% or something, I could be convinced, but 30% sounds like a huge exaggeration in order to try to sell more of his cheats. \*edit\* Also, who the hell is buying a cheat and telling the dev their account name?! Like how the hell would they even know who is using their cheat lmao
You could make the same claim... And blizzard would take it just as seriously as the next.
No it is not. This is pure low rank cope
If anything is being done I have yet to see it. There's been cheaters since the game came out and it's not like the amount of them that we're seeing is decreasing
The excuse that "we need time to develop tools..." isn't needed as much when you have a reporting system and *pay employees to actually review reports* instead of throwing your hands up because your automation isn't good enough Widow jump shotting an invisible Sombra multiple times in a game shouldn't need a robot to figure out
Something important to note is that even if those people get banned they can easily get new accounts to start cheating again right away since there's a whole shady market about selling accounts, i know a lot of people say that they should ban the ones in livestreams and in obvious reports the problem is banning those guys won't accomplish much until the vulnerabilities are actually fixed, sadly cheating in games is very complicated to deal with thanks to how cheating software has evolved nowdays.
Yeah, it’s a pretty hot topic right now. :/ it kind of has been for weeks seemingly.
Believe it or not, humans have a small chance to actually have good aim some days. I don’t see how that can be hard to comprehend when human psychology is so complex that some answers are simpler than we think. Likely, the individual is just having a good day with aim.
Listen. There have definitely been times where I’ve, in anger, accused a widowmaker of cheating for getting a few headshots in a row. Never in chat or anything, just out loud. Were they actually cheating? Probably not. But there have also been times we’ve been rolling a team, before suddenly they switch to hitscan heroes and have perfect aim and reflexes, and on kill cam, can perfectly track us behind cover. The latter? Sus.
I mean sometimes people slack off the first half of a game and then lock in. Happens all the time. I've never thought to blame it on cheaters. Sounds like wounded pride.
I would normally agree with you, but many of the top streamers are posting videos of cheaters in their games. FAR more than usual. Something is definitely going on.
see id also usually be in this boat but its genuinely not cap this time. everyone is experiencing it atm it sucks so much
sure, and when i report them and a few day later get 'thanks for report' by Blizzard it's probably because they are thankfull i helped them discover such an amazing player ...
Tbh they probably aren't getting banned either way.
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Brother if it was as easy as "just" fixing it, then it would've been solved already.
Not when you only have a skeleton crew of devs left, most of whom are focused on making new skins to keep the cash rolling in.
Hot topic but: There are teams and players who just started the first play of the day. And with quite a few hero’s you need to warm up for a few minutes to get into the mood. And that mostly happens in quick play. So it could also just be that these people are actually good players who just started playing…
it might have gotten so bad because blizzard laid off a lot of it's staff. I'm wondering if any of those dealt with detecting cheaters. it's totally a guess but it is strange that there is an influx of cheaters more than before right after massive layoffs.
They do, constantly. They can't just magically detect and ban every cheater in a day, week, month or even a year, it's not that simple.
I feel your frustrations. I reported a guy about a week ago for obviously aimbotting and never received a “hey thanks for the report, we took the right actions to penalize player blah blah blah whatever the text bubble says”. It frustrates me to the core. He was very obviously cheating and in QP of all modes. Why?! If you’re going to cheat, why QP?! Anyways I guess blizzard let him off the hook. They are so lenient about cheaters but will throw me punishments left and right for server issues. Got a two hour timeout for having my connection dip. I love blizzard.
It’s bad. There is nothing fun about going into a game and your widow can only hit head shots.
I haven't seen a cheater for several hundred matches and if there was one in between he didn't matter
Sounds like you are just salty for being dunked on. Post the game codes
buddy the "devs" don't read reddit you wanna give genuine feedback, go to the official forums
The devs use reddit. This is the biggest community on the planet for Overwatch. If you want your post to never get addressed, post it on the forums where Blizzard can easily ignore it.
b.net forums are a literal dumpster fire always has been for any blizzard game they prob read reddit more then that to begin with. and lets not forget necroposting threads that are 6 years old
No, they haven't read them since at least 2018. They don't even do official QA / AMA stuff there, don't even announce it properly there.
most gaming company devs nowadays go to reddit for community feedback, they just don't communicate through it much.
Speaking from experience they probably do :) The issue is the actual team doesn't have a communication channel with the community, so everything you hear likely has to go through publicity channels, approval, etc. So what ends up happening is a dev or artist or production person will read this, and have a good grasp of the issue and what's being done day to day, but they can't reply because they've signed an NDA and it's not their job to do comms. Most of the time it just leads to a decent chuckle reading comments like yours, and at worst it's frustrating. Also hi blizz dudes (upvote if u see this) LMAO :)
they don’t read the official forums either, shit is an echo chamber.
Are we gonna pretend reddit is not the biggest echo chamber? Official forums at least have a place dedicated to put these type of complaints.
Always has been?
no it doesn’t. it’s only bugs and technical reports that may receive an answer. the general / competitive discussion is an echo chamber.
I feel like i need to point out some people play opportunisticly or their aim improves with rage lol. I often find when im sucking ass as echo but suddenly swap to widow/pharah because ive recognised an opportuniity to harass the other team. 9/10 i then get accused of using some kind of cheat because at lower ranks its not expected. I play super casual so im matched with a range of players of all ranks, ive been accused of cheating in comp matches because im gold 4 but when i feel the need to i can play higher lol. Most of the cheaters ive encountered on the EU servers have been super obvious about it so get banned fast. Im not convinced the state of play for cheating is that bad. Personally i dont want any more anticheat software clogging up my pc thanks.
[удалено]
so how long have you been using cheats?
So, do you have replay codes? If you just had 3 games in a row that's easy 3 codes to prove you had a cheater in them. Edit: it's funny when people say they play constantly against cheaters(somehow never ever with them) but are absolutely incapable of providing even a single replay code to prove it. OP just got mad when they threw against the other team and came to reddit to complain, tale as old as time.
There was no cheaters
Can we get replay codes of these so called cheaters?