Titanfall Anti-Cheat Won't Ban Cheaters - It Forces Them to Play Together

[Steven Bogos]

Titanfall Anti-Cheat Won't Ban Cheaters - It Forces Them to Play Together

If you get caught cheating in Titanfall, you'll still be able to play the game... but only with other cheaters.

Earlier in the month, we uncovered the slightly disturbing fact that Titanfall didn't actually have an anti-cheat system [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/132997-Titanfall-Doesnt-Have-Anti-Cheat-Yet] that was actively punishing cheaters. We're now happy to report that as of Friday, March 21, cheaters in the PC version of the game are being caught and punished. However, unlike traditional anti-cheat systems, which simply ban you from playing the game online, Titanfall's FairFight works a little differently. If your account gets "banned" for cheating, you'll still be able to play the game... but only with other cheaters!

"You can play with other banned players in something that will resemble the Wimbledon of aimbot contests," said Respawn in an official blog post [http://www.titanfall.com/news/we-hate-cheaters-just-as-much-as-you-do]. "Hopefully the aimbot cheat you paid for really is the best, or these all-cheater matches could be frustrating for you. Good luck."

Furthermore, if you do get flagged as a cheater, you'll still be able to party with your non-cheating friends. "When anyone in your party is banned, then everyone in your party will be treated as banned for that play session. If you are a non-cheater and you invite a cheater friend into a party, you will be stuck playing against cheaters."

It's certainly a very novel way to deal with cheaters, slightly less harsh than outright banning them, especially considering Titanfall is a full-priced game without any sort of single-player component for banned players to fall back on.

Either way, it's good to see the devs finally getting around to dealing with cheaters, although I would have liked to have seen it right from launch.

Source: Respawn Entertainment [http://www.titanfall.com/news/we-hate-cheaters-just-as-much-as-you-do]

Permalink

 

[Neta]

Heh. That sounds like a fun in a poetic justice kind of way.

Like a great big "U Mad?" trollface grinning at people who cheat but still can't win.

 

[DasDestroyer]

I remember having a slightly similar idea back in the days when I played Modern Warfare: find all of the campers, put them on a server where they aren't allowed to move, and see how much fun they have camping.

 

[TheSYLOH]

It's certainly a very novel way to deal with cheaters

Max Payne 3 did it already, and apparently did it well....

 

[Xan Krieger]

I remember having a slightly similar idea back in the days when I played Modern Warfare: find all of the campers, put them on a server where they aren't allowed to move, and see how much fun they have camping.

Camping isn't cheating, if it works it's good strategy. It's not a glitch or cheat, it's playing smart.

OT: Sounds brilliant, wonder if it'll teach anyone not to cheat.

 

[DasDestroyer]

I remember having a slightly similar idea back in the days when I played Modern Warfare: find all of the campers, put them on a server where they aren't allowed to move, and see how much fun they have camping.

Camping isn't cheating, if it works it's good strategy. It's not a glitch or cheat, it's playing smart.

OT: Sounds brilliant, wonder if it'll teach anyone not to cheat.

Well then, good thing I never said it was.

 

[AnthrSolidSnake]

This actually...isn't a bad idea. Obviously banning players from a game isn't deterring them from cheating in the first place, so might as well let them play, just only with each other. It'd be interesting to see cheaters out cheat each other.

 

[Xan Krieger]

I remember having a slightly similar idea back in the days when I played Modern Warfare: find all of the campers, put them on a server where they aren't allowed to move, and see how much fun they have camping.

Camping isn't cheating, if it works it's good strategy. It's not a glitch or cheat, it's playing smart.

OT: Sounds brilliant, wonder if it'll teach anyone not to cheat.

Well then, good thing I never said it was.

I need to quit typing, every time I do it shows my stupidity. Seemed like you were saying the two were equal, got distracted again back to typing, um................yeah my bad.

 

[Chessrook44]

I remember having a slightly similar idea back in the days when I played Modern Warfare: find all of the campers, put them on a server where they aren't allowed to move, and see how much fun they have camping.

Camping isn't cheating, if it works it's good strategy. It's not a glitch or cheat, it's playing smart.

OT: Sounds brilliant, wonder if it'll teach anyone not to cheat.

Am I the only one left now thinking of this?

Spoiler

[youtube]http://youtu.be/bLMYTQUw8Lc[/youtube]

 

[Arawn]

Am the only one that would like to see one of these "Cheater only" sessions? I mean wall hacks, aimbots, and whatever else they might employ would make for a rather quick match no?

I remember having a slightly similar idea back in the days when I played Modern Warfare: find all of the campers, put them on a server where they aren't allowed to move, and see how much fun they have camping.

Camping isn't cheating, if it works it's good strategy. It's not a glitch or cheat, it's playing smart.

OT: Sounds brilliant, wonder if it'll teach anyone not to cheat.

Well then, good thing I never said it was.

I can feel/see DasDestroyer is saying about this. Camping isn't cheating, but it is VERY frustrating. Can't count the number of times to be dominated by such a cheap, yet effective, tactic. At the same time the amount of satisfaction when such campers are hunted down.(knifed the preferred method >)

 

[DasDestroyer]

I need to quit typing, every time I do it shows my stupidity. Seemed like you were saying the two were equal, got distracted again back to typing, um................yeah my bad.

Happens to the best of us.

I can feel/see DasDestroyer is saying about this. Camping isn't cheating, but it is VERY frustrating. Can't count the number of times to be dominated by such a cheap, yet effective, tactic. At the same time the amount of satisfaction when such campers are hunted down.(knifed the preferred method >)

Yup, you nailed it. Both are annoying and it would be hilariously ironic to make both only play with others like them, but camping is certainly not cheating.
My idea is nastier though - at least if you're playing with other cheaters in Titanfall you can still kind of play. If nobody on the server can move and is forced to camp, however, not much playing can be done.

 

[C.TYR]

Do you know what I just realized? This sort of thing could create a new version of a type of StarCraft game, wherein, using a certain layout of the land in the map and timing, cheaters with their aimbots have to create the most strategic way in which to move throughout the map and try to predict other aimbots in order to win.

It'd be like some form of strange robot-related cheaters chess!

 

[Lunar Templar]

I really like this idea to be honest. Will it learn em anything? Probably not, especially since the cheaters will pretty much need their cheats to stay 'effective' (even if taking any kinda cheat into a competitive game like Titan Fall is just pathetic imo), but its better then just taking the game away from them.

 

[Vigormortis]

I kind of like this scenario. In a way, it forces the hackers to get a perpetual taste of their own medicine.

It's almost poetic.

...although I would have liked to have seen it right from launch.

That would have made for the worst and most useless kind of anti-cheat system.

Most don't auto-ban the instant they detect a hack. Doing so would defeat the purpose as, upon discovering which version of a given hack was caught, the hackers (or more to the point, the coders of the hacks) will just modify their builds and continue circumventing the anti-cheat system.

So while instant bans might catch a handful of hackers now and again, systems like the one being used by Respawn (systems that detect hackers but wait for a period of time before doing large blanket bans) wind up catching and banning far more hackers and cheaters.

Why people reporting on this news keep acting as though Respawn had no anti-cheat system in place at all, at least until now, is beyond me...

 

[Leemaster777]

I've always liked systems like this. A few recent fighting games have used similar systems to punish disconnecters (forcing them to ONLY play other disconnecters).

Far less harsh than a straight-up ban, but still weeds the bad apples out of normal online multiplayer. I'm all for this, and I hope we continue to see similar measures taken in future multiplayer-centric games.

 

[shial]

Another alternative is do the Batman method. When people grabbed the bittorrented copy remember things all just failed spectacularly. http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/94524-Arkham-Asylum-Pirates-Get-a-Gimpy-Batman

Make it so a banned player does maybe 1% damage and takes +200% damage, oh and he glows in the dark and can be team killed any time he joins a regular server. Even better make it not so obvious and drive him nuts but basically make him a sitting duck for everybody else.

 

[Olas]

I like this idea. Obviously cheating is a shitty thing to do, but completely losing access to a game you paid 60+ dollars for seems like a harsh punishment even for that.

Though I'm honestly curious what the matches between cheaters would be like because it seems like they could be even more interesting than the main game.

 

[porous_shield]

I like this idea. Obviously cheating is a shitty thing to do, but completely losing access to a game you paid 60+ dollars for seems like a harsh punishment even for that.

Though I'm honestly curious what the matches between cheaters would be like because it seems like they could be even more interesting than the main game.

That would be interesting to watch. All the cheaters trying to figure out the intricacies of other peoples' hacks and cheats so that they could kill the other players without being killed themselves.

It'd probably be a frustrating mess but in my head it looks like chess.

 

[chikusho]

I wonder if this is a permanent thing, or just something that happens when a cheat is detected.