Ubisoft Details Penalties for Cheaters in The Division

[Lizzy Finnegan]

Ubisoft Details Penalties for Cheaters in The Division

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Two strikes and you're out.

In a post today [http://tomclancy-thedivision.ubi.com/game/en-GB/news/detail.aspx?c=tcm:154-248717-16&ct=tcm:148-76770-32], Ubisoft laid out the punishments that the company will be handing out to anyone caught cheating in The Division. A first offense will net you a 14-day suspension, while the second will "always" end with a permanent ban. In order to identify cheating players, Ubisoft has implemented "cheat detection" methods.

For players who exploit bugs, Ubisoft promises to quickly confirm whether or not any specific bug is considered to be an exploit - and all known exploits will be listed in a forum thread and across communication platforms. "This will ensure that those caught after an exploit was confirmed are aware of the consequences and actions that can be taken against them," the post reads.

Players who "abuse exploits" repeatedly will be sanctioned, with these sanctions being determined by the history of the player and "severity of the abuse." Possible sanctions include character rollbacks, suspensions, and permanent bans.

"Fixing game bugs is one aspect of it, and we are improving our processes to address that. Dissuading players from impairing others' gameplay by violating the rules of the game is another aspect. We also want to give you better visibility and transparency. We are fully committed to providing an enjoyable and fair environment for all our players, and will take all steps necessary to achieve this goal."

The post states that Ubisoft has caught "more cheaters in the last few days than we had in total during the previous weeks," and will be issuing the "biggest wave of suspensions and bans to date over the course of the next few days."

Permalink

 

[-Ezio-]

i guess that's easier for them than actually fixing their shit.

 

[Karathos]

i guess that's easier for them than actually fixing their shit.

Punishing cheaters and fixing their game are not mutually exclusive things.

I hope they stick to this and actually do boot people out permanently if they're caught twice. Don't need that kind of thing stinking up the online neighbourhood.

 

[Kenjitsuka]

Experienced online game devs have declared the entire thing would have to be rebuilt from scratch, since it's based on the n00b idea of "trusting the client"... the whole foundation is litteraly unfixable the way it sits!

 

[OldNewNewOld]

For players who exploit bugs, Ubisoft promises to quickly confirm whether or not any specific bug is considered to be an exploit - and all known exploits will be listed in a forum thread and across communication platforms. "This will ensure that those caught after an exploit was confirmed are aware of the consequences and actions that can be taken against them," the post reads.

This is idiotic. Unless they make it so that you're forced to read through the forum, there is no way that people will know about whether something is an exploit or not. What if someone "discovers" a known exploit on his own by accident? 14 days suspension because he didn't visit Ubishits forum?

Also it's no the players fault that they can't hire competent developer. Maybe fix your freaking game instead of punishing people for doing something that you allowed. There is a huge difference between cheater and bug exploiting.

 

[enginieri]

Yesterday a game network expert diagnosed that The Division has a client trusted model, so you have the dinner served for all kinds of hacks and exploits, and only with a total rewrite of the game network code to mostly run in the server you can "fix" this game.

 

[P-89 Scorpion]

Love it, buy $60 game run into a glitch get perma-banned for 'cheating' and then Ubisoft expects people to buy more of their games, really? LOL

 

[Karathos]

Also it's no the players fault that they can't hire competent developer. Maybe fix your freaking game instead of punishing people for doing something that you allowed. There is a huge difference between cheater and bug exploiting.

You do something once and it's a discovery sure. What if then your game profile shows you never report it anywhere on official channels and you in fact replicate it several times. Who's to blame at that point?

People really need to grow up and take some responsibility for their own actions instead of intentionally acting dumb. This is daycare-level lying plain and simple. "I DIDN'T KNOW WAAH" is what toddlers scream when they're caught sneaking cookies out of the jar when it's not snack time. You say there's a huge difference between cheater and bug exploiting and you're right. But guess what? There's a huge difference between "something the dev allowed" and "something the dev didn't catch in testing". Whenever there's talk of bug exploiting in games nowadays there's always the same words coming from a different source. A resounding "b-b-but we didn't know you weren't allowed to completely bypass a central boss fight to get loot. Why didn't you fix your game?"

Stop it. For the sake of your own dignity and intellect don't insult yourself by saying you didn't know it wasn't allowed, or didn't realise the point of that entire instance was to completely skip the boss fight, or by shifting blame onto the Devs like a child.

Just stop it.

 

[Kathinka]

What's wrong with getting rid of the cheating scum right away like in the good old days? Hell, I'm all for locking them out of their entire Uplay / Steam library permanently.

 

[Starke]

What's wrong with getting rid of the cheating scum right away like in the good old days? Hell, I'm all for locking them out of their entire Uplay / Steam library permanently.

Oh, hey, look, there's Dark Souls 3 over there issuing soft bans to players because an invader was cheating. I sure wish that system was overhauled to lock people out of their Steam library.

._.

 

[Starke]

Experienced online game devs have declared the entire thing would have to be rebuilt from scratch, since it's based on the n00b idea of "trusting the client"... the whole foundation is litteraly unfixable the way it sits!

One dev, and he did include the caveat that he had no first hand experience with the game. Either from the developmental side or as a player. He was simply evaluating the information he could find on line... which is still credible.

That said, yeah, there's really no excuse for a trusted client setup in The Division. Especially one without sanity checks of any kind. These kinds of teleports and godshot cheats should not be possible at all. There is absolutely no excuse for someone being able to actually affect your MMO via something as simple as cheat engine.

 

[The Enquirer]

i guess that's easier for them than actually fixing their shit.

DCUO had a habit of not banning hackers, or taking a long time to do so when it did. It ultimately lead to a fairly crappy community when it came to that stuff. If you refused to exploit certain things you'd be kicked from the group. There was a rather notorious glitch that happened wherein if you were a certain power, you could glitch behind a wall and beat the boss without taking any damage whatsoever.

There's two things worth noting with this glitch. The first being that it was actually impossible to do on the PC platform, so it was not caught during the testing phase by any of the people who ran the raid repeatedly so it only showed up on the Playstation servers once it hit live servers. The second being that it was a glitch people knew they were exploiting. There were open calls for people of that specific power to run that specific raid to glitch the content for easy rewards.

These same people weren't banned and, through the remaining time I spent with the game, were the same people who would kick people from their groups if they refused to exploit something. So while I don't think you should be banned for every exploit due to the development side of things, there are definitely exceptions.

What's wrong with getting rid of the cheating scum right away like in the good old days? Hell, I'm all for locking them out of their entire Uplay / Steam library permanently.

The funny thing is when it comes to people getting nostalgic over the good old days is that they tend to forget all the bad that came with them and the fact that the landscape is entirely different now.

 

[Kathinka]

What's wrong with getting rid of the cheating scum right away like in the good old days? Hell, I'm all for locking them out of their entire Uplay / Steam library permanently.

Yes, stealing all the software someone has purchased is fully justified against people that modify a game for fun. How dare people modify our software to enjoy the game in a way they prefer.....

...

.....

Think about how dumb that comment was, this is before even bringing in the many false positives these 'anti cheat' systems have.

I get it, cheaters are annoying, their why I don't play games online in PvP, only PvE. But regardless of their annoyance they still paid for the game like we did and I find it disgusting that a dev thinks it has the right to punish someone for playing how they like it. A 'mod' can be classified as cheating, this sort of crap is why i don't buy Ubisoft games, you can't mod them for fun (I'm thinking more the old style add new guns etc fun).

Then again this game sounds like a full MMO game pretending to be a boarderlands style RPG. Which is false advertising bullcrap to begin with.

There is nothing wrong with modifying your game files for your personal single player experience. But as soon as you bring that into multiplayer, destroying other peoples experience, you deserve whatever is happening to you.

I admit I'm not super caught up with the current state of anti cheat measures, but back when I was versed, (CoD4 days) false positives were super rare to non-existent. When you pull a PB screenshot from a client and there is red boxes around every enemy player model, even those out of sight behind walls, there really isn't much wiggle room for "false positive".

 

[RicoADF]

There is nothing wrong with modifying your game files for your personal single player experience. But as soon as you bring that into multiplayer, destroying other peoples experience, you deserve whatever is happening to you.

I admit I'm not super caught up with the current state of anti cheat measures, but back when I was versed, (CoD4 days) false positives were super rare to non-existent. When you pull a PB screenshot from a client and there is red boxes around every enemy player model, even those out of sight behind walls, there really isn't much wiggle room for "false positive".

Unfortunately the problem is alot of games (esp from Ubisoft) are always online "semi" multiplayer like Dark Souls which makes it hard to separate the SP from the MP. Wish these devs would make it easier to separate that stuff so people have choices.

I still don't agree with your previous statement about locking people's steam out even if they are caught 100% as cheating online. Doing so is still stealing their software they paid money for and would be illegal (rightfully so).

 

[Something Amyss]

i guess that's easier for them than actually fixing their shit.

The Division is so screwed that time travel is probably easier for them than actually fixing their shit.

At this point, they should probably be refunding money and I kinda wouldn't be surprised if they pulled an AC Unity on this game.

Yes, stealing all the software someone has purchased is fully justified against people that modify a game for fun. How dare people modify our software to enjoy the game in a way they prefer.....

Nothing is being stolen.

You're also conflating "mod for fun" with "mod to cheat at the game," even though you just said yourself cheaters suck. The issue here is that people are modding for "fun," only if you consider "fun" to mean "win at PVP." And I don't care if they paid for the game. All the legit players did, too. You're railing against the idea that players can't play the way they want. Well, I want to play by the rules, and I can't. I want to enjoy the endgame content, and I can't. Why does the baby who has god mode on get to "enjoy the game the way he wants," but the rest of us don't?

Sure, you don't buy games like this. But this is a game like this. It's a MMO hybrid whatchamacallit. The "single player" argument is already out the window. And you know that, because you've already commented on it.

 

[RicoADF]

You're also conflating "mod for fun" with "mod to cheat at the game," even though you just said yourself cheaters suck. The issue here is that people are modding for "fun," only if you consider "fun" to mean "win at PVP." And I don't care if they paid for the game. All the legit players did, too. You're railing against the idea that players can't play the way they want. Well, I want to play by the rules, and I can't. I want to enjoy the endgame content, and I can't. Why does the baby who has god mode on get to "enjoy the game the way he wants," but the rest of us don't?

Sure, you don't buy games like this. But this is a game like this. It's a MMO hybrid whatchamacallit. The "single player" argument is already out the window. And you know that, because you've already commented on it.

Thing is he had suggested cheaters should not only be banned from the game in question but also their whole Ubisoft and/or Steam library which would include other games the player owns (both SP and MP). No way could you consider that acceptable nor could you argue it would not be stealing.

"Why does the baby who has god mode on get to "enjoy the game the way he wants," but the rest of us don't?"
Ban the player from PvP until they play by the rules sure, but that is different from banning them out of the whole game that includes a SP component which they still did pay for.

 

[Kathinka]

There is nothing wrong with modifying your game files for your personal single player experience. But as soon as you bring that into multiplayer, destroying other peoples experience, you deserve whatever is happening to you.

I admit I'm not super caught up with the current state of anti cheat measures, but back when I was versed, (CoD4 days) false positives were super rare to non-existent. When you pull a PB screenshot from a client and there is red boxes around every enemy player model, even those out of sight behind walls, there really isn't much wiggle room for "false positive".

Unfortunately the problem is alot of games (esp from Ubisoft) are always online "semi" multiplayer like Dark Souls which makes it hard to separate the SP from the MP. Wish these devs would make it easier to separate that stuff so people have choices.

I still don't agree with your previous statement about locking people's steam out even if they are caught 100% as cheating online. Doing so is still stealing their software they paid money for and would be illegal (rightfully so).

I'm not so sure about the legality. They breached the TOS of steam and could rightfully lose the account.
Or at least make them lose their online capability, so they can still use their library in offline mode. At any rate, they lost the right to interact with other people through games online, they have proven that they can not be trusted to play fair.

I agree with the part about the melding of single- and multiplayer though. Would be nice if it was more clear cut. But any reasonable human being should understand that it's supremely shitty to cheat at the expensive of others. Cheat all you want, in some games, like especially the older GTAs, cheats were crazy fun. But if you do, keep it offline.

 

[Strazdas]

For players who exploit bugs, Ubisoft promises to quickly confirm whether or not any specific bug is considered to be an exploit - and all known exploits will be listed in a forum thread and across communication platforms. "This will ensure that those caught after an exploit was confirmed are aware of the consequences and actions that can be taken against them," the post reads.

If theres something i learnt running a multiplayer server is that 99% of your playerbase will never read those even if their life depended on it.

"Fixing game bugs is one aspect of it, and we are improving our processes to address that. Dissuading players from impairing others' gameplay by violating the rules of the game is another aspect. We also want to give you better visibility and transparency. We are fully committed to providing an enjoyable and fair environment for all our players, and will take all steps necessary to achieve this goal."

You know come to think of it i havent seen a publisher this size be this transparent with their bug system. So I guess thats good for them.

Punishing cheaters and fixing their game are not mutually exclusive things.

If the game is properly fixed there wont be cheaters to punish. There is a reason some games are considered uncheatable. Of course a lot of developers seem to prefer to take the easy route nowadays and then blame the community for it (cough, Rockstar, cough)

Stop it. For the sake of your own dignity and intellect don't insult yourself by saying you didn't know it wasn't allowed, or didn't realise the point of that entire instance was to completely skip the boss fight, or by shifting blame onto the Devs like a child.

Just stop it.

If you can skip the central boss and go to the loot damn right its the devs fault for not having basic quality assurance.

What's wrong with getting rid of the cheating scum right away like in the good old days? Hell, I'm all for locking them out of their entire Uplay / Steam library permanently.

because bugs, broken DRM and false positives will get you banned. Also locking you out of other games is flat out illegal.

 

[RicoADF]

I'm not so sure about the legality. They breached the TOS of steam and could rightfully lose the account.

I don't know where you live but in the EU and I'm certain here in Australia the ToS does not override local laws. Such laws include theft of items that someone has purchased. To lock someone out of their Steam library over accused cheating would be considered theft and as such the company would find themselves on the wrong side of a court order.

Funny enough Valve is already sitting in such a position over their previous no refunds policy. Just one example of how their ToS/EULA is only binding upto the point that local law says otherwise.

Regarding the false positives, please see Demon Souls 3 false positives as the latest example of how easy people who don't cheat could be caught up in this.

 

[BloodRed Pixel]

as usualy ubi fucks up.
The only rightful way to deal with cheater is the way, I think Titanfall did it. Put them all on one Server,
see how much fun they have.

Comletely banning from playing is effectively stealing the license the player bought.