79 replies to this topic

[[HWK]ZamboniChaos]

Greetings pilots,

This post is intended to lay out our policy regarding hackers and how we deal with them. We want our community to be clear on our stance and our process when a potential hacker is reported.

First, it's important to note that if you want to report someone who is suspected of hacking, video evidence will most likely be requested. Keep this in mind if you're looking for hackers and always be prepared to capture video.

When we receive a report, we use the evidence provided by the community and our cheat detection algorithm to determine the veracity of the claim. Every case is different and many times the solution is not black and white.

If enough data is provided by our cheat detection algorithm and the same player has been reported multiple times, we will usually implement a permanent ban on that player's account. If our cheat detection algorithm is lacking data, we will usually turn to the community and use reports from all of you to determine our next course of action. As long as we have enough trustworthy data, a permanent ban is usually the result.

Occasionally, we will implement suspensions instead of permanent bans. This is usually done when the possibility of false positives or the lack of evidence creates "reasonable doubt" and prevents us from permanently banning the player. However, if the player in question appears on our radar again and the evidence is solid, the player is permanently banned.

We hope this information helps our players understand how we approach the process of determining the measure of punishment for suspected hackers. There is zero tolerance for hacking in HAWKEN, and players who are proven to be using these hacks will be permanently banned from the game.

Thanks for all of your help so far in reporting suspected hackers and providing us with the necessary evidence for us to take action. We're constantly working to perfect the process and make HAWKEN a fun, hacker free experience for everyone.


(Call out threads are not appreciated since those are not used by our anti-cheat system and violate our forum rules. Players that violate these rules will have to face consequences. --[HWK]Defter)

[Cloudstorm]

Thanks for this very helpful. Would yo be prepared to issue the stats ie 60 accounts suspended, xx investigated. Having this sort of data in the forums would take a lot of heat out on the debate that nothing happens after a posted ticket_

[Lightangel112]

Thank you for this enlightening post.

[h0B0]

Thanks for sharing this with the community. However history has shown that this method hasn't been working to the satisfaction of the community.

Are there any plans from the dev team to improve the current methods by which hackers are detected and dealt with_

[LordTemujin]

I am certain this is not the first time the community has seen this, by the same token I am JUST as certain that there is a disconnect between your official policy compared to how it is actually implemented. This is clearly displayed by several known and reported aimbotters who have been reported as early as January by a number of individuals, and yet they are still playing the game and I still run into them on average once every two days. This is unacceptable and causes a schism in both the community and your consumer bases ability to trust what you actually SAY to us.

Tell me something once and don't act on it...and don't expect me to forget it. Things like this have a tendency to follow and damage a games reputation.

Edit:spelling/grammar

Edited by LordTemujin, May 14 2014 - 05:36 PM.

[OmegaNull]

LordTemujin, on May 14 2014 - 05:35 PM, said:

I am certain this is not the first time the community has seen this, by the same token I am JUST as certain that there is a disconnect between your official policy compared to how it is actually implemented. This is clearly displayed by several known and reported aimbotters who have been reported as early as January by a number of individuals, and yet they are still playing the game and I still run into them on average once every two days. This is unacceptable and causes a schism in both the community and your consumer bases ability to trust what you actually SAY to us.

Tell me something once and don't act on it...and don't expect me to forget it. Things like this have a tendency to follow and damage a games reputation.

Edit:spelling/grammar

^^ This

And because of how things are seem to handled, that leads to call-out thread.

Edited by OmegaNull, May 14 2014 - 08:37 PM.

[RunaPanda]

LordTemujin, on May 14 2014 - 05:35 PM, said:

I am certain this is not the first time the community has seen this, by the same token I am JUST as certain that there is a disconnect between your official policy compared to how it is actually implemented. This is clearly displayed by several known and reported aimbotters who have been reported as early as January by a number of individuals, and yet they are still playing the game and I still run into them on average once every two days. This is unacceptable and causes a schism in both the community and your consumer bases ability to trust what you actually SAY to us.

Tell me something once and don't act on it...and don't expect me to forget it. Things like this have a tendency to follow and damage a games reputation.

Edit:spelling/grammar

^^This most definitely.

There needs to be some kind of actual detection method in the game itself, be it VAC, punkbuster, etc. The ban hammer should come down on them when their in the act of hacking, not whenever afterwards if they're even reported at all. There are far to few who are actually able to record video while playing, let alone in good enough quality to be presentable as evidence. Something needs to be done on a proactive basis.

[Saturnine]

RunaPanda, on May 15 2014 - 09:46 AM, said:

LordTemujin, on May 14 2014 - 05:35 PM, said:

I am certain this is not the first time the community has seen this, by the same token I am JUST as certain that there is a disconnect between your official policy compared to how it is actually implemented. This is clearly displayed by several known and reported aimbotters who have been reported as early as January by a number of individuals, and yet they are still playing the game and I still run into them on average once every two days. This is unacceptable and causes a schism in both the community and your consumer bases ability to trust what you actually SAY to us.

Tell me something once and don't act on it...and don't expect me to forget it. Things like this have a tendency to follow and damage a games reputation.

Edit:spelling/grammar

^^This most definitely.

There needs to be some kind of actual detection method in the game itself, be it VAC, punkbuster, etc. The ban hammer should come down on them when their in the act of hacking, not whenever afterwards if they're even reported at all. There are far to few who are actually able to record video while playing, let alone in good enough quality to be presentable as evidence. Something needs to be done on a proactive basis.

The problem with taking action against a hacker while they're still in game, is that that anti-cheat would be useless. It would work the first day or two, where it catches current hacks, but banning a player as they are playing makes it extremely easy for the people making the hacks to figure out how the hacks are being detected. When they know how they are being detected, it's trivial to rework the hack so it gets around the anti-cheat. The examples of anti-cheat systems that you gave don't ban immediately ever. If they do, they are completely worthless as anti-cheat solutions.

[ReEvolve]

RunaPanda, on May 15 2014 - 09:46 AM, said:

There needs to be some kind of actual detection method in the game itself, be it VAC, punkbuster, etc.

Their cheat detection algorithm actually always runs on their servers and gathers data about players with suspicious behaviour even if that player wasn't reported via the ticket system yet. So, yeah, they have an actual detection method in the game itself.

[BoompigXD]

ReEvolve, on May 15 2014 - 01:14 PM, said:

RunaPanda, on May 15 2014 - 09:46 AM, said:

There needs to be some kind of actual detection method in the game itself, be it VAC, punkbuster, etc.

Their cheat detection algorithm actually always runs on their servers and gathers data about players with suspicious behaviour even if that player wasn't reported via the ticket system yet. So, yeah, they have an actual detection method in the game itself.

They do, but it's fuzzy bunny and needs to be replaced by something like Punkbuster or VAC

[RunaPanda]

Saturnine, on May 15 2014 - 01:01 PM, said:

RunaPanda, on May 15 2014 - 09:46 AM, said:

LordTemujin, on May 14 2014 - 05:35 PM, said:

I am certain this is not the first time the community has seen this, by the same token I am JUST as certain that there is a disconnect between your official policy compared to how it is actually implemented. This is clearly displayed by several known and reported aimbotters who have been reported as early as January by a number of individuals, and yet they are still playing the game and I still run into them on average once every two days. This is unacceptable and causes a schism in both the community and your consumer bases ability to trust what you actually SAY to us.

Tell me something once and don't act on it...and don't expect me to forget it. Things like this have a tendency to follow and damage a games reputation.

Edit:spelling/grammar

^^This most definitely.

There needs to be some kind of actual detection method in the game itself, be it VAC, punkbuster, etc. The ban hammer should come down on them when their in the act of hacking, not whenever afterwards if they're even reported at all. There are far to few who are actually able to record video while playing, let alone in good enough quality to be presentable as evidence. Something needs to be done on a proactive basis.

The problem with taking action against a hacker while they're still in game, is that that anti-cheat would be useless. It would work the first day or two, where it catches current hacks, but banning a player as they are playing makes it extremely easy for the people making the hacks to figure out how the hacks are being detected. When they know how they are being detected, it's trivial to rework the hack so it gets around the anti-cheat. The examples of anti-cheat systems that you gave don't ban immediately ever. If they do, they are completely worthless as anti-cheat solutions.

Antihacks are meant to be in essenece a first line defense. They're not meant to be completely stand alone, they're meant to compliment old fashion investigation work. But this so called anti cheat algorithm isn't doing much of anything like Lord said, multiple people who are guilty are still playing without punishment even after multiple reports.

[BadCatWillum]

I didn't see this extensive article about the cheat industry until now, perhaps it would be of interest to this thread: http://m.pcgamer.com...-game-cheating/

[h0B0]

BadCatWillum, on May 16 2014 - 02:25 AM, said:

I didn't see this extensive article about the cheat industry until now, perhaps it would be of interest to this thread: http://m.pcgamer.com...-game-cheating/

Good read.

Here are some memorable quotes.

Quote

If Tripwire, Valve, or other developers want to reduce the number of cheaters, they have to do it themselves.[...] Tripwire’s anti-cheat strategy is three-pronged. The first is technical, using both VAC and Punkbuster. This is one topic Gibson was secretive about, but he said Tripwire uses both because “they handle things in different ways.” The second is being a proactive developer. When Tripwire notices a loophole, it closes it as fast as possible.

Quote

Gibson said that if you cheat, you always get detected eventually. After talking to cheaters, I’m not sure that developers are as effective at preventing cheats as they think.

Quote

Another cheater suggested I practice cheating in free-to-play games. “That’s what I love about free games,” he said. “You can just keep coming back and there’s nothing they can do about it.”

Quote

If you’re a good closet hacker you also won’t get caught by statistical anti-cheats like FairFight, used in Titanfall and other Electronic Arts games, or Overwatch, another, peer-review layer of CS:GO’s anti-cheat strategy, where approved players view flagged replay footage and vote on whether another player was cheating.

Quote

If matchmaking worked perfectly and everyone always felt like a capable player up against equally skilled opponents, maybe there would be fewer of the closet cheaters that make Ultra Cheats a profitable business. When matchmaking works, you won't win every game, but you'll never feel dominated. It’s like a friendly neighborhood basketball game. When it doesn't work, it feels like being mercilessly dunked on by LeBron James. That's not fun. [...] Ultimately, the most effective anti-cheat strategy is to make cheating feel unnecessary. That means either more sophisticated, accurate matchmaking or some kind of handicap system, which some fighting games (Street Fighter IV, Smash Bros.) already implement.

Where does this leave HWK_ Far behind i'm afraid.

As been stated in the article the devs need to be proactive about fixing the loopholes causing these hackings. If a simple player can hack MMR services for over 6 months, what has been done to prevent the blatant hacking that has been ongoing since 12/12/12_ Very little evidence has been observed to show us that HWK is indeed actively fixing loopholes in a timely fashion.

Furthermore while other reputable gaming developers use triple pronged defense HWK uses 1.5 prong. It has an algorithm (which according to the hackers is the easiest protection to bypass) and a community referral system that is entirely dependent on the community members gathering evidence(which is an essentially flawed system as it requires the community to be recording and not every can and will, and is also based on not the point of view of the hacker which makes it even more hard to gauge).

Since there seems to (have been) be no further effort being put into countering hackers and matchmaking is getting "better" (even tho the community still often complains about its inefficiency) where does that put hawken in its war against hackers_ I'd love the see the community be given tools to help the devs, but until we get a replay function, spectator mode and private servers with admin there is little to nothing we can do. And even then we'd still require a considerable amount of involvement on your part.

So once again i will ask: Are there any plans from the dev team to improve the current methods by which hackers are detected and dealt with_

Edit: i'd like to clarify my previous statement. I'm not expecting an in depth explanation of the methods they intend to use(like i would for game design) to prevent hacking as i believe that would be counter-productive. What i am expect is to see a comment acknowledging the ongoing battle that is providing a legitimate playground for you consumers.

I believe that this thread is a clear example of the reactive behavior that has been plaguing the dev team. Instead of taking matters in their own hand and fixing the issue when it comes up initially this thread appeared after a year and half of callout threads in GD. Furthermore the system highlighted in this thread is reactive by nature and doesn't give any hopes of the hackers being detected without the required combination of sufficient evidence, knowledge and data being gathered before hand.

I find it absurd that some hackers can not only reach level 30 ( pre grind reduction ) and be in a competitive clan yet "the system" be totally unaware of their behavior.

Edited by h0B0, May 16 2014 - 07:57 AM.

[OmegaNull]

I strongly agree with Hobo here. Something needs to be done and the current way just isn't even close to being effective.

[oObugOo]

hello, I have already seen some players use a program that allows them to have a higher movement speed to normal permanently.
Since I play, I saw two players using this program, a gift named "silver potato", I'm not sure of the spelling.
Even if for the moment I do not see alot of players using this program, it is likely that over time we will see more and more players using this program.
For more information, view last player using this program, playing on the U.S. est server.
Sorry I can not provide more information and precision

[kellokafa]

Before making strategy games Learn how to prevent cheating ..
In one of the two servers are cheating
I do not have the reputation and confidence  hawken.

sorry bad english google translate.

[Aregon]

Can I say h0B0 is scary_

[James232385]

oObugOo, on May 17 2014 - 10:22 AM, said:

hello, I have already seen some players use a program that allows them to have a higher movement speed to normal permanently.
Since I play, I saw two players using this program, a gift named "silver potato", I'm not sure of the spelling.
Even if for the moment I do not see alot of players using this program, it is likely that over time we will see more and more players using this program.
For more information, view last player using this program, playing on the U.S. est server.
Sorry I can not provide more information and precision

My friends have also suffered a similar hacker; That is a Heavy Mech, but faster than light mech, and seems to have used up the fuel capacity.
After that time, my friend and his teammates siege the heavy mech, sacrificing a few teammates, the enemy still escape. My friend immediately out of the game, he said, because the game has been unfair.

Edited by James232385, May 18 2014 - 03:13 AM.

[Ashfire908]

h0B0, on May 16 2014 - 07:22 AM, said:

If a simple player can hack MMR services for over 6 months,

Huh_

[EliteShooter]

How about we all chill and go play pong_