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Infinity Ward wields MW2 Steam-powered banhammer
Author: Harry ButlerPublished: 30th November 2009
Infinity Ward and Steam have swung the banhammer, but is it enough?
This is the first public statement regarding cheating in Modern Warfare 2 from Infinity Ward since the game's release and its controversial switch away from dedicated servers. New anti-cheat abilities were touted as a major benefit for the game with the move from Punkbuster to Valve's inhouse anti-cheat system VAC, promising a hack free experience for gamers.
It's likely more hackers will face the wrath of Steam's banhammer before long, although this will come as little consolation to those who've had their games ruined by cheaters, especially as VAC's automated banning procedure is typically slower than manual methods - it's taken over two weeks for this first round of bans to emerge, for instance.
Infinity Ward and Steam have also been working to make things difficult for those trying to get online with pirated copies of the game, releasing regular small updates to the game's executable via Steam that invalidate pirated copies from the IWnet matchmaking service.
Have you experienced cheating in Modern Warfare 2? Think VAC is too sluggish to be an effective anti-cheat? Tell us your thoughts in the forums
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this wont do squat, if you have to wait 2 weeks before you can find a decent game, within those 2 weeks even more people will have started cheating thus making this an exercise in futility
cheat much :P
Gremlin - the way VAC works is by analysing the cheats themselves - cheat comes out, gets added to VAC and then VAC bans everyone using it. This is the same for TF2, CSS, Left 4 Dead and they don't have a reputation for cheating. Sure it's not as immeadiatley effective as direct admin bans but it has a much wider reaching effect.
I know how it works, but without direct bans it seriously destroys your game when you run into them
There are plenty of good reasons for a delayed-ban system.
At least with PB it banned your CD key, this is the one place where steam falls down, once something is hacked, its hacked for good.
Likewise, I've not seen any cheating either, and TBH what's far more annoying to me than any potential cheaters that might be out there is accusations of cheating being thrown around in every single game I play. It gets old very, very quickly.
I can only guess that people aren't very good at spotting cheaters. I only ever encountered a couple of wallhackers in COD4, and you could spot them a mile off just by watching the killcams. I'm currently rank 60 and I haven't seen anything like that (though I have seen people that are already rank 70 on the 10th prestige level already, but that doesn't really harm anyone else's experience). People say they're just 'good' cheaters so disguise it well, but when the alleged cheater has a negative kill/death ratio it just makes the people that throw these accusations around sound like whining kids that don't like it if something doesn't go their way.
All I can say is that if there are any cheaters out there, they're probably better off trying to actually play the game rather than using those crappy hacks, because they're obviously not very good.
1: i was a TDM 6-6 and the top player got 48-1 kill/death ratio (next nearest was around 20ish-5). i didint call it but looking at his kill cam some shot were amazing accurate in a split second. cud have been a pro player i guess.
2: was a guy with something silly like 65-6 K/D and alot of his kills to me and my friend were knife attacks. The guy just seemed to run through you.
thats about all ive seen. The thing that annoys me most is the bunny hoppers and dolphins drivers whcih kill the experiance for me.
They make a game which is supposed to slightly-realistic with fast game play and tactics and it gets reduced to bunch a idiots prancing around shooting.
i really wish they would ban jumping and shooting like the MOD for Cod4 that prevents firing at all when jumping.
My thoughts exactly - paranoia quickly sets in if you get a few lucky kills. Watching kill cams should be enough for most people but some people just can't accept a bad beat. Many don't realise moving makes noise - even the heat beat sensor's "beeps" can be heard by enemies and have given me away more than a few times.
I think the ''cheats'' that they are talking about are mostly achievement hacks and those don't worry me. I don't think having all the weapons will make you any better than me on rank 1 and I usually make a beeline for the high ranked players because I expect to have a more skillful encounter. If they cheated their way up then they are going to get shot by me repeatedly.
And MR HAPPY, if you believe dedicated servers and admins would have been better then you're dreaming. 75% of servers never have the admins on because they are just hosted and of the rest with active admins, half go on a power trip so it becomes impossible to play there if your good and half are incompetent, so there is little left to actually do some proper banning.
I welcome this news item.
I'm not so sure that CSS doesn't have a reputation for cheating. The game is constantly in the top 20 sales on Steam due to people 'losing' their old steam id.....
discussion ==> http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?p=2160606#post2160606
He said "then I couldn't win then could I?"
Silly noobcake.
Ive played the game on a "private" server and on Iwnet and iwnet was full of hacks noticible and not so noticible. horrible experience.
nothing is better than an admin immediately banning someone who using a mod or hack to gain an advantage. Most mods and hacks are not very noticible but make an average player a good player. The game is fun but i'll stick to playing multiplayer on a "Private" server so to speak.
The VAC system itself is very good, but the inability to take up the slack before a new cheat gets detected is abysmal. It does lead to a lot of cries of 'cheat', mostly unfounded. I have seen a couple of very very suspect players on MW2, but I have to agree that the bunny hopping is killing the game for me.
Which brings me to another point, slightly off topic. Dedi servers allow a community of like minded players to grow and enjoy a game the way they wish to enjoy it. People are individual. Some don't mind having the talk spammed with obscenities, or bunny hopping and diving, or speed knifing, or choppers, or arty... etc. But, some do. The huge variation of setups and rules on COD4 shows this.
I strongly believe that MW2 online for PC will die a death after the first few months. Once the ranks and perks are done there really isn't anything to keep interest high enough to overcome the crappy parts of gameplay caused by non-like minded players.
I think all pirates and hackers should be banned from the IP level.
Stuff like hacking and all is only considered fun with friends that are just messing around in a non ranked match.
/sarcasm off
For those of you who have said you haven't come across people hacking in this game.....again I say "ARE YOU SERIOUS?!!!" Of course someone who is 45 and 1 in 3 minutes of play is obviously hacking but there are a TON of people hacking this game right now. The most popular hack just shows where everyone is. It's amazing how many times I see kill cam shots where the person is looking the other way and then BAM!, they move site right to me when I can I can't even be seen. (This is with ninja and cold blooded on) It's fricken rediculous. So these guys may not have the uber crazy scores but they're doing pretty damn good because they always know where everyone is.
There there are the level 70 prestige douchebags. Next time you're in game, take a look at how long someone has played......45level prestige in 50hrs of online play......that is utter BS. The more you look, the more you'll see that hacks are just rampant in this game.
Oh, and never mind hacking.....but then there is the lovely speed glitch.....that IW has yet to address or even acknowledge exists. IW needs to get their S*** together or this game is going ot be dead in 3months.
Who wants to play silly 2d games when 6 degrees of freedom are available with elite titles like Shattered Horizon.
Yours in full dx10 3d glory,
Star¤Dagger
ive seen two blatant aimbotters so far...
Sadly I have :( It is highly frustrating especially since MW2 knocks your stats down by ranking another loss for you if you exit the multiplayer round. It doesn't matter to most people, nor me, but I can see where serious gamers would throw a fit.
And is it me or does killcam only come on if you're on a death streak?
In regards to knifing, the only thing I can see helping that would be wallhacking. It's honestly not difficult to put on Commando, Lightweight and Marathon and run around with your tac-knife and get a good ktd ratio.
What? CS:S has the highest incidence of cheating of any game online. Literally every time I play, at some point during the session, some prepubescent griefer turns up and knifes 20 people in seconds.
However, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, he's rapidly kicked and banned. It's usually over in two minutes and then play continues unaffected. I worry that MW2 will suffer from the hacking but not be able to apply the band-aid of kick-banning.
I am still having a good time in MW2
The free ones - The ones that are likely falling to this first round of bans - are easy to kill.
The paid ones? Not so much. Granted, they all get found eventually, but if the game is remotely popular, the cheat systems will easily be updated.
Punkbuster, though is a piece of ****. I'm only happy with experienced admin bans. Everything automated is either slow, or far too trigger happy.
It's hard when I love the game(play) to bits, but the online system just sucks so major cock.
As a seasoned gamer - way back to DOOM multiplayer and every FPS since (I still have fond memories of action quake) it is more obvious to me and my felow old timers when a cheat is in use.
I have seen Aimbots, wall hacks, radar, NOOB TOOB spam, the 3 minute nuke and the long range sniper rifle hip fire kill, all in action.
If your score becomes highly variable ie 45/15 then 15/30 the alarm bells should start ringing.
Ufortunately cheats are sometimes not obvious on the kill cam but the score line should tell the tale if your suspicions are roused.
I also agree that dedicated servers are required and better control of which games you enter and with who.
IW need to sort the problems out or run the risk of losing the ever dwindling, and currently alienated, COD community.
This is a perfect time for another developer to take the gauntlet and capture the disheartened COD players who are longing for a cheat free gaming experience.
Aye it's not up to dedicated server standards by any means but the gameplay is pretty damn good and thus still very enjoyable.... such a shame they didn't give us PC gamers dedi's.
As for the cheaters then I say get rid of them wherever possible although in I've haven't spotted any in MW2 so far.
I might give the single player a run either with a friends copy on 360 or on PC.
There is no way in hell i'm paying that much money for a gimped online experience!
Ban all you want....... 5 minutes to make a new account.
The best way to enjoy the multiplayer is without IWnet and using a heavily modded version of the game. (lean mod)
actually I'm tired of this game already. I rather play HALO.......... roflmao....
Same story as COD4, but far less cohesive - I still don't really understand what is happening and I'm about an hour in. It is almost like they've tried to shoehorn a bunch of different gimmicks - the massacre thing, the snowmobile, the ice climbing and the heartbeat monitors etc into the first hour to keep console gamers happy. It all seems a bit pointless. Incredibly linear, constantly respawning enemies...meh!
Annoyingly, Borderlands is a far better game (in my opinion) yet it doesn't get anywhere near the same hype.
By the sounds of it, Battlefield 2 is still a far better multi-player game too...
Well it's pretty blatantly obvious. Of course no one should yell hax until someone gets like 6 headshots in a row anyways.
when steam ban the your account its an VAC ban for All games that use VAC under that steam account you need to make an new steam account if you wish to play online and buy every game again (why its recommended to buy 1 game per steam account just in-case VAC does an injust ban by mistake), if the game uses PB that is its own banning system and buying an new game may not remove the ban if its an hardware ban (you have to change 1-2 parts of the system to get unbanned) soft bans are nom CD key based hardware ban get given out for mutihack software