[Megathread] BFV and Cheating Discussion

[Blackhawk]

@ColesFlexili

@sniperwolfpk5

I do not understand why the hell there is no vote kick option. Last week I quit playing BF v. As there is a cheater in every single server.I left go to another and there is a cheater I left and go to another server and there is a cheater. What the hell is going on

Because a votekick will most likely hit legit players. If you play with experienced players in a solid squad you can easiely go 60-0 in a game. with a votekick thats 100% of the times a kick coming your way. votekick is an option that will be abused. If you have played CS:GO you know that the natural response of teh cheaters is to use a namechanger so noone knows what the name actally is. votekick does not work against cheaters.

Small price to pay for being able to kick hackers. Votekick is on games without hacking, players get kicked for being rude on the chat, etc.
Whatever, it’s an invalauble tool that lets players police themselves. Well worth it, even if some really skilled players will get kicked for having a good record.

[RRedux]

Interesting that the whole TTK change has all of Dice’s attention and this 53 page long thread goes ignored.

[SirBobdk]

@RRedux

Interesting that the whole TTK change has all of Dice’s attention and this 53 page long thread goes ignored.

Dice have ignored the problem for years.

Instead of investing in a decent product, we have been given a homemade worthless discount product

[NN_Buzz12]

From my perspective I find it difficult to believe a company would take my money than allow others to ruin the experience. Must be willing to write me off as a future customer after taking my money one last time.

[Dr_Steamfur]

In an Underground game tonight. Two friends are rage hacking…its blatant, its obvious. Everyone is calling this dude out.

I am on my MG 42, behind a corner firing up at this window trying to kill/suppress this dudes fire. Rage hacker #1 runs FACE FIRST into my MMG while I was on full auto at 981 RPM, STILL kills me before I kill him. I did not even take 50% of his health.

I don’t know if this is a case of him hacking, or a case of bad coding in BFV…but when an MG 42 at 981 RPM is going full auto, no where near over heating and someone runs head first into it, no way in hell should that person kill the MMG player…but it happened. IF this is intentiaonal, then this means MMG’s need SUPER MASSIVE BUFFS, because as it stands, all things being equal, an MMG player will NEVER win a 1v1 “balanced” encounter.

I just came back a few weeks ago, I can already see the reason so many have left and why the negative press about EA, DICE and BFV continues to this day.

I would say GG, but no…its not.

[xHonest_Abe]

I can see in the future, cheating/hacking might cause the decline of PC gaming as we know it. With the new and more powerful consoles Xbox X (better graphics, keyboard, and mouse) and others scheduled for 2020, why buy build a new $2000 PC for gaming now. It appears consoles have much less hacking going on than the PC. In the future, you can buy one of these for less than the price of the high end graphics card that does not improve the game one bit when the hackers are making the game miserable on the PC. I rather pay small subscription fee than have what we are getting now.

[Lancelot_du_Lac]

@QU4NT0R

Yes. We’re talking about PC Gaming. It’s also possible to cheat on consoles, but on PS4 and XBox the hurdles for using cheats are much higher and involving partly expensive hardware. But it also depends how a studio/publisher is defining cheating on consoles. There are input adapters like XIM (in some games it’s “allowed” to use it / in others not) or Special modified/programmable controllers with built-in helpers. Also it’s possible to use an additional PC as some sort of proxy between Console and Router to add some “value” (sarcasm) to the gaming experience.

Regarding those 25%. You need to consider that this number is only including the people who were buying a Standard or Deluxe Edition on PC. But a lot of people are playing BF5 through their monthly subscription with EA Access (Origin Access)… The subscribers are not represented in the annual schedules for BF5. Also the subscription service was till July only available on PC and not on the consoles. So I think the real amount of people who were playing on PC at the time the report was released was much higher then 25%. True is that the sales for BF5 were way behind the forecasts. But EA/Dice couldn’t know this before the release. So they’ve expected much higher numbers. And under normal circumstances an anti-cheat will be implemented before release.

I think the absence has some other reasons / considerations. To point those out I need a bit more time, but I think it is related to the “Game as a service” approach of BF5 and also about Asia becomming a much more important market within the last 3 years.

There are also a lot of other aspects I left out in my former post as the whole thematic is a very complex one. If I find the time I’ll dig a bit more deeper into it later on.

@QU4NT0R

thanks for your response. A couple of quick comments…

Input adapters aside, I haven’t been able to find a single confirmed case of consoles being hacked. Not to say it isn’t possible, but I’m guessing that the number is so small it is insignificant.

As to Origin subscribers, I would think it is included in the PC numbers. Their stated revenue sources are only broken down into console/mobile/PC. They do not mention other revenue sources in their annual report. Even if I have underestimated PC revenue by 50%, PC still only represents a little over 13%.

however, this is just semantics - I don’t have any inside information as to why EA have not included effective anti-cheat for PC games. I am just guessing, based on my time working for large consumer goods companies, that it is related to revenue - either on the expense side, or the sales side.

As you mentioned, there may be other considerations.

Cheers

[HeavenFowl]

@DancesWthMice

@QU4NT0R

@timebanditbfv

Anyone got any actual footage of the process in which dice/ea/whoever actually ban players for obvious cheats/hacks? or am i just wasting my time reporting players in game?

Let me try to break this down for you:

I’m a self-employed freelancing contractor within the games-industries. Before I’ve worked for over 20 years for several game studios in several positions all over the world. I’m one of those guys whos name you’ll find in the credits somewhere down below . As I’m almost 50 years old I’ve decided to step back from all those crunch-times and burnouts a while ago and now earning my pay as a consultant. For around 3 yrs now I’m working for the anti-cheat-dept. of another well known major studio. Among others it’s my responsibility to keep an eye on the market for cheating tools, buy them if some new for the projects I’m involved in pop up, reverse-engineer/analyze them if possible and help with implementing routines to detect them.

It’s always an ongoing race between cheat- and anti-cheat developers. There is and there will never be a 100% bulletproof solution to detect and get rid of all cheaters. But there are already solutions available which can filter and catch at least 80-90% of them. In this case we’re talking about those who are buying / renting them from cheat-developers who are selling them for a living. It gets a bit more complicated if it comes to private hacks of people who are programming them for their own good and only giving them to a handful of friends. Sometimes it’s hard and requires a lot of “undercover” work to get the hands on them. Throughout the years I’ve seen and tested a lot of different cheats for several games. Of course all those “testing” was done within closed test environments and not on any public server.

Also you have to differ between active and passive cheats. Active cheats like Aimbots and DMG-Modifiers are way easier to detect by then those passive ones like ESP/Radar-Cheats. For active cheats game data needs to be manipulated and injected into the data-stream whilst passive cheats are working “read-only” and projecting the data into overlays and not manipulating data-streams. Those ESP/Radars can only be detected if you’ve a client-side anti-cheat-solution like i.e. Battle-Eye. But therefore the cheat program must be known by the AC-client so that the software knows what processes on a users system to watch out for. Fairfight is designed to detect active cheats server-sided by analyzing statistics but for some reasons it’s not working. My personal theory is that Fairfight is causing performance issues on the servers and has been deactivated for that reason a long time ago.

As a guy working for so long in the games industry I’m of course also a passionate gamer. Battlefield ever was one of my favorite franchises as in cause of my job I don’t have the time to dig into a more complex shooter like Arma and so on. Battlefield is always good to play some relaxed rounds and get the head clear. But with all those cheaters around the fun has completly gone for me.

My actual BF-behavior is playing it Thursdays to fulfill the weekly assignments for ToW or after a new update went live. Within the rest of the week I’m mostly only watching BF-Games in spectator view. I’m doing this for two reasons: 1st of all as a gamer who cares about the game and the franchises and who want to have a fair gaming experience for all. But I’m also doing it for professional reasons. A lot of gamers are using the same anonymous gamer-tags in several games from several publishers. So if I see an obvious cheater in Battlefield I check if the same name/tag is used in the projects I’m involved. If so I flag those accounts and take a much closer look at them . Happens not often, but it happens that one of those could be banned in other titles.

Back to topic and to your initial question:

As a Battlefield gamer I’m constantly recording and reporting cheaters whenever I encounter one. Last weekend I’ve done an intensive check: In my personal archives I’ve recorded game play of 115 (suspected) cheaters in BF5 which I’ve personally met in games:

23 of them are blatant aimbotters and rage cheaters. The ones even a blind player can spot.
34 of them are using a combination of aim assists and ESP and trying hard to stay undetected to look like a legit “Pro”.
42 of them are using ESP only (which is the most common cheat used but very hard to detect and only detectable by closely watching their game-play in spectator over an extended period. No chance to find out about them whilst actively gaming)
The last 16 are the ones I’m not really 100% sure if they’re cheating or if they’re just real talented players. Those are the names I’m watching out for to get more footage for a final judging.

Those are only the numbers I’ve personally encountered and recorded. Have seen a lot more, but not always recorded it. I also have a real life beside all the gaming stuff

I’ve also some recordings about some real Pro-players with an amazing battle sense and skills. But those are very rare. I use those videos to learn a bit from them as I’m only an average player by myself (with almost 50 years those reflexes are no longer that good as they were years ago)

For answering your question I’ve checked those 23 blatant aimbotters today with the battlefield tracker website. 18 accounts of them are still active. 3 of those 18 have not played for some weeks (last game reports are from early November). 2 accounts are set to private and not providing any data to the tracker. So I assume they’re still active.

Only 3 accounts seem to have been banned !!! - 1 of them belongs to an guy which was spectated by forum-moderator “LOLGotYerTags” at the same time I was doing it. So I assume he scored the ban on him.

All in all in my opinion this is a declaration of bankruptcy for the DICE-Anti-Cheat-Dept… If they can’t really handle the blatant ones then I don’t want to see how they’re doing when it comes to the more stealthy ones.
Also you can’t find any evidence online that EA/Dice is really doing something vs. cheating. You can’t find any “I’ve been banned for no reason”-whining posts on the forums. Not on this one and especially not within the forums of the cheat-developers which I’m constantly monitoring. In the forums of the cheat-developers you can find a lot of “I’ve been banned” posts for a wide variety of games. But not for Battlefield. This is a strong indicator that nothing is done by EA/Dice.

As an example you can check the forums of CoD-MW. This one is full of cry-babies. Even if their AC also lacks you can see that they at least try to do something.

Some days ago I’ve started to upload some of those vids on YT, sending those links directly on Twitter to the known Dice CM and DEV-accounts. Hoping that something might change if those vids are permanently showing up in their feeds. I’m not that talented in cutting/publishing vids so it’s a slow process which consumes a lot of my already rare spare-time. But I’m still in love with the overall franchise so I think it’s worth a try. Maybe everyone else in this thread should do it too - maybe it’s generating some pressure.

In a post on the first side of this thread I’ve already pointed out what can and should be done to effectively counter the plaque. But I can’t see any efforts taken by EA/DICE to address it.

From a professional point of view I cannot understand the strategy behind it. As cheaters are always walking on the edge and know that they will maybe someday being banned I don’t think that a lot of them are buying any premium skins. Such an amount of cheaters in an online game are driving a lot of gamers away to other games. Gamers who might be willing to pay for skins and premium content. The only reason I can think of is that the amount of cheaters is that high (30-40% of the PC population) that EA/Dice is fearing to kill the game by banning them all. But on the other side: Now is a good time to act as the Black Friday and Christmas-Sales have brought a lot of new accounts into the game. I also cannot understand that EA/Dice have spent so much money into Denuvo-DRM for a game like this. That’s not really making sense as no one is buying BF for its famous single-player. So the impact of illegal copies on the sales of an account-based-multiplayer-shooter is close to zero. They should have used the money for Denuvo and spent it to license Battle-Eye or EAC.

Sad thing: Those players who cares about the game and coming to the forums will be immediately policed whilst no one is punishing the cheaters.

And as a last thing: All games from all publishers are having issues with cheaters. And a lot of developers are not doing very well to battle them. But nearly all of them at least trying. If EA/Dice really wants to change something then they should look at Blizzard. They’re doing a good job with Overwatch. Also Battle-Eye protected games are making a good progress (only Rainbow Six is a bit behind - but this is more the fault of Ubisoft and the developers as they can’t integrate BE as deep into the environment as it’s suggested in cause of their DRM System). You can’t get any cheats from the top cheat-developers for Battle-Eye protected games. They were all detected in the past. R6 is the only exception as already said.

Enough said.

This post is sticky quality. Mods, please pin this post at the beginning of the thread.

A very interesting read ! Thank you. Also it was painfully obvious since the start that there wasn’t any decent anti-cheat on the game

[Lancelot_du_Lac]

@QU4NT0R

@Lancelot_du_Lac

@DancesWthMice

QU4NTOR, informative post, thx. All the naysayers came out from under their rocks when I brought up the Forbes and BBC cheating reports estimated online cheating at around 33%. Your estimation of 30-40% fits with the anonymous surveys these other groups took. BFV should actually have a higher than average cheat population due to Dice rolling out the red carpet for them. Cheaters welcome, no name and shame, no worries kiddies this is your new home!

Just to put this in context…

You are talking about PC only - correct?

If PC represents around 25% of BFV gamers (source: EA Annual Report), then 35% of 25% is less than 9% of all players. Maybe this is why EA has not invested enough into anti-cheat.

Ever so, I am surprised at how prevalent cheating is, and what a big business it is!

Full disclosure - I switched from PC to PS4 from BF1 because of cheaters.

Yes. We’re talking about PC Gaming. It’s also possible to cheat on consoles, but on PS4 and XBox the hurdles for using cheats are much higher and involving partly expensive hardware. But it also depends how a studio/publisher is defining cheating on consoles. There are input adapters like XIM (in some games it’s “allowed” to use it / in others not) or Special modified/programmable controllers with built-in helpers. Also it’s possible to use an additional PC as some sort of proxy between Console and Router to add some “value” (sarcasm) to the gaming experience.

Regarding those 25%. You need to consider that this number is only including the people who were buying a Standard or Deluxe Edition on PC. But a lot of people are playing BF5 through their monthly subscription with EA Access (Origin Access)… The subscribers are not represented in the annual schedules for BF5. Also the subscription service was till July only available on PC and not on the consoles. So I think the real amount of people who were playing on PC at the time the report was released was much higher then 25%. True is that the sales for BF5 were way behind the forecasts. But EA/Dice couldn’t know this before the release. So they’ve expected much higher numbers. And under normal circumstances an anti-cheat will be implemented before release.

I think the absence has some other reasons / considerations. To point those out I need a bit more time, but I think it is related to the “Game as a service” approach of BF5 and also about Asia becoming a much more important market within the last 3 years.

There are also a lot of other aspects I left out in my former post as the whole thematic is a very complex one. If I find the time I’ll dig a bit more deeper into it later on.

Apart from input devices, I am not aware of any company supplying cheats for consoles. I haven’t heard of the PC-Router-Console hack. I’m guessing this is a private hack that would require significant technical knowledge.

As for Origin, the EA numbers only breakout revenue by console/mobile/PC - so I am assuming Origin revenue is included in PC.

I am happy to concede that the lack of an effective anti-cheat may not necessarily be cost/revenue driven, but it is probably the most common. Look forward to exploring the ‘other’ reasons you hinted at.

Cheers

[DancesWthMice]

@QU4NT0R

(Quote)
Yes. We’re talking about PC Gaming. It’s also possible to cheat on consoles, but on PS4 and XBox the hurdles for using cheats are much higher and involving partly expensive hardware. But it also depends how a studio/publisher is defining cheating on consoles. There are input adapters like XIM (in some games it’s “allowed” to use it / in others not) or Special modified/programmable controllers with built-in helpers. Also it’s possible to use an additional PC as some sort of proxy between Console and Router to add some “value” (sarcasm) to the gaming experience.

Regarding those 25%. You need to consider that this number is only including the people who were buying a Standard or Deluxe Edition on PC. But a lot of people are playing BF5 through their monthly subscription with EA Access (Origin Access)… The subscribers are not represented in the annual schedules for BF5. Also the subscription service was till July only available on PC and not on the consoles. So I think the real amount of people who were playing on PC at the time the report was released was much higher then 25%. True is that the sales for BF5 were way behind the forecasts. But EA/Dice couldn’t know this before the release. So they’ve expected much higher numbers. And under normal circumstances an anti-cheat will be implemented before release.

I think the absence has some other reasons / considerations. To point those out I need a bit more time, but I think it is related to the “Game as a service” approach of BF5 and also about Asia becomming a much more important market within the last 3 years.

There are also a lot of other aspects I left out in my former post as the whole thematic is a very complex one. If I find the time I’ll dig a bit more deeper into it later on.

Additionally, many players on pc use hacked accounts on the black market at .50 to $2 per account. EA was hacked, but they didn’t fill the public in on this.

[Uzzi_za]

LOLGotYerTags

No point in reporting players as nothing happens when you report them. You can include stats from BV Stats, post videos on youtube with the cheat only getting headshots and that a player has a 76 KD ratio and has only played 2 games of firestorm. Have a look a week or two later and the player is still cheating and more videos have been uploaded.

Does BFV have any anti-cheat or is the sum of the anti-cheat only to report them on Origin?

[Tx_Lightning]

ya its such crap EA wont do a thing and we cant even post them on here.. had a player went 156-7 last round and was only rank 26 and been playing for 6 hrs total. reported him but we know nothing will be done.. by allowing these cheats DICE has ruined BF. been playing since 1942.. think its time to walk away.. between 5.2 (hotfix didnt solve a thing), cheats everywhere, and no hardcore BF has gone to the dogs.

[Medussagg]

After i read many post about cheat. And they dont give a ¯_(ツ)_/¯ about. Well idk what to say anymore

[globalchaos_1984]

Ive played Battlefield ever since the second and cheating BFV is more blatant and widespread than any other one at any time. And it’s still going on over a year after release if not worse than launch. It feels like dice hasn’t done a thing, the same hackers at level 360 headshotting everyone that have been the game for a year now.

[JoesDementia]

@xHonest_Abe

I can see in the future, cheating/hacking might cause the decline of PC gaming as we know it. With the new and more powerful consoles Xbox X (better graphics, keyboard, and mouse) and others scheduled for 2020, why buy build a new $2000 PC for gaming now. It appears consoles have much less hacking going on than the PC. In the future, you can buy one of these for less than the price of the high end graphics card that does not improve the game one bit when the hackers are making the game miserable on the PC. I rather pay small subscription fee than have what we are getting now.

PC gaming is much, much more than multiplayer games.

[V0MlT]

gone back to bf4, saw a few players get banned from servers i was on for cheating, overall though a much better

experience, cheaters dealt with a long time before they could empty the servers of players

such a pity bfv condones and encourages cheating, encourages because it does nothing about them.

[bsafawi1974]

Folks You Need to understand this
No Matter How many comments about cheating you are Posting Here ’ it’s useless ’ (content removed by moderator for breaking the forum rules).
Go To EA Helps
Choose Feedback
Share your feelings about cheaters ( Spectur mode Players )
Ask them to they are put options in score board for BFV
Report the player for cheat
That’s the only way
Good luck

[bsafawi1974]

https://forums.battlefield.com/en-us/profile/Rattoner
@Rattoner it’s nothing wrong with your skills you are simply shooting on the wrong target
Subject was cheating using Spectur mode with 2 account in the same time
With Spectur modeThey are unusually strong extra Health is on of that

[Private_Tom_7]

We want you to make hardware ban and ban list public.
you dont have to warry about hackers privacy.

[V0MlT]

@Private_Tom_7

We want you to make hardware ban and ban list public.
you dont have to warry about hackers privacy.

Punk Buster do it already, master ban list