We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger

> This still leaves you wide open to cheaters using mobile data tethering and proxies

Is latency going to be good enough on mobile data (especially if they're also using proxies) for a FPS, though? Sure, they're using cheating software, but I wouldn't be surprised if the software gets the information it needs to cheat too late often enough for it to be useful.

Assuming obvious cheat, even 100ms or 200ms latency is unbeatable by a human. Especially since the cheat doesn't need time to aim.

Even for non-obvious use-cases, it's hard to beat the advantage provided by knowing the position of players.

On my own hotspot, I have less than 30ms of latency.

Yes the latency is not nearly as bad as you might think, it's comparable to a VPN in my experience, though the quality will depend on your location and the available connections.

Sophisticated cheats in games like CSGO (and other competitive shooters) are usually very subtle, such as displaying enemies on the mini-map when they shouldn't be visible which provides a major advantage without requiring superhuman input, and the added latency is often negligible—especially when the info can be relayed to teammates and now you essentially have the entire team cheating with only 1 player suffering from a bit of increased latency.

And I wouldn't say this is an edge case either as in my experience the majority of cheaters I encountered are individuals that play on an alt account and offer a service to guarantee wins in ranked games.

I regularly played CSGO in Europe because the North American ranking system were screwed up.

I got to Supreme (2nd highest rank) with 150 ms ping. The people I queued with hit Global.

It's possible to play legitimately with very high ping. The higher ping put us at a disadvantage, but the skill gap between regions made it worth it to arbitrage.

What was screwed up about the NA ranks?

NA is (or at least was when I played) the most populated and visible regional zone, and attracts a lot of players attempting various kinds of rank manipulation. On the one hand you have smurfing, which is the practice of a relatively high skill player using a an account with relatively low rank so that they can dominate lower ranked players. On the other side you have boosting, which is a relatively high skill player ranking up new accounts for later sale.

In practice this means at lower ranks, it was not at all uncommon to be matched with players with similar rank but vastly better skills.

This was my experience too years ago when I played CSGO. The difficulty at higher ranks (up to a certain point) felt significantly easier than the lower ranks. Getting out of the silver and gold ranks (can't remember the exact names) was a hellish grind with lots of matches that ended in one sided stomps with one or two guys on the other team racking up some insane k/d. Past that was smooth sailing for a long long way.

At the time, there were no people of very high ranks. I also queued office only which didn't help.

It's basically impossible to keep one's rank at Supreme if you only play against Gold Nova or so due to the way the rating system works.

It's not ideal but I lived half a year with unreliable internet and frequently played over a tethered 4G mobile connection (in Europe). Latency was around 40-50ms, which was still lower than the people playing from Eastern Europe who would play in EU West matchmaking. I imagine with 5G it could be even lower.

Yep - same story here with Nuke (the old one, but then it happened again on the new one too). Got to global and it was a ghost town save for the same 5 man we ran into every night.