We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger

Cheating in online games is a scourge and I really don't understand why people do it. It's one person selfishly getting a "win" at the expense of ~60 other people in that match having their time, pleasure, potentially money absolutely wasted.

I think even more infuriating than blatant hacking is this epidemic of "micro cheating" for lack of a better way to put it that I've seen prevalent in some games that just boost some stats or reactions by amounts large enough to help the cheater but low enough where new or inexperienced players have absolutely no way of telling if someone is cheating or genuinely good especially in games with high skill ceilings. At least when it's blatant you can leave without time wasted but when they're doing it subtly you end up getting tilted and spending the whole match with a bad taste in your mouth second guessing if someone is actually playing fair or not. Chivalry 2 is a really bad offender for this, once you notice it you can't unnotice it anymore, almost every match will have at least one guy with his swing/move speed adjusted by ~10% and in a game where swing manipulation is a legitimate mechanic it can be borderline impossible to catch someone out on it unless you're really paying attention.

Cheating is also big business. Players can pay big bucks to rent (!) a cheat.

IIRC there is an episode on darkness diaries podcast about this.

Yeah I get that, I understand why cheat developers do what they do. It seems like there's a huge market and I find it hard to blame them trying to make a living- morality wise they're probably more worried about rent, bills, family than whether or not someone's game time is ruined. But it's only this way because so many people are willing enough to cheat that dropping money on it is fine for them. It's their psychology I don't really get. Even if they're doing it because they want the satisfaction of a "win", doesn't that victory feel hollow because it's something they paid money for? It's like the difference between a community valuing you enough to give you an award vs going down to the trophy shop and paying someone a make you your own trophy that doesn't really mean anything.

What a bunch of absolute losers. If it's taught me anything though, it's that you can't underestimate the pathologies of people you encounter 'in the real world'.

> Cheating in online games is a scourge and I really don't understand why people do it. It's one person selfishly getting a "win" at the expense of ~60 other people in that match having their time, pleasure, potentially money absolutely wasted.

The article addresses this specifically and concisely. It starts with “I'm not being funny and I mean no disrespect.” and then becomes very Australian.

In the case of CSGO, playing means earning lootboxes, and the items contained therein can be resold / auctioned off. It's the same problem as in Diablo 3 when it first launched, you could sell items found (randomly) in-game for real money. I read one guy's project, I'm sure it was posted on HN, who had 25 bots / copies of the game running to monitor the in-game currency market for deals, then resell those for real money.

Every once in a while there would be a ban wave - implying bot detection and handling was a manual / batch job process - but he'd just get 25 new copies / accounts, the income he made was more than enough to make up for it.

Of course, that assumes he was able to funnel the money out quick enough. And also, both Valve and Blizzard have their own incentive to not be too hard on bots, as they get a cut for every transaction. As long as people don't stop playing / paying because of bots.

Some "micro cheating" are really easy to develop. When I was younger and a bit bored, I wrote my own "micro-cheat" in AutoIt[0] with less than 10 lines of code.

This was for the game counter-strike (I don't remember which version, either Source or early CSGO). The logic of the cheat was:

  - I manually aim, with the sniper, close to the wall of an intersection
  - I press a special key, then when the pixel at the center of the screen change, simulate input mouse click to "fire"

This was fun for maybe 1-2h, but the fun was more about the success of the project (from an idea to a working cheat) than getting some free kills while playing.

[0] -- https://www.autoitscript.com/site/

Do they need to cheat to get drops though? It's been a good while since I've played CSGO but I thought the drops there were similar to TF2 where you just get them on match end and it's not tied to player performance at all?

Remember that at all times we are surrounded with people who are such leaches on society that they won't even put away a grocery cart at a supermarket, instead leaving it in the middle of the parking lot because they are too important to take the time to push it five feet.

Something like 10% of people are just maximally assholes, no justification, no reason, no rationale, they genuinely think everybody else exists only for their benefit.