Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech. And in the last
Speaker 1: episode on this topic, I talked about the early days
Speaker 1: of cheating in video games and the two really big
Speaker 1: subdivisions of cheats in games in the early to mid
Speaker 1: eras of video games. So, on the one hand, you
Speaker 1: have cheats that were inserted into games by developers. These
Speaker 1: were intentionally included, not at first. This was primarily to
Speaker 1: allow developers to navigate through games quickly during the development
Speaker 1: process in order to check code and make sure the
Speaker 1: game is working properly without having to worry about actually being,
Speaker 1: you know, an expert at the game yourself, Like you
Speaker 1: want to make sure that stuff was posible, but you
Speaker 1: might not want to have to manually try and make
Speaker 1: your way through a game in order to test the
Speaker 1: specific part you wanted to look at. So developers would
Speaker 1: often you know, create these codes that would let them cheat,
Speaker 1: essentially to to bypass a lot of the stuff in
Speaker 1: the game, and often they would leave these cheats in
Speaker 1: the finished game rather than go in and clear out
Speaker 1: all that code, essentially thinking well, who's going to find
Speaker 1: this anyway, and eventually that information made its way out
Speaker 1: to the game playing public. This later evolved into cheats
Speaker 1: that developers would include in order to actually reward players
Speaker 1: with easter eggs or funny effects. At that point, developers
Speaker 1: knew that gamers were going to find out about the cheats,
Speaker 1: and so they experimented a bit to broaden the results
Speaker 1: of inserting these cheats. Some games even created cheats that
Speaker 1: would make games harder for people as a way to
Speaker 1: challenge the most hardcore of players, like not to trick them.
Speaker 1: Although there were those two I remember, I want to
Speaker 1: say it was heretic that if you were playing Heretic
Speaker 1: and you put in a Doom cheat, it would actually
Speaker 1: make the game harder for you instead of easier, as
Speaker 1: kind of a uh high, I see what you're doing there.
Speaker 1: But anyway, in some cases it was more like, hey,
Speaker 1: your hardcore, let's see how hardcore you could be. Also,
Speaker 1: I should point out that we're primarily talking about single
Speaker 1: player experiences here, stuff that was played natively on a
Speaker 1: single machine, and it was the player versus the computer.
Speaker 1: The other major type of cheat that I talked about
Speaker 1: came courtesy of game enhancement devices like the game Genie
Speaker 1: or the game Shark. These devices took the peak and
Speaker 1: poke approach to cheating, meaning they would examine the code
Speaker 1: that was being run in the computer's memory, and they
Speaker 1: would identify which lines of code were responsible for specific
Speaker 1: outcomes in the game, and then intercept requests from the
Speaker 1: machine to the media and inject new code in its place. So,
Speaker 1: for example, a game system might look to see how
Speaker 1: many lives a player has at the start of a game,
Speaker 1: and the device replaces the standard three lives with lives
Speaker 1: or whatever. Game enhancement devices had their heyday in the nineties,
Speaker 1: but they had faded significantly by the mid two thousand's. Now,
Speaker 1: with single player games, cheats usually aren't that big a deal,
Speaker 1: at least not until things like the achievement systems were
Speaker 1: introduced by Xbox and the Trophy system from Sony, because
Speaker 1: the only person affected usually is the cheater themselves, and
Speaker 1: they might have a good reason to cheat. For example,
Speaker 1: some games just aren't easily accessible to people who might
Speaker 1: have disabilities, for example, and cheats could make it possible
Speaker 1: for those people to actually experience a game that otherwise
Speaker 1: they would never really be able to experience. That's a
Speaker 1: good thing. Or maybe you and joy a specific game,
Speaker 1: but you're only able to get to a certain point
Speaker 1: before it just becomes too difficult for you to progress
Speaker 1: any further, and you just want to see how the
Speaker 1: heart hold thing ends, and cheats can really help out
Speaker 1: in those cases too. But even if a person is
Speaker 1: just cheating in order to get a dopamine rush of
Speaker 1: feeling like, you know, like they're an unstoppable tank, typically
Speaker 1: the only person affected is the cheater, unless again we're
Speaker 1: talking about something that relates to things like achievement points
Speaker 1: or whatever. Uh. Also, if the person is participating in
Speaker 1: something like a high score competition, that's different too. It's
Speaker 1: another matter entirely so. One of the most famous instances
Speaker 1: of alleged cheating, or at the very least misrepresentation is
Speaker 1: the story of Billy Mitchell, who had set records for
Speaker 1: high scores in classic arcade games like pac Man and
Speaker 1: Donkey Kong, and organization called Twin Galaxies maintained leaderboards for
Speaker 1: high scores for those classic games, but in Twin Galaxies
Speaker 1: chose to strike Mitchell's score off the list. For Donkey Kong.
Speaker 1: So what was going on? Well, according to Twin Galaxies,
Speaker 1: upon investigating the video of Mitchell setting that Donkey Kong
Speaker 1: high score, they determined that he had not been using
Speaker 1: a standard Donkey Kong arcade game or an official Donkey
Speaker 1: Kong printed circuit board or PCB. You gotta remember these
Speaker 1: old arcade games, they were hard coded onto circuit boards,
Speaker 1: and so the allegation was that Mitchell was relying upon
Speaker 1: some sort of emulated version of the game, which therefore
Speaker 1: would not behave exactly like the classic arcade game. And
Speaker 1: the organization said that the transitions in the game in
Speaker 1: the video that Mitchell sent didn't match the official version
Speaker 1: of Donkey Kong, and therefore Mitchell's record could not count
Speaker 1: toward that because it wasn't on a standardized version of
Speaker 1: the arcade game. Mitchell disputed that, and the whole matter
Speaker 1: is currently wrapped up in a court case between Mitchell
Speaker 1: and Twin Galaxies. Now, I have no idea if Mitchell
Speaker 1: circumvented the rules of the competition. I do know that
Speaker 1: Twin Galaxies was careful not to actually refer to Mitchell
Speaker 1: as a cheater. Instead, they alleged that Mitchell failed to
Speaker 1: follow the official rules, and therefore a score doesn't count.
Speaker 1: I also find it somewhat amusing that this whole thing
Speaker 1: is going through the legal system, and that there have
Speaker 1: already been lawsuits and countersuits related to this matter. I
Speaker 1: guess my point is that there are folks who take
Speaker 1: these things very, very seriously, and I can understand why.
Speaker 1: I mean, if it turns out you're the best in
Speaker 1: the world, it's something it would probably chease you off
Speaker 1: if someone else topped your performance, but it turned out
Speaker 1: they had done so by breaking the rules in some way,
Speaker 1: or that your score was invalidated because someone was claiming
Speaker 1: that you it do it correctly. But for someone to
Speaker 1: go on and get credit for something without having put
Speaker 1: in the actual work to develop those skills, that would
Speaker 1: be really upsetting. If if that were the case now,
Speaker 1: I could confidently say I will never experience that, because
Speaker 1: I am at best mediocre at pretty much everything. I
Speaker 1: should also add that Twin Galaxies itself has something of
Speaker 1: a tarnished reputation among some gamers, who alleged that the
Speaker 1: organization has failed to apply any sort of rigor into
Speaker 1: investigating high score claims. There's another series of scores that
Speaker 1: were posted by a guy named Todd Rogers, the self
Speaker 1: proclaimed first professional gamer, and some of those scores were
Speaker 1: later disputed by other folks. For example, there was an
Speaker 1: incredible score for an old Atari game called Dragster. Uh. Dragster,
Speaker 1: as the name suggests, is a game in which the
Speaker 1: player controls a drag racing car. So there's this really
Speaker 1: quick countdown, and then the player has to ans hitting
Speaker 1: the accelerate button and switching gears against the cars tendency
Speaker 1: to have its engine blowout or to pop a wheelie
Speaker 1: and slow down. So your goal is to get to
Speaker 1: the finish line and as little time as possible. Way
Speaker 1: back in, Rogers posted an insane time of just five
Speaker 1: point five one seconds, which was a record that stood
Speaker 1: in Twin Galaxies books until two thousand eighteen. Now, the
Speaker 1: reason why I said it was an insane time is because,
Speaker 1: at least according to people who tried to look into this,
Speaker 1: the theoretical perfect score, if you were absolutely timed perfectly right,
Speaker 1: would be five point five second seven seconds, so five
Speaker 1: point five seven, whereas Rogers posted five point five one.
Speaker 1: They said, there's just no way to get a score
Speaker 1: that's better than five point five seven, and twin galaxies
Speaker 1: would subsequently strike Rogers posted score from their records and
Speaker 1: they banned him. And Rogers also held records that were
Speaker 1: likewise purged, including some that showed him scoring truly ludicrous
Speaker 1: high scores above like the second best showing like millions
Speaker 1: more in some cases, like there was one I want
Speaker 1: to say where his score was somewhere around fifteen million
Speaker 1: and second place was in the tens of thousands, which
Speaker 1: does seem to say something he is going on here
Speaker 1: if there's that big gap between second place and first place.
Speaker 1: But I don't know what the realities are here, whether
Speaker 1: Rogers cheated or not. Again, I don't know. But his
Speaker 1: story is another in the world of high score scandals,
Speaker 1: and there are other scandals in single player games. Let's
Speaker 1: switch gears a little bit to the world of speed runs,
Speaker 1: which you know kind of relates back to Dragster actually, now,
Speaker 1: in case you've never heard of that term, a speed
Speaker 1: run is when someone makes an attempt to complete a
Speaker 1: game at a record time, and you could argue that
Speaker 1: the Dragster case was kind of an early speed run
Speaker 1: in many ways, but these days we typically think of
Speaker 1: it as a way to post the fastest time to
Speaker 1: complete longer games. Usually, so like you, you look at
Speaker 1: a game like maybe Super Mario Brothers, and you say, well,
Speaker 1: what's the least amount of time it would take for
Speaker 1: me to complete this game. So speed runs all have
Speaker 1: their own subclassifications, and we'll go through a few of
Speaker 1: those really quickly. So there's something called a glitchless run.
Speaker 1: This means the player is completing the game as quickly
Speaker 1: as they can without relying upon glitches in that game.
Speaker 1: So a glitch in this case is something in the
Speaker 1: game that lets a player, you know, bypass stuff in
Speaker 1: a way that developers didn't intend. A common example is
Speaker 1: that you might discover in a map in a game world,
Speaker 1: if you stand in a particular spot and you do
Speaker 1: a particular action, you can pass through that part of
Speaker 1: the map and then navigate quickly to some other part
Speaker 1: of the map without having to travel that physical distance,
Speaker 1: and that this can save you huge amounts of time.
Speaker 1: That's one version of a glitch or exploit. Now, glitch
Speaker 1: less runs ideally avoid those kinds of exploits, although sometimes
Speaker 1: some types of exploits are allowed and others aren't. It
Speaker 1: gets a bit subjective then you've got any percent games
Speaker 1: that's any percent run it's typically a n Y and
Speaker 1: then the percent sign that means that you get to
Speaker 1: the conclusion of the game, but you don't necessarily complete
Speaker 1: the whole game, like you don't have to do say,
Speaker 1: all the side quests or whatever, all the optional you know, content,
Speaker 1: you can bypass that. You're just interested in going from
Speaker 1: the very beginning of the game and getting to the
Speaker 1: very end of the game as quickly as you possibly can.
Speaker 1: So this style of speed run can also rely heavily
Speaker 1: on exploits and glitches. Now you can do in any
Speaker 1: percent glitchless run, which means that you don't really rely
Speaker 1: on the glitches. You're still just trying to get to
Speaker 1: the end as fast as you possibly can. And if
Speaker 1: you watch these on YouTube, you might end up seeing
Speaker 1: a game that looks very different from a normal run through, right, Like,
Speaker 1: if there's any percent glitch run, uh, it can be
Speaker 1: that the game starts, you're like, yeah, I recognize this,
Speaker 1: and then immediately you're like, wait, what what happened? What
Speaker 1: did they do? And it could be pretty incredible. Then
Speaker 1: you have completion, which is what it sounds like a
Speaker 1: player has to try and complete every aspect of a
Speaker 1: game within the shortest amount of time possible. So for
Speaker 1: some games like Elder Scrolls five Skyrim, that would involve
Speaker 1: a ton of stock just because there's so much content
Speaker 1: in that game, and a speed run could still require
Speaker 1: several hours of play in order to actually complete everything.
Speaker 1: There are lots of other subcategories as well, including ones
Speaker 1: that are restricted to specific games. For example, in the
Speaker 1: Hitman series, you play as a hit Man who must
Speaker 1: eliminate specific targets, and these games are fairly open ended.
Speaker 1: They allow the player to don different disguises, come from
Speaker 1: different directions, use all sorts of various methods in order
Speaker 1: to eliminate targets. But maybe you're doing a specific type
Speaker 1: of speed run where you want to do suit only
Speaker 1: silent assassin. That means you never change disguise and you
Speaker 1: have to do it in a way where no one
Speaker 1: ever discovers any of the kills you make before you
Speaker 1: escape the level. Uh. It adds another level of challenge
Speaker 1: to it, and you're also doing it in the least
Speaker 1: amount of time you possibly can now. For years, speed
Speaker 1: runs were a niche within a niche within a niche,
Speaker 1: you might break a record, and you might end up
Speaker 1: submitting it and having it posted in a hard print
Speaker 1: magazine that no one other than other speed runners would
Speaker 1: ever pay attention to. But over the last several years,
Speaker 1: the speed run community has grown thanks to stuff like
Speaker 1: YouTube and twitch, gamers can post attempts at setting a
Speaker 1: speed run, either to beat their own personal best or
Speaker 1: maybe even to establish a new world record. And while
Speaker 1: speed runs don't typically have big rewards associated with them,
Speaker 1: at least not directly, someone who's known for speed running
Speaker 1: can end up accumulating a really large community of fans
Speaker 1: and they might be able to monetize through that. So
Speaker 1: there are speed runners who have Patreon pages, or they
Speaker 1: have YouTube channels or twitch a channels, or a combination
Speaker 1: of all three, and they can make money from their work. Well,
Speaker 1: the speed run community is incredibly competitive. There's always people
Speaker 1: looking to see if they can shave even a fraction
Speaker 1: of a second off a run, and there are no
Speaker 1: shortage of scandals in the speed run community, surrounding players
Speaker 1: who have used various tricks outside of the accepted ones
Speaker 1: in order to post speed run scores. And that kind
Speaker 1: of sounds a little bit of weird, right Like within
Speaker 1: speed running. It could be okay to leverage an exploit
Speaker 1: that allows you to get an unintended advantage in a game,
Speaker 1: as long as that exploit really already existed within the game,
Speaker 1: like if the developers had accidentally left something there, that
Speaker 1: would be okay. But it would be against the rules
Speaker 1: to say, alter a games code in some way to
Speaker 1: give you an advantage, to hack the game to change
Speaker 1: the game. That would be against the rules. So you
Speaker 1: can sort of cheat under certain circumstances, but you can't
Speaker 1: cheat in other's I guess let's talk about an example
Speaker 1: of a speed run cheat. A Minecraft player who uses
Speaker 1: the handled Dream, one of the most popular Minecraft streamers
Speaker 1: out there, completed a speed run and Minecraft in that
Speaker 1: broke records, And you might wonder how the heck you
Speaker 1: speed run a game like Minecraft if you're only kind
Speaker 1: of familiar with Minecraft. I mean, most people think of
Speaker 1: that as a crafting game that really doesn't have an
Speaker 1: end to it. Well, there is a quote unquote end
Speaker 1: to Minecraft, which involves confronting a monster called the nether
Speaker 1: Dragon and defeating it. But in order to even do that,
Speaker 1: you first have to craft some special items, and you
Speaker 1: do that using some really rare raw materials, and so
Speaker 1: speed runs hinge on how quickly you can accumulate those
Speaker 1: raw materials so that you can journey to the nether
Speaker 1: Dragon and then hopefully defeat it. Now, those rare items,
Speaker 1: their appearance depends upon r n G or random number generation.
Speaker 1: That is, there's a a certain percentage chance for those
Speaker 1: items to appear under certain circumstances, but it's not a guarantee.
Speaker 1: It's just a chance, and a random number generator, which
Speaker 1: is essentially the equivalent of rolling dice, determines if the
Speaker 1: item drops or not. So one of the items that
Speaker 1: Dream needed to complete the speed run had just a
Speaker 1: four point seven percent chance to drop under a specific
Speaker 1: set of circumstances. I'm not going to go into all
Speaker 1: the details. They're not important. Dream, however, was incredibly lucky,
Speaker 1: like unbelievably lucky, because ultimately Dreams you know, results were
Speaker 1: more like a fift drop return instead of four point seven. Now,
Speaker 1: that raised concerns that Dream was playing Minecraft on an
Speaker 1: altered or customized game that boosted the drop rate of
Speaker 1: those specific items, and that conclusion seemed pretty certain because
Speaker 1: the drop frequency was just way too high to be
Speaker 1: up to chance. It would be like winning the lottery
Speaker 1: three times in a row. But Dreams said that he
Speaker 1: wasn't aware that there was any sort of modified game,
Speaker 1: and that actually could be true. You see, Dream was
Speaker 1: playing on a shared server. Now, in Minecraft, there are
Speaker 1: two different ways you could play a game. You can
Speaker 1: play a local game which runs on your machine, like
Speaker 1: your PC, and this is a client side style of gaming.
Speaker 1: Everything's running on the client, that being your machine. If
Speaker 1: you install mods on your client based Minecraft game, well
Speaker 1: then the mods you install they will affect your client
Speaker 1: based gaming sessions. However, let's say you log into a
Speaker 1: shared Minecraft world, one that other people can log into
Speaker 1: as well. This is on a server, not on your client,
Speaker 1: not on your PC. So your client based mods would
Speaker 1: never apply to a server based game. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: you could have modified your game all you want when
Speaker 1: you play privately on your computer, but when you play
Speaker 1: on the server, you're playing by the server rules. The
Speaker 1: only mods that could apply to the server would be
Speaker 1: server side modifications. So what Dream was saying was that
Speaker 1: the people who set up the game server that he
Speaker 1: played on had boosted the drop rates and he didn't
Speaker 1: know about it at the time, so it was still
Speaker 1: kind of an instance of cheating, but not necessarily intentional cheating. Well,
Speaker 1: when we come back, we'll talk about a few more
Speaker 1: famous instances of cheating in video games, but first, let's
Speaker 1: take this quick break. All right, let's talk about online
Speaker 1: games and cheating. You can pretty much bet that if
Speaker 1: a game games pop pularity, and if there's any sort
Speaker 1: of competition in that game, hackers will try to create
Speaker 1: tools that will change that game in some way, including
Speaker 1: ways that can give players certain advantages. UH. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of common examples of this. Uh, for example,
Speaker 1: in the first person or a third person shooter genres.
Speaker 1: There are some very common ones like aim bot and
Speaker 1: wall hacks and recoil elimination. So aim bot cheats are
Speaker 1: pretty self explanatory. These are cheats that assist players in
Speaker 1: locking onto an opponent to aim at someone. Some aim
Speaker 1: bots are less obvious than others, but if you've ever
Speaker 1: watched gameplay that showed someone just instantly locking onto opponents heads,
Speaker 1: even if those opponents are obscured by stuff like smoke
Speaker 1: or cover, or they're so far away that you can't
Speaker 1: even really see them on the screen, there's a good
Speaker 1: chance that an aim bot played a part in that.
Speaker 1: Now this does get a little muddy because we are
Speaker 1: now in the era of cross platform play, and this
Speaker 1: changes things. See, if you have a really skilled player
Speaker 1: who uses a keyboard and mouse to play first person shooters,
Speaker 1: they might refine their skills and be able to hit
Speaker 1: headshots way more frequently than your average player can, and
Speaker 1: they could just be relying on legit skills. They're they're
Speaker 1: just that good. It doesn't mean they've got to hit
Speaker 1: every single shot. But their precision that they have with
Speaker 1: a mouse, particularly when they've dialed in the mouse sensitivity
Speaker 1: to their preference, they can zero in on targets really
Speaker 1: accurately and quickly. But contrast that with someone who's playing
Speaker 1: the same video game but on a console, not on
Speaker 1: a PC, and they're using a game pad of some sort.
Speaker 1: Game pads typically are far less precise. Some games allow
Speaker 1: players to change controller sensitivity, but you're still left with
Speaker 1: the fact that you're using a pair of thumbsticks or
Speaker 1: maybe a thumbstick in a direction pad or whatever. It's
Speaker 1: just not going to give the player the same level
Speaker 1: of responsiveness and precision as a mouse would. And if
Speaker 1: the game supports cross platform play, in which console players
Speaker 1: and PC players can be matched up in the same match.
Speaker 1: That creates a skilled gap. You might have someone who's
Speaker 1: really good at console gaming and they're having trouble against
Speaker 1: you know, moderately skilled PC gamers. But it's not because
Speaker 1: the PC gamers are necessarily better at the game. It
Speaker 1: might be because their control scheme just natively gives them
Speaker 1: a slight advantage, and that's all it takes. To that end,
Speaker 1: a lot of console games include an aim assist feature,
Speaker 1: so it's kind of like driver assist with cars. The
Speaker 1: aim assist doesn't totally take over for players the way
Speaker 1: an aim bot program could. Instead, it helps dial in
Speaker 1: aim a little bit. So if you were direct your
Speaker 1: sites toward an opponent, the game assist might do the
Speaker 1: last five or ten percent to help you lock on
Speaker 1: for your shot, because otherwise your control mechanism of the
Speaker 1: game pad would put you at a disadvantage against people
Speaker 1: who are playing with mouse and keyboard. Now, I've actually
Speaker 1: followed some pro gamers who use controllers with certain FPS
Speaker 1: titles like Call of Duty war Zone, and I've seen
Speaker 1: some of those players get banned, and they weren't banned
Speaker 1: for well, they were banned for cheating, but it turned
Speaker 1: out they weren't cheating, and after an investigation, they had
Speaker 1: their accounts restored because it turned out, you know, they
Speaker 1: weren't relying on aim bots. Instead, they were just really
Speaker 1: skilled players, and their style of play also incorporated a
Speaker 1: little bit of aim assist because they were using a
Speaker 1: game pad, so they weren't cheating. They were pairing game
Speaker 1: systems with their skill level at to play at the
Speaker 1: top of their capability, and they were just really darn good.
Speaker 1: But there are cases in which it's no question that
Speaker 1: a player is using an aim bot, and this extends
Speaker 1: even to professional e sports level. In famous instance of
Speaker 1: this happened in two thousand eighteen in a counter Strike tournament.
Speaker 1: Counter Strike is a multiplayer shooter game in which you've
Speaker 1: got two teams of players competing against each other. It
Speaker 1: has its own fascinating history. I may have to do
Speaker 1: episodes about counter Strike at some point. It started off
Speaker 1: as a mod for Half Life way back in two
Speaker 1: thousand and people still compete in counter Strike tournaments to
Speaker 1: this day now. In one two thousand eighteen tournament, there
Speaker 1: was a player who used the handle Forsaken. He was
Speaker 1: performing at a level that was truly astounding. He was
Speaker 1: zeroing in on opponents, particularly with headshots, with an almost
Speaker 1: inhuman like precision. In fact, not not almost. The tournament
Speaker 1: admins stopped the play fairly early on in order to
Speaker 1: investigate Forsaken's PC because they thought something hinky was going on,
Speaker 1: and they found he was running an aim bought hack
Speaker 1: program that gave him the uncanny ability to lock onto
Speaker 1: opponents and wipe them out. Forsaken had named the files
Speaker 1: word e x E in his cheap folder kind of
Speaker 1: as a way to throw people off the scent of
Speaker 1: what he was doing. It did not work. He was
Speaker 1: caught anyway, and later the whole work e XC thing
Speaker 1: became a meme. You would hear streamers say stuff like,
Speaker 1: I guess I should have turned on work e x
Speaker 1: C after getting eliminated to that kind of thing. Anyway,
Speaker 1: four seconds team was disqualified as a result of that.
Speaker 1: Wall hacks are a little bit different. A wall hack
Speaker 1: is any sort of cheat that allows a player to
Speaker 1: see opponents, uh or maybe just other players, not just opponents,
Speaker 1: even if those players are otherwise obscured behind something that
Speaker 1: you would not be able to see through. So imagine
Speaker 1: that you're able to see if someone is on the
Speaker 1: other side of a wall, or on the other side
Speaker 1: of a hill, or right around a corner or whatever.
Speaker 1: Obviously that would give you a huge advantage. One of
Speaker 1: the giveaways that someone is using wall hacks is when
Speaker 1: they start doing what's called pre firing. That is, they
Speaker 1: start airing their weapon towards you before you're even in view,
Speaker 1: So they're firing at where you're going to be, but
Speaker 1: at least theoretically, there's no way they would have known
Speaker 1: that that's where you are going to be. So if
Speaker 1: someone starts firing down the hallway before you even come
Speaker 1: around the corner, that could be a case of them
Speaker 1: using wall hacks. Now, this is also not always clear cut.
Speaker 1: A lot of games incorporate stuff like three D audio,
Speaker 1: So if your opponent is just really observant and they
Speaker 1: have a really good pair of headphones, they might be
Speaker 1: able to hear that someone is coming down the hall
Speaker 1: and they anticipate you coming around the corner and they
Speaker 1: just start firing, and you know, it can look like
Speaker 1: they're cheating, but in reality, they're just relying upon information
Speaker 1: within the game. But a lot of these games also
Speaker 1: include the ability for players who have been eliminated to
Speaker 1: view a cam of their opponent, which is really useful.
Speaker 1: I mean, you might just use it in order to
Speaker 1: get you know, a better at a game, Like you
Speaker 1: can see what you did wrong because you're looking at
Speaker 1: it from your opponent's point of view. But you can
Speaker 1: also sometimes tell if someone is cheating. So let's say
Speaker 1: you're watching a deathcam after you've been eliminated, and you
Speaker 1: notice that the player was tracking you before they could
Speaker 1: even possibly see you, Like their radical is right where
Speaker 1: you were the whole time before you come around the corner.
Speaker 1: That pretty much tells you that that person is probably
Speaker 1: using a wall hack. And there's been some pretty notable
Speaker 1: cases in which players were seen to have relied on
Speaker 1: these kinds of hacks and they gave themselves away. Sometimes
Speaker 1: this pops up and streaming and again, streaming like e sports,
Speaker 1: can be a way to potentially make money by playing
Speaker 1: video games, so obviously there is something valuable at stake here.
Speaker 1: It's not just you know, bragging rights. Artificially boosting your
Speaker 1: bragging rights at a game. There can be real money involved.
Speaker 1: So there are streamers who gain a following because they
Speaker 1: seem to be amazing at certain games, and sometimes these
Speaker 1: streamers get exposed for using hacks, and sometimes they do
Speaker 1: it to themselves. In fact, this is true for all
Speaker 1: sorts of hack. Typically, the process for using hacks is,
Speaker 1: you know, whatever game you're playing, you go searching to
Speaker 1: see what kind of hack engines are available for that
Speaker 1: particular build of the game. There's some hack engines that
Speaker 1: cover multiple titles, and you would download that and install
Speaker 1: it on your machine. Sometimes they're freely distributed. Sometimes you
Speaker 1: actually have to pay to use those hacks. Sometimes it's
Speaker 1: a subscription service. So you install the hack on your
Speaker 1: machine and you run the hack at the same time
Speaker 1: as you're running your game, and the hack typically has
Speaker 1: a window that has a menu in it and allows
Speaker 1: you to choose which features you turn on and which
Speaker 1: ones you don't. The more you turn on, the more
Speaker 1: likely your activities are going to come across as hacking.
Speaker 1: Right Like if you if you said everything to on,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be pretty obvious that you are not playing
Speaker 1: in a normal way. So a lot of hackers are
Speaker 1: a lot of cheaters. Rather will only select certain ones
Speaker 1: under certain conditions in order to kind of screw below
Speaker 1: the radar and not get detected for for cheating and UH.
Speaker 1: The other important part is you want to make sure
Speaker 1: that you're only if you're streaming, you're only sending out
Speaker 1: the game view of what's going on, because you don't
Speaker 1: want to show people that you've got a hack engine running.
Speaker 1: But several times streamers have accidentally revealed that they were
Speaker 1: using hacks as they were playing. For example, if the
Speaker 1: streamers using wall hacks and they forget to send out
Speaker 1: the version of their stream that doesn't show the wall
Speaker 1: hack exposed players, that's dead giveaway. Viewers will see that
Speaker 1: indicators that should not be there are up in view
Speaker 1: and they'll know right away that that person is cheating.
Speaker 1: For that reason, most wall hacks include options that allow
Speaker 1: streamers to send out a feed there's a different view
Speaker 1: for audiences so that they don't see the outlined opponents.
Speaker 1: But you gotta remember to select that stuff first, and
Speaker 1: not everyone does UH. In other cases, streamers have acts
Speaker 1: the screen shared a screen that had their hack menu up.
Speaker 1: Some hacks for games include multiple options, like maybe you
Speaker 1: don't want to have aimbot on, but you do want
Speaker 1: to reduce the recoil for your guns so that you
Speaker 1: know once you walk onto someone and you start firing,
Speaker 1: you can keep your gun trained on them without worrying
Speaker 1: about the gun recoiling out of the way. Now, skilled gamers,
Speaker 1: they learn how each weapon in a game will handle.
Speaker 1: They will learn that recoil pattern so that they can
Speaker 1: counteract it with their own skill. So like if a
Speaker 1: machine gun tends to recoil so that moves up into
Speaker 1: the left, they will automatically control the gun and and
Speaker 1: move it sort of down into the right to counteract
Speaker 1: that tendency. Or you know, you could just install hacks
Speaker 1: and use a cheat code to do it for you. Well,
Speaker 1: there's been a few cases where players have done this
Speaker 1: and they've forgotten to hide it. For example, a streamer
Speaker 1: who used the handle Mr Gold's got caught when he
Speaker 1: was playing a first person shooter. It was it was
Speaker 1: Call of Duty war Zone, and he was running hacks
Speaker 1: at the time. He forgot to hide the hacks window
Speaker 1: before he started streaming, and soon his audience was clipping
Speaker 1: that stream and then sharing those clips on social media,
Speaker 1: and Mr Gold's ultimately received a ban from Twitch as
Speaker 1: a result. And that's a big deal when you're a
Speaker 1: pro gamer. I mean, that's where your money is coming.
Speaker 1: From and it's not like you're likely to land a
Speaker 1: sponsorship deal if your rep happens to be associated with cheating.
Speaker 1: Another example was with a streamer who used the handle
Speaker 1: miss q Jemini. She had been playing in a game
Speaker 1: of Counterstrike and revealed accidentally that she was using cheats.
Speaker 1: She activated the cheats in the middle of the stream.
Speaker 1: She was unaware that her stream could actually see it,
Speaker 1: and she tried to cover it up and explain it away,
Speaker 1: saying like, oh, this is why you don't give people
Speaker 1: access to your PC, but you know, she still had
Speaker 1: her channel banned as a result. Now, to counteract hacks,
Speaker 1: companies have created software designed to detect the presence of
Speaker 1: stuff like aim bots and that kind of thing, and
Speaker 1: some of them are client based, meaning that the software
Speaker 1: runs on your computer locally. Uh. The anti cheat software
Speaker 1: is usually bundled with the game itself, and it's kind
Speaker 1: of like anti virus software. It's typically looking for examples
Speaker 1: of well known identified cheat hacks and it blocks them
Speaker 1: from working or just doesn't allow you to even play
Speaker 1: the game and launch it at all. But there are
Speaker 1: also server side anti cheap programs. Fair Fight is an
Speaker 1: example of this, and as the name says. Server side
Speaker 1: anti cheap programs sit on the server you log into
Speaker 1: for online multiplayer games, so it's not on your PC,
Speaker 1: it's on the server that is hosting the game. So
Speaker 1: every gamer who logs into that server has the same
Speaker 1: anti cheat software that's scanning for examples of hacks. Both
Speaker 1: client and server side anti cheap programs are not perfect.
Speaker 1: Hackers are always looking for new ways to exploit a
Speaker 1: game and create advantages, and it's not like anti cheat
Speaker 1: software has some sort of magic way to stay up
Speaker 1: to date and know what's going on. Some games like
Speaker 1: war Zone, which you know, as I said, was as
Speaker 1: a variant of Call of Duty. It's a free to
Speaker 1: play version of it, they go through cycles in which
Speaker 1: cheaters will start to flood servers. It will just be
Speaker 1: rampant cheating in various ways, and then you'll see a
Speaker 1: big purge where thousands of accounts get banned and new
Speaker 1: anti cheat methods are put into place, and then the
Speaker 1: whole cycle slowly repeats itself. Now, clearly playing against cheaters
Speaker 1: is frustrating. It can lead to people quitting a game,
Speaker 1: so companies have a vested interest in cutting back on cheating,
Speaker 1: but sometimes that's just easier said than done. And of
Speaker 1: course there are other types of cheating that don't involve
Speaker 1: direct hacking either. We'll talk about those a bit more
Speaker 1: when we come back. Before the break I talked about
Speaker 1: there are types of cheating that don't involve hacking. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is just simple stuff. I'm talking about stuff like
Speaker 1: streams sniping. Uh. This is when you've got someone who's
Speaker 1: streaming their gameplay of a multiplayer game. Maybe it's a
Speaker 1: pro gamer, you know, and the fact that they're streaming
Speaker 1: live means other people can see what game they're playing,
Speaker 1: what server they're on, and where they might be within
Speaker 1: the game. So that means they could potentially jump into
Speaker 1: a game with that player and target them because they
Speaker 1: have more information about the streamer than the streamer has
Speaker 1: about them. So in a game like pub G, which
Speaker 1: begins with everyone deciding where on this massive game map
Speaker 1: they're going to start, this could be a really harmful
Speaker 1: tool for at least harmful to the streamer, because if
Speaker 1: people are watching the streamer and they know where the
Speaker 1: streamer is headed at the beginning of a match, they
Speaker 1: can try and head there too and potentially take the
Speaker 1: streamer out before they can get any momentum going, so
Speaker 1: that's stream sniping. But another common type of cheating is
Speaker 1: when cheaters are collaborating or teaming up in games that
Speaker 1: are meant for solo play. So this is particularly bad
Speaker 1: in games like pub G where you might be playing
Speaker 1: in solo mode, which is an everyone for themselves mode,
Speaker 1: so it's solo Battle Royale. You start off with like
Speaker 1: a hundred players and it comes down to the last
Speaker 1: surviving player. You're supposed to treat it like it's you
Speaker 1: against everybody else, But sometimes players will collude with one
Speaker 1: another and they'll work together to help eliminate opponents and
Speaker 1: thus reduce the risk of themselves losing until they get
Speaker 1: down to the last couple. That sort of thing is
Speaker 1: looked down upon. Usually it requires a moderator to look
Speaker 1: into it to actually see that that's what's going on,
Speaker 1: but it can result in moderators banning players if they
Speaker 1: find it. But let's talk about a few instances of
Speaker 1: how various people have dealt with cheaters in the past.
Speaker 1: One game that has a hefty online presence is Grand
Speaker 1: Theft Auto five, or g t A five as it
Speaker 1: is otherwise known. G T A five has been a
Speaker 1: real money maker for rock Star Games. The single player
Speaker 1: version pub in two thousand thirteen, but eight years later
Speaker 1: people are still pouring money into playing the online version,
Speaker 1: so they're using real world money to buy in game
Speaker 1: currency and then use that to purchase stuff within the game,
Speaker 1: arranging from real estate to submarines, to aircraft and all
Speaker 1: sorts of stuff. Well back in two thousand fifteen, a
Speaker 1: gamer with a handle plucks Are uploaded a video showing
Speaker 1: how he dealt with a particularly obnoxious hacker. The hacker,
Speaker 1: who was using the handle Zamma Rath, had turned on
Speaker 1: god mode, had a hack that was making this this
Speaker 1: character immune to damage. You could not kill this character. However,
Speaker 1: g T A five has rag doll physics, and as
Speaker 1: that name suggests, these physics make characters go limp or
Speaker 1: like a rag doll under certain conditions, which typically revolves
Speaker 1: around getting knocked down or you know, getting killed, So
Speaker 1: they flop around and players lose all control of the
Speaker 1: characters until that animation stops. So Plucks are heard about.
Speaker 1: This hacker got into an armored vehicle and tracked down
Speaker 1: the hacker who was blasting other players with a rocket
Speaker 1: launcher and then essentially just kept on running into the
Speaker 1: player and using explosives to activate rag Doll over and
Speaker 1: over again, so they he wasn't doing any damage to
Speaker 1: Zama Wrath. Because of that god mode, Zama Wrath was unhurt,
Speaker 1: but every single time an explosion or collision happened, it
Speaker 1: would make Zama Wath go into Doll mode rag Doll mode.
Speaker 1: So plucks Are just kept on doing that and trolled
Speaker 1: Zama Wrath over and over and over again until the
Speaker 1: hacker finally quit the game. What that kind of vigilante
Speaker 1: justice has its own sort of element of satisfaction, but
Speaker 1: obviously it's not a real solution to hackers. It just
Speaker 1: means that a troll kind of gets a little taste
Speaker 1: of their own medicine on occasion. Another example, and I've
Speaker 1: actually seen versions of this happen in person, is when
Speaker 1: a group of players will take it upon themselves to
Speaker 1: punish a cheap or even if it means they lose
Speaker 1: the game in the process. So there's a game that
Speaker 1: had a really big popular boost in twenty called Fall Guys.
Speaker 1: In this game, if you're not familiar with it, players
Speaker 1: assume the role of these cute little jellybean looking critters
Speaker 1: and they compete in a series of games as a
Speaker 1: Battle Royal Finish. So you start with a large number
Speaker 1: of players and each round that number gets whittled down
Speaker 1: until you have one winner. So the goal is to
Speaker 1: reach the end of the series of competitions and be
Speaker 1: the soul winner. And while the game isn't exactly a
Speaker 1: cutthroat style competition, you you still see cheaters on there
Speaker 1: on occasion. These are folks who have downloaded hacks to
Speaker 1: let them do stuff like float over a map. And
Speaker 1: since a lot of the competitions involved navigating obstacle courses,
Speaker 1: that means the characters have kind of a shortcut to
Speaker 1: the finish line. Well, some of the competitions and fall
Speaker 1: guys actually divide players up into temporary teams. So it
Speaker 1: one case, and this was a version that was captured
Speaker 1: on a stream by a player with a handle h
Speaker 1: so so S Game or TIOS game, who, by the way,
Speaker 1: was not the cheater, he was just capturing this The
Speaker 1: players had collectively decided that they had had enough of
Speaker 1: this hacker who had been just coasting through the earlier rounds.
Speaker 1: So after the cheater had blatantly been breaking the rules,
Speaker 1: it came down to a team based game in which
Speaker 1: the remaining players divided up into three teams, and the
Speaker 1: cheater was on the Red team, and the goal of
Speaker 1: this particular mini game was to collect eggs on a
Speaker 1: level and throw them into your team's collection point. Meanwhile
Speaker 1: other teams are trying to steal your eggs and protect
Speaker 1: their own eggs. Well, the other players in the Red
Speaker 1: team didn't want to see the cheater get any further
Speaker 1: in the game, so they worked against their own self
Speaker 1: interest and they helped the other two teams. They ended
Speaker 1: up grabbing their own eggs out of their collection point
Speaker 1: and chucking them out, And I meant everyone on the
Speaker 1: Red team got eliminated, but that also meant the hacker
Speaker 1: would not be able to go any further in that game.
Speaker 1: It was essentially a collective message of hey, stop trying
Speaker 1: to ruin this for other people to that hacker. Another
Speaker 1: famous example of a hacker getting pooned was someone who
Speaker 1: was going by the unlikely handle of Okay Savings Bank.
Speaker 1: They were playing the fighting game Teken, in which players
Speaker 1: can select from a roster of fighters and they compete
Speaker 1: against each other. So Tekens kind of in the same
Speaker 1: category of games as Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter. Okay
Speaker 1: Savings Bank was clearly up to no good because the
Speaker 1: fighter they were using was called double Kazumi. And here's
Speaker 1: the thing that that character was not a selectable character
Speaker 1: for multiplayer. You had to cheat to be able to
Speaker 1: use this character and multiplayer, so something was hanky. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Double Kazumi is a particularly powerful character, and so this
Speaker 1: this player was just breezing through the competition until by
Speaker 1: random chance, they paired against a guy named Jay men By,
Speaker 1: better known as the his pro gamer handle Knee. Knee
Speaker 1: is an incredibly skilled the Teken player like championship level
Speaker 1: tech in player, and it took a little bit of
Speaker 1: time for him to get his groove against you know,
Speaker 1: the hacker. But Knee totally schooled Okay Savings Bank to
Speaker 1: the point that the cheater actually quit midway through the
Speaker 1: match because it was clear that even with their unfair advantage,
Speaker 1: they just could not put up a fight against a
Speaker 1: truly skilled player. And uh, while we're talking about cheaters
Speaker 1: and hackers, we should also talk about scammers and thieves,
Speaker 1: because sometimes a cheater's worst enemy is a bad guy
Speaker 1: who is, you know, even badder than a cheater is
Speaker 1: so back in, some malware designers created a piece of
Speaker 1: malware called Balder b a L d R and one
Speaker 1: of the groups they were specifically targeting were video game cheaters.
Speaker 1: So the malware could all information from users and clading
Speaker 1: stuff like credit card info and passwords and that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. So the designers paired this malware with a
Speaker 1: cheat engine, which was supposed to give you know, cheaters
Speaker 1: an edge in the game. Apex legends it included stuff
Speaker 1: like an aim bot and wall hacks and speed hacks
Speaker 1: and more. But the cheaters who downloaded and installed the
Speaker 1: cheat engine, we're also unknowingly installing the Balder malware on
Speaker 1: their computers and potentially losing their information and their money. Also,
Speaker 1: the the hacks software was a subscription based software, so
Speaker 1: they were paying to get robbed. So the malware designers
Speaker 1: had hit on a classic tactic. You target a population
Speaker 1: that's most likely to fall victim to your scheme. Now,
Speaker 1: typically I talk about this in terms of malware designers
Speaker 1: attacking really vulnerable populations, such as people who are looking
Speaker 1: to get a job. In fact, I got a phishing
Speaker 1: attempt an email that used this approach this morning. I'm
Speaker 1: not looking for a job, but all the blue I
Speaker 1: got an email directed to me saying, Hey, we found
Speaker 1: this perfect job for you. We just need you to
Speaker 1: fill out all these forms that will give us all
Speaker 1: your personal information. Um, it was a total scam. Well,
Speaker 1: people who are looking for a job are really eager
Speaker 1: to jump on an opportunity, and sometimes they might even
Speaker 1: do that if the opportunity seems to come out of
Speaker 1: nowhere and it's too good to be true. And that's
Speaker 1: a pretty nasty thing to see, right, It's it's mean
Speaker 1: to see malware designers go after people who are already
Speaker 1: presumably in a pretty rough position. However, when it comes
Speaker 1: to them targeting cheaters, it becomes a little harder to
Speaker 1: feel sympathy towards cheaters, right. Balder also popped up in
Speaker 1: other types of downloads, most notably in pirated copies of games,
Speaker 1: So in that case, the malware designers weren't targeting cheaters,
Speaker 1: they were targeting thieves, though of course the hackers themselves
Speaker 1: were also thieves. Also, I guess it's a good target
Speaker 1: to go for because it's far less likely that someone
Speaker 1: who is cheating or stealing is going to complain when
Speaker 1: they themselves get targeted by hackers because if you come forward,
Speaker 1: it means you also have to admit that you were
Speaker 1: engaged in questionable behavior yourself. So it's like blackmailing someone
Speaker 1: who's really doing something terrible. They're not likely to call
Speaker 1: you out on blackmailing because it would mean having to
Speaker 1: admit that they were doing the terrible thing in the
Speaker 1: first place. Same sort of thing, and you know, cheaters
Speaker 1: typically really hate coming forward even when they're caught out.
Speaker 1: It's pretty common to see cheaters deny or deflect or
Speaker 1: even attack in response to folks pointing out when something
Speaker 1: hinky is going on. And as we wrap up, I
Speaker 1: want to say something else. Do not cheat in multiplayer games.
Speaker 1: It just doesn't end well. You're more likely to get
Speaker 1: banned than anything else. Even if you're able to succeed
Speaker 1: in the short term. Over the long term, it's not
Speaker 1: likely to work out well for you. And moreover, if
Speaker 1: you're playing against me in anything, don't eat because you
Speaker 1: don't have to. Because I'm telling you, I love video games,
Speaker 1: but I am not good at them. I've had cheaters
Speaker 1: take me out in games. I think I mentioned pub
Speaker 1: G in the last episode because that was undeniably cheating.
Speaker 1: But seriously, that's just a waste of time for you.
Speaker 1: I mean, you could probably take me out on your
Speaker 1: own without much trouble. I've made it to the final
Speaker 1: two in pub G maybe three times. Every single time.
Speaker 1: It was not because I was wrecking shop. It was
Speaker 1: because I would play an entire match and I wouldn't
Speaker 1: run into anyone until the end, and then I would just,
Speaker 1: you know, fold over. When I finally came across somebody
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh wow, I made it all
Speaker 1: the way the second place, and I never saw anyone,
Speaker 1: including the last player who was clearly skilled. So just
Speaker 1: give me a fighting chance and then you can riddle
Speaker 1: me with bullets. All right. That wraps up these episodes
Speaker 1: about cheating in video games. Obviously it goes well beyond that.
Speaker 1: They're some other notable examples that I didn't really touch on,
Speaker 1: Like there was a FIFA uh crime ring that that
Speaker 1: was active last year. That was kind of an interesting story,
Speaker 1: but we'll save that for some other episode. I hope
Speaker 1: you enjoyed this. For those of you in the United States,
Speaker 1: I hope you have a great Thanksgiving break. Remember tomorrow's
Speaker 1: episode is a rerun about how cyber Monday got started.
Speaker 1: So if you're curious about that, make sure you tune
Speaker 1: in and we'll be back next week with all new episodes.
Speaker 1: And remember, if you want to send me anything to
Speaker 1: you know, talk about, maybe there's a company or technology
Speaker 1: or trend in tech that you'd really like an episode about,
Speaker 1: send me a message on Twitter. The handle for the
Speaker 1: show is tech Stuff hs W, and I'll talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit
Speaker 1: the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows. M