WEBVTT - The Dark Side of Video Game Cheaters 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:07.800 Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. 0:00:12.160 --> 0:00:14.760 Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, 0:00:14.880 --> 0:00:17.640 Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio 0:00:17.680 --> 0:00:20.520 and I love all things tech. And in the last 0:00:20.560 --> 0:00:23.440 episode on this topic, I talked about the early days 0:00:23.960 --> 0:00:28.240 of cheating in video games and the two really big 0:00:29.040 --> 0:00:33.320 subdivisions of cheats in games in the early to mid 0:00:33.920 --> 0:00:37.080 eras of video games. So, on the one hand, you 0:00:37.159 --> 0:00:40.559 have cheats that were inserted into games by developers. These 0:00:40.600 --> 0:00:45.120 were intentionally included, not at first. This was primarily to 0:00:45.159 --> 0:00:49.320 allow developers to navigate through games quickly during the development 0:00:49.320 --> 0:00:52.080 process in order to check code and make sure the 0:00:52.120 --> 0:00:55.640 game is working properly without having to worry about actually being, 0:00:55.920 --> 0:00:58.600 you know, an expert at the game yourself, Like you 0:00:58.640 --> 0:01:01.640 want to make sure that stuff was posible, but you 0:01:01.720 --> 0:01:04.720 might not want to have to manually try and make 0:01:04.760 --> 0:01:07.360 your way through a game in order to test the 0:01:07.400 --> 0:01:10.840 specific part you wanted to look at. So developers would 0:01:10.880 --> 0:01:14.280 often you know, create these codes that would let them cheat, 0:01:14.520 --> 0:01:17.080 essentially to to bypass a lot of the stuff in 0:01:17.080 --> 0:01:20.120 the game, and often they would leave these cheats in 0:01:20.640 --> 0:01:23.360 the finished game rather than go in and clear out 0:01:23.400 --> 0:01:27.200 all that code, essentially thinking well, who's going to find 0:01:27.200 --> 0:01:30.399 this anyway, and eventually that information made its way out 0:01:30.520 --> 0:01:35.119 to the game playing public. This later evolved into cheats 0:01:35.160 --> 0:01:38.480 that developers would include in order to actually reward players 0:01:38.720 --> 0:01:43.920 with easter eggs or funny effects. At that point, developers 0:01:44.000 --> 0:01:47.120 knew that gamers were going to find out about the cheats, 0:01:47.600 --> 0:01:51.040 and so they experimented a bit to broaden the results 0:01:51.240 --> 0:01:55.560 of inserting these cheats. Some games even created cheats that 0:01:55.640 --> 0:01:58.200 would make games harder for people as a way to 0:01:58.280 --> 0:02:01.760 challenge the most hardcore of players, like not to trick them. 0:02:01.760 --> 0:02:04.360 Although there were those two I remember, I want to 0:02:04.360 --> 0:02:07.160 say it was heretic that if you were playing Heretic 0:02:07.240 --> 0:02:10.000 and you put in a Doom cheat, it would actually 0:02:10.000 --> 0:02:12.639 make the game harder for you instead of easier, as 0:02:12.720 --> 0:02:14.880 kind of a uh high, I see what you're doing there. 0:02:15.080 --> 0:02:18.840 But anyway, in some cases it was more like, hey, 0:02:18.919 --> 0:02:21.679 your hardcore, let's see how hardcore you could be. Also, 0:02:21.760 --> 0:02:24.520 I should point out that we're primarily talking about single 0:02:24.680 --> 0:02:28.560 player experiences here, stuff that was played natively on a 0:02:28.639 --> 0:02:32.320 single machine, and it was the player versus the computer. 0:02:33.160 --> 0:02:35.320 The other major type of cheat that I talked about 0:02:35.400 --> 0:02:40.040 came courtesy of game enhancement devices like the game Genie 0:02:40.160 --> 0:02:42.920 or the game Shark. These devices took the peak and 0:02:43.040 --> 0:02:46.760 poke approach to cheating, meaning they would examine the code 0:02:47.200 --> 0:02:50.280 that was being run in the computer's memory, and they 0:02:50.280 --> 0:02:55.000 would identify which lines of code were responsible for specific 0:02:55.040 --> 0:02:59.320 outcomes in the game, and then intercept requests from the 0:02:59.400 --> 0:03:04.720 machine to the media and inject new code in its place. So, 0:03:04.800 --> 0:03:07.359 for example, a game system might look to see how 0:03:07.360 --> 0:03:09.680 many lives a player has at the start of a game, 0:03:10.160 --> 0:03:14.680 and the device replaces the standard three lives with lives 0:03:14.760 --> 0:03:18.560 or whatever. Game enhancement devices had their heyday in the nineties, 0:03:18.800 --> 0:03:23.400 but they had faded significantly by the mid two thousand's. Now, 0:03:23.440 --> 0:03:28.440 with single player games, cheats usually aren't that big a deal, 0:03:28.480 --> 0:03:32.560 at least not until things like the achievement systems were 0:03:32.600 --> 0:03:36.560 introduced by Xbox and the Trophy system from Sony, because 0:03:36.560 --> 0:03:41.240 the only person affected usually is the cheater themselves, and 0:03:41.440 --> 0:03:44.200 they might have a good reason to cheat. For example, 0:03:44.280 --> 0:03:47.600 some games just aren't easily accessible to people who might 0:03:47.640 --> 0:03:51.400 have disabilities, for example, and cheats could make it possible 0:03:51.440 --> 0:03:54.640 for those people to actually experience a game that otherwise 0:03:55.120 --> 0:03:57.880 they would never really be able to experience. That's a 0:03:57.920 --> 0:04:01.240 good thing. Or maybe you and joy a specific game, 0:04:01.280 --> 0:04:03.280 but you're only able to get to a certain point 0:04:03.360 --> 0:04:05.880 before it just becomes too difficult for you to progress 0:04:05.880 --> 0:04:08.320 any further, and you just want to see how the 0:04:08.400 --> 0:04:11.440 heart hold thing ends, and cheats can really help out 0:04:11.440 --> 0:04:14.760 in those cases too. But even if a person is 0:04:14.840 --> 0:04:18.120 just cheating in order to get a dopamine rush of 0:04:18.279 --> 0:04:23.080 feeling like, you know, like they're an unstoppable tank, typically 0:04:23.120 --> 0:04:26.480 the only person affected is the cheater, unless again we're 0:04:26.480 --> 0:04:30.720 talking about something that relates to things like achievement points 0:04:30.760 --> 0:04:34.599 or whatever. Uh. Also, if the person is participating in 0:04:34.680 --> 0:04:38.800 something like a high score competition, that's different too. It's 0:04:38.839 --> 0:04:42.120 another matter entirely so. One of the most famous instances 0:04:42.240 --> 0:04:46.640 of alleged cheating, or at the very least misrepresentation is 0:04:46.720 --> 0:04:49.560 the story of Billy Mitchell, who had set records for 0:04:49.640 --> 0:04:53.560 high scores in classic arcade games like pac Man and 0:04:53.720 --> 0:04:59.880 Donkey Kong, and organization called Twin Galaxies maintained leaderboards for 0:05:00.160 --> 0:05:04.280 high scores for those classic games, but in Twin Galaxies 0:05:04.360 --> 0:05:07.920 chose to strike Mitchell's score off the list. For Donkey Kong. 0:05:08.040 --> 0:05:11.839 So what was going on? Well, according to Twin Galaxies, 0:05:12.200 --> 0:05:16.239 upon investigating the video of Mitchell setting that Donkey Kong 0:05:16.320 --> 0:05:19.960 high score, they determined that he had not been using 0:05:19.960 --> 0:05:24.599 a standard Donkey Kong arcade game or an official Donkey 0:05:24.680 --> 0:05:29.320 Kong printed circuit board or PCB. You gotta remember these 0:05:29.320 --> 0:05:33.279 old arcade games, they were hard coded onto circuit boards, 0:05:33.960 --> 0:05:38.640 and so the allegation was that Mitchell was relying upon 0:05:38.760 --> 0:05:42.599 some sort of emulated version of the game, which therefore 0:05:43.160 --> 0:05:47.359 would not behave exactly like the classic arcade game. And 0:05:47.400 --> 0:05:51.560 the organization said that the transitions in the game in 0:05:51.600 --> 0:05:54.839 the video that Mitchell sent didn't match the official version 0:05:54.839 --> 0:05:58.440 of Donkey Kong, and therefore Mitchell's record could not count 0:05:58.640 --> 0:06:01.840 toward that because it wasn't on a standardized version of 0:06:01.960 --> 0:06:05.359 the arcade game. Mitchell disputed that, and the whole matter 0:06:05.440 --> 0:06:07.880 is currently wrapped up in a court case between Mitchell 0:06:07.920 --> 0:06:11.159 and Twin Galaxies. Now, I have no idea if Mitchell 0:06:11.279 --> 0:06:14.800 circumvented the rules of the competition. I do know that 0:06:14.839 --> 0:06:18.160 Twin Galaxies was careful not to actually refer to Mitchell 0:06:18.240 --> 0:06:22.279 as a cheater. Instead, they alleged that Mitchell failed to 0:06:22.320 --> 0:06:26.320 follow the official rules, and therefore a score doesn't count. 0:06:27.000 --> 0:06:29.400 I also find it somewhat amusing that this whole thing 0:06:29.480 --> 0:06:32.440 is going through the legal system, and that there have 0:06:32.480 --> 0:06:36.040 already been lawsuits and countersuits related to this matter. I 0:06:36.080 --> 0:06:38.680 guess my point is that there are folks who take 0:06:38.720 --> 0:06:43.400 these things very, very seriously, and I can understand why. 0:06:43.520 --> 0:06:45.359 I mean, if it turns out you're the best in 0:06:45.400 --> 0:06:48.480 the world, it's something it would probably chease you off 0:06:48.960 --> 0:06:52.200 if someone else topped your performance, but it turned out 0:06:52.200 --> 0:06:54.440 they had done so by breaking the rules in some way, 0:06:54.760 --> 0:06:58.640 or that your score was invalidated because someone was claiming 0:06:58.920 --> 0:07:03.000 that you it do it correctly. But for someone to 0:07:03.040 --> 0:07:05.400 go on and get credit for something without having put 0:07:05.440 --> 0:07:07.800 in the actual work to develop those skills, that would 0:07:07.839 --> 0:07:10.800 be really upsetting. If if that were the case now, 0:07:10.800 --> 0:07:14.960 I could confidently say I will never experience that, because 0:07:15.000 --> 0:07:19.800 I am at best mediocre at pretty much everything. I 0:07:19.800 --> 0:07:22.680 should also add that Twin Galaxies itself has something of 0:07:22.720 --> 0:07:26.160 a tarnished reputation among some gamers, who alleged that the 0:07:26.240 --> 0:07:29.960 organization has failed to apply any sort of rigor into 0:07:30.000 --> 0:07:34.400 investigating high score claims. There's another series of scores that 0:07:34.440 --> 0:07:37.640 were posted by a guy named Todd Rogers, the self 0:07:37.640 --> 0:07:40.920 proclaimed first professional gamer, and some of those scores were 0:07:41.000 --> 0:07:44.920 later disputed by other folks. For example, there was an 0:07:44.920 --> 0:07:50.800 incredible score for an old Atari game called Dragster. Uh. Dragster, 0:07:50.960 --> 0:07:53.520 as the name suggests, is a game in which the 0:07:53.520 --> 0:07:57.400 player controls a drag racing car. So there's this really 0:07:57.480 --> 0:08:00.920 quick countdown, and then the player has to ans hitting 0:08:00.920 --> 0:08:05.240 the accelerate button and switching gears against the cars tendency 0:08:05.320 --> 0:08:08.560 to have its engine blowout or to pop a wheelie 0:08:08.600 --> 0:08:10.440 and slow down. So your goal is to get to 0:08:10.480 --> 0:08:14.920 the finish line and as little time as possible. Way 0:08:14.960 --> 0:08:20.280 back in, Rogers posted an insane time of just five 0:08:20.360 --> 0:08:23.480 point five one seconds, which was a record that stood 0:08:23.480 --> 0:08:27.880 in Twin Galaxies books until two thousand eighteen. Now, the 0:08:27.960 --> 0:08:30.680 reason why I said it was an insane time is because, 0:08:30.800 --> 0:08:33.679 at least according to people who tried to look into this, 0:08:34.280 --> 0:08:40.640 the theoretical perfect score, if you were absolutely timed perfectly right, 0:08:41.160 --> 0:08:45.360 would be five point five second seven seconds, so five 0:08:45.360 --> 0:08:49.520 point five seven, whereas Rogers posted five point five one. 0:08:50.080 --> 0:08:52.400 They said, there's just no way to get a score 0:08:52.679 --> 0:08:56.160 that's better than five point five seven, and twin galaxies 0:08:56.160 --> 0:09:00.840 would subsequently strike Rogers posted score from their records and 0:09:00.880 --> 0:09:04.160 they banned him. And Rogers also held records that were 0:09:04.200 --> 0:09:09.040 likewise purged, including some that showed him scoring truly ludicrous 0:09:09.200 --> 0:09:13.679 high scores above like the second best showing like millions 0:09:13.720 --> 0:09:15.439 more in some cases, like there was one I want 0:09:15.480 --> 0:09:18.240 to say where his score was somewhere around fifteen million 0:09:18.600 --> 0:09:21.439 and second place was in the tens of thousands, which 0:09:21.480 --> 0:09:24.440 does seem to say something he is going on here 0:09:24.480 --> 0:09:27.800 if there's that big gap between second place and first place. 0:09:28.240 --> 0:09:31.880 But I don't know what the realities are here, whether 0:09:32.000 --> 0:09:34.760 Rogers cheated or not. Again, I don't know. But his 0:09:34.760 --> 0:09:37.400 story is another in the world of high score scandals, 0:09:37.920 --> 0:09:40.840 and there are other scandals in single player games. Let's 0:09:41.040 --> 0:09:43.840 switch gears a little bit to the world of speed runs, 0:09:43.880 --> 0:09:46.960 which you know kind of relates back to Dragster actually, now, 0:09:47.040 --> 0:09:50.080 in case you've never heard of that term, a speed 0:09:50.120 --> 0:09:52.960 run is when someone makes an attempt to complete a 0:09:52.960 --> 0:09:55.760 game at a record time, and you could argue that 0:09:55.880 --> 0:09:58.960 the Dragster case was kind of an early speed run 0:09:59.360 --> 0:10:01.760 in many ways, but these days we typically think of 0:10:01.800 --> 0:10:05.040 it as a way to post the fastest time to 0:10:05.200 --> 0:10:10.040 complete longer games. Usually, so like you, you look at 0:10:09.920 --> 0:10:12.800 a game like maybe Super Mario Brothers, and you say, well, 0:10:13.440 --> 0:10:15.800 what's the least amount of time it would take for 0:10:15.840 --> 0:10:18.720 me to complete this game. So speed runs all have 0:10:18.800 --> 0:10:21.880 their own subclassifications, and we'll go through a few of 0:10:21.880 --> 0:10:26.320 those really quickly. So there's something called a glitchless run. 0:10:26.920 --> 0:10:29.480 This means the player is completing the game as quickly 0:10:29.520 --> 0:10:33.080 as they can without relying upon glitches in that game. 0:10:33.440 --> 0:10:35.720 So a glitch in this case is something in the 0:10:35.760 --> 0:10:38.920 game that lets a player, you know, bypass stuff in 0:10:38.960 --> 0:10:42.559 a way that developers didn't intend. A common example is 0:10:42.600 --> 0:10:46.360 that you might discover in a map in a game world, 0:10:46.679 --> 0:10:48.800 if you stand in a particular spot and you do 0:10:48.880 --> 0:10:51.920 a particular action, you can pass through that part of 0:10:51.960 --> 0:10:55.400 the map and then navigate quickly to some other part 0:10:55.400 --> 0:10:59.040 of the map without having to travel that physical distance, 0:10:59.480 --> 0:11:01.560 and that this can save you huge amounts of time. 0:11:01.840 --> 0:11:05.240 That's one version of a glitch or exploit. Now, glitch 0:11:05.320 --> 0:11:09.960 less runs ideally avoid those kinds of exploits, although sometimes 0:11:10.040 --> 0:11:12.600 some types of exploits are allowed and others aren't. It 0:11:12.640 --> 0:11:18.120 gets a bit subjective then you've got any percent games 0:11:18.160 --> 0:11:21.560 that's any percent run it's typically a n Y and 0:11:21.559 --> 0:11:24.320 then the percent sign that means that you get to 0:11:24.360 --> 0:11:27.199 the conclusion of the game, but you don't necessarily complete 0:11:27.360 --> 0:11:29.920 the whole game, like you don't have to do say, 0:11:29.960 --> 0:11:33.959 all the side quests or whatever, all the optional you know, content, 0:11:34.040 --> 0:11:37.360 you can bypass that. You're just interested in going from 0:11:37.440 --> 0:11:39.880 the very beginning of the game and getting to the 0:11:39.960 --> 0:11:42.160 very end of the game as quickly as you possibly can. 0:11:42.280 --> 0:11:44.880 So this style of speed run can also rely heavily 0:11:44.920 --> 0:11:47.720 on exploits and glitches. Now you can do in any 0:11:47.760 --> 0:11:52.000 percent glitchless run, which means that you don't really rely 0:11:52.040 --> 0:11:53.679 on the glitches. You're still just trying to get to 0:11:53.720 --> 0:11:56.719 the end as fast as you possibly can. And if 0:11:56.720 --> 0:11:59.720 you watch these on YouTube, you might end up seeing 0:11:59.720 --> 0:12:03.680 a game that looks very different from a normal run through, right, Like, 0:12:03.960 --> 0:12:08.000 if there's any percent glitch run, uh, it can be 0:12:08.040 --> 0:12:10.120 that the game starts, you're like, yeah, I recognize this, 0:12:10.160 --> 0:12:12.640 and then immediately you're like, wait, what what happened? What 0:12:12.679 --> 0:12:17.120 did they do? And it could be pretty incredible. Then 0:12:17.200 --> 0:12:21.120 you have completion, which is what it sounds like a 0:12:21.120 --> 0:12:23.560 player has to try and complete every aspect of a 0:12:23.640 --> 0:12:26.680 game within the shortest amount of time possible. So for 0:12:26.760 --> 0:12:30.680 some games like Elder Scrolls five Skyrim, that would involve 0:12:30.720 --> 0:12:33.720 a ton of stock just because there's so much content 0:12:33.760 --> 0:12:36.680 in that game, and a speed run could still require 0:12:36.800 --> 0:12:39.960 several hours of play in order to actually complete everything. 0:12:40.400 --> 0:12:44.160 There are lots of other subcategories as well, including ones 0:12:44.200 --> 0:12:47.800 that are restricted to specific games. For example, in the 0:12:47.880 --> 0:12:50.080 Hitman series, you play as a hit Man who must 0:12:50.120 --> 0:12:54.160 eliminate specific targets, and these games are fairly open ended. 0:12:54.400 --> 0:12:57.640 They allow the player to don different disguises, come from 0:12:57.679 --> 0:13:01.360 different directions, use all sorts of various methods in order 0:13:01.400 --> 0:13:04.880 to eliminate targets. But maybe you're doing a specific type 0:13:04.880 --> 0:13:07.360 of speed run where you want to do suit only 0:13:07.679 --> 0:13:11.720 silent assassin. That means you never change disguise and you 0:13:11.800 --> 0:13:13.319 have to do it in a way where no one 0:13:13.360 --> 0:13:16.320 ever discovers any of the kills you make before you 0:13:16.520 --> 0:13:20.079 escape the level. Uh. It adds another level of challenge 0:13:20.120 --> 0:13:22.000 to it, and you're also doing it in the least 0:13:22.000 --> 0:13:25.400 amount of time you possibly can now. For years, speed 0:13:25.480 --> 0:13:28.200 runs were a niche within a niche within a niche, 0:13:28.640 --> 0:13:31.640 you might break a record, and you might end up 0:13:31.679 --> 0:13:34.320 submitting it and having it posted in a hard print 0:13:34.400 --> 0:13:38.520 magazine that no one other than other speed runners would 0:13:38.559 --> 0:13:41.680 ever pay attention to. But over the last several years, 0:13:42.040 --> 0:13:44.800 the speed run community has grown thanks to stuff like 0:13:44.840 --> 0:13:49.000 YouTube and twitch, gamers can post attempts at setting a 0:13:49.000 --> 0:13:52.040 speed run, either to beat their own personal best or 0:13:52.080 --> 0:13:55.160 maybe even to establish a new world record. And while 0:13:55.160 --> 0:13:58.720 speed runs don't typically have big rewards associated with them, 0:13:58.760 --> 0:14:02.320 at least not directly, someone who's known for speed running 0:14:02.480 --> 0:14:05.559 can end up accumulating a really large community of fans 0:14:06.040 --> 0:14:08.760 and they might be able to monetize through that. So 0:14:08.800 --> 0:14:11.800 there are speed runners who have Patreon pages, or they 0:14:11.800 --> 0:14:14.760 have YouTube channels or twitch a channels, or a combination 0:14:14.760 --> 0:14:18.480 of all three, and they can make money from their work. Well, 0:14:18.520 --> 0:14:22.560 the speed run community is incredibly competitive. There's always people 0:14:22.560 --> 0:14:24.880 looking to see if they can shave even a fraction 0:14:24.960 --> 0:14:27.800 of a second off a run, and there are no 0:14:27.960 --> 0:14:31.440 shortage of scandals in the speed run community, surrounding players 0:14:31.480 --> 0:14:35.120 who have used various tricks outside of the accepted ones 0:14:35.440 --> 0:14:38.920 in order to post speed run scores. And that kind 0:14:38.920 --> 0:14:41.080 of sounds a little bit of weird, right Like within 0:14:41.200 --> 0:14:44.080 speed running. It could be okay to leverage an exploit 0:14:44.160 --> 0:14:47.920 that allows you to get an unintended advantage in a game, 0:14:48.600 --> 0:14:52.160 as long as that exploit really already existed within the game, 0:14:52.200 --> 0:14:55.840 like if the developers had accidentally left something there, that 0:14:55.880 --> 0:14:58.440 would be okay. But it would be against the rules 0:14:58.480 --> 0:15:02.240 to say, alter a games code in some way to 0:15:02.320 --> 0:15:05.000 give you an advantage, to hack the game to change 0:15:05.040 --> 0:15:07.720 the game. That would be against the rules. So you 0:15:07.760 --> 0:15:10.960 can sort of cheat under certain circumstances, but you can't 0:15:11.000 --> 0:15:14.080 cheat in other's I guess let's talk about an example 0:15:14.080 --> 0:15:17.880 of a speed run cheat. A Minecraft player who uses 0:15:17.920 --> 0:15:21.560 the handled Dream, one of the most popular Minecraft streamers 0:15:21.600 --> 0:15:25.400 out there, completed a speed run and Minecraft in that 0:15:25.480 --> 0:15:28.320 broke records, And you might wonder how the heck you 0:15:28.360 --> 0:15:31.400 speed run a game like Minecraft if you're only kind 0:15:31.400 --> 0:15:33.640 of familiar with Minecraft. I mean, most people think of 0:15:33.680 --> 0:15:37.160 that as a crafting game that really doesn't have an 0:15:37.320 --> 0:15:40.880 end to it. Well, there is a quote unquote end 0:15:41.040 --> 0:15:44.680 to Minecraft, which involves confronting a monster called the nether 0:15:44.800 --> 0:15:48.200 Dragon and defeating it. But in order to even do that, 0:15:48.240 --> 0:15:51.200 you first have to craft some special items, and you 0:15:51.280 --> 0:15:55.320 do that using some really rare raw materials, and so 0:15:55.520 --> 0:15:59.200 speed runs hinge on how quickly you can accumulate those 0:15:59.280 --> 0:16:02.400 raw materials so that you can journey to the nether 0:16:02.480 --> 0:16:07.400 Dragon and then hopefully defeat it. Now, those rare items, 0:16:07.440 --> 0:16:12.120 their appearance depends upon r n G or random number generation. 0:16:12.600 --> 0:16:16.360 That is, there's a a certain percentage chance for those 0:16:16.440 --> 0:16:21.120 items to appear under certain circumstances, but it's not a guarantee. 0:16:21.120 --> 0:16:23.840 It's just a chance, and a random number generator, which 0:16:23.880 --> 0:16:27.440 is essentially the equivalent of rolling dice, determines if the 0:16:27.480 --> 0:16:30.360 item drops or not. So one of the items that 0:16:30.480 --> 0:16:33.680 Dream needed to complete the speed run had just a 0:16:33.760 --> 0:16:36.640 four point seven percent chance to drop under a specific 0:16:36.680 --> 0:16:38.600 set of circumstances. I'm not going to go into all 0:16:38.600 --> 0:16:43.160 the details. They're not important. Dream, however, was incredibly lucky, 0:16:43.200 --> 0:16:49.880 like unbelievably lucky, because ultimately Dreams you know, results were 0:16:49.880 --> 0:16:55.000 more like a fift drop return instead of four point seven. Now, 0:16:55.040 --> 0:16:58.360 that raised concerns that Dream was playing Minecraft on an 0:16:58.400 --> 0:17:02.320 altered or customized game that boosted the drop rate of 0:17:02.360 --> 0:17:06.200 those specific items, and that conclusion seemed pretty certain because 0:17:06.200 --> 0:17:08.919 the drop frequency was just way too high to be 0:17:09.040 --> 0:17:12.120 up to chance. It would be like winning the lottery 0:17:12.240 --> 0:17:15.439 three times in a row. But Dreams said that he 0:17:15.560 --> 0:17:18.760 wasn't aware that there was any sort of modified game, 0:17:19.080 --> 0:17:22.320 and that actually could be true. You see, Dream was 0:17:22.400 --> 0:17:26.639 playing on a shared server. Now, in Minecraft, there are 0:17:26.640 --> 0:17:29.560 two different ways you could play a game. You can 0:17:29.560 --> 0:17:32.600 play a local game which runs on your machine, like 0:17:32.680 --> 0:17:37.520 your PC, and this is a client side style of gaming. 0:17:37.520 --> 0:17:41.720 Everything's running on the client, that being your machine. If 0:17:41.760 --> 0:17:45.480 you install mods on your client based Minecraft game, well 0:17:45.480 --> 0:17:49.240 then the mods you install they will affect your client 0:17:49.440 --> 0:17:53.480 based gaming sessions. However, let's say you log into a 0:17:53.560 --> 0:17:56.639 shared Minecraft world, one that other people can log into 0:17:56.640 --> 0:18:00.359 as well. This is on a server, not on your client, 0:18:00.480 --> 0:18:04.440 not on your PC. So your client based mods would 0:18:04.440 --> 0:18:08.159 never apply to a server based game. Uh. You know, 0:18:08.200 --> 0:18:10.400 you could have modified your game all you want when 0:18:10.400 --> 0:18:12.920 you play privately on your computer, but when you play 0:18:12.920 --> 0:18:15.679 on the server, you're playing by the server rules. The 0:18:15.720 --> 0:18:18.639 only mods that could apply to the server would be 0:18:18.760 --> 0:18:22.760 server side modifications. So what Dream was saying was that 0:18:22.800 --> 0:18:25.520 the people who set up the game server that he 0:18:25.560 --> 0:18:29.200 played on had boosted the drop rates and he didn't 0:18:29.240 --> 0:18:31.960 know about it at the time, so it was still 0:18:32.040 --> 0:18:37.720 kind of an instance of cheating, but not necessarily intentional cheating. Well, 0:18:37.720 --> 0:18:40.040 when we come back, we'll talk about a few more 0:18:40.080 --> 0:18:43.960 famous instances of cheating in video games, but first, let's 0:18:44.000 --> 0:18:54.600 take this quick break. All right, let's talk about online 0:18:54.680 --> 0:18:58.640 games and cheating. You can pretty much bet that if 0:18:58.760 --> 0:19:01.800 a game games pop pularity, and if there's any sort 0:19:01.800 --> 0:19:05.280 of competition in that game, hackers will try to create 0:19:05.320 --> 0:19:08.240 tools that will change that game in some way, including 0:19:08.280 --> 0:19:12.600 ways that can give players certain advantages. UH. There are 0:19:12.600 --> 0:19:16.520 a lot of common examples of this. Uh, for example, 0:19:16.520 --> 0:19:19.960 in the first person or a third person shooter genres. 0:19:20.680 --> 0:19:23.480 There are some very common ones like aim bot and 0:19:23.600 --> 0:19:28.600 wall hacks and recoil elimination. So aim bot cheats are 0:19:28.640 --> 0:19:32.359 pretty self explanatory. These are cheats that assist players in 0:19:32.600 --> 0:19:36.920 locking onto an opponent to aim at someone. Some aim 0:19:36.960 --> 0:19:39.640 bots are less obvious than others, but if you've ever 0:19:39.680 --> 0:19:44.679 watched gameplay that showed someone just instantly locking onto opponents heads, 0:19:44.920 --> 0:19:47.679 even if those opponents are obscured by stuff like smoke 0:19:48.359 --> 0:19:50.920 or cover, or they're so far away that you can't 0:19:50.920 --> 0:19:53.520 even really see them on the screen, there's a good 0:19:53.600 --> 0:19:56.320 chance that an aim bot played a part in that. 0:19:57.240 --> 0:20:00.520 Now this does get a little muddy because we are 0:20:00.880 --> 0:20:03.920 now in the era of cross platform play, and this 0:20:04.000 --> 0:20:07.359 changes things. See, if you have a really skilled player 0:20:07.480 --> 0:20:10.920 who uses a keyboard and mouse to play first person shooters, 0:20:11.520 --> 0:20:13.920 they might refine their skills and be able to hit 0:20:13.960 --> 0:20:18.680 headshots way more frequently than your average player can, and 0:20:18.800 --> 0:20:21.640 they could just be relying on legit skills. They're they're 0:20:21.680 --> 0:20:24.480 just that good. It doesn't mean they've got to hit 0:20:24.600 --> 0:20:28.040 every single shot. But their precision that they have with 0:20:28.080 --> 0:20:31.560 a mouse, particularly when they've dialed in the mouse sensitivity 0:20:31.640 --> 0:20:35.240 to their preference, they can zero in on targets really 0:20:35.280 --> 0:20:39.760 accurately and quickly. But contrast that with someone who's playing 0:20:39.920 --> 0:20:43.439 the same video game but on a console, not on 0:20:43.480 --> 0:20:47.000 a PC, and they're using a game pad of some sort. 0:20:48.240 --> 0:20:51.840 Game pads typically are far less precise. Some games allow 0:20:51.920 --> 0:20:56.040 players to change controller sensitivity, but you're still left with 0:20:56.160 --> 0:20:58.840 the fact that you're using a pair of thumbsticks or 0:20:59.040 --> 0:21:02.560 maybe a thumbstick in a direction pad or whatever. It's 0:21:02.600 --> 0:21:04.440 just not going to give the player the same level 0:21:04.480 --> 0:21:08.840 of responsiveness and precision as a mouse would. And if 0:21:08.840 --> 0:21:13.320 the game supports cross platform play, in which console players 0:21:13.440 --> 0:21:16.719 and PC players can be matched up in the same match. 0:21:17.600 --> 0:21:20.639 That creates a skilled gap. You might have someone who's 0:21:20.760 --> 0:21:24.080 really good at console gaming and they're having trouble against 0:21:24.080 --> 0:21:27.440 you know, moderately skilled PC gamers. But it's not because 0:21:27.520 --> 0:21:30.600 the PC gamers are necessarily better at the game. It 0:21:30.680 --> 0:21:34.919 might be because their control scheme just natively gives them 0:21:34.960 --> 0:21:38.720 a slight advantage, and that's all it takes. To that end, 0:21:39.200 --> 0:21:42.960 a lot of console games include an aim assist feature, 0:21:43.280 --> 0:21:46.800 so it's kind of like driver assist with cars. The 0:21:46.880 --> 0:21:50.400 aim assist doesn't totally take over for players the way 0:21:50.400 --> 0:21:54.680 an aim bot program could. Instead, it helps dial in 0:21:55.000 --> 0:21:57.600 aim a little bit. So if you were direct your 0:21:57.640 --> 0:22:01.000 sites toward an opponent, the game assist might do the 0:22:01.080 --> 0:22:03.560 last five or ten percent to help you lock on 0:22:03.720 --> 0:22:06.760 for your shot, because otherwise your control mechanism of the 0:22:06.800 --> 0:22:10.120 game pad would put you at a disadvantage against people 0:22:10.160 --> 0:22:13.040 who are playing with mouse and keyboard. Now, I've actually 0:22:13.040 --> 0:22:16.920 followed some pro gamers who use controllers with certain FPS 0:22:17.000 --> 0:22:20.200 titles like Call of Duty war Zone, and I've seen 0:22:20.680 --> 0:22:23.919 some of those players get banned, and they weren't banned 0:22:23.920 --> 0:22:25.720 for well, they were banned for cheating, but it turned 0:22:25.720 --> 0:22:28.679 out they weren't cheating, and after an investigation, they had 0:22:28.680 --> 0:22:31.640 their accounts restored because it turned out, you know, they 0:22:31.640 --> 0:22:34.720 weren't relying on aim bots. Instead, they were just really 0:22:34.920 --> 0:22:39.959 skilled players, and their style of play also incorporated a 0:22:40.000 --> 0:22:42.119 little bit of aim assist because they were using a 0:22:42.200 --> 0:22:45.360 game pad, so they weren't cheating. They were pairing game 0:22:45.440 --> 0:22:48.080 systems with their skill level at to play at the 0:22:48.119 --> 0:22:50.560 top of their capability, and they were just really darn good. 0:22:51.200 --> 0:22:54.600 But there are cases in which it's no question that 0:22:54.720 --> 0:22:57.400 a player is using an aim bot, and this extends 0:22:57.480 --> 0:23:01.280 even to professional e sports level. In famous instance of 0:23:01.320 --> 0:23:04.640 this happened in two thousand eighteen in a counter Strike tournament. 0:23:05.160 --> 0:23:08.119 Counter Strike is a multiplayer shooter game in which you've 0:23:08.160 --> 0:23:11.439 got two teams of players competing against each other. It 0:23:11.520 --> 0:23:14.040 has its own fascinating history. I may have to do 0:23:14.240 --> 0:23:16.680 episodes about counter Strike at some point. It started off 0:23:16.720 --> 0:23:19.080 as a mod for Half Life way back in two 0:23:19.119 --> 0:23:22.760 thousand and people still compete in counter Strike tournaments to 0:23:22.800 --> 0:23:26.600 this day now. In one two thousand eighteen tournament, there 0:23:26.640 --> 0:23:30.000 was a player who used the handle Forsaken. He was 0:23:30.080 --> 0:23:33.040 performing at a level that was truly astounding. He was 0:23:33.160 --> 0:23:37.480 zeroing in on opponents, particularly with headshots, with an almost 0:23:37.560 --> 0:23:41.720 inhuman like precision. In fact, not not almost. The tournament 0:23:41.800 --> 0:23:45.280