Malf on 16/1/2018 at 13:58
Ok, (
https://www.pcgamesn.com/playerunknowns-battlegrounds/pubg-tencent-arrests-cheats) this is a little startling.
I'm not sure if this has happened before and is just making news because of Plunkbat's popularity, but arresting people for making cheats for a videogame seems more than a little heavy handed. Don't get me wrong, cheaters in online games piss me
right off. But I've never thought that cheating at games should be
punishable by law.
Hell, I even have problems with some developers outright banning people from games they've paid for, especially when said game is equal parts single and multi-player.
I mean, yes, we're talking about China here, who've had a somewhat strained relationship with human rights for a whiles now, but I can't help extrapolating and wondering what happens if other countries start treating cheating the same way.
And does it stop at multiplayer?
Or do people start going to jail because they've cheated in single-player titles and therefore have attained achievements nefariously?
Do the makers of Cheat Engine face a witch hunt?
This makes me particularly nervous considering my recent confessions in the (
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=148586) "Confess!" thread.
Seriously, what the actual fuck?
PigLick on 16/1/2018 at 14:09
Have you played PUBG? Cos if you have this would seem a reasonable measure.
in other words its absolutely about the game itself and not cheating in general.
WingedKagouti on 16/1/2018 at 14:55
They're not the first to go after cheaters in (semi-persistent) online multiplayer games like that. Epic recently had a couple of court sessions with some cheaters in Fortnite, as far as I can recall the cheaters more or less ended up with a mark on their criminal record and the potential to pay damages if they ever do something like that for any Epic game in the future. No prison or damages paid this time. Blizzard has also gone after cheat creators for their various online-only titles several times in the past, I believe with somewhat similar results.
Actual arrests are more unusual to my knowledge, but it's probably not the first time. The scale is most noteworthy thing, but the game is quite big in China and they seem to have a slightly different approach to online gaming culture.
Malf on 16/1/2018 at 16:15
Yeah, I saw Blizzard try to sue cheat makers last year, and I've seen various attempts over time. They only usually get any traction when the injured party can prove the cheat maker has actually used and abused the code of the affected game. But hex editors and memory access utilities (such as Cheat Engine) don't do that.
As for have I played Plunkbat? Nope, but I'm not sure what makes cheating in Plunkbat any more egregious than cheating in any other online-only multiplayer game.
I mean, the douchebags who started griefing us in GTA V this weekend? Dickwads, for sure. But they definitely don't deserve prison terms.
And Plunkbat isn't some special exception.
I'm also very aware that I'm making a lot of false comparisons between the makers of cheats and cheaters themselves here. But at the same time, is making a program that allows you to cheat in an online game really something that should be punishable by law?
Jeshibu on 16/1/2018 at 16:41
Disagree. Off with their heads!
kidding, but I still wouldn't be opposed to punishing provable behavior that is universally seen as a dick move purely done for the sake of being a dick
henke on 16/1/2018 at 17:06
Kinda surprised it's taken this long before a Plunkbat thread popped up here, given how massively popular it seems to be in the wider gaming scene. I take it only PigLick has played it here? Must say I am a bit tempted to pick it up myself, especially since they added a replay editor.
Kudos to Malf for referring to the game by it's proper title btw. ;)
Pyrian on 16/1/2018 at 17:16
It's not really the cheating or the cheat-making. It's the selling of cheat software that gets them into real trouble.
PigLick on 17/1/2018 at 01:25
Yeh on the chinese servers there is even splash screens advertising said cheats.
PigLick on 17/1/2018 at 06:37
Quote Posted by Malf
is making a program that allows you to cheat in an online game really something that should be punishable by law?
absolutely, why shouldnt it be?
for example I read that around 1 out of 10 PLUNKBAT players will be using cheats of some kind. If you have 1 million concurrent players, thats 100,000 ppl that are using cheats. In a game that involves skill, strategy and permadeath, I find it incredibly frustrating and even offensive that I have paid money for a gaming experience that is totally marred by cheaters.
Also take into account that a lot of those cheats are being paid for, someone is making money off the huge install base.