Would you install EasyAntiCheat or another app to be allowed to Participate in BG? [dev insight]

With cheating/modding being such a hot topic within Battlegrounds (and potentially other game modes like Arena), I'm wondering what the communities reception would be towards being required to install and be running a 3rd Party App such as EasyAntiCheat in order to participate in a specific game mode or MCOC itself.

Comments

Ace2319

Or they could just figure out how to stop cheating in game, I’d much rather that than having to jump through a bunch of hoops for one game mode

MiniMF

Or they could just figure out how to stop cheating in game, I’d much rather that than having to jump through a bunch of hoops for one game mode

I agree but this could also be a temporary solution before they solve the issue

Cyta

Isnt it easier for them to integrate that in the game rather than installing a 3rd party app? There are so many methods of autospotting cheats, if they wanted ...Like insane dmg on 1 hit or whatever...they can read the champ attack, they know the nodes and what is possible and what isnt...1mil/hit, automatically perma banned...if it was an error on that ban, open ticket and it gets lifted...but i doubt there are many cases when 1mil/hit can be done...or the clever ones, that finish all fights with 100% hp...u got hit x times and ur hp bar didnt move, automatically send silent alarm to be reviewed...

Adevati

Kind of moot. No way they make us install a 3rd party app. They’ll just build it in.

To that regard, isn’t something already built in? All these people posting ban messages for using bluestacks seem to be automated bannings.

K00shMaan

Kind of moot. No way they make us install a 3rd party app. They’ll just build it in.

To that regard, isn’t something already built in? All these people posting ban messages for using bluestacks seem to be automated bannings.

I think the Bluestacks detection is kind of different though. Typically that appears to be used to play the game on a non mobile device so it might just be detecting that you aren't using a MobileOS. Many people who use that seem to be blind sided by the fact that they are going against ToS for doing it. Now they could be lying but at least some of them may not be actual cheaters.

Wozzle007

If Kabam weren’t in a position to catch modders/cheaters who are obviously cheating, they shouldn’t have delayed battlegrounds until it was in place. Clearly one extra single employee isn’t having anywhere near the desired effect.

If you have a game mode where someone can do millions, I think in some cases billions of hit point damaged in one hit, but it can’t be detected within a few minutes then the mode has failed. I enjoy the mode immensely but coming up against cheaters destroys the will to play. I don’t get my points back, my elders marks back. I lose placed in victory track and gladiators circuit. But the cheaters continue on.

It’s upto Kabam to solve this, but for me to get another app.

K00shMaan

Isnt it easier for them to integrate that in the game rather than installing a 3rd party app? There are so many methods of autospotting cheats, if they wanted ...Like insane dmg on 1 hit or whatever...they can read the champ attack, they know the nodes and what is possible and what isnt...1mil/hit, automatically perma banned...if it was an error on that ban, open ticket and it gets lifted...but i doubt there are many cases when 1mil/hit can be done...or the clever ones, that finish all fights with 100% hp...u got hit x times and ur hp bar didnt move, automatically send silent alarm to be reviewed...

Yes and no. I bring it up because there are games that are much bigger than MCOC that have ultimately decided that this is their solution (Fortnite, Apex, Battlefield). Sometimes it can make more sense to contract a solution rather than developing it yourself. Not everyone who is cheating is doing it in a way that is obvious. Yeah some people are making it so they do 2 Billion damage every hit but others may only boost their attack by 25%. That person probably isn't triggering any eye test indicators becuase we don't get to actually see their fight. They may even lose matches. But if you can change your win rate from say 45% to 70%, you will have tremendous success in the mode.

Cyta

Not sayin all cheaters can be spoted by a script...but if they implement something like that..even if it will spot just 20% of the cheaters, it will make things easier for the manual overview, plus some problems are solved on the spot, not at the end of month, or end of the bg season, when a lot of harm is already done..that modder gets removed, ok, but what about the points, the energy, elder marks etc that people lost when they faced those cheaters ? Any step in the right direction is good imo

Malreck04

Anti cheat is usually integrated even if it’s a third party, you don’t usually have to install anything separately

Colinwhitworth69

Often people assume that identifying cheaters is easy and that Kabam is lazy.

We all wish there was an easy solution, and if there was Kabam would have implemented it already.

The problem is not Kabam, it is the cheaters. Direct your anger at them.

spidyjedi84

No, because I don't want to violate Kabam's TOS to handle an issue Kabam should be policing/correcting themselves.

ThePharcide

Like insane dmg on 1 hit or whatever

So good bye if we L3 with G99?

This is kind of what tripped the Quake bans. But on the opposite side. 0 hits received/no dsmage 0 hits done dead War opponents. It tripped and a few people got banned.

Yeah they got overturned but they were still banned. And even a few days, especially with no compensation can hurt you.

Cyta

Like insane dmg on 1 hit or whatever
So good bye if we L3 with G99?

This is kind of what tripped the Quake bans. But on the opposite side. 0 hits received/no dsmage 0 hits done dead War opponents. It tripped and a few people got banned.

Yeah they got overturned but they were still banned. And even a few days, especially with no compensation can hurt you.

IF you cant spot the difference between a hit and a special, then ...Again...they have all the details needed to make the script...they can even capture the inputs, how you played and replicate them with their own data..if you crit for 50k, but in their algorithm your crit should have been just 10k, things get easy.

unknown

This content has been removed.

Kabam Jax

Hey Summoners,

I like this idea! However, regardless of how many people would be willing to install additional software, we'd inevitably lose a large percentage of people who were not. We love our massively dedicated Summoners, but MCOC still needs to be casual-Summoner-friendly, as we love them too.

let me just say: I appreciate that you're taking the time to brainstorm and present new ideas and solutions, as opposed to being swept up in a never ending storm of frustration with the modder situation.

I think conversations like these go a long way toward providing context for how complex this issue is. It's an issue without a simple solution, and is something without a lot of visual evidence for you all; I know that can be frustrating.

Every time I address the topic of modding/cheating, I want to reassure everyone that this is being worked on consistently behind the scenes. The nature of the beast is that not a lot of the changes are visually apparent, and it's not always as quick as the snap of the fingers. We are working on ways to provide more meaningful information about actions taken throughout, and at the end of, BG seasons.

BigBlueOx

Hey Summoners,

I like this idea! However, regardless of how many people would be willing to install additional software, we'd inevitably lose a large percentage of people who were not. We love our massively dedicated Summoners, but MCOC still needs to be casual-Summoner-friendly, as we love them too.

let me just say: I appreciate that you're taking the time to brainstorm and present new ideas and solutions, as opposed to being swept up in a never ending storm of frustration with the modder situation.

I think conversations like these go a long way toward providing context for how complex this issue is. It's an issue without a simple solution, and is something without a lot of visual evidence for you all; I know that can be frustrating.

Every time I address the topic of modding/cheating, I want to reassure everyone that this is being worked on consistently behind the scenes. The nature of the beast is that not a lot of the changes are visually apparent, and it's not always as quick as the snap of the fingers. We are working on ways to provide more meaningful information about actions taken throughout, and at the end of, BG seasons.

Definitely appreciate the check in, would it be out of bounds to inquire about why cleaning modders from the leader board is so complex? Some of these modders are so unabashed that they claim they are doing it in their user names, it just seems not only bad for the players but even worse for Kabam that

K00shMaan

Hey Summoners,

I like this idea! However, regardless of how many people would be willing to install additional software, we'd inevitably lose a large percentage of people who were not. We love our massively dedicated Summoners, but MCOC still needs to be casual-Summoner-friendly, as we love them too.

let me just say: I appreciate that you're taking the time to brainstorm and present new ideas and solutions, as opposed to being swept up in a never ending storm of frustration with the modder situation.

I think conversations like these go a long way toward providing context for how complex this issue is. It's an issue without a simple solution, and is something without a lot of visual evidence for you all; I know that can be frustrating.

Every time I address the topic of modding/cheating, I want to reassure everyone that this is being worked on consistently behind the scenes. The nature of the beast is that not a lot of the changes are visually apparent, and it's not always as quick as the snap of the fingers. We are working on ways to provide more meaningful information about actions taken throughout, and at the end of, BG seasons.

Thanks for the response Jax. It's a big reason I proposed the question since I figured it may not have been something in consideration. Obviosuly having a Poll split about 50/50 unfortunately doesn't help all that much but if the results had been far more one sided it might have been particularly useful information. One big thing I noticed with games that use apps like this is the promptness from detecting a cheater to them being unable to login which I think is one of the most frustrating parts of the issue at the moment. People are able to identify obvious cheaters and don't feel like action is being taken within a reasonable amount of time.

Kabam Jax

Definitely appreciate the check in, would it be out of bounds to inquire about why cleaning modders from the leader board is so complex? Some of these modders are so unabashed that they claim they are doing it in their user names, it just seems not only bad for the players but even worse for Kabam that

I can touch on it, a bit, yeah.

So, the issue can be massively oversimplified into two distinct areas to illustrate what's happening.

Firstly, the specific tech being used to remove modders does all tasks one at a time. After investigating a claim, when we decide to remove a modder... we have to issue an account ban, zero out their leaderboard points and remove their contributions to solo and alliance quests and then remove them visually from the leaderboard. The tech doesn't do all of this at once, so we have people working hard to do each individual task. We are working on developing further tech to streamline the process, but as it stands, the priority is ensuring players get accurate rewards and modders get none. Therefore, the leaderboard purge, as we call it, is the very last step.

The second is an issue of perspective. We all understand the frustration from encountering a modder. Say you match up against a modder, you get angry, you post their account in the forum and it get's taken down. Now you think nothing is being done about it and you check the next couple days to see they're still a live account, and now you're double angry, right? Makes sense.

But that's not how it works.

The team is going through in-game reports in the order they're received. Posting something somewhere outside of the queue, doesn't give it a higher priority than the reports already received. Just because one cheater is more egregious than another, doesn't make them a higher priority either. They get added to the (long) list just the same as everyone else. The turn around time feels long, because it is, and that's when people most feel like "nothing is being done," but it does not indicate it's not being taken seriously, or that people aren't actively working on it.

GeneralMerce

Definitely appreciate the check in, would it be out of bounds to inquire about why cleaning modders from the leader board is so complex? Some of these modders are so unabashed that they claim they are doing it in their user names, it just seems not only bad for the players but even worse for Kabam that
I can touch on it, a bit, yeah.

So, the issue can be massively oversimplified into two distinct areas to illustrate what's happening.

Firstly, the specific tech being used to remove modders does all tasks one at a time. After investigating a claim, when we decide to remove a modder... we have to issue an account ban, zero out their leaderboard points and remove their contributions to solo and alliance quests and then remove them visually from the leaderboard. The tech doesn't do all of this at once, so we have people working hard to do each individual task. We are working on developing further tech to streamline the process, but as it stands, the priority is ensuring players get accurate rewards and modders get none. Therefore, the leaderboard purge, as we call it, is the very last step.

The second is an issue of perspective. We all understand the frustration from encountering a modder. Say you match up against a modder, you get angry, you post their account in the forum and it get's taken down. Now you think nothing is being done about it and you check the next couple days to see they're still a live account, and now you're double angry, right? Makes sense.

But that's not how it works.

The team is going through in-game reports in the order they're received. Posting something somewhere outside of the queue, doesn't give it a higher priority than the reports already received. Just because one cheater is more egregious than another, doesn't make them a higher priority either. They get added to the (long) list just the same as everyone else. The turn around time feels long, because it is, and that's when people most feel like "nothing is being done," but it does not indicate it's not being taken seriously, or that people aren't actively working on it.

Jax,

The community appreciates your transparency on these such processes, thank you for the insight and perspective!

TimeGenesis

Definitely appreciate the check in, would it be out of bounds to inquire about why cleaning modders from the leader board is so complex? Some of these modders are so unabashed that they claim they are doing it in their user names, it just seems not only bad for the players but even worse for Kabam that
I can touch on it, a bit, yeah.

So, the issue can be massively oversimplified into two distinct areas to illustrate what's happening.

Firstly, the specific tech being used to remove modders does all tasks one at a time. After investigating a claim, when we decide to remove a modder... we have to issue an account ban, zero out their leaderboard points and remove their contributions to solo and alliance quests and then remove them visually from the leaderboard. The tech doesn't do all of this at once, so we have people working hard to do each individual task. We are working on developing further tech to streamline the process, but as it stands, the priority is ensuring players get accurate rewards and modders get none. Therefore, the leaderboard purge, as we call it, is the very last step.

The second is an issue of perspective. We all understand the frustration from encountering a modder. Say you match up against a modder, you get angry, you post their account in the forum and it get's taken down. Now you think nothing is being done about it and you check the next couple days to see they're still a live account, and now you're double angry, right? Makes sense.

But that's not how it works.

The team is going through in-game reports in the order they're received. Posting something somewhere outside of the queue, doesn't give it a higher priority than the reports already received. Just because one cheater is more egregious than another, doesn't make them a higher priority either. They get added to the (long) list just the same as everyone else. The turn around time feels long, because it is, and that's when people most feel like "nothing is being done," but it does not indicate it's not being taken seriously, or that people aren't actively working on it.

Question, will there ever be a possibility of say a Bg season ban for a mobile phone device instead of accounts? And any accounts that is being run on the same device.

I say a season coz phone devices can change owners per se, but wouldnt exclude the possibility of a new phone user being banned for owning the same device.

BigBlueOx

Definitely appreciate the check in, would it be out of bounds to inquire about why cleaning modders from the leader board is so complex? Some of these modders are so unabashed that they claim they are doing it in their user names, it just seems not only bad for the players but even worse for Kabam that
I can touch on it, a bit, yeah.

So, the issue can be massively oversimplified into two distinct areas to illustrate what's happening.

Firstly, the specific tech being used to remove modders does all tasks one at a time. After investigating a claim, when we decide to remove a modder... we have to issue an account ban, zero out their leaderboard points and remove their contributions to solo and alliance quests and then remove them visually from the leaderboard. The tech doesn't do all of this at once, so we have people working hard to do each individual task. We are working on developing further tech to streamline the process, but as it stands, the priority is ensuring players get accurate rewards and modders get none. Therefore, the leaderboard purge, as we call it, is the very last step.

The second is an issue of perspective. We all understand the frustration from encountering a modder. Say you match up against a modder, you get angry, you post their account in the forum and it get's taken down. Now you think nothing is being done about it and you check the next couple days to see they're still a live account, and now you're double angry, right? Makes sense.

But that's not how it works.

The team is going through in-game reports in the order they're received. Posting something somewhere outside of the queue, doesn't give it a higher priority than the reports already received. Just because one cheater is more egregious than another, doesn't make them a higher priority either. They get added to the (long) list just the same as everyone else. The turn around time feels long, because it is, and that's when people most feel like "nothing is being done," but it does not indicate it's not being taken seriously, or that people aren't actively working on it.

This might be the best, most transparent update on the topic yet. A sincere thank you, this really illuminates quite a bit. I’m the spirit of 360 feedback I would suggest that the leaderboard get a little more priority in addressing cheaters. It’s like a bright neon sign broadcasting the opposite of this thoughtful messaging, with a possible side effect of attracting even more cheaters

Crys23

Can you clarify something Jax? In your process, do you do all those 'tasks" for one account, then move on to the next account and start over? Because that's incredibely inneficient.
Investigate, confirm modder -> Ban. Investigate - confirm -> Ban. Permanent ban. Then those players can't influence the leaderboard, other players placement, can't score points in the solo/alliance events.
Then, you can do all that other stuff. Clean up the game mode first, sort out the rewards later.
You can't have people modding for an entire season, ruining the experience for legit players. I bet most of us would be willing to wait for rewards longer at the end of a season while you sort out the points. You could even extend the off-season to 2 weeks. Just BAN these people asap.

K00shMaan

We are working on developing further tech to streamline the process, but as it stands, the priority is ensuring players get accurate rewards and modders get none. Therefore, the leaderboard purge, as we call it, is the very last step.

Hi Jax, this is the line in your post that concerns me the most. I don't think I'm in the minority when I say that this isn't the priority. The priority is removing the ability for the offending party to participate in Battlegrounds as soon as possible. Everything else is secondary. There are massive butterfly effects the longer they are allowed to play the game mode. People are losing those matches, Energy/Elder Marks are being wasted, Victory Shields and Shuffle Signets are being wasted, players are having to get 2 wins to make up for facing a cheater. It's a bit of a chicken and egg scenario but the sooner the cheater is removed from the game mode, the less significant the rewards issue becomes because they wouldn't have been to get anything of significance. I'm willing to wait all season for the Leaderboard to get fixed. I can wait all season for their Solo/Alliance Event points to be docked. I just want them to be unable to queue into a match ASAP once they've been identified.

Mauled

This response is quite heartening because it does feel like it’s something that’s only being paid lol service, from the outside at any rate.

Outside of the thousands, probably tens of thousands, of tickets being raised on this issue I do think that it would be worth the Kabam Ban Hammer doing a quick sweep of the leaderboard, at least the top 500 or so and picking out the obvious cheats and just zurging them. The accounts with 12-13k prestige and 1m rating for example, let alone the few floating around with 9k or something equally ridiculous.

Now I’m obviously not in tune with the ticketing architecture but if each account has a unique ID, which I presume they do, are you able to confirm that I report player A, Kabam confirms he’s a filthy cheat and deletes him, does that automatically close the rest of the open tickets against that account?

Stellar

if there is an "anti-cheat" 3rd app, why not just integrate it in the game ?

LordSmasher

They should put a jail icon around the profile pics of banned accounts in game.

DNA3000

With cheating/modding being such a hot topic within Battlegrounds (and potentially other game modes like Arena), I'm wondering what the communities reception would be towards being required to install and be running a 3rd Party App such as EasyAntiCheat in order to participate in a specific game mode or MCOC itself.

EasyAntiCheat is a PC-based anti-cheating technology. It doesn't work on mobile devices, and no such technology would work on current iOS and Android phones for the most part.

There are technological options available, but they require direct integration with the game client to work, because they need to work within the game client not outside of it (because due to operating system architectural issues, something like EasyAntiCheat can't do what it does in mobile environments generally).

The problem is time. It takes a lot of time to integrate such things into the game client. I was actually having a discussion about such technology with Kabam when this little problem came up that proved to be a bit of a distraction. You might have heard about it, something about inputs not working correctly after a Unity engine upgrade.

Tampering with the game client to integrate anti-cheat technology is a highly risky thing to do for a very mature game client like MCOC. it is not a plug-in solution generally. They are aware of such technologies in general, but I believe the sticking point is the complexity and involved nature of integrating most of them into the game. Without completely breaking everything.

DNA3000

Kind of moot. No way they make us install a 3rd party app. They’ll just build it in.

To that regard, isn’t something already built in? All these people posting ban messages for using bluestacks seem to be automated bannings.

Most are automatically detected at least, but that situation also points to the complexity of the issue of auto-detecting mods in BG.

It might seem obvious that there are certain events that are obvious signs of cheating, but you have to consider two complicating factors. First, the game is constantly changing. A behavior that seems to obviously be cheating today might not be tomorrow, and an automated system looking for such behavior could suddenly ban a lot of players who didn't cheat without warning. Second, the game isn't perfect. The developers are not watching your fights, they are examining the data logs. Those logs must be perfect 100% of the time if you're going to autoban based on them. Are they?

Getting back to emulators. There was an incident a while back when someone posted they got banned for using emulators, and it seemed to be a bit fishy to me, because they said they were using a phone that to the best of my knowledge was not generally available for purchase yet. So I discussed this with Kabam and discovered that this particular person was banned accidentally and had to be reinstated, for technical reasons I won't discuss. But in general, what happened was they were looking for something only emulators do, until one day that wasn't true anymore.

Multiply that by a thousand, and that's the scope of the problem of automatic BG cheat detection.

The other problem with autobanning "obvious" cheating is that there's only obvious cheating happening because it isn't autobanned. Cheaters will change their methods to whatever is the simplest that still works. We can all agree that killing something in one hit in one second is obviously cheating. Unless it is Symbiote Supreme vs Red Skull of course. Make sure to program that exception into your anticheat detection software. But if we autoban the obvious one hit kill, the cheaters will simply switch to two hit kills, then three hit kills, then four. They will simply change their dials until they aren't caught, then do that. So it is pointless to say "well, this should be obvious." it is, but it only happens because it isn't insta-banned.

I'm not saying we shouldn't try to be more aggressive, but I am saying that the problem is way harder than people think, because it only looks simple because we aren't aggressive. The true scope of the problem is its hidden nature, that we would only see once we start becoming more aggressive. The faster we ban cheaters, the faster they will get immediately feedback on what works and what doesn't. They only look stupid now because stupid works.

This is exactly what the botters did with arena. Kabam got better at deteecting them, so they changed how they operated to evade those specific detection criteria. And when Kabam adjusted to that change, they changed again. That's why they disappear from the leaderboards for extended periods of time, then suddenly reappear.

MrSakuragi

Definitely appreciate the check in, would it be out of bounds to inquire about why cleaning modders from the leader board is so complex? Some of these modders are so unabashed that they claim they are doing it in their user names, it just seems not only bad for the players but even worse for Kabam that
I can touch on it, a bit, yeah.

So, the issue can be massively oversimplified into two distinct areas to illustrate what's happening.

Firstly, the specific tech being used to remove modders does all tasks one at a time. After investigating a claim, when we decide to remove a modder... we have to issue an account ban, zero out their leaderboard points and remove their contributions to solo and alliance quests and then remove them visually from the leaderboard. The tech doesn't do all of this at once, so we have people working hard to do each individual task. We are working on developing further tech to streamline the process, but as it stands, the priority is ensuring players get accurate rewards and modders get none. Therefore, the leaderboard purge, as we call it, is the very last step.

The second is an issue of perspective. We all understand the frustration from encountering a modder. Say you match up against a modder, you get angry, you post their account in the forum and it get's taken down. Now you think nothing is being done about it and you check the next couple days to see they're still a live account, and now you're double angry, right? Makes sense.

But that's not how it works.

The team is going through in-game reports in the order they're received. Posting something somewhere outside of the queue, doesn't give it a higher priority than the reports already received. Just because one cheater is more egregious than another, doesn't make them a higher priority either. They get added to the (long) list just the same as everyone else. The turn around time feels long, because it is, and that's when people most feel like "nothing is being done," but it does not indicate it's not being taken seriously, or that people aren't actively working on it.

Quick question - why are only accounts being banned? Other games have the ability to ban devices based on device ID. Is that not possible with mcoc or is it a choice to not do so?

DNA3000

Definitely appreciate the check in, would it be out of bounds to inquire about why cleaning modders from the leader board is so complex? Some of these modders are so unabashed that they claim they are doing it in their user names, it just seems not only bad for the players but even worse for Kabam that
I can touch on it, a bit, yeah.

So, the issue can be massively oversimplified into two distinct areas to illustrate what's happening.

Firstly, the specific tech being used to remove modders does all tasks one at a time. After investigating a claim, when we decide to remove a modder... we have to issue an account ban, zero out their leaderboard points and remove their contributions to solo and alliance quests and then remove them visually from the leaderboard. The tech doesn't do all of this at once, so we have people working hard to do each individual task. We are working on developing further tech to streamline the process, but as it stands, the priority is ensuring players get accurate rewards and modders get none. Therefore, the leaderboard purge, as we call it, is the very last step.

The second is an issue of perspective. We all understand the frustration from encountering a modder. Say you match up against a modder, you get angry, you post their account in the forum and it get's taken down. Now you think nothing is being done about it and you check the next couple days to see they're still a live account, and now you're double angry, right? Makes sense.

But that's not how it works.

The team is going through in-game reports in the order they're received. Posting something somewhere outside of the queue, doesn't give it a higher priority than the reports already received. Just because one cheater is more egregious than another, doesn't make them a higher priority either. They get added to the (long) list just the same as everyone else. The turn around time feels long, because it is, and that's when people most feel like "nothing is being done," but it does not indicate it's not being taken seriously, or that people aren't actively working on it.
Quick question - why are only accounts being banned? Other games have the ability to ban devices based on device ID. Is that not possible with mcoc or is it a choice to not do so?

I'll let Jax decide whether to address the question of "why" but I think it is worth stating here that what most people think are device bans are not actually device bans. This gets into technical measures and counter-measures, which I try to be careful about discussing, but to the best of my knowledge there is no cross-platform fool-proof way to ban a mobile phone. Anyone who tells you they can do this, even if it is a game operator, is probably just trying to keep their anti-cheat mechanics a secret. The problem game operators face is that both Apple and Google anonymize phones to prevent unauthorized tracking. Everything you *think* you could use to identify and ban a phone are things both Apple and Google have policies that restrict or block the usage of by app vendors.

There are "things you can do" and I'll leave it at that, but this is a very difficult subject to discuss without getting very deep into the technical weeds.