Regarding Recent Reports of Cheating
chunkyb
Member, Content Creators Posts: 1,453 Content Creator
I wanted to take a minute to explore the announcement made yesterday. It's not stickied, and buried 6 pages down... but it seems like everyone involved was found innocent of TOS violations once an investigation was done. I find that following the logical angles to the end helps me to at least see what MAY have occurred. i'm not making claims that any of this happened, i'm just putting together the statements made by these alliances with the clarification made by the mod to see what comes out.
ALLIANCE 1
according to the stories laid out in line chats (and eventually here) by both sides, alliance 1 said they had 3 players booted from their alliance before those players could finish their war path. They also said those players were invited back, and because they had already joined war prior to the boot... they were able to continue aw attack and finish the war. BUT because these boots happened within the 5 war end of season cutoff, they believed the 3 players would miss out on season rewards.
if i'm reading the mod post correctly, either the boots DID NOT happen or the boots did happen but (according to evidence) weren't done by a player from another alliance who had allegedly logged in to an alliance 1's officer account. there is no other way for the "innocent" outcome to have been reached. one of those allegedly booted players has stated in chats that he had "fixed his situation" and would be receiving season rewards. that would mean that either he WAS NOT actually booted OR if he was booted (as the alliance claims in text and pictures) that a special pass was given to enable him to not miss his season rewards.
If we WAS booted, idk how he would be so confident in his season rewards.. but hey, people are always honest on the internet right? he was really confident tho haha. if he was NOT booted, then they fabricated screenshots and a story to go along with them to screw another alliance (this IS a claim made by alliance 2). alliance 1 has also stated they sent numerous tickets to support with their proofs.
ALLIANCE 2
gotta start by saying i'm going to ignore all of the past stuff about alliance 2 and just focus on this situation.
alliance 2 says that one of their players was unable to complete their path in war because every time this player entered his war fight, he received a message that his account had been logged in from another device and was logged out. they state that this went on for around 3 full hours with the player continually attempting to enter the fight and being logged out. they have posted a video of this occurring and the video does show him entering a fight, receiving that message, and being logged out... obviously the video doesn't go for 3 hours and only shows this occurrence once. they also show a snippet of war room chat where alliance 1 asks if their player is having troubles entering the fight. i say snippet because all context/replies have been removed. they claim this happening over a 3 hour period prevented them from clearing the map, and caused a loss. they did lose. i believe this loss killed their chances at a top 3 finish.
according to the evidence on hand, no wrongdoing occurred. that crosses off account sharing being the heart of the matter in this situation as in the alliance 1 situation. if no account sharing happened, then i'd have to assume this player logged in to fight, then logged in on another of his/her devices and received that message on the first device, all while screen-recording. then this alliance spread the video as "proof" of wrongdoing by the other alliance. that would also mean that alliance 1 was watching their defensive screen at the exact time that the player in alliance 2 was creating this video as faked evidence to be used in a take down of alliance 1, and the alliance 1 players took some "friendly jabs" at him in the war chat. that's very lucky timing for all things to happen at once. or, i guess the war chat screenshot could be completely doctored. regardless of the war chat, the video was made and posted as "proof" that alliance 2's players were being prevented from completing their war path (for 3 hours).
OVERALL
so, at best and according to the statement from kabam, you have 2 alliances creating "evidence" of wrongdoing by the opposing alliance, spreading that created "evidence" and claims thru chats AND the forums, and sending a flood of tickets to support which would obviously impede support's abilities to investigate/fix real issues players are having. you also have alliance 2 posting a large thread here, attempting to lay out all the alleged wrongdoing by alliance 1. i don't honestly know if any of that is a TOS violation, i haven't searched for that yet. it definitely is dirty pool and even worse because is clogs up an already struggling ticket system. I'll admit that knowing what i know about both, it's very hard to believe that faked evidence is all this comes down to... but that's what we've been told and have no other choice than to accept that. there are some "blind spots" as far as kabam's abilities go in finding violations, and a few alliances seem to exploit them. I can't blame that on kabam because i can't even come up with a way of detecting those outside of a massive change in how log-in's work and that's probably not feasible.
at worst... well i think we all know what should go here, but i'll pass on writing it up.
anyway, that's it. i just wanted to talk things thru in order to help players that may have missed the non-stickied announcement or may have looked sideways at it. I'm pretty sure i've followed the rules, and since this has been a hot topic with the community i think it's ok to post about it as long as i'm not breaking rules.
if you're gonna reply to this, please keep it clean and abide by the rules. i'm sure there are parts where i'm missing an angle, but i think i covered the "if this, then that" pretty well overall. it's a ridiculous situation and i wish people could just play the game without all this bs
ALLIANCE 1
according to the stories laid out in line chats (and eventually here) by both sides, alliance 1 said they had 3 players booted from their alliance before those players could finish their war path. They also said those players were invited back, and because they had already joined war prior to the boot... they were able to continue aw attack and finish the war. BUT because these boots happened within the 5 war end of season cutoff, they believed the 3 players would miss out on season rewards.
if i'm reading the mod post correctly, either the boots DID NOT happen or the boots did happen but (according to evidence) weren't done by a player from another alliance who had allegedly logged in to an alliance 1's officer account. there is no other way for the "innocent" outcome to have been reached. one of those allegedly booted players has stated in chats that he had "fixed his situation" and would be receiving season rewards. that would mean that either he WAS NOT actually booted OR if he was booted (as the alliance claims in text and pictures) that a special pass was given to enable him to not miss his season rewards.
If we WAS booted, idk how he would be so confident in his season rewards.. but hey, people are always honest on the internet right? he was really confident tho haha. if he was NOT booted, then they fabricated screenshots and a story to go along with them to screw another alliance (this IS a claim made by alliance 2). alliance 1 has also stated they sent numerous tickets to support with their proofs.
ALLIANCE 2
gotta start by saying i'm going to ignore all of the past stuff about alliance 2 and just focus on this situation.
alliance 2 says that one of their players was unable to complete their path in war because every time this player entered his war fight, he received a message that his account had been logged in from another device and was logged out. they state that this went on for around 3 full hours with the player continually attempting to enter the fight and being logged out. they have posted a video of this occurring and the video does show him entering a fight, receiving that message, and being logged out... obviously the video doesn't go for 3 hours and only shows this occurrence once. they also show a snippet of war room chat where alliance 1 asks if their player is having troubles entering the fight. i say snippet because all context/replies have been removed. they claim this happening over a 3 hour period prevented them from clearing the map, and caused a loss. they did lose. i believe this loss killed their chances at a top 3 finish.
according to the evidence on hand, no wrongdoing occurred. that crosses off account sharing being the heart of the matter in this situation as in the alliance 1 situation. if no account sharing happened, then i'd have to assume this player logged in to fight, then logged in on another of his/her devices and received that message on the first device, all while screen-recording. then this alliance spread the video as "proof" of wrongdoing by the other alliance. that would also mean that alliance 1 was watching their defensive screen at the exact time that the player in alliance 2 was creating this video as faked evidence to be used in a take down of alliance 1, and the alliance 1 players took some "friendly jabs" at him in the war chat. that's very lucky timing for all things to happen at once. or, i guess the war chat screenshot could be completely doctored. regardless of the war chat, the video was made and posted as "proof" that alliance 2's players were being prevented from completing their war path (for 3 hours).
OVERALL
so, at best and according to the statement from kabam, you have 2 alliances creating "evidence" of wrongdoing by the opposing alliance, spreading that created "evidence" and claims thru chats AND the forums, and sending a flood of tickets to support which would obviously impede support's abilities to investigate/fix real issues players are having. you also have alliance 2 posting a large thread here, attempting to lay out all the alleged wrongdoing by alliance 1. i don't honestly know if any of that is a TOS violation, i haven't searched for that yet. it definitely is dirty pool and even worse because is clogs up an already struggling ticket system. I'll admit that knowing what i know about both, it's very hard to believe that faked evidence is all this comes down to... but that's what we've been told and have no other choice than to accept that. there are some "blind spots" as far as kabam's abilities go in finding violations, and a few alliances seem to exploit them. I can't blame that on kabam because i can't even come up with a way of detecting those outside of a massive change in how log-in's work and that's probably not feasible.
at worst... well i think we all know what should go here, but i'll pass on writing it up.
anyway, that's it. i just wanted to talk things thru in order to help players that may have missed the non-stickied announcement or may have looked sideways at it. I'm pretty sure i've followed the rules, and since this has been a hot topic with the community i think it's ok to post about it as long as i'm not breaking rules.
if you're gonna reply to this, please keep it clean and abide by the rules. i'm sure there are parts where i'm missing an angle, but i think i covered the "if this, then that" pretty well overall. it's a ridiculous situation and i wish people could just play the game without all this bs
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Comments
If Kabam does not know how to accurately detect instances of account sharing, reaching out to people who have the skills to do so for assistance is the right move. No company can enjoy dealing with the extent of complaints/drama that has been caused by AW Seasons.
I'd welcome an overhaul of login protocol to cut out the sharing methods used at the top levels tbh. I just don't know how costly it would be on the front end. There would be arguments that say it would hurt profits in the end, but those are asinine. Piloting still exists and both saves the players money/resources and directs money to other entities than kabam.
So from what I understand, kabam stated the issues that happened between both alliances was due to account sharing and not hacking, but no punishment is being placed even though account sharing and piloting is against tos?
My understanding was that an investigation was done, and no violations were found.
Here's the relevant part. Took me a minute to find the post.
"We’ve dug deep into reports on the recent allegations of hacking, account sharing and people being kicked from alliances, as well as customer service ticket history associated with this situation. We simply have not found corroborating evidence in game or in ticket history that supports what some have tried to spread within the community. There is zero evidence of hacking or a data breach."
Tho I will say that I never thought the "hacking" part of the alliances' stories carried any weight and seemed to be just more wood thrown on the fire. Imo, if any of it did happen... It was all because of past account sharing. But there again, kabam states no evidence was found.
Interesting, so account sharing isn’t a violation.
It is. But the investigation found no account sharing... Hence my post trying to figure out what actually happened since there was no account sharing according to the results of the investigation.
It's basically a "since no TOS violations occurred, then one of these things must have happened" sorta post.
If alliance 1 were to offer a substantial sum to someone in alliance 2, the only way they would ever capture that is if those involved were stupid enough to do so in ingame chat.
Not saying fishy things in game didn’t happen. Just saying far more fishy things can happen outside te reach of the game itself (can and does for that matter).
Nice find. I didn’t know fabricating evidence in support tickets was a TOS violation.
Those members did lose out on AQ rewards (which happened to be rank 1 that week) which is a big blow that support did nothing about. There’s screenshots of those members being shown ineligible for AQ if people still don’t believe it.
I know that each alliance has a different story about the kicks, one saying it happened.. One saying it didn't at all. Alliance 1 knows if it did and if they were the ones to do it. And kabam knows if it happened and which account did the kicking if it happened. But that's the extent of what kabam could know about it.
As far as falsified evidence goes, it's just one of the possibilities in the story (for both alliances). And if it was intentionally falsified and submitted.. That would be a TOS violation.
I am confused on one part of what you said tho. Maybe I'm reading it wrong. You state that since they were able to rejoin before war ended and attack.. They're still able to collect season rewards. This war was the first during "cutoff" time. Then you said if it happened in the next war, they wouldn't be eligible? I don't get that?
It was at the 5th out of the remaining 5 wars of the season so because the kicked people had placed on defense, were on attack, and were able to rejoin quick enough to continue the attack; they *should* get the season rewards because they will be participating in the remaining 5 wars of the season and hit eligibility for season rewards. Basically it counts for them because they "joined" their "new" alliance within the 5 war season cut off timeframe.
If it happened during the final 4 wars of the season then they would have gotten nothing for season rewards because it was after the 5 war cut off timeframe.
(Does that help @chunkyb ?)
(edited to clarify war counts because English is terrible)
Thx for trying to clarify.
I think my confusion is basically just me being dumb. I'm reading "5th from last" and "4th from last" wrongly. 5th from last would be the 6th war in the "countdown" and 4th from last would be the 5th in the "countdown". I go dumb sometimes (possibly a lot)
A better clarification on my part would have been "It was within the last 5 wars of the season..."
(edited my previous post above for better clarification)
What I mean is if a player in 1 who had previously piloted for a player in the other alliance still had not just their login details but the player IP and location from covering up past piloting then it’s entirely possible Kabam looked at the logs and couldn’t see it happening. 🤷🏻♂️
Something like that is a definite possibility. I just don't want to accuse anyone of anything so I left it out. But it does seem to bypass kabam's identification from the reports I've read
No, an investigation found no hacking. That statement was very carefully worded.
It's impossible for them to have found no evidence of account sharing, but (in my opinion) they made the statement in this fashion to confuse the issue because they do not intend to punish for the ToS violations. I hope I'm wrong but I doubt it. If they are not both punished, the integrity of war is completely shot and it has become nothing but a farce.
I get that the part of adora's statement is kinda worded in a way that opens it up to interpretation. I'd love to hear official clarification on it. But here it is...
"We’ve dug deep into reports on the recent allegations of hacking, account sharing and people being kicked from alliances, as well as customer service ticket history associated with this situation. We simply have not found corroborating evidence in game or in ticket history that supports what some have tried to spread within the community. There is zero evidence of hacking or a data breach."
So first, she states that they've checked on 3 things... Hacking, acct sharing, and kicking.
Then she says they've found no evidence that corroborates what has been reported.
That's where I'm making the assumption that what she terms as "what some have tried to spread within the community" is referring to hacking, acct sharing, and booting.
But the last sentence makes it sound like the thing they don't have evidence of is specifically hacking/data breach.
And "what some have tried to spread within the community" could refer to several things.
Admittedly, i could 100% be interpreting wrong. But again, clarification is welcome. I hope they do clarify, and I've tried hard to keep the thread within the rules and a friendly discussion of what goes on in the game and community. It helps players to know how things work and what to watch for.
I don't necessarily believe that the war rating is the optimal way of punishing players/alliances, but I will point out that several top alliances have had war rating deductions since season 2. Season 1 was an abomination for various reasons. And even tho piloting has just become more crafty, I'm glad there have been steps taken towards fixing the issues surrounding aw. More is needed, but they haven't just sat back and watched like season 1.
Call their bluff. Game content was static when the last boycott occurred. Boycotting during AW Seasons would cause top spending alliances to fall far behind in both AQ rank rewards and AW Seasons rank rewards. The imagined threat of top spending alliances boycotting gives too much credit to people who spend 50-100K+ per year on MCOC. You don’t reach that degree of spending because you have strong self-control.
That logic seems sound imo. According to Alliance 1, the demotion was in order to stop the boots after they realized it was happening.
And as far as "no violations found" I'm only repeating what i have interpreted from the mod post... Tho further mod clarification would be welcome.
I understand why the demotion happened, but someone had to have his log in info. So once again i say, there is a tos violating somewhere. But hey, it's not my problem. Even though it affects every alliance that doesn't cheat.