Fining Hackers?

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Just had an idea. Comes after seeing that ET:QW has been aimbotted/chammed/trigger botted 5 days after release.

I know this won't happen but I would love to hear some thaughts on the idea of fining (real money) from those who cheat in online games.

Suppose you could call it anti-social cyber behaviour.
 
Its against the T&C's afaik, so its already against the law i guess.... so theres the reason to fine them... but finding them to fine would be a bit harder on the games that arent pay to play
 
AFAIK it isn't 'illegal' to cheat in games..you're just breaking the terms of the EULA.As much as I hate cheaters I don't think we're going to see any locked up any time soon.

Fining them would be problematic..illegal probably as they've broken no law.I don't think we'll see anything done other than the whole 'patch - exploit - patch - exploit' cycle for a while.
 
if they are over 18 then accepting the EULA is counted as signing a legally binding contract, if taken to court then this SHOULD be upheld and compensation/fine payed, would depend on the court though
 
has there ever been a case in court in any country, not just the UK where the EULA has been seen as a contract though? highly unlikely tbh.

and that brings it onto another problem, how would you go about fining people from all over the world? bad enough trying to get people through the same law courts but when its 10,20,30 different countries all with different laws.. heh you imagen?!
 
You would also have the problem of proving beyond reasonable doubt that the player you are fining was actually knowingly cheating.

"My mate was playing on my account at the time!"
"Must have been a trojan put those files on my PC!"
"I didn't know that modification x/y/z was a cheat!"
"This is BS. Show me the proof. And I don't mean no silly logfile you just knocked up in notepad, n00bs."
"My account got h4x0r3d! Now I'm gonna sue YOUR ass for letting that happen!"
 
HangTime said:
You would also have the problem of proving beyond reasonable doubt that the player you are fining was actually knowingly cheating.

"My mate was playing on my account at the time!"
"Must have been a trojan put those files on my PC!"
"I didn't know that modification x/y/z was a cheat!"
"This is BS. Show me the proof. And I don't mean no silly logfile you just knocked up in notepad, n00bs."
"My account got h4x0r3d! Now I'm gonna sue YOUR ass for letting that happen!"

They seem to be able to proove otherwise for those who perform illegal use of computers.. hacking/illegal p2p usage/creating viruses etc.

How do you pleed? AFK.
 
Its not illegal. You could probably sue through a civil court. But you would need evidence and a lot of money, not to mention international borders. Not practical.
 
And most EULA will not stand up in a court, they are deemed unfair or infrignment upon numerous other protection laws.
So you will not see anyone in court(civial) for actualy breaking the EULA, they don't even actively chase the makers of cracks for the games.
 
Do you mean fine the hackers/crackers that made the cheats or the kids who use them :confused:

kids who use them aren't really hacking are they :confused:

I think the only way it would be illegal would be if the hacker (programmer) used some of the source code from the original game. Like the bloke who made OGC for quake3, who was taken to court for using segments of the quake3 source.

Breaking the EULA is different to breaking the law, altho I agree that these kids who download and use public cheats are annoying and should be punished in some way :(

It's also a shame that these websites who charge people for cheats don't get shutdown.
 
Valve "fines" cheaters by permantly banning them from playing online. So you have to purchase a new copy of the game. It is a good deterrent although even with the VAC system I did come across a few hackers still.
 
This idea came after 3 people saying to me within 4 days:
"If you could work out a way of perminently stopping cheaters then you would be set for life"

The Fining idea came first then someone said force screenshots. Which can be bypassed. Not certain how it is done but I was wondering, maybe a patch from MS to re-write the screencapture function built into windows to prevent screenshot bypassing.

Doubt MS would consider it worth my time and I don't know if it would work.

Or maybe drivers for monitors which allow captures of the data being outputted by the monitors instead, that would prevent screenshot bypassing.

They are all stupid ideas but I just hate cheating and can't even think why anyone would want to do it.
 
Jaffa_Cake said:
This idea came after 3 people saying to me within 4 days:
"If you could work out a way of perminently stopping cheaters then you would be set for life"

The Fining idea came first then someone said force screenshots. Which can be bypassed. Not certain how it is done but I was wondering, maybe a patch from MS to re-write the screencapture function built into windows to prevent screenshot bypassing.

Doubt MS would consider it worth my time and I don't know if it would work.

Or maybe drivers for monitors which allow captures of the data being outputted by the monitors instead, that would prevent screenshot bypassing.

They are all stupid ideas but I just hate cheating and can't even think why anyone would want to do it.

The Valve system is far better. If it finds anything it considers a hack or cheat you get banned forever. Don't need to bother with screenshots or other evidence. Innocent people have nowt to worry about.

As for why people cheat I can't really say. It could be boredom. When I had played a game to death, I would find the cheats and make the game last a bit longer by mucking about with Godmode or stupidly powerful weapons etc.

Having said that using cheats programmed into a single player game is completely different to exploiting a multiplayer game.
 
SiriusB said:
Having said that using cheats programmed into a single player game is completely different to exploiting a multiplayer game.

I have absolutly no problem with using the cheats in a single player game, admitidly if you NEED them to complete it your abit of a loser :p

Playing with godmode I do aswell though, trickjumping *** :)
 
Armadillo said:
Just ban the germans from playing online , thats like 90% of the hackers gone in one move.

The german government has apparently made it a criminal offence to shoot virtual people (in the head or otherwise :D) Saw it in PCGamer i think.
 
Jaffa_Cake said:
This idea came after 3 people saying to me within 4 days:
"If you could work out a way of perminently stopping cheaters then you would be set for life"

The Fining idea came first then someone said force screenshots. Which can be bypassed. Not certain how it is done but I was wondering, maybe a patch from MS to re-write the screencapture function built into windows to prevent screenshot bypassing.

Doubt MS would consider it worth my time and I don't know if it would work.

Or maybe drivers for monitors which allow captures of the data being outputted by the monitors instead, that would prevent screenshot bypassing.

They are all stupid ideas but I just hate cheating and can't even think why anyone would want to do it.

Maybe try online gaming on a console? Not saying theres no cheating there but its surely much more limited. But cheating in online games is the one thing that puts me off pc gaming.
 
I thought that Punkbuster used to enable admins to take screen shots (BF ?) anyway.

if they can enable it, then most games can - but anti-cheat costs $$ and are the developers actualy that bothered ?
Whats the actual life span of a top end game anyway from a publishers point of view, 1-2 years ?

Unless you are willing to pay a monthly sub for a monitored server, then I can't see a plausible way to stop it.
 
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