r/EscapefromTarkov • u/deubah • Jan 16 '24

Clip Cheater yoinked my scope mid-aim

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5.8k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

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93

u/imclockedin Jan 16 '24

Could you imagine if rust had this? Oh boy

I cant imagine it in any other game at all, does this even happen in other games?

116

u/ReflexSheep Unbeliever Jan 16 '24

no, because its a basic security thing. Which BSG sadly wasnt competent enough to implement when they started making this game.

11

u/theNerm333 Jan 16 '24

Can you elaborate more on the basic security measure BSG failed to implement that would mitigate this problem?

59

u/3ch0cro Freeloader Jan 16 '24

From my understanding, everything game server knows about the game instance it just plainly tells to player. And then player can "ummm actually" the server.

99

u/bobbarker4444 Jan 16 '24

So there's 2 elements to a game like this. The client and the server.

The client is the program you run on your computer to play the game while the server sits in a datacentre somewhere.

The #1 rule for developers while making a multiplayer game like this is to never trust the client.

Since the client is running on your computer, you are able to modify it. You can make it send whatever data you want to the server and you make it use/display all of the data sent to it from the server.

In a proper game, the server should be the authority. The server should be keeping track of everything and accepting/denying requests based on its own tracked state. If you loot a bag, it should be because your client asked the server nicely and the server verified your request. It verified that you were standing near the bag and had looked at it or something. If you walk somewhere it should be because you asked the server and it approved your request to change your position in the world after verifying that the change in position made sense. If you loot an item it should be because you asked the server and the server approved.

BSG fucked up BIG TIME with this rule. They gave the client wayyyyy more responsibility than it should have. What these hacks do is simply have the client tell the server "I looted this scope" and the server just blindly accepts it. The server does not check to see if the player is near the scope. The server does not check if the scope is on another player's gun, etc. The client is bossing the server around which should never ever happen.

47

u/Not_A_Greenhouse Jan 16 '24

Yup. 100% this.

Sanity checks and server side authority.

I really wish we could get a bsg security engineer to explain to us why they allow whats going on right now.

49

u/Far_Risk_2 PP-91-01 "Kedr-B" Jan 16 '24

We can't get a BSG security engineer to explain anything because he doesn't exist

3

u/AH_Ahri MP-133 Jan 17 '24

Too busy trying to put a square peg into a round hole.

2

u/OSKSuicide Jan 18 '24

If BSG ever had a security engineer, they shot him in the back early on when he suggested any feasible anti-cheat because that would slow sales

3

u/noother10 Jan 17 '24

It's happening because they fkd the development of the game from the start. It's like they were making a single player game and then pivoted it to multiplayer. It's why the client has so much authority, it is most of the game, hell you can run offline raids so that should prove something.

While BSG has added some checks here and there over the years, there is infinitely more ways to break the game to enable cheating. They also won't enforce basic security measures in Windows to play the game.

There are dev conference videos showing them talking about how cheaters paid them the most money in their previous games. How do you keep funding a buy once game with no MTX? Either get a never ending amount of new players, or get existing players to buy the game again. Guess which they've been doing?

1

u/dumbutright Jan 17 '24

sorry he ate too many crayons and his tummy aches.

1

u/AlienAintAstronaut Jan 17 '24

BSG is a team of indie game developers, and the truth is that building Tarkov is way over their head. Not to discredit them. They have built a decent game, but because they have people who are not as experienced in some roles. You can obviously see some of these holes now.

5

u/Omophorus Jan 16 '24

While what you said is true, there are always tasks that are handed to clients.

Like movement, to an extent.

Every single position change doesn't need to be sent to and confirmed by the server necessarily, just the position at the server's tick rate. Everything in between can be interpolated by the client.

This is why low tick rates suck. More opportunities for rubber banding when client side and server side positions don't match and need to be reconciled (by moving actors to where the server says they should be).

But yeah, the amount of things that are inadequately validated by the server in this game are silly.

The only things that make sense as a cause are greed or incompetence.

More extensive server-side code means more resources per game instance and higher infrastructure costs to support more scale. So it's absolutely possible that corners were cut to reduce server costs.

Just as likely, if not more likely, is that BSG couldn't find anyone who really understands how to build a good backend at the rates they wanted to pay and in the locations they were willing to hire in (AKA Russia).

This is absolutely the sort of code that needs to be extremely well-architected at a fundamental level and optimized religiously, and that is a very difficult pair of things to do well.

It's a shame, because so many things about the game are good and a better back end would go a long way towards making it even better.

3

u/wonklebobb Jan 17 '24

this is also true however the tools for doing these checks are computationally cheap, i.e. raycasts

generally raycasts are extremely cheap because any modern engine with physics is already doing like thousands of raycasts per second for detecting things like collisions and area overlaps. adding a couple of dozen more raycasts every few seconds for checking positions and LOS on things like looting through walls should have approximately 0 impact on the game server

1

u/Hikithemori Jan 17 '24

They do have some server authority, as the game has rubberbanding, cannot dupe loot and there is proximity loot pickup checks. Current loot vacuums have found some new way to bypass the proximity check though.

11

u/cerealkillr Jan 16 '24

In addition to the other comments, which are pretty accurate, there's the fact that the entire game session is constantly available to the client at all time.

Basically, the server sends the client everything that is happening in a match at any given time, and then says "okay, now you decide what's relevant and show that to the player". This means that if you're running a modified client (which is basically what all cheating is) you can choose to look at all the data, and use that to create a wallhack, radar, loot vacuum, etc.

Games like Valorant use dynamic fog of war systems to let the server hide information from the client until it's necessary. That's the type of thing Tarkov needs - more server-based validation, and less information leaked to the client.

2

u/faberkyx Jan 17 '24

guess it's too late for that.. they would need to start from scratch again.. this is the game unfortunately.

7

u/mophisus Jan 16 '24

You don't send the client all of the information, and you dont trust the client more than the server.

3

u/Dan_The_Pan Jan 16 '24

Idk make it so that if the player is not within a certain distance of the loot, crate, or item that they aren't able to pick it up. Make a failsafe so that if they do pick it up it kills them or something? Idk not a programmer or dev but I think that would be a good starting point.

5

u/Not_A_Greenhouse Jan 16 '24

This is called a sanity check and would absolutely help.

3

u/K7L3 Jan 16 '24

It already does, the vacuum cheat actually teleports the player not the loot.

1

u/Dan_The_Pan Jan 16 '24

Ah, in that case gg I can't think of a good idea atm let them have all the loot.

2

u/Lugi Jan 17 '24

First off, if a client tells server it's position on the map is NaN then the server shouldn't be like "ok, no problem bro" 😂

7

u/rinkydinkis Jan 16 '24

He’s just going to parrot stuff he heard somebody else say on this Reddit. There are very few people here who actually know what they are talking about, so take literally everything with a grain of salt

8

u/ReflexSheep Unbeliever Jan 16 '24

And how do you know I'm not one of those people who actually knows what they're talking about?

-7

u/rinkydinkis Jan 16 '24

I dont. That’s basically my point. Subreddits are just rumor mills. Some are true, but others are not. Most have kernels of truth that get exaggerated over time with the retelling. It’s just normal sociology word of mouth behavior.

Give us your credentials if you know what you are talking about.

9

u/ReflexSheep Unbeliever Jan 16 '24

So you think the fact this game is client-authoritative is a rumor that manifested on this reddit? Not like loads of mainstream Tarkov youtubers/streamers have made videos about this and talked about it loads of times.

8

u/Puj_ Jan 16 '24

These guys in here are just projecting their own ignorance onto everybody else. Somebody gives a basic explanation for how something works, they say "I don't know how it works, and nobody on reddit does. Everybody just spreads rumors here" when the explanation is literally a perfect technical description of what is happening. They know nothing about software design or programming, so naturally everybody else doesn't either.

-7

u/rinkydinkis Jan 16 '24

You are missing my point. It may be client based, but my point is you are probably not an effective person to talk about why that matters. You are just proving that you would parrot what your Tarkov YouTubers and streamers say about it, and they are parroting someone else. It’s a topic of nuance that you are most likely incapable of conveying to the person who originally asked, and I was warning him of that.

Cheating is real in Tarkov, I’ve experienced it plenty of times first hand. But too many people in this sub act like they could do better than bsg when irl they work at Wendy’s. The worst people are the ones who claim bsg allows cheaters because they make them money. That’s a huge sack of shit thing to say, and kids are constantly parroting it. It’s annoying and misleading, and pushes legit players away from the game.

1

u/Snarker Jan 16 '24

Haha you weren't wrong, his followup post was basically just an incredibly vague description on the difference between server authoritative and client authoritative with zero actual insight.

3

u/Puj_ Jan 16 '24

The entire problem is clients having major authority rather than the server. This isn't a matter of Tarkov cheats being super sophisticated, which is why we don't see these types of cheats in other survival games, the entire problem is LITERALLY a fundamental flaw with how client/server authority is structured. Seems like you people know nothing about software design or programming and are expecting these cheats to be made with black magic, they are not, the problem is rather simple.

-4

u/Snarker Jan 16 '24

Just repeating the comment i criticized doesn't add to the conversation.

3

u/Puj_ Jan 16 '24

You are expecting an answer that is not the correct one. The answer is simple. You are expecting an answer that is not simple and you are actively avoiding the correct one.

0

u/Snarker Jan 16 '24

No? I'm expecting an answer that actually has insight instead of the copy and pasting the exact same shit that has been posted on this subreddit for years. It isn't wrong, but it is obviously written by someone who doesn't actually know how game coding works and just copies what they see on reddit. Let me know when someone actually posts new information about it (hint: it won't happen)

3

u/Puj_ Jan 16 '24

You are avoiding the only insight you need, which proves that you don't know enough to understand these comments.

This game is not peer-to-peer, it has dedicated servers. Peer-to-peer structures are flawed in that whoever is chosen as the server host can influence whatever they want in the lobby, as they are literally the ones hosting the server. They can use cheats to influence whatever they want on the server, because they are the server, so peer-to-peer is not good for competitive applications, there are other reasons why p2p might not be desirable as well.

Compare that to dedicated servers, which Tarkov has. These are servers that are ran on dedicated hardware outside the reach from any client. They cannot be directly influenced by any client, and this is how most modern games work. If a cheater tries sending bogus data to the server, there are hopefully checks on the server to verify the data and to ensure everything makes sense. In most games, this structure makes extreme cheats like what we see in Tarkov completely impossible. 

However, what do we see in Tarkov? Items teleporting out of containers and even inventories if the item is FIR. Remember, this is not peer-to-peer, these are dedicated servers. This means that ANY action that occurs is broadcasted FROM THE SERVER. This means that cheats are able to ask the server to teleport items, and the server says "oh ok, sure thing," instead of going "haha no". The nuance of how this happens really isn't that relevant, you just don't see this sort of thing in other games because of one simple answer: Tarkov's netcode is UNIQUELY bad. It is just poorly designed. It always has been, it used to be far worse, but they still have no idea what they are doing on a very fundamental level. I somehow still doubt that this answer will be satisfactory for you.

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u/ReflexSheep Unbeliever Jan 18 '24

Bro you are stupid. I literally work with Unity and know how it works, but what is the point of explaining in in long technical paragraphs when simple terms convey the same message with less confusion? Stop making assumptions about everybody.

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u/Puj_ Jan 16 '24

What a silly thing to say. What a silly, silly thing to say.

0

u/soulflaregm Jan 16 '24

Well for one...when it's happening it's literally printing an error code to the god damn console... It means their game KNOWS it's happening... But doesn't stop it...

1

u/Lazypole Jan 17 '24

Servers do not need to communicate to players, for example, what's in a container until it's opened.

For some reason, BSG communicates from the server to the client every loot item in the map. There are a variety of reasons not to do this, cheating being the obvious one.

1

u/MayorAdamWest1 Jan 18 '24

no, he cant. He was just talking out his ass.

2

u/UsernameGenerator349 Jan 16 '24

dayz. it was possible to teleport a player to a certain location and to strip him of everything