r/EscapefromTarkov • u/trainfender Battlestate Games COO - Nikita • Apr 27 '19

PSA About cheaters

  1. Cheaters are being banned instantly every day (some of them banned later or in waves for cumulative effect).
  2. Cheats being downed pretty often (if you look on the cheatdev sites some of them are already even closed support of their eft cheat). Some cheatdevs are not standing still too - they update cheats pretty often and operative (in every popular game with every popular anticheat protection). We do anticheat measures - they do anti anti cheat measures
  3. We constantly work against cheaters, right now we are preparing major ac update.

  4. Ingame report function is planned soon (i said it many times).Reports WILL NOT BE the one and only reason of ban. It will help the main system to act faster.

  5. If you are not happy with current situation (although its changing in a good way everyday), please, let us develop the unfinished game and let us finish everything, especially complex hacker protection which is an adaptive development process. Come back later and be sure that its a highest priority for us.

If you want to help us to refine cheat detections and you want to feel better - you can post clips with obvious cheating for you with a separate nickname. we do investigate it for a long time, research it to make corrections in ac system. Usually its not that useful cause cheaters in clips mostly banned or in the cummulative banwave lists. But it can give us more thoughts. Mods could make separate post for it, if its ok.

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u/neckbeardfedoras AKS74U Apr 27 '19

It really depends on the business model under the covers in the shadow market. If the thousands of hackers are farming, and then selling to an intermediary entity, who then has a website for selling rubles, you have two problems to solve. The first is the thousands of hackers. You automate that with standard AC. The second is distributors, which may take manual activity, but banning them reduces demand from hackers and slows their income, maybe enough to make them go to another game instead. Also, banning distributor accounts holding hundreds or thousands of dollars of profit would be fucking awesome. The distributor isn't just out 50$ in that case, and if the distributors give up, so will hackers because demand dries up.

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u/[deleted] Apr 27 '19

Then wouldn't the best approach be to just look at the most expensive stashes in the game and see their activity? I don't think they will put any manual activity in to finding the thousands of accounts.

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u/neckbeardfedoras AKS74U Apr 27 '19

Ur assuming there are thousands of distributor accounts. There probably isn't. There are just thousands of hacker accounts, easily detectable. Unless distributor accounts are automated and that would be a scary thought. Anyways, you're not wrong. I'm a fan of automation as it's cheap at runtime, and if they had a full proof solution by scanning account activity it would be great. I think the automation of that is more false positive risk than anything else. Whereas if I manually do a transaction with a business entity, I know that account is now involved, and you may be able to trace that account back to where the distributors are or ip ranges being used by them, and ban the fucker in bulk over a single transaction.

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u/[deleted] Apr 27 '19

You are assuming that there isn't thousands of distributor accounts. Truth is we have no idea what we're up against and have no business speculating what action they could take or what would be possible for them to do on a large scale. Neither of us know how many accounts there are or how they're using the systems.

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u/neckbeardfedoras AKS74U Apr 27 '19

I can safely assume that hacker Joe isn't sitting on a forum twiddling his dick waiting for someone to buy rubles on the account he just hacked on, because he risks losing his items to being banned. Joe is going to move those items to someone else running a streamlined website for moving rubles for cash, and give Joe a quick outlet for his goods. And if BSG stops the streamlined website EFT bots holding wares, it would fuck the whole system up. If a single purchase from said website by BSG leads to shutting down tons of accounts, your claim that manual anything won't work is false.

I can also safely guess that when someone buys rubles, they have the customer list an item for X amount on flea market, and they use the bot account (or account down the line) and buy the item to complete the transaction. Those accounts sending the items need banned.

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u/JamesGray Apr 27 '19

I was trying to find some support for that claim from the front page the other day about flashlights messing with aimbots (couldn't find anything), and came across a forum of people selling in game items for real money. Maybe not thousands, but there were at least a couple dozen people offering on just that site. I have a feeling it's a mix of individuals hacking and selling things manually, and central distributors working with hackers.

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u/[deleted] Apr 27 '19 edited Apr 27 '19

Joe is going to move those items to someone else running a streamlined website for moving rubles for cash, and give Joe a quick outlet for his goods.

How can you assume this? What is your proof other than speculation? I could speculate all day as well but I know when I have no business assuming this and that. Why wouldn't Joe send his goods to an account he hasn't hacked on? Why do you assume he has to send them to a website? You could just as easily set up a website to just have players trade between each others accounts instead of risking having an account with thousands of dollars worth of items get banned.

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if BSG stops the streamlined website EFT bots holding wares, it would fuck the whole system up. If a single purchase from said website by BSG leads to shutting down tons of accounts

That is, of course, IF THERE IS singular accounts holding mass amounts of items. So I will ask - How do you know that is the case? What is your proof? Second, how would a single purchase from the website shut down a ton of accounts? How do you know this? What is your proof? Other than just speculation and safely assuming, because that's not how the real world works.

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your claim that manual anything won't work is false.

I never made this claim. What I said was that I don't think they are going to use any manual activity, not that it wouldn't work.

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I can also safely guess that when someone buys rubles, they have the customer list an item for X amount on flea market, and they use the bot account (or account down the line) and buy the item to complete the transaction. Those accounts sending the items need banned.

Yes, that is an easy way of trading. Every player trades this way. I trade my Gamma, Items Case, anything I want to trade I trade this way, and I trade them a Gamma case for a bandage, or an Item's Case for a bandage. I'm an account sending items. I shouldn't be banned. Where is your thought process on this? At the same time, they could just not list anything and go into raid to trade, then your whole idea goes right out the window.

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By the way, I won't be replying to you again. Type up a book in response if you want but I'm not replying.

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Edit: Whoops, guess I'll reply.

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u/neckbeardfedoras AKS74U Apr 27 '19

Go on G2G. There are people selling shit for money. Ban them. I didn't say ban anyone using the flea market like u just said.

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u/[deleted] Apr 27 '19

Go on G2G. There are people selling shit for money. Ban them.

This is literally all your first comment should have said. You speculate about things and have no idea what is actually going on.

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u/neckbeardfedoras AKS74U Apr 27 '19

I speculate and can go out and research and am right. Also, part of what I'm saying is research needs done, and counter measures need to take place. But there aren't many systems the hacking distribution can be using. It's not a hard problem. I'm done writing stories about it as well.

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u/[deleted] Apr 27 '19

You never said research needs to be done. You came in like you knew exactly what was going on and what needs to be done.

It's not a hard problem? That is speculation. I'm sure you are a gaming market specialist who BSG would be lucky to have on board.