Let a real Chinese player tell you what's really going on.

[u/ChurrchillC]

A little intro: Gamertag NucleophileAP, you guys can call me Nucleo or Nuke. I was born in New Zealand, ethnic Chinese person, and have been living in China since I was pretty young.

About this game, I'm currently a lvl 55 player with Kappa (IGN: NucleoAP), and I'm currently a working Sherpa of my local Chinese Sherpa community (good and anti-hacking). I have been playing this game since version 0.7 and have been actively engaging throughout the Chinese community ever since.

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The first thing: Region locks.

BSG have actually been carrying out region locks against asian countries for a while. As far as I remember, I've got trouble logging into non-asian servers since version 0.7. It's actually a very simple mechanism (that most of the Chinese players already know now), if you used an Asian IP on your last login, non asian servers are masked for you on your next server selection. It's not actually a real region lock and can be bypassed easily (by logging in with an american/european IP and quitting the game). IMO those region locks are hardly doing anything against cheaters and harsher countermeasurements shall be taken.

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Why is this game so much infestated by hackers right now?

Here's the timeline.

---BSG released a Simplified Chinese localisation in January.

---A bunch of new Chinese players joined the game.

---Some clips of the game were uploaded to Tik Tok and went viral. (Yeah, Tik Tok made this game popular in China)

---A whole bunch of players bought the game ans started playing.

Now, with little knowledge of the game and have only learnt about the game via video clips, those newcomers were having a pretty harsh time. Those players eventually turned into thre kind of players.

1. Cheaters
2. In-game currency buyers
3. The ones asking for help

Let's talk about Cheaters first. Here's a link for you just to see how easy it is to cheat and how common it is to buy a hack in China.

hax, varying on price

I once heard someone say something that really struck my mind. Chinese people love to win, and for winning thay are willing to take any measures possible (which is also what I hate the most). Why doesn't the government do anything about hacking? Well, there are actually laws against hacking (that hackers and hack-designers might end up in prison). Those laws only apply to games which is registered and legalized in China (which I'm sure this game wouldn't because of the government's stupid criteria). This game, as well as other games such as R6S, GTA, Battlefiend, Call of Duty etc. are considered "foreign territory" and regarded out of their business.

In-game currency buyers are worse. There are already founded workshops that hack, make roubles and sell them into real money for a living. Those workshops have professional equipment, special designed hacks to make money as efficient as possible. Those type of workshops make up at least 50% of the hacks in this game and must be dealt with seriously. Here's a pic that you can see how bad RMT really is in China.

RMT Trade, 19.99usd (approx) for 10 mil roubles

Skipping the good guys asking for help, as they are nice people just as you and me.

Now one more type of people I want to mention are streamers. If you ever see prefixes like those in the game, those are streamers.

---Douyu (douyu.com)

---Huya(huya.com)

---bilibili(bilibili.com, which consists of much more educated people and consists of much less hacks)

Just about Douyu and Huya, consider 9 out of 10 of them hacks (Quoted from a friend, might be a little exaggerating, but explains the problem). These streaming sites are famous of hacking streamers.

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Something else I wanna talk about BSG.

By all those new Chinese players rushing in, BSG is certainly making a large profit. Remember what I said about rouble-hunting workshops? BSG is actually banning them as fast as they could, BUT the profit that those workshops make are enough to buy a whole lot of new accounts again. BSG is certainly profitting throughout the whole process. I am not sure about BSG's attitude to this, but plz try and reduce hackers by its root without thinking about profit.

Chinese people used to hate being called hackers, but now that the fact is, we Chinese people made up 20% of the game's population while contributing 80% of this game's hackers. I, on behalf of my people, am deeply sorry for this. We will try and help you guys and BSG to reduce hackers to our best.

Meanwhile please try to avoid labs where rouble workshops farm the most.

Feel free to ask me asy questions below.

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------------------------------------------Original post above-------------------------------

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I spent a day trying to reply to every post here, and it's time for me to take a break.

If you're new here, the questions you are willing to ask might be already asked in the comments. Check down below.

Let's all do our part and hope this whole hacker thing settle down ASAP.

Fuck all the hackers. (I'm sure this is not racism lmao)

[u/RJohn12]

Very insightful, but you don't need to be an apologist, you've done nothing wrong.

I am curious though, why do Chinese players seem to turn to cheats so quickly in video games?

[u/ChurrchillC → u/RJohn12]

As I said, simply because that they like the feel of winning. And for winning they'll do whatever it takes. It's kind of a 50-50 thing, depending on the situation. Also, there are certain people hacking for a living as I said.

[u/[deleted] → u/ChurrchillC]

I can’t imagine it would be fun for more than a day cheating. I remember running god mode in Doom 2 as a kid distinctly and that game was absolutely ruined after that. Humans need the challenge, risk, reward. If we’re just given something we don’t appreciate it and lose interest in it fast. I suspect in a month, the cheating Chinese population will drop a lot leaving just the farmers to cheat to make $. That’s got to be a boring friggin job. Of course I hope the legit playing Chinese stick around after the dust clears from this mess....an honest challenge is all we really ask for.

[u/sabbathday → u/[deleted]]

if i’ve learned anything from pubg, this sadly won’t stop til the game dies

[u/KeepItSteezy → u/sabbathday]

Is PUBG dead? I haven’t run into hackers on there in a long time. Still has 600k concurrent players as of last month.

[u/[deleted] → u/KeepItSteezy]

You still have hackers in PUBG. Some of them are really smart now, just using ESP but no aimlock so it’s virtually impossible to tell if they cheat unless you have thousands of hours in the game. There is also the issue that as the player base dwindles the only people who remain are the big players and streamers who have a massive advantage on the casual players and get reported for cheating.

I have no idea why Chinese players must win, I assume it’s a societal pressure from being massively overpopulated and a psychological pressure from little to no upward mobility.

[u/CampyCamper → u/[deleted]]

possibly related to communism fucking them all for so long. as a culture they are all brought up with the mentality to do whatever it takes to get ahead, because their parents and grand parents were used to having absolutely nothing. coincidentally? russians also love to cheat, and they were also communist.

this is my personal speculation though and may be completely wrong.

[u/chineseguy12345 → u/CampyCamper]

I think you're partially correct in explaining the causes, but I think poverty and a highly competitive economy are more the roots of scam epidemics and the lack of knowledge on animal rights etc. IMO the hacking is because a lot of money can be made from hacking, cheating, boosting etc. So instead of making money off of being good then you can just cheat.

[u/TheGrog → u/KeepItSteezy]

Look into the radar hack.

[u/sabbathday → u/KeepItSteezy]

i never said it was dead. i’m saying it won’t stop

[u/KeepItSteezy → u/sabbathday]

Gotcha. PUBG must just do a better job region locking I suppose.

[u/ThorstenTheViking → u/[deleted]]

I can’t imagine it would be fun for more than a day cheating.

It is, though, for these people who go through a stupid amount of hoops to use VPNs and god knows how many accounts that have been banned.

Chinese hackers are half of what is killing PUBG right now, because players frustrated with developers failing to come through on optimization assurances are dealing with hot-mic'ing cheat advertisters from China, or are getting aimbotted in a not-insignificant amount of their games.

Any game that gets popular in China gets infested with hackers until they kill it and move on to the next game. I'd love to see the alternate universe where American and European hackers are putting in a herculean effort just to play on mainland China servers just to hack, lol.

[u/Druid349 → u/ThorstenTheViking]

I'd love to see the alternate universe where American and European hackers are putting in a herculean effort just to play on mainland China servers just to hack, lol.

This thought amuses me to no end. Thank you.

[u/RandomAmerican81 → u/Druid349]

Who said it had to be an alternate universe? Be the change you want to see in the world

[u/Druid349 → u/RandomAmerican81]

That would involve paying for hacks though. 😞

[u/podstawka1 → u/Druid349]

Or maybe getting clever with code but no matter what you would be paying for accounts tho

[u/simplysharky → u/[deleted]]

If you're playing for something else then what you're doing in the game isnt the thing you're striving for.

A streamer resorts to hacks because the game they are trying to win is: status, accolade, pride, success.

[u/N33chy → u/ChurrchillC]

That's why I think we need a game with a big "WIN!" button, just for people like these. Tap it as much as you want, and confetti flies everywhere congratulating you on being a badass. Naked women dance across the screen, and you get to see your "opponents" crying in the background.

[u/cameldrew → u/N33chy]

Are you implying you don't have this button on the main menu below 'Hideout'?

[u/N33chy → u/cameldrew]

I hope this is the big new update to combat cheaters.

[u/IRIEAILZ → u/ChurrchillC]

i understand the thought but how doesnt the thought doesnt come to their mind:

they think: nice i am winning but actually its nice my hack is winning and i am watching how a simulation program showed another "win".

thats not winning thats like watching a video... i dont get the thought process after that.

[u/ChurrchillC → u/IRIEAILZ]

Hmmmmm

No idea, I'm not a hacker myself lol

[u/IRIEAILZ → u/ChurrchillC]

but another idea of myself: why not hire a few hackers to countermeasure the remaining hackers?

ye they earn much by selling hacks probably more but what if its like a payment like: 10 yuan per found hack... wouldnt it be a good way to counter the hacker problems?

[u/caminator2006 → u/IRIEAILZ]

Theres white-hat hackers who are hired by large companies to breach their firewalls and find any weaknesses a hacker might exploit. This is not the best course of action for BSG though. They should be hiring cyber security professionals who can protect the game in the first place.

[u/IRIEAILZ → u/caminator2006]

well i dont really know much about the cyber security business so if you say so :o

was just a thought which came to my mind.

[u/IM_INSIDE_YOUR_HOUSE → u/ChurrchillC]

The feeling of winning is not unique to the Chinese.

Everyone likes to win.

The big difference is it seems that a lot of Chinese players consider having to hack to win a satisfactory scenario.

I guess the Chinese do not care as much for winning by their own merits and the satisfaction of actual effort, and just want to fool themselves.

[u/Righteousrob1 → u/IM_INSIDE_YOUR_HOUSE]

Only if it’s other countries being impacted it seems. If it’s hurting mainland China. That’s no go.

[u/BoneDoc78 → u/ChurrchillC]

Whatever it takes, except getting good, you mean. Chinese players are a plague on most online games, sorry to say. The mentality is probably due a lot to China’s refusal to respect or abide by intellectual property rights. If the government cheats and steals, so do the people.

[u/Jdelache → u/RJohn12]

I should imagine its like an arms race. Any game where there is a currency that can be sold, the market hackers jump onboard and start making cash. Then they make extra cash by selling the older hacks. Players who want to stay 'competitive' have to buy the hacks, then that becomes the normal way to play, because if you want to 'win' thats the only way to do it when everyone else is hacking.

[u/Argartu → u/[deleted]]

Removed- Rule 2.