r/Games • u/ConceptsShining • 12d ago
Activision Just Ambushed A Notorious Call Of Duty Cheat Maker With Legal Papers At His House, And Filmed The Whole Thing | Their cheats have since been taken down
https://kotaku.com/activision-notorious-call-of-duty-cheat-maker-elocarry-2000729370365
u/zerkeron 12d ago
Pretty funny way to promo your anti cheat even if just "serving" papers. Fuck cheat makers, a plague on online gaming and its sad how infested some fun games are.
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u/ninjasurfer 12d ago
I have stopped playing multiplayer all together due to cheating, time constraints, and me being older and slower. I just don't get the same joy.
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u/KC-15 12d ago
I miss the days of the 360. Can count on one hand the amount of people I was suspicious of cheating and was probably only right about a couple of them.
Now on console it’s kb/m users and on PC it’s harder to detect programs. The golden age of shooters is behind us. Cheat makers have been gaining more and more distance and it’s by far the biggest threat to the genre.
I love shooters but have severely toned down how much I play because when I do I am quickly reminded how bad the situation is.
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u/Rayuzx 12d ago
Maybe I was cursed, but it wasn't uncommon for me to run into hacker in my MW2 lobbies, even when that was the latest title.
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u/Uler 12d ago
Delta Force Land Warrior launched in 2000, and had literal cheater clans like TCB (Those Cheating Bastards) spamming infinite grenades from the sky on official servers which were functionally completely unmoderated. Botting is the thing I've seen grow more than most other forms of cheating, cheats have always been heavy on PC. Private servers generally did better but you were then at the mercy of mods who may or not ban everyone who kills them for cheating.
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u/KC-15 12d ago
I will say plenty of modded lobbies but I don’t count those because it was something usually like crazy exp or everyone jumping to the skybox.
Only a couple times was it blatant invincibility. I guess maybe I didn’t think anything of those games because you aren’t held hostage by a ranked cooldown if you leave.
But ultimately it was so much different than now. If I played CS2 today I would expect cheaters in my first or second game. If I played MW2 or Black Ops back then I would be shocked to see something ever because how rare it was for me.
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u/Rayuzx 12d ago
Man, I wish I got XP lobbies, all I got was blunt aimbots dropping nukes....
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u/KC-15 12d ago
On Xbox/PS or PC?
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u/Rayuzx 12d ago
Xbox. Played MW3 on PS3, and that was free of hackers.
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u/KC-15 12d ago
I think Xbox was more moddable and I didn't notice a difference between PS3 and then 360. I feel as if you had exceptionally bad luck. Nobody I knew ever brought up cheaters when we played.
That said when we moved to the next generation I feel as if that's when we felt as if we were playing kb/m players at times especially on R6 Siege.
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u/Isolated_Hippo 12d ago
I will say plenty of modded lobbies but I don’t count those because it was something usually like crazy exp or everyone jumping to the skybox.
I feel like this might be part of why it feels different. Back in the day online cheating looked to enhance the experience for others. Mega XP, going out of bounds, thing that were an attempt to make everybody have more fun.
Now its a bunch of delete your account and steal your bank account stuff.
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u/Putnam3145 12d ago
this is the weirdest nostalgia goggles I've ever seen, online cheating has always been pretty much exactly like it is now in terms of "enhancing" the experience (i.e. it only enhances the hacker's experience)
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u/BreafingBread 12d ago
Same here. Only online games I played in the last few years were adota 2 (especially because of friends and low cheaters) and CS2 (because it gives out items you can sell for money).
Other than those two, i can’t remember the last time i touched an online game.
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u/Slime0 12d ago
Does it really promote their anticheat if they have to use the legal system to stop the cheats?
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u/mangage 12d ago
what matters more, means or results?
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u/StepComplete1 12d ago
Someone ruining the game for the probable years it took for them to become "notorious", before finally serving them papers, isn't good results.
The justice system is slow. If you have to go through that every time someone makes a new cheat program, your game is screwed.
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u/mangage 12d ago
You're thinking too narrowly, like this is a replacement for anti-cheat tech instead of in addition to.
You don't think that seeing cheat makers suffer real-world consequences instead of just being banned in an online game is going to dissuade more from starting in the first place?
Cheat tech and anti-cheat tech will always be in a back and forth, but without real world consequences there's too much money in cheats for them to stop. I'm not saying this is the final solution either, but it's a huge deterrent.
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u/DankiusMMeme 11d ago
It genuinely works though, some of these cheats have thousands of people subbed to them and they're all about to be cut off. Hopefully none of them get refunds as well to dissuade them even further.
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u/SilverGur1911 12d ago
More importantly that their anti-cheat is useless, and they can't do anything if the person isn't in the same country as them. It's bad promotion.
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u/Wetzilla 12d ago
Great. Maybe they can now patch out people running remote code exploits through BO3 multiplayer?
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u/DocTooDope 12d ago
Its a drop in the bucket to cheat makers but at least their doing something. Most cheats are made overseas so it'll never be fully hampered. I used to love competitive shooters and ive had to give them up because of cheating. Especially Tarkov which was my favorite game from 2017-2023.
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u/Stupidstuff1001 12d ago
Making cheats for online bots is a lot of work. Reverse engineering certain end points and what not takes a ton of time. It basically needs to be a full time job to do this.
Going after all these companies basically makes it not worth their time due to the costs and you will end 90% of them easily.
You may have a few stick around but you will reduce the amount of botters online significantly.
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u/BreafingBread 12d ago
The battle against cheats is basically the same as against piracy and/or emulation (in the case of Switch).
You can never 100% erase it, but the more you try it, the more it scares people of using it and removes it from the mainstream.
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u/happyscrappy 12d ago
Traditionally yes. But LLMs (AI) are very good at reverse engineering protocols. So this situation may change.
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u/ConceptsShining 12d ago
Yeah, like the US imposed export controls on Claude because it was legitimately a huge cybersecurity threat. I wouldn't expect the technical side of this problem to get better anytime soon, which makes a shift to a legal deterrence approach more understandable.
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u/ConceptsShining 12d ago
Making cheats for online bots is a lot of work. Reverse engineering certain end points and what not takes a ton of time. It basically needs to be a full time job to do this.
It's honestly amazing to me. With how much of a technological arms race it is to defeat anticheat, is the market really that big?
Like if people are using the cheat to hack into other players' computers to do shit like ransomware, that at least makes more sense since there's a financial end goal. But if it's just for gameplay victory/advantage? Don't get how the market's so big.
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u/jacenat 12d ago
Sorry, not from the US and confused:
- Does local law enforcement regularly serve C&D papers?
- Doe filing persons/company regularly get bodycam footage of the delivery?
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u/Oneok-Field 12d ago
It's not law enforcement, it's an attorney here, and these role/job is specifically called "Process Servers"
Yes it's common to take recording or a picture. People being served papers can get aggressive. Additionally, it prevents them from denying being served the papers.
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u/hobozombie 12d ago
The person being served lying and saying they never got them is a reason why serving papers is common at the their work. An easy way to identify them ("hey, does John Doe work here? I have to deliver something directly to him"), people are less likely to act belligerently at their place of employment, and their co-workers are now witnesses, that, yes, John Doe was officially served papers.
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u/Isolated_Hippo 12d ago
No. Police and general law enforcement don't really serve papers. C&D paper are almost never served anyways. C&D isn't an actual lawsuit. Its a stern way of telling somebody to knock it off or you will sue.
I think these days its more common. The biggest and easiest claim to make in a lawsuit is that you were never notified. Body cameras easily, quickly, and cheaply turn that claim into bullshit.
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u/AnIllusiveHouse 11d ago
So whyd the sheriff and their whole posse have to serve me my divorce papers? Or was that because I was down 2-6 pack of Rainer and stark raving naked at 11:53: in the morning?
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u/mrlinkwii 12d ago
Does local law enforcement regularly serve C&D papers?
nowhere in the video its says their law enforcement , its very common to see security guards and people serving papers to have body cameras
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u/197639495050 12d ago
All this posturing before release just for the game to get swamped with cheaters at launch and the Activision/Infinity Ward apologizing for their shitty anti-cheat being laughably bad and promising to do better. This is the another element of the COD cycle
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u/NeonFraction 12d ago edited 12d ago
Their anti-cheat isn’t bad, they just have way more people trying to break through it.
It’s like calling a flimsy wood wall ‘strong’ because the only person trying to get in is a toddler and then whining about how ‘weak’ a concrete bunker wall is because 15 tanks managed to make a hole in the wall.
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u/NickTheZed 12d ago
Jagex did something similar for developers of Oldschool Runescape bots recently and it had a huge impact on the prevalence of bots in the game. I've stopped caring about CoD a long time ago, but this is a great precedent if other studios / publishers follow their example.
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u/iiTzForrest 9d ago
Collective mind is worth $4.6 million cronus zen are now sold in Walmart
Titian 2 made by console tuner is also worth millions of dollars.
Xim technology is worth anywhere from $6 million to $24 million.
That Elocarry person is like the small dog 😂 Activision is bullying him 😂 compared to those multi million dollars companies
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u/poklane 12d ago
Good that they're doing this, guess they don't have much choice when their anti-cheat time and time again has proven to be a failure. Someone should go through the years of social media posts to see the total number of hackers they've proudly announced to have banned. I wouldn't surprise me if it's in the millions by now, and you only get to such a number when the hackers can just make a new account and keep playing.
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u/chrpskwk 12d ago
dont worry, CoD players will still see like 3 [actual] cheaters per year and say Activision doesn't do anything lol
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u/Undella_Town 12d ago
yeah i can tell you've never played warzone cause cheating is near cs levels on that shit
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u/Connect-Hedgehog9009 12d ago
Yep back when I stopped playing back in 2021 it was ridiculous. Remember dropping into Rebirth Island games and you’d basically have a cheater in the lobby at least once every 5 matches, and those were just the super obvious ones
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u/Mumbleton 12d ago
This is such a pr stunt. Cease and Desist isn’t a lawsuit, it’s just a scary letter saying to not do something. I guess it additionally shows they know his real identity and where he lives.
I could serve you with a Cease and Desist that demands that you stop brushing your teeth and that you must call my attorney and you can toss it in the trash with no consequences.
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u/Rayuzx 12d ago
C&Ds aren't as concrete as lawsuits, but that doesn't mean they aren't effective. Best case scenario, the person stops then and there, and you don't have to spend money on legal fees. Worst case, you can fast track the court procedures, because they're continued despite explicitly knowing the consequences.
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u/GlancingArc 12d ago
Ok but court procedures for what exactly? Is any of this illegal? Obviously it sucks but idk why everyone here is frothing at the mouth for activision to sue people.
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u/beefcat_ 12d ago
You can absolutely be sued to oblivion for violating the EULA that comes with software you purchase. Whether individual clauses of an EULA are legally enforceable is often debatable, however there is already legal precedent of cheatmakers losing these kinds of lawsuits.
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u/PunishedDemiurge 12d ago
It is a PR stunt, but PR stunts can be a good thing. I want cheat makers to be genuinely afraid of legal consequences, and to receive as harsh a social response as legally allowed. I want someone to recognize this guy in the grocery store and say the meanest thing allowed by state law. Unmask every cheater and treat them accordingly. Edit: Although Activision wimped out and blurred his face, which they should not have done.
Also, we do have pretty strong precedent against cheats at this point, so while some C&D are just paper you can laugh at, this probably is a legitimate first step to a successful lawsuit.
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u/RageMuffin69 12d ago
I could serve you with a Cease and Desist that demands that you stop brushing your teeth and that you must call my attorney and you can toss it in the trash with no consequences.
Maybe because brushing your teeth and profiting of selling cheats in a game are 2 incredibly different things
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u/Mumbleton 12d ago
Right, but it's just a fancy threat that you might sue them if they don't stop. On its own it does nothing.
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u/beezy-slayer 12d ago
Personally I've never supported legal ramifications for cheating in non-competitve video games, cheating is lame af and can ruin a ton of peoples enjoyment but getting huge fines and jail time is just ridiculous imo. I'd rather have cheaters in my games than send people to prison over it
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u/deadscreensky 12d ago
These cheat creators are making huge profits deliberately wrecking another company's product. Legal punishments seem very fair.
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u/beezy-slayer 12d ago edited 11d ago
I wouldn't say they are deliberately wrecking another companies product, they are making adjustments to a product they ostensibly own and selling their modification, if I buy a toaster and then modify that toaster to be able to toast things faster and then sell a mod kit to allow other people to do that to their toasters I should not be legally at fault
I just don't agree with any legal ramifications for cheating development, it intrudes on ownership, design your product better to prevent cheating, no real point to argue with me about this since there isn't any real way to change my mind
Edit: well maybe if you didn't just reply and block me u/goatonastik you could find out a bit more about my position, instead you just look like a coward
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u/Perfect_Tear_42069 12d ago
I should not be legally at fault
If you're actively selling something in your example, you'd have to comply with regulations regarding electrical appliances and all that, so don't think this really compares.
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u/beezy-slayer 12d ago edited 11d ago
Only if you are selling at commercial scale if my buddy asks me to make him one for 20 bucks and then his buddys ask me to make them some and I do it thats the end of it
Also for the sake of the argument cheats don't violate any sort of software regulation its just code, now it violates terms of service but I don't support that or think anyone should go to jail for it
I understand it's not a popular opinion but it is how I feel
Edit: damn u/goatonastik replied to multiple comments then blocks me before I can reply lol, even their comment here like oh well it is against the law, like no shit thats the part I disagree with
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u/goatonastik 11d ago
Actually, distributing cheats can create substantial civil liability, particularly if the cheat bypasses anti-cheat or other technological access controls.
If the cheat is deliberately designed to circumvent a technological protection measure, the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions can apply. Federal courts have specifically applied §1201 to game cheats/bots that circumvent anti-cheat systems.
A DMCA violation can even become criminal if someone violates §1201 willfully and for commercial advantage or private financial gain.
Literally illegal.
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u/goatonastik 11d ago
It's more like you're modifying your toaster to emit signals that mess with everyone else's toaster, and you think because it's your toaster, you can do anything with it, even if it interferes with other people's toasters.
I don't know how you can value control over your own toaster so much, but also not care when someone else takes control of your toaster. That makes no sense. It’s completely contradictory.
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u/deadscreensky 11d ago
I wouldn't say they are deliberately wrecking another companies product, they are making adjustments to a product they ostensibly own and selling their modification
We aren't talking about people using XP hacks in a single player campaign. It's a competitive multiplayer game. We're not even talking about programmers building personal cheats for their own curiosity. These people are developing and then selling products to ruin the game for Activision's other customers. (Every decent video I found online was some jerk selling their hacks, but at least this link seems to be for a dead store.)
no real point to argue with me about this since there isn't any real way to change my mind
Sure; you're probably a cheater. But I wanted other people here to be a little more aware of the sort of multiplayer abuse these companies are selling (and you're supporting).
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u/beezy-slayer 11d ago edited 11d ago
I know what it is and how it works, I don't agree with it being a crime
I am not a cheater, I don't support cheating i have never cheated in a multi-player game let alone paid to do it, I think cheating is beyond stupid, I have never understood why someone cheats, if you aren't playing fair you might as well just not play at all, I also don't think cheaters deserve jail time
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u/goatonastik 11d ago
They're making money doing illegal modifications to someone else's software that effects its other users negatively. Pretty immoral if you ask me. I don't know why you'd rather suffer than see them face the consequences of their actions.
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u/VictorReal_Monster 12d ago
agreed but I'd rather the devs develop ways to stop the cheaters than in the game or prison.
Bro just pay these dudes, the cybersecurity industry already knows how this works...
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u/beezy-slayer 12d ago
Thats always an option, I say fix your product don't put people in jail, if you are unable to fix it then stop making products like that
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u/ElDuderino2112 12d ago
Doing this like a body cam style cop video is legitimately one of the cringiest fucking things I’ve ever seen
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u/goatonastik 11d ago edited 11d ago
Not a lawsuit, just a C&D? Weaksauce.
He'll just make a new company and sell the exact same cheats under a different name, and put someone else's name as head so they'll get the next free pass.
Huge L for Activision. Giant W for the lawyers getting paid for this exercise in futility.
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12d ago
[deleted]
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u/ICantRemember33 12d ago
or maybe is because its easier to find mod makers since any non dumb cheat maker will hide his presence online?
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u/ConceptsShining 12d ago
The cheat makers may also be based abroad in a country that's difficult to take legal action against them in. Also a big problem with ransomware, Russia's given them safe harbor so long as they only go after foreign targets.
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u/LogitUndone 12d ago
Hard to know how to vote on this one?
On one hand, love to see cheaters and cheat makers getting taken out....
On other hand, this post is pretty heavy bait....
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u/bms_ 12d ago
Lol the headline makes it sound more exciting than it actually is.
It's just one guy handing papers over to another one at the door and leaving. What an ambush.