DICE ramps up Battlefield 3 anti-cheating measures

Battlefield 3 developer DICE has implemented some new anti-cheating procedures for the multiplayer shooter, allowing players to report suspected offenders.

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Few things in competitive multiplayer games are more annoying than encountering cheaters, as breaking the rules of the game ruins the experience for everyone else. Thankfully, the good folks at DICE feel the same way, and have implemented some new anti-cheating measures for Battlefield 3, fresh on the heels of stat-wiping and banning a sizable number of said cheaters from the game.

DICE reveals on the official Battlefield 3 blog that it's "recently banned another batch of several hundred confirmed cheaters based on your reports and our player behavior data." The developer further states: "Stats wiping and banning this disruptive minority is the only way they will understand that they are ruining the game for others."

Beginning today, Battlefield 3 players will be able to easily report other players they believe are cheating in-game, so that DICE can investigate and take necessary action.

It works like this: If you suspect a player of cheating, you can go to Battlelog, visit the profile page of the suspected cheater, and then click the yellow triangle with the exclamation point next to his or her name. A window will then open, allowing you to describe--in as much detail as possible--why you suspect the player is cheating. Linking to the Battle Report of the match in question will also help.

"These reports are then received by our analysts here at DICE who will do a deeper analysis of the situation and take appropriate action, including stats wiping and/or banning players who are confirmed as cheating," DICE explains.

While sifting through player-submitted complaints of cheating in order to determine which ones are valid sounds like an administrative nightmare of sorts, we can certainly get behind DICE's impetus to keep cheaters from unfairly turning the tide of battle.

From The Chatty
  • reply
    January 11, 2012 4:15 PM

    Jeff Mattas posted a new article, DICE ramps up Battlefield 3 anti-cheating measures.

    Battlefield 3 developer DICE has implemented some new anti-cheating procedures for the multiplayer shooter, allowing players to report suspected offenders.

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      January 11, 2012 4:17 PM

      That's good news. It doesn't seem like a huge issue but anything helps.

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      January 11, 2012 4:17 PM

      let me be the first to say THANK FARKING GOD

      its been a disaster, overall great game but easily ruined by wall hackers

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        January 11, 2012 7:44 PM

        wall hackers? pssh, that's sooo early 2000. there are variety of hacks now.

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          January 11, 2012 9:35 PM

          Details, details...

          Dudes outside the world shooting at you,etc

          FIX IT F*CK (The * added for the new owners of the site, can never be too careful)

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            January 11, 2012 9:36 PM

            what in the flying fuck are you going on about

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              January 11, 2012 9:37 PM

              fucking newbs, right?

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              January 12, 2012 2:56 AM

              [deleted]

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              January 12, 2012 10:03 AM

              Ben day hos

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              January 13, 2012 1:12 PM

              Sometimes bugs or hacks allow a player to travel outside the normal game boundaries and then shoot at your enemies through the flip side of a polygon object's collision mesh, since the projectile was never meant to enter that plane from that angle. Then the people you shoot get very mad because you are essentially ruining their game experience by cheating. I believe these people should be banned, their named/IP blacklisted from gaming, on a company and maybe even, industry wide level.

              Do you need more explanation?

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      January 11, 2012 4:23 PM

      Doesn't seem like that's going to do too much to deter hackers. Ban their account! Make them buy a new copy of the game and set up a new origin account. If they cared about their profiles being wiped out they wouldn't be using hacks in the first place.

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        January 11, 2012 6:11 PM

        If they have to buy a new copy, that might deter some.

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          January 11, 2012 6:39 PM

          i totally misread it earlier, only saw the stats wiping part for some reason

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        January 12, 2012 5:08 AM

        the problem with hackers like that is that they already tend to be people who aren't constrained by any sort of ethics or morals, so if you ban their accounts, that'll probably just motivate them to find a way to hijack someone else's.

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          January 12, 2012 7:57 AM

          Most people that hack have no idea how to actually hack. They pay $300 to run an exe and press like F1 to activate auto-aim or something. Most hack sites give you an extra key or something so if they do get banned then they have another key so they can keep playing.

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            January 12, 2012 9:32 AM

            actually, hacks are pretty cheap, more like 10-15 bucks.

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            January 12, 2012 3:14 PM

            it can be just as easy to buy discounted hijacked accounts as well, though. See: The whole hacked xbox account debacle.

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      January 11, 2012 5:06 PM

      I can see the flagging system being a possible problem though. Lets face it, we've all had those lucky days where we play great and a person getting dominated on the other team will start throwing out the hacking accusations. I feel sorry for the guys who are going to have to shift through all the data on a case by case basis.

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        January 11, 2012 5:08 PM

        I don't think it'll be the players problem though. Just some really unlucky sods at DICE

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      January 11, 2012 5:10 PM

      Starting today? Hasn't that triangle always been there?

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      January 11, 2012 5:30 PM

      Dear Dice,
      Please implement first person spectating of teammates. At least then I could spec a player and record (FRAPS) a player if I suspect if they are aggressively aim botting (snapping to targets) or using a wall hack poorly (shooting walls before players appear). This would make your job easier and the jobs of good server admins easier as well. It has been my experience that when teammates see an obvious hacker on a pub, they will out that person pretty quickly allowing the community to take care of its own problems.

      For the record, I don't think hacks are a huge problem in BF3 PC. I've only been suspicious twice.

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        January 11, 2012 9:36 PM

        Come into the dropmeammobro metro64 and sit back, enjoy the show

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          January 11, 2012 9:44 PM

          Ahh maybe that's it. I never play on a servers with more than 24 slots and usually Squad Rush if I can find a game.

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      January 11, 2012 6:22 PM

      How about making gcc and pbbans streaming be required for ranked servers on top of punkbuster. That would help more then whatever this is.

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      January 11, 2012 6:35 PM

      [deleted]

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        January 11, 2012 7:00 PM

        Search for servers with gcc/pbbans streaming in the name.

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        January 11, 2012 7:45 PM

        today someone killed me with a blowtorch from their spawn point.

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      January 11, 2012 7:12 PM

      You shouldnt get a "Warning" with a stats wipe. You should get perma-banned.

      no excuse for that shit.

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      January 11, 2012 7:17 PM

      Thank god they're doing this just in time for...uhh..well I don't know.

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      January 11, 2012 10:03 PM

      They need to get rid of being able to ride UAVs and paradropping beacons.
      Hightopping is a larger problem than hacking.

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        January 11, 2012 10:05 PM

        that's a hilarious usage of the game's mechanics!

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        January 12, 2012 2:32 AM

        Agreed. Those are clearly exploits - though I do think they're clever and funny, albeit cheating nonetheless.

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      January 11, 2012 10:27 PM

      The main problem is client site hit detection. Client side hit detection is free, cheap and provides a simply near immediate feedback. Client-side detection ultimately cannot be trusted (*cough* Carmack *cough*), but the world of BF3 makes it nearly impossible to keep it all on the server.

      Until/unless all hit detection is made on the server level, the client side hacks will remain available.

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      January 12, 2012 3:36 AM

      you wanna know how bad it is? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDL2LUhqamc

      i was on a server yesterday with someone having 300+ kills. simply reporting players won't help much. you need to hire some smart people DICE to get rid of that problem..

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      January 12, 2012 4:49 AM

      Thank the lawd. Shit is getting out of hand.

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        January 12, 2012 5:24 AM

        client side prediction :( yeah, I'll guess they will never be able to remove hacking.
        Its damn near impossible, unless doing it also on the server and have some kind of arbiter that can decide of what should be possible from the client side.

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      January 12, 2012 4:57 AM

      I encountered a hacker recently. He joined the server and then everytime someone on our team spawned we died immediately even if we were in a vehicle. Dunno how he did it.

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        January 12, 2012 5:10 AM

        Hacks

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        January 12, 2012 5:35 AM

        insta-kill hack. Seen it two times in the last 3 days.

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        January 12, 2012 8:00 AM

        seen it also, stupid hacks.

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          January 12, 2012 8:14 AM

          There are hacks that are not stupid?

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            January 12, 2012 8:26 AM

            Someone should start making troll type hacks. Like randomly inverting controls of pilots or BANG flags for ammo.

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        January 12, 2012 8:05 AM

        Well that's just boring

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      January 12, 2012 9:57 AM

      In one hand, BF3 is easily the most hacked game that I have played, i have seen hacking in other games, but the frecuency of hacking incidents here is just ridiculous, and is not the regular "OMG that duke killme, H4CKS!", its more things like 1 guy entirely sweaping the enemy team in the spawn with a SOFLAM (not a javelin and a soflam, just the soflam).

      in the other hand, reporting players in the battlelog actually works, I reported 2 hackers who clearly used hacks (one of them even brag about it in the game-chat), I follow them for various games looking how they kill the entire population of server after server, they just enter, kill everybody in the enemy team for like 15 minutes and leaves after people abandon the game (way to ruin the game), most people dont know how to report a cheater, so I use the chat to tell them. both acount where reseted :) (make me feel like a virtual vigilante), take a look at 1 of them:

      http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf3/user/Bloodworks2/

      its kinda easy to spot a cheater by his stats, they got like 3 billion points with 1 or 2 weapons in a few hours, the problem now is that they are using lots of special characters in his names to hinder the reporting process, in that case you must open the battlelog while the guy is still in the server and select him for the list of current players.

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        January 12, 2012 10:00 AM

        Cheaters only getting their stats reset? Their cd key should be baninated!

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          January 12, 2012 10:25 AM

          IP should be banned for life

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        January 12, 2012 11:06 AM

        Did you not play counterstrike? Ton of hackers there

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