How Many Billions of Dollars a Year is the Video Game Cheating Industry Worth?

[Grooveriding]

It doesn't matter that it is easy (at least to make a basic hack.) The real problem is that there is no real solution in sight. The available anticheats are very lack luster, PunkBuster for instance relies on checksum heavily and grabs screenshots, however you can take the screenshot call and send them anything you want. Neither of these are effective and it is impossible to keep up with every hack released.

VAC is very slow to update and ban people.

A real comprehensive anticheat would almost require a rootkit.

I don't know that we need to go so far as a rootkit, but I agree it would take something very draconian in its ability to monitor your system to stop hacks outright.

If it was proven I'd go for it to be free of cheaters in FPS games, regardless of how overt it had to be. I'd likely run a dual boot with my online shooters on a separate OS install though, just for privacy's sake in case

 

[dud]

While most will dismiss this; but people need to also see this; my ex wife and I used to pay 20 pounds a month so we could 6 box on EQ. Program overlay; then run eq through that. *this was back in 2007-2010*

I used to raid when several people that would also 6 box; hell I knew a guy that 9 boxed on EQ *it was freaking nuts* That's just one of the things that is considered cheats....

The industry will very much play this down; but gold selling is also included in this cheat; the buying of items etc........all of that is also considered cheating.

I can easily see this as a billion dollar industry. I knew a guy that would sell items in EQ that was making min 10k a month; and some months he'd clear more than 20k from farming items and selling them. *again this counts towards cheating*

This isn't just inside competitive Esports; but all pc games; specially MMOs; and its very big business specially with MMOs.

I'll repost this in the other forums. - reposted

You have no idea how happy that I am that I have no idea what you are talking about.

It's a game ...

I remember when games used to be fun.

 

[MeldarthX]

You have no idea how happy that I am that I have no idea what you are talking about.

It's a game ...

I remember when games used to be fun.

They still are games; just with mmos; I know a lot of people that got tired of waiting on groups; so they made their own; it would cost money; for each account; then getting the overlay to do it.......also buying gold cause they are tired of being hammered in PVP etc.....

So games are doing that in themselves; like WOT; can buy gold etc. With games going more and more online; we'll see more and more of this outside esport games and mmos....its just the nature of the beast.

During that time my ex and I were boxing; that was our entertainment. We didn't really go out as that was far more expensive than paying for 4 eq accounts and the overlay which would allow us to log on multiple accounts at once; set up bot macros so characters would follow and act on our commands.

People need to remember; there is money there to be made; if there wasn't; people wouldn't be doing it.