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

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar

How many billions of dollars in revenue does the video game cheating industry make?

  • Less than $1 billion

  • Between $1 billion and $2 billion

  • Between $2 billion and $3 billion

  • Between $3 billion and $4 billion

  • More than $4 billion

Results are only viewable after voting.
Nebor

Nebor

Lifer
Jun 24, 2003
29,582
12
76
Reference:

ThinClient said:
http://www.artificialaiming.net/

That's one of the biggest ones around.

Any idiot can make hacks easily for DirectX games. The smart ones lease their hacks to sites like this for a monthly paycheck. The customer pays a monthly fee like you would for an MMO. That enables their user/pass for the parent program that manages these hacks. The program is basically an all-included package for every game advertised on the website or a one-off purchase for one month for one specific game. The all-inclusive package basically makes it easy for the customer to not have to edit all the games they own. They can just launch the game, launch the cheat manager, and poof it works.

The list of games that AA covers is impressive and the quality of the cheats are very nice.

This is a multi-billion dollar per year industry. Yes, that's with a $B.
Click to expand...
 
cmdrdredd

cmdrdredd

Lifer
Dec 12, 2001
27,052
357
126
Meh...as long as there are servers that are managed well enough to get rid of these types I don't care. For single player games I really care even less...probably about zero. I've used console commands to do weird stuff in games before that you aren't supposed to be able to do. Don't care if people want to run around in Farcry with infinite ammo.
 
cmdrdredd

cmdrdredd

Lifer
Dec 12, 2001
27,052
357
126
Speaking of that...there was a bunch of chinese groups invading FFXI years ago and selling gil for real money. People were paying $300 for like 10 million gil or something like that. I knew people who actually paid money to get in game currency to buy rare items. Then they got wise to that and cracked down on real money trading. They decided then to stop selling currency and start selling the item. Pay $100 and you can join the team and cast lots on the item if it drops or they would get you the item within a week if you paid for it. It got so bad that legit linkshells and groups resorted to pulling trains of high level monsters to the area to wipe the zone and refuse to raise the gil farmers. Then they adjusted it so monsters would despawn after a time if the person who drew aggro died. I remember one particular war where two groups constantly wiped eachother for 12 hours straight by using various tactics to steal aggro from the NM they were fighting or just pulling trains to the spot they were fighting in. It really was pathetic.
 
Grooveriding

Grooveriding

Diamond Member
Dec 25, 2008
9,147
1,329
126
There is no way it is a multi billion dollar industry. My common sense guesstimate is sub 100 million and even that seems excessive.
 
ImpulsE69

ImpulsE69

Lifer
Jan 8, 2010
14,946
1,077
126
Grooveriding said:
There is no way it is a multi billion dollar industry. My common sense guesstimate is sub 100 million and even that seems excessive.
Click to expand...

It's like piracy. Make any number up you want because no one truly knows and can't prove you wrong.
 
P

PowerYoga

Diamond Member
Nov 6, 2001
4,603
0
0
cmdrdredd said:
SIt got so bad that legit linkshells and groups resorted to pulling trains of high level monsters to the area to wipe the zone and refuse to raise the gil farmers. Then they adjusted it so monsters would despawn after a time if the person who drew aggro died. I remember one particular war where two groups constantly wiped eachother for 12 hours straight by using various tactics to steal aggro from the NM they were fighting or just pulling trains to the spot they were fighting in. It really was pathetic.
Click to expand...

Uh, gilselling is completely unrelated to training. People were doing that way before gilsellers became involved, it was common BS pulled on competing HNMLSes. JP LSes would train NA ones then NA ones would train JP ones. Only difference is NA players would get banned while racist GMs did nothing to ban JP players who started the whole BS. People were stealing simurgh from each other before even sky or the big 3 dragons (vrtra, jourmangand and i forgot the other one) were introduced.

Gilsellers only switched to selling the item because they changed it to rare/ex so it couldn't be sold and introduced the drop (or equivalent ones) in BCNMs to reduce its value.

Random sidenote: Most gilsellers are students, talked to a few of them. They work in shifts on the characters so they can be online 24/7.
 
Last edited:
TeknoBug

TeknoBug

Platinum Member
Oct 2, 2013
2,084
31
91
I have no idea of the figures, but yes they make a ton of money, it's bloody pathetic really- ISIS is competing with those for making the most amount of money for a crime based organization.
 
M

MeldarthX

Golden Member
May 8, 2010
1,026
0
76
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
 
cmdrdredd

cmdrdredd

Lifer
Dec 12, 2001
27,052
357
126
PowerYoga said:
Uh, gilselling is completely unrelated to training. People were doing that way before gilsellers became involved, it was common BS pulled on competing HNMLSes. JP LSes would train NA ones then NA ones would train JP ones. Only difference is NA players would get banned while racist GMs did nothing to ban JP players who started the whole BS. People were stealing simurgh from each other before even sky or the big 3 dragons (vrtra, jourmangand and i forgot the other one) were introduced.

Gilsellers only switched to selling the item because they changed it to rare/ex so it couldn't be sold and introduced the drop (or equivalent ones) in BCNMs to reduce its value.

Random sidenote: Most gilsellers are students, talked to a few of them. They work in shifts on the characters so they can be online 24/7.
Click to expand...
Some of it was related to gilsellers. They were trying to remove them because they bottled to claim an NM.

As it relates to the topic, people were willing to pay real money to get ahead of everyone else.
 
ThinClient

ThinClient

Diamond Member
Jan 28, 2013
3,977
4
0
Subyman said:
"Any idiot can make a directx hack."

Nope.
Click to expand...

Anyone who denies this is not someone who understands how to do it.

As long as DirectX is continued to be used for gaming, it doesn't take much more than a script kiddie to modify existing cheats for new games.
 
D

digitaldurandal

Golden Member
Dec 3, 2009
1,828
0
76
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.
 
Newbian

Newbian

Lifer
Aug 24, 2008
24,777
881
126
Unless the game sells their in game currency also then no money is being lost but instead it's being made.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom