Steam's VAC Anti-Cheat blows!

[Chosonman]

I've been playing CS for over 5 years.

Yes there are good players out there that don't hack, but seasoned pros cant spot a hack from mile away. If we're not sure, we can record the player and run the replay without skins to check out the players vectors. If they're too precise or you they are vectoring through walls you can tell they are cheating.

Some players use scripts to help them with some their controls, but that isn't usually considered cheating unless they are using it to affect game play. Common scripts are crouch jump, buy, and burst fire scripts.

Harder to detect cheats are no recoil and frame rate hack. The easiest way to tell is someone is hacking is if they don't play like a pro and their score is high, or they're making impossible shots too often.

The best method to remove hackers is to play on a reputable server with good admins. I would choose my Pub server carefully there are a few reputable one out there. Lanfusion, ECG, Urban Assualt are a few east coast servers I would recommend.

As for VAC, Vac banning is not immediate, so even if you cheat you probably won't be banned days or even weeks later. This is to cause confusion as to which hack is traceable and make it more difficult for hackers to come up with updates. I think it's stupid of anyone to complain about hacking and then going out and downloading and installing a hack. It's even dumber to post the link to hacks here.

 

[sandorski]

VAC is very good. Cheats/Hacks are constantly being released so it's impossible to keep all Cheats/Hacks from the game all the time, but once VAC is updated for a Cheat/Hack, it's gone. I certainly wouldn't want to play a game without it(or other similar App).

 

[NanoStuff]

Originally posted by: sandorski
VAC is very good. Cheats/Hacks are constantly being released so it's impossible to keep all Cheats/Hacks from the game all the time, but once VAC is updated for a Cheat/Hack, it's gone. I certainly wouldn't want to play a game without it(or other similar App).

It's not good at all. At worst if you get banned after a few weeks, all you have to do is make another account and pay the 10 dollars or so for the game you want to play.
It's like an 'all you can cheat' subscription. However cheats are released so frequently (almost every other day) that a competent cheater can always stay on top of the latest releases and never be exposed. My friend cheats immensely in every game he plays, he's had his original VAC account for over a year now. Many hackers also sell private compiles for some 10-20 dollars. They have no chance of being caught by VAC because it's a deterministic system that doesn't use detection heuristics. This assures no false-positives, but it also assures certain cheats are completely immune to VAC.

 

[imported_Imp]

Phew. So I'm not a sore loser and just suck every time when I scream hacker.

 

[sandorski]

Originally posted by: NanoStuff

Originally posted by: sandorski
VAC is very good. Cheats/Hacks are constantly being released so it's impossible to keep all Cheats/Hacks from the game all the time, but once VAC is updated for a Cheat/Hack, it's gone. I certainly wouldn't want to play a game without it(or other similar App).

It's not good at all. At worst if you get banned after a few weeks, all you have to do is make another account and pay the 10 dollars or so for the game you want to play.
It's like an 'all you can cheat' subscription. However cheats are released so frequently (almost every other day) that a competent cheater can always stay on top of the latest releases and never be exposed. My friend cheats immensely in every game he plays, he's had his original VAC account for over a year now. Many hackers also sell private compiles for some 10-20 dollars. They have no chance of being caught by VAC because it's a deterministic system that doesn't use detection heuristics. This assures no false-positives, but it also assures certain cheats are completely immune to VAC.

It's far better than nothing. I don't think anyone will claim it's perfect, but if you want to see something that really sucks, try playing games without VAC/PB or other Anti-Cheat app.

 

[rasczak]

Originally posted by: NanoStuff

Originally posted by: sandorski
VAC is very good. Cheats/Hacks are constantly being released so it's impossible to keep all Cheats/Hacks from the game all the time, but once VAC is updated for a Cheat/Hack, it's gone. I certainly wouldn't want to play a game without it(or other similar App).

It's not good at all. At worst if you get banned after a few weeks, all you have to do is make another account and pay the 10 dollars or so for the game you want to play.
It's like an 'all you can cheat' subscription. However cheats are released so frequently (almost every other day) that a competent cheater can always stay on top of the latest releases and never be exposed. My friend cheats immensely in every game he plays, he's had his original VAC account for over a year now. Many hackers also sell private compiles for some 10-20 dollars. They have no chance of being caught by VAC because it's a deterministic system that doesn't use detection heuristics. This assures no false-positives, but it also assures certain cheats are completely immune to VAC.

yet in this case who really wins? the hacker was so intent on hacking cs that they bought the game again...seems to me that vac is doing it's job. it's not great by any means but once caught it is effective.

 

[RandomFool]

Originally posted by: rasczak

Originally posted by: NanoStuff

Originally posted by: sandorski
VAC is very good. Cheats/Hacks are constantly being released so it's impossible to keep all Cheats/Hacks from the game all the time, but once VAC is updated for a Cheat/Hack, it's gone. I certainly wouldn't want to play a game without it(or other similar App).

It's not good at all. At worst if you get banned after a few weeks, all you have to do is make another account and pay the 10 dollars or so for the game you want to play.
It's like an 'all you can cheat' subscription. However cheats are released so frequently (almost every other day) that a competent cheater can always stay on top of the latest releases and never be exposed. My friend cheats immensely in every game he plays, he's had his original VAC account for over a year now. Many hackers also sell private compiles for some 10-20 dollars. They have no chance of being caught by VAC because it's a deterministic system that doesn't use detection heuristics. This assures no false-positives, but it also assures certain cheats are completely immune to VAC.

yet in this case who really wins? the hacker was so intent on hacking cs that they bought the game again...seems to me that vac is doing it's job. it's not great by any means but once caught it is effective.

To me it sounds like Valve is winning by selling the game over and over again.

Hackers will always be around no matter how good the anti-cheat systems get. You can always just switch to a different server and/or find servers that are well admined. There are a lot of people out there who are just good at the game. A few years back I was getting banned for cheating. I was just good at the game because I was playing it all the time and by all the time I mean like ~6 hours a day.

 

[potato28]

Originally posted by: sandorski

Originally posted by: NanoStuff

Originally posted by: sandorski
VAC is very good. Cheats/Hacks are constantly being released so it's impossible to keep all Cheats/Hacks from the game all the time, but once VAC is updated for a Cheat/Hack, it's gone. I certainly wouldn't want to play a game without it(or other similar App).

It's not good at all. At worst if you get banned after a few weeks, all you have to do is make another account and pay the 10 dollars or so for the game you want to play.
It's like an 'all you can cheat' subscription. However cheats are released so frequently (almost every other day) that a competent cheater can always stay on top of the latest releases and never be exposed. My friend cheats immensely in every game he plays, he's had his original VAC account for over a year now. Many hackers also sell private compiles for some 10-20 dollars. They have no chance of being caught by VAC because it's a deterministic system that doesn't use detection heuristics. This assures no false-positives, but it also assures certain cheats are completely immune to VAC.

It's far better than nothing. I don't think anyone will claim it's perfect, but if you want to see something that really sucks, try playing games without VAC/PB or other Anti-Cheat app.

And its a good way for Valve to keep making money off of people if they want to continue hacking in the same game, they just re buy it until they get banned again.

 

[NoStateofMind]

So what about anti-cheat companies going out and buying/downloading those hacks (reverse engineer?) and add some sort of feature to scan for them when the server begins a round? I don't know if this will work, DO NOT ask me about software :laugh:

 

[rasczak]

Originally posted by: RandomFool

Originally posted by: rasczak

Originally posted by: NanoStuff

Originally posted by: sandorski
VAC is very good. Cheats/Hacks are constantly being released so it's impossible to keep all Cheats/Hacks from the game all the time, but once VAC is updated for a Cheat/Hack, it's gone. I certainly wouldn't want to play a game without it(or other similar App).

It's not good at all. At worst if you get banned after a few weeks, all you have to do is make another account and pay the 10 dollars or so for the game you want to play.
It's like an 'all you can cheat' subscription. However cheats are released so frequently (almost every other day) that a competent cheater can always stay on top of the latest releases and never be exposed. My friend cheats immensely in every game he plays, he's had his original VAC account for over a year now. Many hackers also sell private compiles for some 10-20 dollars. They have no chance of being caught by VAC because it's a deterministic system that doesn't use detection heuristics. This assures no false-positives, but it also assures certain cheats are completely immune to VAC.

yet in this case who really wins? the hacker was so intent on hacking cs that they bought the game again...seems to me that vac is doing it's job. it's not great by any means but once caught it is effective.

To me it sounds like Valve is winning by selling the game over and over again.

Hackers will always be around no matter how good the anti-cheat systems get. You can always just switch to a different server and/or find servers that are well admined. There are a lot of people out there who are just good at the game. A few years back I was getting banned for cheating. I was just good at the game because I was playing it all the time and by all the time I mean like ~6 hours a day.

Agreed. I used to get banned as well from numerous servers. Playing the game 10 - 12 hours a day got you to that point. thanks to my wife and kids, i only play about an hour or two a night now, if that. still love playing the game.

 

[Martimus]

Originally posted by: maxster

Originally posted by: Spartan Niner
Cheats or no cheats, they get destroyed by me...

But I quit playing Source because of COD4...

Rediculous. You can't beat an aimbotter/speedhacker except by luck. 3 bullets in your head before you even moved your mouse.

Why would someone do that? I can't imagine a game being fun if you can just hit the "win" button. What is the point of cheating so brazenly on a game with no aparrent reward for winning?

 

[Maximilian]

What about half life 2 deathmatch? Is there cheaters on that?? How can i tell a cheater apart from someone thats better than me?

Is it a good bet that they cheat if their k/d ratio is like 76/12 that they cheat, and real good players are more along the lines of 76/50 in half life 2 deathmatch?

 

[Tempered81]

This is the main reason I played quake 1 for so long. I would adopt these newer games every once in a while, but would get destroyed by hackers. Every once in a while a hacker would come in and bot on our Quake 1 games and we would all know it and just laugh.

there was about a grand total of 250 to 500 of us left playing that game 10 years after it was released in 1996. We were all so good and could immediately tell when someone came in hacking. Plus were were friends with good moderators and admins who would immediately take care of the problems for us.

Heheh. I miss quake!!!!