[J_Shelby_J]

I don’t know what to say. Cool project, but I would be mortified to admit to using this. Cheating in a competitive game is just griefing with self-delusion and extra steps.

You’re also going to never be able to have a professional relationship with an athlete or gamer ever again. People who have dumped thousands of hours practicing to get good at something, and you’re proud of cheating them and people like them?

Enjoy your s3 emerald skins. I’ve reported your accounts to embark.

[drdaeman]

> People who have dumped thousands of hours practicing to get good at something, and you’re proud of cheating them and people like them?

Just as a hypothetical situation - what if one had built a similar tool on their own, or used this as a foundation but trained a new model? Does it count, or are we denying this as a personal growth and limiting it strictly to playing exactly by the book?

Alternatively... What if someone has a physical condition that limits their manual dexterity? Is it different from having a physical condition that limits their eyesight and have to wear glasses?

I'm trying to draw a line. Or challenge the status quo where the existing line is drawn.

[endominus]

What if someone did not have the physical strength to become a champion cyclist/baseball player, but found a medicinal way to overcome their limitations and achieve peak performance in their field? We've already come to a decisive conclusion on this; steroids are banned in most sporting competitions. Just as cheats are in online games. Just because someone does not have the pure physical ability to compete at the highest level does not give them leeway to cheat.

[drdaeman]

> We've already come to a decisive conclusion on this

Have we, really?

In the professional sports there's WADA and similar agencies, that, obviously, have to push this idea really hard (and make everyone believe that everyone else thinks so, because this is how you do it in modern times). But that's because that's what's literally keeping them afloat. But they're already struggling, trying to figure out what to do those gender-to-chemicals mismatches. And as sciences and societies evolve, I suspect it's only going to get more interesting, and I have this hunch that this status quo has cracks in its foundation and will likely shatter in the future.

They also have to make sure that athletes are safe enough and don't just wreck themselves - which makes things a quite bit different. Unless we count risks of issues in some people with predisposition to toxicity, that is associated with cheat use /s (no love for those folks).

But back to the "have we" question - do people actually care about all this stuff in non-professional sports when played recreationally? (Just like video games.) I really doubt so. People just try to balance around it, fixing the matchmaking rather than players.

But - you certainly have a point - I would suggest to exclude professional scene entirely and narrow the scope strictly to recreational gaming. Pro sports and e-sports are more controversial.

[ultimafan]

It's hard for me to think of many equivalents of video game cheats to professional sports in the sense that most "cheats" for professional sports that I can think of don't "play" the sport for you. A normal everyday joe can't just wake up and start taking steroids one day and place anywhere near the top in olympic or power lifting (or even anywhere near the middle class of amateur, clean competitors who have been training for a few years). Nor can he do blood doping and hope to compete against world class cyclists. Or in any way go up against and win bouts with masters of various martial arts. In one way or another those methods of cheating still require incredible amounts of effort, training, etc. to utilize. But a video game cheats like auto aim, wall hacks, radar, or the more blatant ones like infinite health, speed hacks and the like let someone with no skill or preparation just jump in and casually outcompete even the best of the best in a way that allows for little to no opportunities to outplay them. I'd say it's less like using steroids and more like showing up to a deadlift competition with an industrial crane.

To get to the point, I think this is why less people seem to care in non professional sports if some random guy who is on performance enhancers shows up to your amateur soccer match or pick up basketball game. The gap at the amateur level between a clean amateur and cheating amateur is not so large and certainly overcomable if the clean amateur has more training.

[wellthisisgreat]

> do people actually care about all this stuff in non-professional sports when played recreationally? (Just like video games.)

People absolutely care, because a cheater in a lobby will ruin the experience for a dozen or more people and ultimately waste their time, taking it away from their lives.

The cheater is doing it willingly and knowingly and with a full intent to cause harm - take away someone’s time which is really the only thing we have. Cheaters shiho absolutely be punished beyond just video games, not sure how exactly though (I wouldn’t trust state nor mob with that task for sure)

[wellthisisgreat]

Video game cheats are nothing like sports cheats / steroids

A non-roided pro can still sometimes somehow beat a roided pro.

With videogames there is zero chance you can actually beat a cheater. Maybe you can score a lucky point / frag against him/her once in 100 instances, but actually beat him?

Imagine idk Mike Tyson in his prime comes up against an underdog and the underdog can teleport or has a perfect reaction time of a standard auto-aim cheat?

[dvngnt_]

you can cheat in single player games. no exceptions for multiplayer games

[drdaeman]

That's one of the important criteria, yes. But I was trying to draw the line on what is "cheating", not when it's socially or morally acceptable.

[beeboobaa3]

It's really pathetic to go out of your way to report someone's accounts like that. Go lick some more boots.

[ultimafan]

Not him, but why? Cheaters in multiplayer games seek a gain for themselves at the expense of everyone else playing. They provide no benefit to a community and it's not something anyone should be even remotely proud of, even if they put a significant amount of intellectual effort into doing so.

A few years ago, I used to play EFT with friends after work and putting my kids to bed quite frequently. For a group of friends living quite far apart it was one of our favorite gaming experiences as a group. But our feeling on it soured as the game was slowly but surely taken over by large amounts of cheaters in every single match we played. The developers weren't able to deal with it at all and eventually we all quit playing. There's nothing that takes the wind of your sails in gaming like sitting down to unwind for the hour or two a week of free time with your friends and just being completely unable to enjoy that time because a significant portion of the lobby is made up of selfish cheaters. I can remain friends with someone who cheats in a multiplayer game but I never play with them after finding out they did so. I don't hesitate to report accounts. There's no benefit to you as a player keeping them around unless you're somehow making money off cheat sales.

[beeboobaa3]

My disdain primarily comes from going out of your way to snitch on someone, regardless of why.

But in general I'm not upset with cheaters anyway. People are always going to push boundaries. It's a fact of life.

I also believe that most cheats, at least the more invasive ones, are only possible because the game was poorly designed, without cheating in mind. Instead most game companies seem to just slap a commercial anticheat product on top and hope for the best.

[ultimafan]

I see, thanks for clarifying. I guess my frustration with that viewpoint comes from a personal bias- I can't share any sympathy for reports of that nature after seeing many of my friends and my own hours "wasted" when budgeted free time that could have been lighthearted and relaxing turns into frustration, venting, anger etc. after getting repeatedly shut down by blatant cheaters (though one could say games are wasted time in and of themselves). That I paid for the game to play with friends and none of them are willing to play it anymore because of how ineffectual the developers were at dealing with the problem compounds that frustration.

I do agree that developers should put more effort into thinking about proper design and anticheat protections. But it's also a huge ask for smaller or more inexperienced studios when they have to waste time dealing with bad actors that could have been better spent on game development, and an excuse for antisocial cheaters to keep behaving poorly. People want to assume the best out of each other. In an ideal world, people who can't keep themselves from making their hobby that of making others miserable for pleasure would be the ones being punished instead of laying the blame on those naive enough to assume that everyone is good natured and cooperative.

[beeboobaa3]

In an ideal world there would be no cheats, no (need for) lawyers, no bankers and things would be much better. It's not an ideal world.

[ultimafan]

I agree, it's not, and people should be more careful. But at the same time it's just strange to me to see someone actually trying to clean up an online community and make it more ideal labeled as "pathetic" and a "snitch," as if a cheater's right to waste other people's time and pleasure is more important and people should just accept someone bragging about acting poorly in a social context. I don't think that's very productive behavior.