Confirmed, Hackers banned for 3-10 days. [Statement from Smed]

[Roy Awesome]

Updated OP:

Originally Posted by Smed

I wanted to briefly explain how we approach banning and clear up some misconceptions out there.

First off. If we have clear evidence of a person cheating we ban them. We search for any other accounts they have and we ban those too. We have very good hacking detection algorithms. They aren't perfect though. There are some things that are very hard to detect. There is no "7 day ban". That's a myth. Sometimes we suspend someone for 7 days. This is typically someone who is breaking a rule but it doesn't warrant banning. Sometimes we suspend people for something while we actually suspect them of cheating. We'll watch them when they come back and the GM's are able to watch people while they play to make sure we're satisfied they are cheating.

Sometimes people say "But this guy is an obvious aimbotter". That may be true. It may not be. There are a lot of really good people in this game. There are also aimbotting scumbags. Telling the difference can be tough for our players sometimes but it's not for us. However we are careful about who we ban. We don't just ban because some player reports and says person X is an aimbotter. We actually put in the time to confirm this.

Also please don't use the new player site as "proof" that someone is cheating. I said when we launched it that it's still beta and we're still working out some data issues.

Also please realize the fight against cheaters is not a war we will ever be finished with. We make new detection and anti-hack code, they spend time and try and work around it. It's a constant effort. We just want you to know we hate them just as much as you do and we're busting our asses to get them out of the game. Do we do it as fast as you might like? Not all the time no. But we also don't want to falsely accuse people without solid proof.

I hope this helps clear this up at least a little. I'm sure there will be people that don't think we're doing enough. After having personally viewed some of the major cheat sites I can tell you I'm blown away by how sophisticated some of these operations are. They are making money on this. We're working on that from another angle too that I'm not going to go into just yet (hint. it involves lawyers) . But we have the resources to fight this fight and we will keep doing it.
Smed

http://www.reddit.com/r/Planetside/c...ingsuspension/

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This is a cross post from Reddit, posted by ArcFault (who doesn't have an account here). The original thread is here: http://redd.it/194qqy

We don't need to cross reference anything. Use it.. we'll find you. we'll find your family. we'll hunt you down.

-John Smedley on Hackers via Twitter


So this post is about SOE's policy regarding hackers, not technical aspects of it which is a different issue and not one we're going to address here.

I think it's completely unacceptable that hackers are given a free pass like this in this game. I understand there is a business aspect to this, I do, and if someone who was hacking decides they want to play legit then great! But they should start over with a new character. Their old character should have it stats reset and that character should be explicitly labeled "Hacker" on their stats in huge, red, comic sans letters.

If I had it my way, the person who reported them for hacking with proof would get the hacker's character name mounted on their in-game profile like a taxidermed moose-head. Players who follow the rules and support the game should have the ability to know if the person that beats them consistently is the real deal or not.

The hacker paranoia has taken hold within the community. I've seen hackers that I am 100% sure about make it all the way to ~BR30. I have a list of people whom I suspect, but am not sure about, whose BRs are well into 50+ and beyond. It must be really nice to be able to give yourself a little handicap over legitimate players without fear of repercussions. Also, since money=station cash=weapons=certs it must be nice to steal your way through the game.

How do I know this and where's my proof?

Well funny enough, I got to talk to someone who made a hacker account to counter-hack (LOL) one of Mattherson's more well-known long term and ridiculously obvious hackers - VanuSerpentor(BR29) (And heshe's TR alt LordSerpentor). Here's a sample of LordSerpentor in a mossie: here . I have multiple videos of this scumbag who was reported multiple times by multiple people. Anyways, the hacker named their character VenuSerpentor and then proceeded to counter-hack the shit out of VanuSerpentor in some attempt to bring cosmic balance to Auraxis. It was pretty funny. Now VenuSerpentor also hacked everyone else ridiculous amounts and got a stern 7 day ban. That's it.

Here's the email and here's their stats prior to having the ban lifted:

E-mail: http://i.imgur.com/uCozY6n.png

Stats: http://imgur.com/I1layDq,qfjk0pF#1

Here's their stat page after the ban is lifted:

Post ban stats: http://imgur.com/I1layDq,qfjk0pF#0

Yep, everything is still there on the character, the hacker confirmed that all his unlocks were available, and he got some nice passive cert gain!

This is not a one-time thing. I have multiple confirmations from different hackers at different BR levels (one at BR40). I'm keeping some of it to myself for now because I want to see what happens to these people. I wouldn't be surprised if nothing does.

This sure as hell isn't the hard-line against cheaters Smedley was proclaiming a few months ago. You may never be able to completely rid online games of cheaters but when your policy is to just give them a free pass - that's completely unacceptable to me and probably a lot of you in the community. If I ever stop playing this game, as one of the paying customers, it will be for shit like this. Apologies for making this a public ordeal but this discussion has been private long enough with very little change in direction.

[Stardouser]

I think this is a VERY weak approach to hacking but I want to focus on another thing. Hacking is a much more serious transgression than exploiting, would you not agree? They have permabanned EQ and other MMORPG accounts with 200 DAYS of play time for the first offense over the years, for exploits, sometimes even minor. I think we all agree it's not as big a deal to start over in PS2 compared to an MMORPG, right? Yet it makes sense to permaban MMORPG accounts where it really hurts a player to start over, but go easy on PS2 accounts where starting over wouldn't be so bad, relatively?

And also, when EQ Next comes, are they going to continue going easy on PS2 hackers while having no mercy on mere exploiters in EQ Next?

[Tatwi]

Thank you for proving why this game is not worth my money. When my SC dries up, I'll not be purchasing any more, unless by that time SOE gets some balls.

Cheat once, life time ban. Period. Too fucking bad for you.

[OCNSethy]

Given Smedly's quote, I am dissappointed.

[camycamera]

as a first warning for hacking, they should remove any certs they have gained, and do not allow any more gaining of certs. also they should lock weapons, and do not allow any use of vehicles, abilities, etc, for say, a month. and any attempt to leave the warpgate will result in an insta-death and will spawn back in the warpgate. a second offence should remove their account permanently.


oh, oh, even better; there should be a jail area in the warpgate to put griefers and hackers in

[Hamma]

I honestly don't think this is a blanket thing. Though I have no doubt this is happening for some people.

[Rumblepit]

i would like to know which genius at SOE came up with this policy, hes just as bad as the hackers in my book. i wouldnt even pisss on these people if they were on fire.

sorry for being so vulgar but this just makes me rage,this is fing pathetic.

[Assist]

Considering how some people took a week long disappearance from Waterson and then showed back up playing on a completely different level skill wise, can't say I'm surprised.
I run into a hacker at least once a day still, although usually they're low rank(10-20)

[Sturmhardt]

Wow... I'm speechless. I hope RadarX (as community manager) can comment on this.

.sent via phone.

[Rothnang]

Hackers come in two varieties.
There are the guys who just want to see how far they can push it, and what can be done. These are the guys who make flying tank hacks or something like that that's blatantly obvious. They just do it for the luls, and they most likely made a disposable account in the first place to try it out. The thing about these types of hackers is, they don't play day after day, week after week with a flying tank. They do it once, they have their laughs, they move on to some other mischief.
Then you have the guys who aren't so much hackers as they are cheaters. They really want to win, they want an unfair edge over their opponents, but they actually care about their character. They use hacks to get those accomplishments, and they will go for hacks that they think can't be detected. Something that just slightly tweaks the game in their favor. There are probably a lot more of these guys than the first kind.

The first kind of hacker really can't be stopped, if something is popular someone is going to want to leech some fame by sabotaging it, and honestly, as long as it isn't done maliciously or too often it doesn't really hurt anything too badly. There aren't a lot of people with the technical knowhow or time to mess with a game just for a few laughs.
On the other hand, if you're a cheater and you do it all because you want to win and have a high battle rank and lots of certs you are actually attached to those things. If you get caught, but they say "stop what you're doing and you can keep your character", you know that you're under observation, you know that you can be caught, but they have also given you a reason to stop hacking. If they ban the cheater for life all they do is force him to make another account, and most likely cheat again to regain his old status more quickly.

It may seem like a slap on the wrist, but in the long run it has a better chance of turning a cheater into a regular player than knocking them back down to BR1.

[Spiritbeast]

Hackers should be punished severely. They negatively effect the gaming experience for every person they kill. I dont care how fun it is for them. Get your rocks off on somone elses face. Stop blowing your load on mine ; P

Except for the guys hacking just to pay em back. That's awesome. like RobinHood with a machinegun hehe. I dont like to get picked on. I dont put up with it in RL, the only difference is in the game i cant fight back cause i dont know how. So i disagree. Punish them 100 times over for acting against me, and 1000 times over for everyone else ; P LVL 1 With a Special PINK Camo that glows in the dark. If they hack again ban em.

[Rothnang]

What's better? Some attempt at "revenge" or pursuing a course that might actually curb some hackers, even if that means their punishment is less severe?

[Sprintfox]

Well, while I am someone who thinks that every person should get a second chance, I've to say also, that...

... on first caught, they should get their character resetted to 0. I mean, there are a lot of hackers currently playing on a smart way or whatever, while they've also spent money on station cash. This means, do not lock their weapons and / or block the purchased stuff. When it comes to a false/positive this could throw a bad light on SOE. BR should be resetted to 1, which includes that certs are set to 0.

... on second caught, obviously permaban. I mean, if they got a second chance to increase their reputation, then they should use her. People which isn't thankful doesn't deserve to continue playing the game.

[Sifer2]

Yeah it's stupid. What is this "maybe they will reform" crap? They should be permanently banned in every way possible. Account closed, IP ban, and CC ban which btw a CC should have been required to play this game from the start. But no I guess it's ok for SOE's actual paying customers to get shot through the floors, and know the guy they reported for farming thousands of kills, and ruining the game for hundreds of other players will be back in a week. And even get to keep his certs lol what a god damn joke.

[Sturmhardt]

If the GM is sure about the hacking the guy should be banned forever right away. He then can appeal to SOE support if he feels something went wrong and they decide if the ban was just or not. Temporary bans as a "warning shot" for cheaters are ridiculous.

.sent via phone.