I understand that this probably isn't popular opinion, but I believe we need hackers/exploiters in games, and we need recognized communities for them in those games.
People cheat in games for almost an endless amount of reasons. But many times, I've seen that it usually comes down to wanting to 'be the best' or just a general interest in understanding how things work. Creating a 'safe space' for people to cheat in games becomes a net plus for everyone because it keeps a lot of the non-malicious cheaters out of legitimate player's games. It also helps developers understand where some flaws are in their systems that they wouldn't ordinarily catch because they'll end up with communities openly discussing their latest exploits, or specific servers where they can look to see what bugs or hacks people are coming up with now. It also means the people who are cheating so they can 'be the best' will get bored of it very fast once they finally have everything and move to the next game. A cheater that's in a designated server is someone that is not interrupting a legitimate game.
There will, of course, always be malicious hackers and trolls that won't want to stick to designated servers or openly discuss exploits so they don't get patched. But this is going to happen regardless of whether or not there's a recognized community, and it doesn't make sense to punish everyone because of this. Popular cheating communities also tend to be self-enforcing. It's not uncommon for people to get blacklisted from these groups or reported in games by other cheaters if they cross a line(ie. Caught cheating in non-designated servers, DOSing servers, etc..).
Disclaimer: I was an admin and regular on a couple popular cheating/exploit communities over 15 years ago at this point. It was my first introduction to how computers actually work but also should put in perspective how this is a never-ending battle
But yeah the sticking point is that cheaters wanna “be the best”, even if that requires cheating, and if they’re surrounded by other cheating users that doesn’t really work anymore, so why would they stick to those servers?
> But yeah the sticking point is that cheaters wanna “be the best”, even if that requires cheating, and if they’re surrounded by other cheating users that doesn’t really work anymore, so why would they stick to those servers?
There's so many different games so there's no single answer. But from my own experience, in FPS games, people love building better aimbots, or augmenting different abilities to get a better edge, or adding overlays to their visuals to better calculate trajectories. Being a better cheater becomes its own competition.
The end-goal of this wouldn't be to move all cheaters to designated servers, that will never happen, it's to make it more obvious and easier to take action when there's a cheater in a legit match.
Yeah, the number of people who go from cheating on games to interested in programming cheats to FAANG engineer is non-trivial and means that cheating ends up as a value add for reality, even if it hurts the enjoyment of the other gamers in the moment.
People cheat in games for almost an endless amount of reasons. But many times, I've seen that it usually comes down to wanting to 'be the best' or just a general interest in understanding how things work. Creating a 'safe space' for people to cheat in games becomes a net plus for everyone because it keeps a lot of the non-malicious cheaters out of legitimate player's games. It also helps developers understand where some flaws are in their systems that they wouldn't ordinarily catch because they'll end up with communities openly discussing their latest exploits, or specific servers where they can look to see what bugs or hacks people are coming up with now. It also means the people who are cheating so they can 'be the best' will get bored of it very fast once they finally have everything and move to the next game. A cheater that's in a designated server is someone that is not interrupting a legitimate game.
There will, of course, always be malicious hackers and trolls that won't want to stick to designated servers or openly discuss exploits so they don't get patched. But this is going to happen regardless of whether or not there's a recognized community, and it doesn't make sense to punish everyone because of this. Popular cheating communities also tend to be self-enforcing. It's not uncommon for people to get blacklisted from these groups or reported in games by other cheaters if they cross a line(ie. Caught cheating in non-designated servers, DOSing servers, etc..).
Disclaimer: I was an admin and regular on a couple popular cheating/exploit communities over 15 years ago at this point. It was my first introduction to how computers actually work but also should put in perspective how this is a never-ending battle