Whats the difference between botting/cheating in games versus say ... sports? Why should games be protected by laws while faking getting fouled not? And where do we draw the line? Laws apply to everyone, thats the whole point of it. Will cops keep an eye on kids at a playground making sure they are not cheating?
Its a game. And that game economy? Its not real. Yes even if you pay real money for it. Just because you pay money for something doesn't mean its real.
Besides its easy to stop serverside. Just use region blocking, i have been in china and let me tell you pingtimes to european servers was beyond horrible, and i kinda doubt adding proxies or VPNs ontop of it to fould a region lock would improve it any. So just autokick anyone with a ping over XY and done.
And yeah, do as much on the server as possible, make it so the game needs a 1mbps stream just to render the landscape and players.
It would cost taxpayers money for something retarded. What's more important IMO is making it possible to track digital products, like gaming accounts, better so when someone steals it, it can be proven and they can be punished for theft.
When it comes to cheating, gaming companies need to get more creative in how they handle it. For one, they should probably set up a kind of "level of severity" system so that people who do minor "cirmes" get punished in-game and people who do major crimes you get more severe.
A quick make up of what I'm thinking would look something "like" this:
Griefing players: in game jail time (1day)
getting caught with minor exploits (trapping mobs while you kill them): in game jail time (3-5 days)
caught again with another minor exploit: 2 week-1 month ban
3rd minor exploit offense: Unlimited time ban with account unlock possible with $50 purchase
major exploit first offense: Unlimited time ban with account unlock possible with $50 purchase
Correction, you can easily change your IP address. MAC address spoofing is a little more complicated,
You can't easily spoof your IP address* without using a VPN or proxy type service, which are very easy to detect and block. What you can do is change your IP address by changing your MAC address (much easier than you seem to think), causing your ISP to issue you a new IP address because it thinks it's a different connection. Problem with that is the IP address is still in the same block owned by your ISP, so if there is something like a regional ban in place, then that won't help.
IP blocking is actually a very effective method if it also keeps a VPN and proxy block list as well.
*note: you actually can easily spoof your ip address, but it's trivial to detect. Mail servers, for example, are usually configured to reject mail claiming to be from one IP, but actually coming from another.
We, the roleplayers and virtual worldists, tried to wage this war back in the mid 2000s in games like SWG and Asheron's Call. More or less, we were told to STFU and deal with the bots, because bots were so entrenched in major systems, it would literally break the game for the combat/achiever demographics who relied on bot services.
Heck. They even rewrote the TOS in Star Wars Galaxies to protect non-combat botting (going so far as to ban people who messed with a bot's preprogrammed routine), while at the same time making botting that farmed loots illegal.
Now, to me, if we are going to come down on bots, we ought not to legalize the bots we like, while banning the bots we don't like. All that does is make some players second class citizens to bots. We need to crack down on ALL bots, equally, or NO bots.
__________________________ "Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it." --Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints." --Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls." --Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
Most cheats in games are against the law. As hacking is illegal. However, this doesn't include bots that don't use injectors. On top of that like someone previously stated, it's just not worth their time. I'm still scratching my head to this day as to why they refuse to do IP and MAC address bans as this will eliminate a good majority of the people who are using these programs.
Because neither MAC address nor IP Address are effective. You can easily change your MAC address.
Correction, you can easily change your IP address. MAC address spoofing is a little more complicated,
Never tried it under Windows but on Linux it's 1 line:
$ ip link set dev eth0 XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own. -- Herman Melville
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own. -- Herman Melville
I don't think its worth pursuing because its not something that affects the well being of others or has any real world impact. Its up to developers how they handle botting/cheating. There's no federal laws for cheating in sports that I know of, but the various organizations set their own rules that the players have to follow or else they will be punished.
this is a legitimately silly thread to be honest, TOS cover policing over the games accounts and virtual world and whats done in it, none of it has legal precedence in the real world, you bot you can get banned and lose your account, not thrown in jail with a conviction and a criminal record, and making it so it was a criminal offence would be ridiculous.
hacking is completely different to bot injection, the end user doesnt have access to the memory locations that the bot is injecting too, the only real hacking could be argued is the reverse engineer who designed the bots routines.
Real world legal ramifications have no place when it comes to a virtual world. UNLESS we are talking about legitimate death / stalking attempts that threats due to that online world, or the medium being used as a source for predators.
Actually the best way to stop botters is thru financial institutions. If the gold sellers cannot monetize their efforts then they will stop botting and stop pissing everyone off. However to actually pull this off is another matter. Presumably the banks/credit companies/paypal are willing to go with it they would have to verify what their merchants actually do which requires a lot of effort. Note that banks actually make a ton of money off these gold sellers too... RMT transactions per year has reach as high as $500 million - 1 billion dollars and is growing so there's very little incentive for the banks to step in.
I'm going to type this in huge fucking letters that might scare some of you:
FOR THE SAME REASON INSURANCE FRAUD IS NOT LOOKED INTO
The amount of money it takes to investigate often leads in an overall net loss than just paying out and dealing with it. This is especially true in Southern Ontario Canada where our insurance rates are on a steady increase every year.
Comments
Whats the difference between botting/cheating in games versus say ... sports? Why should games be protected by laws while faking getting fouled not? And where do we draw the line? Laws apply to everyone, thats the whole point of it. Will cops keep an eye on kids at a playground making sure they are not cheating?
Its a game. And that game economy? Its not real. Yes even if you pay real money for it. Just because you pay money for something doesn't mean its real.
Besides its easy to stop serverside. Just use region blocking, i have been in china and let me tell you pingtimes to european servers was beyond horrible, and i kinda doubt adding proxies or VPNs ontop of it to fould a region lock would improve it any. So just autokick anyone with a ping over XY and done.
And yeah, do as much on the server as possible, make it so the game needs a 1mbps stream just to render the landscape and players.
It would cost taxpayers money for something retarded. What's more important IMO is making it possible to track digital products, like gaming accounts, better so when someone steals it, it can be proven and they can be punished for theft.
When it comes to cheating, gaming companies need to get more creative in how they handle it. For one, they should probably set up a kind of "level of severity" system so that people who do minor "cirmes" get punished in-game and people who do major crimes you get more severe.
A quick make up of what I'm thinking would look something "like" this:
Griefing players: in game jail time (1day)
getting caught with minor exploits (trapping mobs while you kill them): in game jail time (3-5 days)
caught again with another minor exploit: 2 week-1 month ban
3rd minor exploit offense: Unlimited time ban with account unlock possible with $50 purchase
major exploit first offense: Unlimited time ban with account unlock possible with $50 purchase
second major exploit offense: perma ban
etc, etc, etc.
You can't easily spoof your IP address* without using a VPN or proxy type service, which are very easy to detect and block. What you can do is change your IP address by changing your MAC address (much easier than you seem to think), causing your ISP to issue you a new IP address because it thinks it's a different connection. Problem with that is the IP address is still in the same block owned by your ISP, so if there is something like a regional ban in place, then that won't help.
IP blocking is actually a very effective method if it also keeps a VPN and proxy block list as well.
*note: you actually can easily spoof your ip address, but it's trivial to detect. Mail servers, for example, are usually configured to reject mail claiming to be from one IP, but actually coming from another.
You make me like charity
Oh, and as for the OP's question...
Any law created would have to be some form of international treaty. Good luck with that.
You make me like charity
We, the roleplayers and virtual worldists, tried to wage this war back in the mid 2000s in games like SWG and Asheron's Call. More or less, we were told to STFU and deal with the bots, because bots were so entrenched in major systems, it would literally break the game for the combat/achiever demographics who relied on bot services.
Heck. They even rewrote the TOS in Star Wars Galaxies to protect non-combat botting (going so far as to ban people who messed with a bot's preprogrammed routine), while at the same time making botting that farmed loots illegal.
Now, to me, if we are going to come down on bots, we ought not to legalize the bots we like, while banning the bots we don't like. All that does is make some players second class citizens to bots. We need to crack down on ALL bots, equally, or NO bots.
__________________________
"Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
--Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
--Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
--Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
Never tried it under Windows but on Linux it's 1 line:
$ ip link set dev eth0 XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville
An even scarier thought would be having the computer illiterate US Supreme Court having to rule on cases involving tech law.
Justice Kennedy thinks any piece of software can be developed over the weekend in a coffee shop.
http://sarahjeong.net/2014/04/22/supreme-court-justices-are-not-good-with-computers/
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville
this is a legitimately silly thread to be honest, TOS cover policing over the games accounts and virtual world and whats done in it, none of it has legal precedence in the real world, you bot you can get banned and lose your account, not thrown in jail with a conviction and a criminal record, and making it so it was a criminal offence would be ridiculous.
hacking is completely different to bot injection, the end user doesnt have access to the memory locations that the bot is injecting too, the only real hacking could be argued is the reverse engineer who designed the bots routines.
Real world legal ramifications have no place when it comes to a virtual world. UNLESS we are talking about legitimate death / stalking attempts that threats due to that online world, or the medium being used as a source for predators.
Wow...The fact that someone is actually bringing this up is just...wow.
Do you have absolutely no clue what the role of government is?
Just....
...wow.
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
I'm going to type this in huge fucking letters that might scare some of you:
FOR THE SAME REASON INSURANCE FRAUD IS NOT LOOKED INTO
The amount of money it takes to investigate often leads in an overall net loss than just paying out and dealing with it. This is especially true in Southern Ontario Canada where our insurance rates are on a steady increase every year.
I think this is bullshit but $$$ talks.