Punkbuster, global bans, and other bad ideas.

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What do You Think of Punkbuster?

  • It's great Approx. Why do you want to cheat?

    Votes: 5 31.3%
  • Meh.

    Votes: 5 31.3%
  • It is teh eval!1!

    Votes: 6 37.5%

  • Total voters
    16

Philophobos

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May 11, 2001
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Reading the official Raven-Shield forums today, I came across a post saying the following:

Warning about ''Game XP'' program
Posted by defain on Sunday, January 11 @ 22:12:47 EST (24 reads)

It has come to our attention that the freeware program "Game XP" will cause a GLOBAL BAN. Do not load or use this program while you are playing any Punk Buster enabled servers. A "GLOBAL BAN" is a ban that is automatically made by Punk Buster. It is not a PunkBusted.com ban. Even Balance is aware of these facts and is working to correct the problem. In the mean time, it is strongly recommended that you do not use this program.

http://www.punksbusted.com/

Now when I first heard about punkbuster and the fact that one infraction while playing on a pb-enabled server could result in a permanent, global banning, chills ran down my spine.

"No!" I thought, "What if you aren't cheating but something goes wrong with pb and it thinks you are cheating. You'd get globally banned for no reason and you'd have to buy a new copy of the game. No program is perfect...what a bad idea."

I was surprised with the response I got on the RvS forums when I let my thoughts on the issue be known. They ranged anywhere from, "Dude, EB(Even balance) are like unto gods. Punkbuster is never wrong...heretic" to stuff like, "dUDeZ Y do U wantz tu h4ve tEh cheeatz?????!!! JuusT dileet Ur HACKZ and ul d0nT have teh worrez ab0uT IT!!1!!one!!1!icantreadbooks!1"

So am I the only one who thinks PB might be a bad thing in some circumstances? The only one who kinda knew something like what's described in the above quote was almost guaranteed to happen?
 
Apr 11, 2002
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I think this is less of a question of if PB is evil (it's generally not), but if GB by an
automated program is a bad idea. It is. Your little brother gets on the computer, installs a
hack and plays. You can no longer play the game online. If a bug triggers the GB, then
you are screwed. This is absolutly wrong, IMO. PB should save a report for the admin,
admin bans player and submits a report to EB, where the wuestion of a Global Ban is
brought up. GB should be a last resort and only given to repeat offenders.

With that in mind, I vote GB is evil.
 

W.R

Infateer
Dec 15, 2001
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i dont like it much, i had my game cracked so i didnt have to use the cd, but pb boots for that... having the cd key should be enough
but then again ppl cant bitch about cheating so i kinda like it

so meh :p
 

Philophobos

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May 11, 2001
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Right, right. I guess I should have made it clearer that I am all for a non GB PB. Permanent server bans would even be fine with me.

I brought up the "little brother" defense at the RvS forums and it met with little success. They all said that if you are stupid enough to let someone do that then you deserve to be banned. I tried to have them understand that specifics of the situation didn't really matter, that what I was trying to get across to them was that a person could possibly be globally and permantently banned through no real fault of his own with the system as it was. Their response: "Dude, you should not let your brother near your games. Oh, and...Deleert urz h4ckZ!11!!!1!"
 

Freon

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Jan 27, 2002
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Hehe I got banned from a CS server (it was well before PB and GB were even imagined ;)) because I was using a client side model pack. I don't really blame them, it can be used to cheat easily, but it's bit stupid. It took me hours to figure what was causing that. There's not even a clear error message, so you can't really fight back :hmm:
The problem with you can't prove it was your little brother playing or a nice program being considered as a hack. They must hear that everyday ;)
 

Big_Duke_06

Charlie Don't Surf!
May 25, 2003
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I think that global bans are okay - but that they should eventually "time out." Have the ban last like a week the first offense, maybe a month the second offense... And third strike you're out? Or maybe just a year - how likely is it that you'd wait a year to fire up a game again???

Matthew
 
Apr 11, 2002
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Try this: Some warezing bozo grabs a CD key gen for the game. The CD key it churns out
happens to be the one that belongs to you. That person cheats and you get banned; he
just pulls out a new CD key and keeps playing.
 

Big_Duke_06

Charlie Don't Surf!
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Demosthanese said:
Try this: Some warezing bozo grabs a CD key gen for the game. The CD key it churns out
happens to be the one that belongs to you. That person cheats and you get banned; he
just pulls out a new CD key and keeps playing.

That's why I think the global bans should time-out. Make it a fairly short period - so that if this *does* happen to you, you'll be able to play again shortly (maybe even a week is too long? maybe just 24 hours for the first offense?) but the warez-ass-pirate will have long moved on by then.

But by keeping track of global bans and increasing the length of the ban for each subsequent infraction, you do keep the repeat offenders away - and still allow for normal, non-cheating people to get back to playing in the case of a simple mistake/misunderstanding/warez/little-brother/etc.

I just don't get why people would cheat in the first place... I don't see how running around without dieing and having the computer do all the shooting for you is any fun... But that's just me, I guess.

Matthew
 

Philophobos

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I was curious too, so I downloaded the well-known cheat for RvS and played a few games (this was before PB, and I usually named myself something like "IAMCHEATING" so they could kick me if they wanted).

It certainly gave me an advantage, but it didn't make me some sort of RvS god. Sure sure, you can see through walls and aim better, but it was far from the wonder tool that people made it out to be. In fact, I found the see-through walls and all that to be more distracting than helpful.

I think the people who seriously use the cheats do so because the game isn't completely unchallenging with them, and using the cheats gives them that "I'm more powerful than you" feeling, whether or not the cheats actually help all that much.
 

Crowze

Bird Brain
Feb 6, 2002
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The problem with Raven Shield is the community in general - if there weren't so may lamers online who'd want to cheat, there probably wouldn't be a need for such stringent hack protection. Still, they're a bit silly for releasing it without testing things like that.

Demo, the usual routine for that is to send evidence of you having purchased the game to whoever it is that can unban you - usually a scanned image of the box is enough. Although how they tell that's actually yours is another story...

EDIT: Hint: Join UMC RvS division ;).
 

JaFO

bugs are features too ...
Nov 5, 2000
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Automated banning is bad.(period)
There's too many things that can go wrong and there's no way to defend ...
Hell given the warez-user scenario it's even possible to use such automated banning systems to cause problems for normal people. (ie : get a program you hate, get yourself a cd-key so you can play ... get yourself banned by cd-key, repeat until the community is destroyed by all the paranoiia you've managed to create ... )
 

spm1138

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Aug 10, 2001
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I think automatic global banning is a bad idea as you can get false positives whatever the software you are using.

I am in favour of manual global banning (or at least admins exchanging lists of cheaters) where the cheating has been verified.

I think once a cheater, always a cheater. If you cheat then you don't deserve to play again, anywhere.

I've been part of communities where respected clans had cheaters as members and it is really damaging if that kind of thing is allowed to persist for any length of time at all. It needs dealing with in as quick and a brutal a fashion as possible.
 
Last edited:

Philophobos

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spm1138 said:
I think automatic global banning is a bad idea as you can get false positives whatever the software you are using.

I am in favour of manual global banning (or at least admins exchanging lists of cheaters) where the cheating has been verified.

I think once a cheater, always a cheater. If you cheat then you don't deserve to play again, anywhere.

I've been part of communities where respected clans had cheaters as members and it is really damaging if that kind of thing is allowed to persist for any length of time at all. It needs dealing with in as quick and a brutal a fashion as possible.


In your opinion then, do I deserve never to play again? Or by cheater do you mean someone who makes a habit out of it?

The thing is, for all the talk of how horrible the cheating was and how PB would take care of it all, and how playing online would be so much more fair and fun after PB was put to use, I noticed 0 difference. And when the servers first began to use PB I was playing a least a couple hours a day, so I should have seen a difference if indeed there was one.

I didn't start doing any better or worse, and I still experienced plenty of "WTF" type kills that before PB would have had everyone crying "cheater!" This led me to assume that cheating never was that big of a deal, and that lowered my opinion of PB even further.
 

spm1138

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In your opinion then, do I deserve never to play again? Or by cheater do you mean someone who makes a habit out of it?

In my opinion if you'd been detected cheating "I was just testing them" would not warrant the removal of your ban any more than "My bro uses this computer, he must have installed it" would.
 

Philophobos

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spm1138 said:
In my opinion if you'd been detected cheating "I was just testing them" would not warrant the removal of your ban any more than "My bro uses this computer, he must have installed it" would.


Fair enough. But the fact that either of those excuses could be valid is enough to warrant something akin to a three-strikes-you're out type policy in my opinion.

It seems more desirable to me to let the guilty go free than to punish the innocent.
 

JaFO

bugs are features too ...
Nov 5, 2000
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Considering we're talking about a lifetime/worldwide ban even 3 strikes is not enough ... unless a strike only lasts for a limited amount of time.

However I still think that it should be humans that decide whether or not to use such extreme measures. That way there's still a little defense/reasoning possible.
The auto-ban will only result in possible hostile reactions from the innocent victims while the real cheaters couldn't care less.
 

Profe

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Humans are weak, let the machines decide.
I remember being banned from a DoD server because the admin thought I was cheating. :/
anyways I think global ban is wrong. Timed server bans seem more reasonable in my opinion.