Tag: hacking

PUBG Chinese Cheating players mass banning

The Chinese game market is the biggest video game market. It contains the largest gaming audience for competitive gaming such as PUBG (Player Unknown Battleground). Tencent and Bluehole Inc. are the video game distributor for PUBG in China so they control the game servers. With such a larger gaming audience, there is also a huge group of hackers. Rather than simply banning their players, Tencent also sends the Chinese police. Law enforcement has found at least 30 cases and 120 people suspected of developing cheating software. The software ranges from X-ray vision and auto-targeting. Even people who have past convictions will go to jail.

Tencent Logo.svg

Hackers are even offering their cheating services on PUBG’s top leaderboards. The top 10 players are all hackers with names such as “contact QQ574352672,” a private account where people can purchase the cheating software. Kim Hak-joon, who analyzes gaming stocks for South Korea’s Kiwoom Securities Co. (PUBG is a Korean game) stated: “Cheaters mostly drive away new users, and without retaining new users, PUBG won’t be able to consolidate its early success and become a long-lasting hit.”

Bluehole’s anti-cheats partner, Battleye, has banned 1.6 million accounts which are about 6% of the total community. People convicted of disrupting computer networks face five years’ imprisonment or more under Chinese law. In 2010, a couple was fined 3 million yuan (465,000) and sentenced to nine years for selling cheat software, according to local media reports. China and Tencent are also very familiar with the number of hackers and cheat creators. Tencent has even filed a lawsuit against piracy after they signed exclusive distribution rights with global record labels. It’s a tough fight that even Allen Zhang, head of anti-cheating, stated “It’s a never-ending battle…You could come up with something effective today, but encounter something completely different the next day.”

The Chinese market will probably never remove the number of hackers in China. With the criminalization of cheating, distributors will always exist. They may even produce them in different countries to offer their services like boosting in League of Legends.

Sources:

Bloomberg

Epic sues 14-year old for cheat mods in Fortnite

Fortnite, Epic Games‘ battle royal type game, has an issue with cheat mods in the game and community. They have filed two civil complaints against two alleged associates who use cheats from Addicted Cheats to actively kill Twitch Streamers players live online. This is known as stream sniping. Players actively look at Streamers live cam footage to find them and actively hunt them from an unfair advantage.

The service from Addicted Cheats is $5 – $15 a month. It allows people to use aimbots and track players throughout the map. The cheat has to modify the game’s source code which is against Fornite’s End User License Agreement and the Copyright Act. Fortnite‘s rule of conduct doesn’t forbid stream sniping like Player Unknown Battlegrounds but forbids cheating. One defendant has been banned multiple times and has created multiple accounts and continued cheating. When asked why “Because its [sic] fun to rage and see streamers cry about how loaded they are and then get them stomped anyways.” He also found another way to cheat after Epic created a block on cheaters stating “Now method is exposed . . . Epic Eat my ass.” As you can tell, he doesn’t feel guilty over his actions.

The other accused is a 14-year-old. Whether Epic was aware of their age prior to the lawsuit. The mother is quite unhappy and has written a letter to the court which attacks Epic‘s handling of the case. TLDR version below from Kotaku:

  • She says that Fortnite’s terms require parental consent for minors and that she never gave this consent.
  • She says the case is based on a loss of profits but argues that it’s a free-to-play video game. In order to prove a loss Epic would need to provide a statement certifying that Rogers’ cheating directly caused a “mass profit loss”.
  • She claims that by going after individual players, rather than the websites selling/providing the software necessary to cheat in an online game, Epic is “using a 14-year-old child as a scapegoat”.
  • She claims that her son did not, as Epic allege, help create the cheat software, but simply downloaded it as a user, and that Epic “has no capability of proving any form of modification”.
  • Finally, the mother says that by releasing her son’s name publicly in conjunction with the move that Epic has violated Delaware laws related to the release of information on minors.

The 14-year-old lives in Delaware and can be sued for damages based on how much the considered loss in money Epic states in the lawsuit. The parent would have to pay the sum. Adolescents can also sign contracts but have different degrees. Epic has yet to respond on whether they will proceed on using the 14-year-old.

Sources

Kotaku

14-year-old sued with mother’s letter