Originally posted by Tasos

We banned 213 cheaters today. These are the people using 3rd party programs to cheat with. They were not banned for macroing, they were banned for cheating. They were automatically detected and also verified manually in a variety of ways. This number represents 90% of the cheaters in Darkfall right now. The rest have also been detected, and we’re waiting for them to be verified before we ban them as well.

These people were warned repeatedly. They chose to believe that we cannot detect what’s going on in our game. They took the word of the makers of these hacks over the word of the creators and administrators of the game. There are no exceptions. We don’t care if journalists, clan leaders, or our friends are among them. They were cheating in order to gain an unfair advantage over the rest of us. They deserve to be banned.

What comes into play here is something called “selfish punishment” in social science. Cheaters are likely to be some of the most outspoken people against cheating, and more likely to report cheaters. This is as so to maximize the benefit for themselves - taking it away from others. This is also the case here; we recognize some of the people from the boards habitually accusing the company for not doing anything and complaining that cheating is rampant in Darkfall, when in reality it’s not.

If you cheat in the game, you will lie about it too. Whenever we ban a cheater he or she will appeal to the community, denying it on the forums. Then come the excuses to Darkfall support about their little brother, their roommate, or about their account being hacked. So now we expect a couple of hundred people to take to the boards. Threads along these lines will be removed and posters will be banned. Darkfall Support has been instructed to not provide more than the automated ban message. Do not side with these people just because you may have played with them and didn’t happen to observe them cheating. They were cheating beyond a shadow of a doubt, detected and verified in more than one ways. There is no appeals process, our decision is final, and we will not reveal our methods.

We will keep aggressively detecting and banning players that cheat in the game. If you’re not running 3rd party cheats, you have nothing to worry about. Those that don’t take our word for it, will be banned like those banned today.

Thank you,
The Darkfall Team

 So  we can assume they actually have some mechanisms implemented to detect / track hacks. Good job. 

Link: forums.darkfallonline.com/showthread.php

This is good news. Now the remaining 6 players can play without having to deal with vile cheaters

I'm sure posters will say "there are thousands of cheaters in darkfall". However, I wager the actual number is closer to 200 than 1000+. The accusations of rampant cheating was always overpblown in my opinion.

Originally posted by oddjobs74

This is good news. Now the remaining 6 players can play without having to deal with vile cheaters

That made me lol.

Originally posted by oddjobs74

This is good news. Now the remaining 6 players can play without having to deal with vile cheaters

Wait a sec...I have six alt accounts ! 

Does anyone find it disingenuous for Tasos to say that it represents a specific percentage of the cheaters, and that the rest have been detected as well?  Grats to AV on winning this battle, but his statements smack of the same declarative speciousness that he continuously used in touting the game as feature complete and ready for release over the last several years.  He doesn't seem capable of admitting that AV may be imperfect or lacking in omniscience.

and after that stellar accomplishment, all other mmo publishers seek to hire the entire AV staff to keep cheaters from thier games aswell.  incoming job offers :P

Only thing If ind amsuing about that, is they say they are 100% accurate. Even blizzard with their massive icome and large dev team still occasionally accidentally bans someone

Originally posted by Blindchance

Originally posted by Tasos

This number represents 90% of the players in Darkfall right now.

Well, that's how I first read it anyway. :D

Darkfall rocks cheaters suck.

so, ~40K subs, ~200 cheaters == roughly 1 in 200 people (0.5%) were cheating.

matches very closely with my experience: i've played since release (and during beta too) and encountered one definite cheater in that time.

Originally posted by Pyrostasis

Only thing If ind amsuing about that, is they say they are 100% accurate. Even blizzard with their massive icome and large dev team still occasionally accidentally bans someone

Indeed, though AV does not have 12 million accounts to monitor and as their account base is actually fairly limited, it is probably a bit easier for them to find in the game logs for just one server.

This is tasos.  He would say 213 cheaters represent 90% of all those cheating.  DF is his baby, what do you expect him to say?  The cheater / hacker quota will always be low according to him.

 There's an official news thread on this, too.  Same comments to each:

So, Aventurine has identified 236 (based on the claim that 213 is 90% of the total number of cheaters) cheating players and has banned 213 so far.  Per Tasos, this doesn't include macroers (presumably he means unattended macroes, since attended macroing is allowed).  I'm curious how many unattended macroers are in addition to the cheaters?  I suspect the number is substantially higher.

Regardless, how many total active players are there in Darkfall right now?  If the number is somewhere between 10 and  20k, then the percent of cheaters is pretty small (1 - 2%).

FYI, per the public forums on a third-party tool's website, there are over 300 premium members for their Darkfall tools:

24-04-2009, 11:05

<links removed> <website name removed>  Developer   About Join Date: May 2008 Posts: 1,711

Re: Rather upset This is technically still undetected, otherwise the other 300 premium members would have been banned as well... According to our logs you used Physics and the Teleporter pretty often over a timeframe of 4 days. If you teleport underground you still teleport and it's been said for weeks now that teleporting can get you banned.  We have announced weeks ago already that if you teleport you should use a 2nd account if you want to take the risk. If you got banned your character was either teleporting or in a location where you normally cant be.

300 is still a pretty low number of cheaters, so I would tend to agree with Tasos' assertion that cheating (specifically using third-party hacks) is not rampant Darkfall and I think it's great that Aventurine is doing something about it and is taking a hard stance.  That being said, I'm curious about their automated detection methods. I'd hope they're not detecting cheats in any invasive manner. As long as they're not, more power to them!

~Ripper

P.S.  What's especially funny is that the quote I posted is the developer's response to the OP, who's asking for a refund since he got banned for using the "undetectable" cheats.  Even better, the OP lies about how often he's used the cheats, which is refuted by the developer.  

Originally posted by javac

so, ~40K subs, ~200 cheaters == roughly 1 in 200 people (0.5%) were cheating.

 

matches very closely with my experience: i've played since release (and during beta too) and encountered one definite cheater in that time.

 

 

Were are you getting 40k subs from? 

When did Av release subscription numbers?

Originally posted by Fariic

Originally posted by javac

so, ~40K subs, ~200 cheaters == roughly 1 in 200 people (0.5%) were cheating.

 

matches very closely with my experience: i've played since release (and during beta too) and encountered one definite cheater in that time.

 

 

Were are you getting 40k subs from? 

When did Av release subscription numbers?

From his:

There are no hackers in darkf... there WERE hackers in Darkfall but all...ok 90% (but why not 100%? )  have been banned by Tacos Tzatziki breath.

Originally posted by Mrbloodworth

Originally posted by Fariic

Originally posted by javac

so, ~40K subs, ~200 cheaters == roughly 1 in 200 people (0.5%) were cheating.

 

matches very closely with my experience: i've played since release (and during beta too) and encountered one definite cheater in that time.

 

 

Were are you getting 40k subs from? 

When did Av release subscription numbers?

From his:

lmfao

thx for that bloodworth

 MrBloodworth brought up an interesting point in the other thread - Will any action be taken against those clans who either directly or indirectly profited from those cheaters who have been banned?  If, for example, a clan was funded primarily through cheats, will the clan be disbanded or have their banks emptied?

~Ripper

Originally posted by javac

so, ~40K subs, ~200 cheaters == roughly 1 in 200 people (0.5%) were cheating.

 

matches very closely with my experience: i've played since release (and during beta too) and encountered one definite cheater in that time.

 

 

Javac lies strike again: www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/233158/page/14

Don't believe everything you read. Do your own research. Don't let guys like javac dupe you into wasting your money.

213 cheaters?  Isn't that 90% of their total  subs? 

i think it is easier for AV to detect cheaters then in other games is because of the sandbox system they have. everybody is in 1 area, only instanced areas are dungeons thats also a reason why the server used to crash in larger sieges.

only reason why some1 would say that there is a small amount of ppl playing this game is because u did not get to play the game yet! biggest server crash so far was 2000+ battle in 1 area i wish i was ther!!

 Playing the "numbers" game:

Per my post above, one cheater developer has stated that there are over 300 premium subscribers for his products.  This is, percentage wise, substantially more than the 213 cheaters confirmed banned by Tasos.  That's over 300 users for a single product.  Now, in another post, cheaters verify bans for using other products:

post #5    Today, 19:01

<name removed>  New Member   About Join Date: Sep 2008 Posts: 2

Re: TODAY BAN Quote: Originally Posted by <name removed>  It wasn't just you guys. Us <tool name removed> users got the ban hammer also. ya i got ban with <tool name removed>. just curious....

So, per Tasos there were ~236 total cheaters verified (extrapolated from his 213 being 90% quote). Since 236 is only 79% (at most) of the confirmed number of other cheaters for a single third-party product and cheaters have confirmed that they've been banned for using at least two different products, it would appear that the% verified and banned is definitely a much smaller percent  than 90.  After all, 90% of the confirmed 300+ cheaters for a single product would be 270. From a conservative guess, if there's at least 300 users for one product, the number of users for the other product is probably anywhere from 100 - 300, too. Assuming 300, that's a total of 600 cheaters, only ~1/3 of which have been caught vs. the 90% reported.

I commend Aventurine on their hard stance against cheating, but it looks like they don't have nearly as good a handle on automatically identifying cheaters as they think they do.  The total number of cheaters and the total % of cheaters out of the active subscriber population, is still probably low, which is good and which supports Tasos' assertion that cheating isn't rampant, but without having verified subscripton numbers, it's impossible to verify. If Javac's subscriber numbers are accurate, the percent of cheaters jumps from .5% to 1.5%.  That's still a small total percent of the overall active population, but those numbers are unverified.  If the number of active subscribers is much lower, say 10 - 20k, then the % of cheaters jumps to 3 - 6% (using my estimated number of actual cheaters).  I'd consider 3 - 6%, especially 6 to definitely be a problem, since that means 1 in 17 players is probably a cheater.

On a side note, one of the cheaters posted the email he received from Aventurine:

Hello, This is to inform you that your Darkfall account has been suspended for use of 3rd party cheats. We're afraid this is a permanent ban because we'veconfirmed your account using such exploits. This activity is strictly forbidden by the Terms of Service which you have agreed to and there have been several announcements about our policy reminding users of the possible consequences. 

http://forums.darkfallonline.com/sho...d.php?t=150640 

When an account is banned it is verified beyond a shadow of a doubt that exploitation is taking place. We do not rely on player or GM reports or on hear say. You were detected, and also verified cheating. You are responsible for canceling your subscription. To cancel your subscription you need to go to the account management page: 

https://www.darkfallonline.com/accounts/f/default.php 

Remove your credit information by clicking on the link right on top of your billing information. Then go to the products page where you should cancel all active subscriptions if there are any. We cannot discuss this matter with you beyond this notice. Darkfall supportwill only respond to your requests with automated messages. There is no appeals process.

Thank you,Darkfall Support

What I find interesing about this is that a cheater could potentially still pay for Darkfall even though the account has been banned.  This tells me Aventurine's account management system is still a little borked.  It would be funny if a cheater ended up paying for months worth of Darkfall because he didn't read the email thoroughly and assumed his subscription wouuld be terminated along with his account, but the lack of synchronization between subscriber and game accounts could clearly have adverse affects on legitimate players/subscribers.

~Ripper

kinda BS that there is no appeals process considering the game costs money.Not that hard to be wrong, especially with an amateur team on a shoestring budget.

Originally posted by pfloydguy84

kinda BS that there is no appeals process considering the game costs money.Not that hard to be wrong, especially with an amateur team on a shoestring budget.

I have mixed feelings about that.  On one hand, cheaters suck and should be banned.  on the other hand, how is Aventurine detecting and verifying cheats? Sony was busted years ago for intruding on players' PCs in an attempt to find ShowEQ.  With Darkfall, I've heard of players falling through the world (which has happened in many other games, too).  If the automated detection includes searching through valid coordinates, would a bugged player end up being  banned by mistake?  I really hope Aventurine is dilligent about validaing true hacks/cheats vs. bugs.  At this point, we'll just need to take their word for it.

It's refreshing to see cheaters admitting they got busted, but I think we're also going to see players claiming they were banned erroneously.  Hopefully those claims turn out to be shenanigans and not actually true.

~Ripper