When musicians, especially rappers, take elements from other songs to use in their own nobody calls it cheating. It is stealing, though, if they don’t give credit and pay for it. In gaming, cheating is breaking the rules, and is unsportsmanlike at the very least. But some hacking goes beyond that into the realm of cyber crime.
http://bf4central.com/2015/02/bf4-cheaters-hardware-ban/
This new year (2015) has seen a new, larger crop of hacking cheaters in BF4. We’ve seen more blatant, obvious, unrepentant hackers than ever before. EA and DICE are working to implement stronger anti-cheat and ban methods, but so far the hack creators are still ahead. Hardware ID bans escalate the risk of hacking software use but don’t really stop it. For games which are either free or very cheap, it may be the only way to stop users from making new accounts. Battlefield 4 isn’t free, as such — but the Game Time system allows players a chance to play it free for a week, and nothing stops a hacker from just making new Origin accounts to continue play.
Hardware ID bans, even if they work, don’t address the core problem, though, which is catching them in order to ban them in the first place. Fairfight and Punkbuster seemed to be doing a decent job at stopping obvious hackers until recently. The anticheat methods may still be working, perhaps a little more slowly, but don’t do anything to deter hackers who aren’t losing any money for each new account they make. Still, if they caught them more quickly, it would make them work harder and get less use out of each new account (which would start over at rank 0 again).
In effect, hackers are stealing copies of Battlefield 4 and cheating without risk or cost. Is there anything that DICE or EA can do about while still allowing the Game Time access for free testing of new games?
I like the idea of Game Time. Like Steam’s free weekends, it gives us a chance to actually try full games, not demos, and have them long enough to judge whether we like them or not. EA just has to do something, and sooner than later, to stop them from being abused.
I wouldn’t mind if Game Time required at least one paid-for game to be on the account before it could be used. There are cheap games available, but making it cost something to get a new account to hack with might deter some people. Plus it allows the possibility to ban payment accounts too, and that might limit them even more.
Game Time accounts could be flagged (in Origin/Battlelog) so that users would be open to special scrutiny for cheat detection. An honest player isn’t going to do anything in one week to even look like they might be cheating.
Game Time could require confirmed identity for login verification. Overall, Origin’s default security doesn’t do enough to stop account hackers from hijacking accounts, or link the account to some real world ID (Phone #, credit card #, whatever else works) to ensure that user identities and accounts are linked and protected.
Short Term Defense
Game Time is the base game only, no DLC, no Premium. You can avoid any player using it simply by choosing servers with DLC maps in their rotation. This isn’t ideal, but it can save you some frustration until and if EA and DICE can remedy this problem. Servers with active admins are also good, as they can kick or ban obvious hackers before they disrupt the game too much.
I would think it would be boring to play using a program which makes the game pointlessly easy and eliminates the need for any skill, but game cheating hackers obviously don’t think that way. They don’t impress anyone with their “skills” either, since everyone can quickly spot anyone using obvious hacks. Even subtle ones raise suspicion. Part of the appeal of Battlefield 4 (and other similar games) is building up your in game achievements, and perhaps gaining a reputation on line as a good player. Or at least a fun one.
Record and report. The motto of a MW3 clan I belonged to, Ban Hackers. Even though the reports aren’t handled instantly, the EA anti-cheat team does deal with them in time and will act on them. Reporting a suspected hacker doesn’t take long.
Hijacking: Real World Game Piracy
While stealing Game Time accounts for unlimited play and cheating is bad, hijacking other player accounts — ones where we paid for the games — in order to use and abuse those accounts is even worse. This happens in BF4, but it is far worse apparently in FIFA 15 (and the earlier games), because of the transfer market. In those games, in game resources can be traded with other players, and there is a market — against EA TOS — online to purchase items with real money. EA is working to deal with that as well, and it can have fallout on Battlefield players like me. Hackers hijack accounts to make purchases with the owner’s money, and if the account has game items of value, to steal them (by trading them to other accounts).
Even without that issue, having your account hijacked risks a hacker using your game to play and cheat, and get you banned. Far better to make sure that your account is secured before that happens.
Game Accounts Never Die
A lot of players leave a game and don’t play for a time. Sometimes, we quit using an account for years — either making a new one or stopping play altogether. That account remains accessible and usable, which is fine when we decide to come back and play. It isn’t so good if a hacker gains access to it when we are no longer active, and exploits it without our knowledge. People have come back to play Battlefield only to discover that they are now banned, despite not playing for an extended time.
I hadn’t played any games on Battle.net for a few years, but this year got back into it. I went to make a new account, and discovered that I couldn’t: I already had one. I fired it up and everything worked OK, so I guess either their security works or I got lucky.
When the Battlefield Hardline Beta came out recently, I decided to try the EA.com account we used on our oldest computer with Bad Company 2. The older Battlefield games didn’t use Origin, but did have an online account. Turns out that all old EA.com accounts are also Origin accounts as well, and ours worked fine for that. No payment information was saved on it, and it had (at that time) no Origin games on it either. All the older games, even though installed on the PC, aren’t automatically registered in Origin – nor do they require it. It saved me from making a new account, and gave us one more PC to use for Origin games if we want that, so no need to clutter things up with more game accounts which will never be used again.
If you haven’t checked up a game account you once used, especially one which is from a site like Origin or Steam which has online purchases, you may want to do that, and make sure the account is still secure.
