When was the last time you saw someone get kicked for cheating? Me either. Yes, it has been that long! When Daybreak took over these products, they likely viewed all dollars as equal (and yes, a cheaters dollar is worth the same as yours when deposited into a bank account). Thus they were likely motivated to NOT enforce rules and punish cheaters by temp bans or perma bans. Since money is money, collect it all. Fast forward to today. As cheaters were not punished, others became tired of the aimbots, hit box resize, NC map hack (using the steerable rocket) and other such things. They either (A) plod along playing fair (B) move on to another game or (C) think "hey if you let this go on, then hell I'll do it too". Enough people have chosen (C) that now may be a decent percentage of the population. And here lies the final conundrum. Eventually one is left with options (B) and (C). And as people opt out via option (B), Day break is stuck having to cater and keep those who hack, they wind up as too high a percentage of the population. Eventually the luster of the hacks wears off, and the cheaters move on as well to another game. So, yes the dollars are the same at the beginning of this, but at the end they truly carry a different outcome for the product. They may chose to milk PS2, EQ2 etc... and let them whither away and hopefully the revenue will be greater than the acquisition cost upon death (net profit). Or they now would need to play catch up, and earn the trust lost in PS2 by the honest players, and invest for the long(er) term to generate net revenue. If they chose the latter, then they need to address the explosion in hacking, and fast.
I'm not sure how not banning people helps with revenue. In h1, daybreak have been banning people left right and centre, if they were just chasing the dollar it would actually make more sense for them to ban people, as a lot of people will start a new steam account and purchase the game again - and probably re buy camo etc. I would have to assume that it must be a technical issue, perhaps it is hard to detect a hack unless the person using it gets reported, idk. I have only been back on ps2 for a couple of weeks now, but i don't think I have come across any hackers yet. It might be different on your server though, I play on Briggs. Just my two cents, have a good one
i did see some pop ups in the game banning cheaters a couple of weeks ago so DBG is still looking for them but i guess the remaining cheaters are harder to find/detect now hackers will always find a way to get in a game even with the highest security installed
I've always found it odd that there are no journalist pieces on the impact to a games revenue stream from cheating. There are no community admins so anything they do to counter cheating costs money. Catch22 My personal belief is most companies now keep both sides happy, both clean and non clean users. To a point where the revenue stream sits happy.
Don't forget the padders, boosters, tkers, and fourth factioners. To say nothing of the bugs that haven't been fixed/addressed since beta.
I haven't seen one of those system messages for ages that announce 'XYZ has been banned for cheating'. I think they need to take a hard stance like Smed did on H1Z1. Ban people then make them make public apologies on YouTube to get their account back.
I don't think they announce bans anymore. What? NC have a "steerable" rocket launcher called Phoenix, it's not a hack.
Its a side-effect of the F2P formula, after all the hackers have nothing to lose. Just now a cheater came in and ruined my will to play. Not an aimbotter or something like that, you know the suspicious ones. Its the outright trough-walls & floors teleport jumping hackers that I find pecular. Don't know if he was insta banned since it only lasted a few minutes, but that's a few minutes to long given the frequency of occurrence.
It's true that cheaters can just make a new account after a ban but for some reason i've seen more cheaters in CS:GO which is a pay-to-play game. Teleporting through walls and stuff can be caused by lag, if the teleporting guy isn't killing lots of people while doing so or warping behind everyone then it's just simple lag.
Its the guys who suddenly appear from nowhere in the crowded control-point room, stand still firing a few bullets, make a run for the wall (slipping inside), coming back on the other side of the room (behind everyone), and so forth. I've seen it a couple of times the last months, it cannot be lag as the time they use from spot A to spot B is a second or two, covering a distance that would take at least ten times as long non-cheating. Once I was outside the respective building, and saw a TR medic jumping out trough the wall, then dissappearing. So I suspect they really go trough the wall and don't just liquidize when they hit it.
What I've seen so far is the abuse of lagging, especially the dearly beloved people of 3EPG (sarcasm intensifies) tend to "suddenly" become one with the walls by simply movin into them (what needs a Ping of 200+) and making use of the MCG cof, aka RNG gunfire. Clever, isn't it?
