Talk:Cheating in Counter-Strike

Untitled

I would like to dedicate this article to Jonathan "Bunka" Ross, who died May 29. 2005 after a tragic car accident. He is the one who gave me the confidence and the determination that made me start all of this. Thank you, Bunka. I will remember you until the alzheimer turns me into a drooling vegetable. Dabljuh

Requesting Protection

I hereby request protection for this article. It's been vandalised repeatedly over the past couple hours which leads me to believe that a community of vandals have made it their goal to vandalize the article. Repeated blankings and statements like 'myg0t owns j00' are a strong indicator for this. myg0t is a community (they refer to themselves as a clan) of disruptive cheaters in counter-strike that are also briefly mentioned in the article. Dabljuh 09:31, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

The reason this article has been vandalized as much as it has is because it is not encyclopedic. The article (written by people who are clearly high on a moral pedestal) offers little more than an "Us vs. Them" mouthpiece of why the reader should denounce cheaters. This has no encyclopedic value and can only possibly attract vandals who disagree with the author's slant. sirslope 02:52, 25 December 2006

Cleanup Reloaded

Ok, I have now done what I had planned for a while: I've moded the History and Analysis sections to their own articles. Have fun cleaning up the bits, should be easier now. Dabljuh 10:58, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

---

The document is fine in my opinion. As a writer of legnthy very specialised completely usless pieces of information in real life http://whisper.ausgamers.com/warstrats.htm articles, I know that you can constantly re-write/re-state what you have said and could spend the rest of your life doing so if you so wish. Fix things as they come to you, but don't get too worried over your content, it is fine, unless you feel the need to do something glaringly obvious. We have also had some excellent additons by some very helpful contributors, as is whats supposed to happen in a wiki. --Whisper555 14:26, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

---

I actually hate this new version, the long version was better, albeit probably more difficult to maintain, but its not a story you can easily seperate into chunks because if you do not know one thing then other things do not make sense. Anyhow I prefer more pertinant information rather than less and it was all pertinant to the discussion at hand, now you have to click shit to know wtf everything is, which just dilutes the spirit of the entire article. --Whisper555 09:53, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

---

I know exactly what you mean, but its near unmaintainable like that. Eventually we can get the other two sections cleaned & proofread somewhat and then reintegrate them into the main article. Maybe keep the history out, while I find it to be interesting (and worthy of being expanded) it can more easily be kept in its own article than the analysis section. Dabljuh 21:19, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

---

User:FlooK Has marked the three articles for re-merge. I will take care of it as soon as I feel like it, as I find each article to be of a relatively high quality now, most spelling errors are corrected and one big bulky article may be more fashionable than three small ones.Dabljuh 12:06, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

---

Actually I did was clarify things by changing the merge tags to the appropriate mergeto and mergefroms since there is no question of which would be the target and source articles in this case. I do however believe that the articles cover many of the same things and there is some overlap, therefore I don't see the need for separate articles unless the file size becomes a problem.

In reference to the changes I made to the article I mostly removed the concept of professional cheating. I am aware of the existence of a small community who participate in competitive cheating [1] but have never heard of organised cheating competitions for prizes. If I am mistaken in this assumption then I apologise and the content does in fact belong in the article so long as it is clear. However, due to the "all clans are cheaters especially competitive ones" slant which I am not the first to notice I took this to be an attempt at dealing with the issue of cheating in professional Counter-Strike. While cheating has been known to exist in competition and evidence of this should be part of these articles, the notion that the entire competitive game revolves around cheating is at best hard to back up and at worst defamatory to those who are honest competitors. --FlooK 15:08, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

NPOV dispute (extent of cheating)

This article is very cynical and includes far too many personal opinions of the authors.

First: No, unfortunately not. Well, I anticipated that this argument was coming at some time. I may refer you to the Bodybuilding article, in which it is also quite clearly stated that the area of professional bodybuilding has a serious problem with anabolic steroids abuse. Also, the Tour de France article contains a fairly lenghty section about the doping scandals. Cheating in online games being nearly synonymous with Counter-Strike, I sought to dedicate an own article to the subject. Unless this is not what you are about - I'm aware quite a bit of Valve/VAC-bashing is going on in the article, which can be edited out or NPOVized. Next time, state some facts in the talk page please, explain what exactly is bothering you and not NPOV, maybe register at wikipedia even, instead of just slapping an NPOV dispute on a well researched article. Dabljuh 09:27, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

Hmm how did I know a veiled anti-newbie remark was heading my way. I don't have a problem with your research, and I know cheating is a problem in online gaming. You seem to have misunderstood the NPOV check, and believe I have a problem with the subject. The problem is with your tone and use of weasel words. In some instances you are not writing an article but what is read to be your opinion. This is especially evident in the reasons to cheat paragraph and furthermore in this line, "Cheating in professional Counter-Strike is thus merely a necessity to maintain the status quo." You present it as a fact. It's one of a few lines where you imply that everyone and every clan cheats. Tips 4, 5, and 6 on how to detect a cheater are especially ridiculous. Although funny they probably have no place in an informative encylopedic article. I found "Get on with your life," to be a very informative line. Time for a review of the weasel words and NPOV articles? I thought it was especially hillarious that you removed a NPOV check from an article nearly entirely written by yourself. Of course you think it's a neutral point of view... You wrote it! Let someone else remove the NPOV check and then you'll know for sure.

Where does the article read that every clan cheats? "Cheating in professional Counter-Strike is thus merely a necessity to maintain the status quo." You present it as a fact. It is a fact. I've done quite a bit of research on the subject and this is what I learned. You are not disputing the NPOV, you are disputing the factual accuracy of the article. Weasel expressions are bountiful in the article, because the community itself is very much divided on the topic. A large part doesn't have a clue and just plays the game, others would right away sign the article with their good name. Then again some will refute it most agressively. Notice again, how there are parallels to Bodybuilding and other doping-heavy competitions.

Bring facts. Change what is wrong, and I'm sure there is quite a bit wrong in the article, but I've gone to great lenghts to maintain the NPOV. Dabljuh 17:57, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

I also think the point of view of this article is too subjective. Saying something like "It is unfortunate for competitive CS that cheats continue to exist." is fine, but "Unfortunately the state of affairs has now degenerated to a complete disaster for Valve Software" contains an absolute opinion (the statement that such a situation is always unfortunate, for everyone) and subjectively claims that the situation is an "complete disaster" for Valve, when they seem to be doing pretty well for themselves. I can think of quite a few peopl it isn't "Unfortunate" for, either -- players of other games who have seen their numbers swell since people left Counter-Strike due to all the cheating. The CS scene seems to be doing pretty well too, despite the cheating. I don't think "complete disaster" applies here, though something like "Unfortunately for many Counter-Strike players, Valve's anti-cheat has not been updated since June 2004 and cheating is very prolific on public servers." would, in my opinion, be better. This communicates the same factual data, but with no unqualified claims.

Ack. I do think though that would probably be a bit over the top npovizing. What next. "Unfortunately for some people, while other people liked it, while some disagreed and went to do something else which again others enjoyed very much, although not all of them" etc... I like to express certain things in a very clear manner, and similiarly sometimes like to see things expressed in a way that cannot be misunderstood. If there is any bias in there, a reader is unlikely going to be very confused or feel misguided or feel like someone tried to trick him into believing something specific. The sentence however is a bit shaky and can probably be reformulated in a better way.

I would still like to keep the disaster word in, because that's so figurative and is the way it is imho. Dabljuh 21:28, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Disputed/Resolution

I've made the article {disputed} to honor the fact that someone disputed its factual accuracy, especially the every progaming clan cheats tenor, wich was to be expected. However no real arguments have been made against this. I will now present logical, a priori arguments why this is the case.

Theory: All competitive pro-gamers cheat.

1. Cheats cannot be detected at a satisfying rate. This is not disputed, the inability of systems like VAC, C-D and Punkbuster to stop cheating is well documented, and the article goes in depth why this is the case.
2. Cheats give a big enough competitive advantage to allow a much inferior clan to defeat a better clan that plays pure. This is rarely disputed as skill beats cheats. It is obvious that it requires a certain expertise with the game to defeat any better clan, complete newbies cannot even cheat enough stealthy to remain undetected. Nevertheless, skill beats cheats is bull. A cheater with the fraction of the training and experience can easily defeat the highest skilled people in the world, well trained cheaters are almost impossible to beat without better cheats and / or better training.
3. Counter-Strike players are no saints, but human.

These three points make it logically, a priori clear why every pro gaming clan that wants to stay competitive has to cheat.

Now empirically, a posteriori, this can be verified by watching demos, attending to countless lans and watching pro gamers play. It can further be verified by watching pro-gaming related news, where hardly a week goes by without someone cheating too blatantly, or retired pro-gamers start to talk. One can talk to hundreds of so called pro-gamers and interview them. One can PLAY against them. These and more things I've done, and I've come to the extremely clear conclusion that all competitive pro-gamers cheat, and that competitions in Counter-Strike are decided mostly by who has the better hack.

I know not all Counter-Strike players cheat. There's a few clans I know that in fact would rather lose to cheaters than start cheating themselves. These may even call themselves pro-gamers, but in all respect and honesty: These are not competitive pro-gamers.

Unless good, valid arguments are brought why the tenor of the article should be changed, I will remove the {disputed} tag.

It's been over a week, no arguments have been made whatsoever, despite RfC'ing and constant requests, so it was righteously removed by Whisper555. Dabljuh 14:18, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

Theory: All competitive pro-gamers cheat.

That's not a theory, it's a hypothesis. And unless it can be proven ("it could be" or "noboby can be 100% sure it's wrong" does not count as proof), it remains a hypothesis --80.145.108.212 13:19, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

Get your facts straight. A Hypothesis is a pronounced explanation for a phenomenon. A Theory "will present certain axioms and rules, corresponding to a useful or interesting abstraction, and then derive non-obvious theorems from those axioms", which is just exactly what I did there.

Your bullshit argument is the same one that lets professional cheaters get away all the time. "It can't be proven (with realistic effort considering the circumstances) therefore it must be wrong". It can be very safely assumed that in competitive, yet unprotected environment with a large enough and diverse player base a large percentage of the players will cheat without second thoughts to win the competition (and thus, the prices).

I have performed large amounts of research and have ended up with the significant conclusion that Tamm was indeed the first and most visible clan, the prototypical professional cheaters. I will readd the section you removed. Dabljuh 20:22, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

If you have performed so much research, then maybe you should share your results with us. The "proof" presented so far are exactly four points:

1. it's possible

2. if they did it, it would give them an advantage

3. they are only human

4. everybody who disagrees only protects cheaters

with the same four points, I could "prove" that everybody who inherited more than 100$ from somebody killed that somebody for the money:

1. it is possible to kill somebody without anybody noticing that it was murder

2. more money == good == advantage

3. they are only human

4. everybody who says that it's ridiculous to sentence somebody based on this "evidence" is protecting a murderer

-> dispute

Bad analogy: The impossibility of being detected when cheating does not compare to the mere possibility of murder going undetected. But I will reroll the axioms anyway.

Don't forget, guys, that Wikipedia is not the place to publish original research, since original research doesn't belong in encylcopedias, but rather, academic journals. If you want to write an article that postulates whether or not cheating is widespread in competitive gaming, contact the gaming websites and magazines and have them publish your article. --Habap 18:27, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Response to NOR claim

About the NOR part, I am already familiar with it. Its about wackos and their use of wikipedia as platforms for making their crazy physics theories look established. The research I did was the research of a journalist, the research of a physicist is experimental in nature and cannot be verified by other wikipedians without a similiarly equipped laboratory.

So,for this article, the NOR does not apply. Most of the material is about 2-4 years old recompiled stuff, and has gone through the "media" long ago. What I tried to create was a single comprehensive article to what cheating is like in Counter-Strike with all its facettes. One of which is the notion that a devastatingly large portion of the online 'competitors' are cheating. Which isn't really news, either. I've attempted to explain the why and hows and its peculiarities, all of which has been done elsewhere before, and probably better too. Of course there's still plenty of FUCKTARDS that deny the scope of cheating going on in CS.

Well, See, the point is, I've been in this situation a lot of times. Mid sized lan (300 or 400 visitors) a big CS tournament, and half the clans were just cheating. What can you do? Well, I sure could walk up the winners and call them cheaters. They usually just smile at me and ask if I had PROOF.

The thing is, they imply that a detection by VAC or CSGuard (see the article for more info) would be considered proof, however not even that is always the case. VAC, CSGuard, Cheating-Death, all have been known to produce false positives, and with constant whining, many of these caught cheaters have even managed to weasel out. Professional cheaters that use nonpublic, undetectable hacks (see the article for more information) do not have to be afraid of this even. So since a long time, I have retorted the question with "You want MATHEMATICAL proof?" And then delivered this actually mathematical proof, now in an updated revision

1. Online Leagues and BYOPC LANs are unprotected competitions where cheating cannot be detected or prevented.
2. Given a large enough player base, a significant number of players will cheat if they can stay undetected.
3. Cheats in CS give a competitive advantage that make it near impossible to lose to a legitimate opponent.

These are the axioms of the theory, and they may more or less correspond to reality. Now to the corollaries:

1. A significant number of players will cheat in Online Leagues and BYOPC LANs of a large enough player base.
2. Given a large enough player base, the winner in an Online League and BYOPC LAN will always be a cheating team.
3. Any winner of an unprotected competition with a large enough player base is cheating.

Lets see how the corollaries correspond to reality. Clanbase Top 500 all cheat? check. CAL-M all cheat? check. Any small lan with more than 100 visitors, the winners of the CS tournament cheat? check.

For the section you removed there has been ample evidence that Tamm have been cheating. I think you simply removed the section and now disputed it because you are german and apparently don't like (german) clan Tamm exposed as cheaters. Keep a NPOV and gather the facts and you will stop disputing the factual accuracy.

Now others have a lot of misconceptions of what Professional Cheating means. It doesnt mean having an open cheating competition, it means taking part in an (apparently) legitimate-players only competition and cheating undetected in order to win prices.

Now, not all pro gamers cheat. Some well-reputed clans simply don't take part in unprotected competitions. The problem is, 99% of the chances the average player in CS gets to play competitively are in unprotected environments. The only Major thing that springs to mind that can be safely considered protected are some CPL and maybe WWCL events. Most lan parties don't have the means to create a protected environment, which always means providing tightly secured computers to the players. Online Leagues are just a cheaters haven, as even if they could detect a cheater (which they dont) the best they can do in that case is kick him out of the league, where as at a lan party, they might at least be beaten up, which I never have seen happened.

That means, the term "unprotected environment" applies to roughly 99% of all competitions. Its not enough to forbid cheating in the rules. Its not enough to force C-D or VAC to be enabled during tournaments. All of this has been known before, all I wanted with my article is for certain folks like the german disputer to wake up, stop spreading misinformed or intentional bullshit and face the truth. CS is a cheating mess, and I'm more sad about this than anyone. Dabljuh 22:26, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Lets see how the corollaries correspond to reality. Clanbase Top 500 all cheat? check. CAL-M all cheat? check. Any small lan with more than 100 visitors, the winners of the CS tournament cheat? check.

Then prove it...your "mathematical proof" only shows is that it would be possible - it would also be possible that any person from my example actually is a murderer. But possibilities are not enough, it's still in dubio pro reo...so PROVE it, THEN you can remove the dispute template.

And as you said, there are major tournaments which enforce a "protected enviroment", so if your hypothesis was correct, this would result in significantly worse games than usual - too bad it doesn't. Even on LANs without that much security, occasionally people should catch a high-profile cheater (if 100% of the good players cheat and the chance to catch them is anywhere above 0). But again, this does not happen... --80.145.76.31 00:56, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Two other things to think about:

1. I can remember one or two cases were medicore players suddently made their way to the top of online leagues and then declared that they had cheated their way up to get their 15 minutes of herostratic fame and could laugh about all the people getting mad at them. Now if really every top player in those leagues would be cheating, I wonder how this could be - if a medicore player is using cheats, he should still be inferior to a veteran player if that veteran was also using cheats.

2. There have been lots of people, among them several very good players, who gave up CS and are ranting about the CS community (can't blame them) and their old clans ever since. So why has none of these guys ever revealed the "evil cheating conspiracy" for spite or because they also want their 15 minutes?

What we have so far is the hypothesis that a large majority of CS players is cheating and the logic conclusion that if this was true, all good players would have to be cheating because "skill beats cheats" does not work most of the time. But so far you could not produce any evidence except for "I know it" and some name-calling.

The conclusion so far? If could be, but it's unlikely...just like it cold be that CS does not exist because it's only an illusion created by the Matrix. --80.145.93.125 11:55, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

1. If you decide from scratch to cheat and later, go public with it, you will cheat less subtly. Most cheaters are highly afraid of being detected and will be very careful not to cheat too obviously. If you go at it from scratch with this different attitude, you will cheat more and beat cautious cheaters. Also, why do you think the clans that did that were mediocre at best? I think winning a tournament with cheating, only to go public and expose the cheating problem in the community takes a lot of guts, and love for the game that I do not attribute to 'merely mediocre' players. They cheated, so what. They admitted it, that's what counts for me.

2. You have to familiarize yourself with the amount of beating i've taken (figuratively speaking) for goint public with my insights about 3 years ago, specifically calling certain clans cheaters. While I was getting the obvious nod from here or there, the overwhelming amount of feedback from inside the community was extremely negative. In IRC, I was harassed, shouted at, from being called a noob a billion times up to death threats. I am not particularly fond of that sort of abuse, and I'm a pretty strong willed (read: stubborn) guy. It made me eventually abandon the "crusade" after a few months. You need to imagine the sort of backlash people would get once they called their former clans, people they've played with lots, their friends, cheaters. Especially if they probably would have to admit to cheating themselves. This is one of the reasons why I ultimately went to wikipedia, because it is a type of protection for my person. The cheaters are very furiously defending themselves against this type of threat, and as most of the cheaters exposed these days are by technical means, I would say I am inclined to believe they are fairly effective. This is social dynamics. And its not a conspiracy. Its just everyone doing the same thing and nobody talks about it openly.Dabljuh 19:02, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Providing a proof and empirical evidence is nice, and I'm convinced (I don't play CS anymore, so I cannot make an informed decision based solely on my own experiences). However, the NOR page specifically says "Verifiability, not truth". Your arguments are well formed, but I am "not equipped" to verify them.

So, I would like other avid CS players to post their opinions of this disputed fact here. There just seems to be an inherent danger in having only one person's opinion (even if it is correct) form part of a Wikipedia article.

I'd also like to point out that, in my opinion, the real goodness of the article is in the history of cheating and in the description of how cheats worked. Some of the methods cheaters use are simply ingenious. As a non-CS player, I don't particularly care whether or not all professional clans cheat. Someone42 10:38, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

I'm in agreement with Someone42 here. I think you're correct, Dabljuh, but NOR is not just to prevent the wackos. This very argument you're having is exactly why they have NOR. If it can't be verified, it doesn't matter how true it is. I suspect you are correct about the extent of the cheating, but that is a small and possibly POV part of the article. If you can add links to external articles that concur, then it won't be labelled as OR. Another option would be to modify the statements, so that it says "It has be asserted that all CS players cheat" or something like that. Otherwise, one of the tards you mention can come and argue that Wikipedia states things that just aren't true and we could only refer back to your mathematical proof.

Excellent work, though. I mean, really excellent work. --Habap 14:17, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

I've added a number of links already that illustrate that cheating in professional environments is far from uncommon. NOR does not mean that journalistic work doesnt belong on Wikipedia. Otherwise, all wikipedia articles that werent copied 1:1 from the encyclopedia britannica would be 'original research', at least from my point of view. IMHO, It is widely accepted outside the CS scene, that Counter-Strike should be renamed Cheater-Strike. The only ones disputing this in general are of course the Cheater-Strikers themselves. I was expecting some dispute over this article, though, but thats why this is wikipedia, where they can change what's wrong. I'm sure there is some stuff plain false in the article (especially about programming details or whatever, I don't code cheats) but the conclusion - that in most online leagues and lan parties its just about "who has the best cheat" - is certainly not one of them, as it is backed up by empirical evidence. Thus, for me, People simply attacking the conclusion rather than providing new information or corrections to old ones - that might logically lead to a change of the conclusion - disqualify themselves for a sensible discussion, at least in my book. Dabljuh 19:02, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

I'd create a seperate section about the scope of cheating in CS, which states what can be verified (lots of cheaters on public servers, some "new talents" in online leagues who turned out to be cheaters) and what some people think is true (cheaters everywhere). IMO the mad paranoia about cheaters ("great shot...or aimbot?") has ruined this game more than the cheaters themselves ever could, so Wikipedia should try to provide some factual information instead of contributing to this madness. --80.145.91.249 16:36, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

I really do not believe a second article just about the scope of cheating is useful or necessary. I also do not believe that the paranoia is worse than the cheaters, as most of the time one is being suspected as a cheater, he probably really is.

If you want some personal estimates about the scope of cheating, let me give you some numbers. I believe that about 25-40% of all CS players cheat. However, by player minutes generated, the cheaters may well amount to 50%. (The numbers are a bit lower in CS:Source) I've come to realize that cheaters in CS generally play more than legit players for several reasons. Firstly, its less exhausting playing with a cheat, and secondly, its more fun if you're winning most of the time - compared to playing legit and losing most of the time to cheaters. Thus cheaters, while being the minority of players, may well contribute to the majority of player minutes. Also, cheaters more often play competitively in online leagues and thus have to practice a lot more to stay in shape (which is necessary regardless of cheating). In competitions, more than the upper half of the player base will almost always be cheating. Now THIS is original research. I did exhaustive statistics in 2002, observing several public servers, writing all the wonIDs down and quickly identifying cheaters by hand. "Cheaters" will often enable and disable cheats, depending on the gameplay, and I've counted them as being cheaters even when their cheats were disabled. I have since updated the figures now and then (although not as professionally) and the trend is very clearly increasing, by about 5% points per year. Dabljuh 19:02, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

I completely agree. Can we also remember that the argument is not whether these claims are true or false but whether they can be verified by reliable enough sources to deserve space on wikipedia? Also, which links are supposed to be about cheating at a professional level? --FlooK 00:14, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Finland Finnish megabust - An unannounced anticheat running for a few weeks detects thousands of players of all ranks

ESL A Wallhack coder notifies anti-cheaters how his cheat watermarks screenshots. LOTS of cheaters go down. (the same thing has happened years ago, too)

ESL Only shortly later, ESL completely stops its CS ladder due to the release of a new cheat

USA The X3 story. Not so inexplicable from a 2005 viewpoint.

Germany German clan admits to cheating, accuses pretty much everyone of cheating (except one clan) and is flamed to hell and back by the community

Alright, I think some aren't in the links anymore but you get the picture. There's more but I'm not paying enough attention ;) cheers Dabljuh 07:03, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Small addition. The "scene news" are full of stuff and stories like that. So anyone part of the scene still proclaiming CS would not have a HUGE FREAKING ASS cheating problem, is either completely retarded, or lying. Dabljuh 07:10, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

While some of these links are useful material for the article, how do they support the argument for cheating at a professional level? Only the X3 article is about a professional clan and that refers to an online league without mentioning cheating at all. It's also worth noting that TAU went on to become a successful team in their own right. The first three links only show cheating is a problem online and I don't see anyone denying that is true to at least some extent, if anything the ESL links only proves wrong the argument that everyone turns a blind eye to cheating. The last link is hardly a reliable source of information considering it is just a rant from a group of known cheaters who were dishonest in the first place, it might be an notable event if presented from a NPOV but it hardly constitutes evidence for anything. --FlooK 11:49, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

The leagues as a whole tend to turn a blind eye on the cheating. The top organizers usually aren't gamers, but rather manager types. "Professional" level is probably a bad term, it means so called 'pro gamers' that don't actually live off their gaming but try to achieve a reputation and fame, read more in the response below. Dabljuh 13:33, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

Those manager types often don't have a lot to do with the day to day running of the ladders and tournaments though, more often than not it's the work of volunteer admins in the online leagues. I would say it's less to do with turning a blind eye and more to do with the difficulties involved in proving someone is cheating over the internet, after all there is no benefit for a league to deliberately be so negligent.

As for the professional thing, can we drop the "pro gamer" and "professional cheater" misnomers? I'm perfectly aware of how the term is used by some but just because a few gamers use the word professional (or a shortened version of it) to describe someone who is simply more dedicated or skilled (or cheating as you might argue) doesn't change the meaning of the word. Using it in this way is confusing to the uninitiated reader as well as ambiguous when true professional gaming is on the rise due to leagues and tournaments which you have yourself have said are at least less likely to allow cheating. --FlooK 15:36, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

Those links show the same problem this whole discussion shows: what can be proven are some cheaters in the leagues (~75 out of 450 000 ppl in the ESL caught cheating) and cheating on public servers, but when it comes to proving what you claim, there is nothing, only accusations.

Since you have been unable to verify your claims, I will now remove them again. And please don't start an edit war about it, just accept that these theories, as good as they may seem to you, simply do not belong here. Quote from wikipedia:no original research:

The fact that we exclude something does not necessarily mean that material is bad – Wikipedia is simply not the proper venue for it

Your theories about the scope of cheating especially in non-public gaming do not meet the requirements described on wikipedia:no original research and wikipedia:verifiability, so they don't belong here. Put them on a seperate page and link it, or add a paragraph where you describe your theory and clearly state what can be clearly verified and what is just theory --80.145.87.57 11:42, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

450'000 people in the ESL, MILLIONS of screenshots. Do you honestly imply they checked them all? bullshit argument.

Additionally, wallhacks normally consist of about 2 lines of code, and so they are a dime a dozen. I'm not surprised by the small number of cheaters detected using A wallhack, I'm surprised so many used the SAME one. You're just trying to confuse people with bullshit statements and distract them. If, for example, one assumes that at very best, 5% of the 1o1-ladder wallhackers had used this cheat, you can assume 1500 players in the 1o1 ladder used any wallhack. The ESL 1o1 league consists of currently 1800 players...

Thirdly, while wallhacks give any player an advantage, the advantage given in 1on1 situations far outstrips what any other cheat could possibly give the cheater, as in CS, 1on1 consists mostly of extremely non fun camping. What they did was to check only the last couple months 1on1 top ladder screenshots only (those are obligatory in order to have 'proof' for the result of the match), and that is where they got those 75 cheaters. Amongst others, they caught the then #1 ranking player. This incident had shocked the upper managment of the league so badly that they suspended the entire ladder the next best chance.

Theories? That Tamm cheated is widely known. Also, they were the among first Counter-Strike "pro gamer" superstars as their rise coincided with the retail version's release and the wide attention delivered to the before then rather underground mod. The only thing "original" the article states is the combination thereof, that they essentially paved the way for the new generation Counter-Strike "Pros".

Go back to germany, TAMM-fanboy.Dabljuh 13:33, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

That may be but where are the sources for the TAMM section? Like I said before I wouldn't consider the word of former cheaters on a webpage particularly reliable information, all that proves is that an accusation was there. --FlooK 15:36, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

You do consider non-cheater accusations more reliable? You have to understand, TAMM were accused by pretty much everyone. At that time, they became synonymous with pro-gaming cheaters in the german language area. Their biggest achievement wasn't being the first clan to cheat, its being the first clan to cheat and not be shy of publicity. They even released a (badly received) book about CS tactics, and their success and fame had inspired many newcomers to follow in their tracks. TAMM disbanded in 2001, just when anti-cheat measures started to become available and the level of cheating had gained painful heights. (Although I do believe the breakup was rather personally motivated than 'professionally').

Even if they had not cheated, they would still be an integral part in how pro-gamers have evolved and also attained their bad reputation, and thus belong in the article. They are part of the History of Cheating in Counter-Strike. None of this is "Original Research" in any meaning of the word, with the possible exception of the mere recognition of TAMM's important role in the developement of "Pro-Cheating".Dabljuh 19:15, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

Since cheating like they did is by nature dishonest, yes I would take the word of someone else more seriously. If TAMM were being accused by everyone and it was more than people upset at being beaten then there will be plenty of reliable sources on those accusations. If a high profile clan like them were known to have cheated (as the original section suggests) then there will without a doubt be record of that left on the web too. You're right about the section in question not being original research though, half of it appears to be nothing but your opinion. — FlooK 17:04, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

as most of the time one is being suspected as a cheater, he probably really is.

Sure, if we accept your claim that most CS players cheat I could randomly accuse somebody and he would probably be a cheater. But like the rest of the pretty cardhouse you are building here, this also falls apart once you no longer assume that everybody is cheating

Now THIS is original research

Nope, that's called "baseless accusation". Also, you are contradicting yourself: first you tell us that all good players in online leagues and also on LANs cheat because it is impossible to catch them. Now you tell us that you could pinpoint cheaters by simply spectating on a public server... To put it short: What you are doing is accusing the whole community of being cheaters (which many players would consider the worst possible insult) without any proof, all your "mathematical proof" and "journalistic research" simply falls apart once you no longer assume that everybody is cheating. But of course that does not matter to you, since you are the sole keeper of the holy wisdom who fights to open the eyes of the people, despite being persecuted by the evil rulers of this world and ridiculed by the people...(if you find any sarcasm, keep it). And after you took too much flak on just about every forum and IRC channel for calling every CS player a cheater or moron, you finally decided to hijack wikipedia, so you could "legitimate" your theories (although I admit that you did a great job in many others parts of the article).

And that is EXACTLY the reason why we have NOR; so put your accusations on a website and link it or maybe add a short paragraph about it in the article (that's what I meant with "section"), but it clearly does not belong into the main article. --80.145.74.4 22:07, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

TAMM

Alright I start the discussion here now about TAMM. My opinion is they've cheatet. The reason for this is the very high trust I put into an admittance statement of a clan that deliberately uncovered that they cheated after they've won a tournament.

The reason for this is that other people's accusations would not be remotely as believeable. There have been plenty of accusations and suspicions against TAMM in clanbase and the former DeCL, but none of them are even remotely as credible as the original eF accusation.

The reason for this is simple: only eF knew (and proved they knew) what they were talking about. Those other clans can be safely assumed to have 'mostly' not cheatet back in 2000, and in 2000, only few people in the whole world had an idea what cheats could do.

I was an avid CS player that time and I remember how I felt ambivalent towards the accusations against TAMM. Of course all those accusations could have been bollocks and whining noobs. I've been accused of cheating so many times myself, most people simply have no idea what they are talking about and just want to whine for whining's sake. Tamm was an AWESOME clan. They had played for years even before CS, like myself, other shooters, and starting CS was only a small step in a history of personal ownage. Tamm became the idols of a large number of young CS players in the german speaking countries, when they won several publicity tournaments and ultimately even released a tactics book for CS (which was badly received.

So either way, for a long time, I couldn't really tell if TAMM were cheating or not. It could be, it might be, or probably not. The number of accusations against them might not have been out of thin air, on the other hand, they rised throughout a time where cheats started out being a rare phenomenon and ended with it being the curse of the community. Maybe, maybe not.

What ultimately made me conclude that they have cheated without a doubt is indeed, solely eF's final statement. I am not easy to convince of such a thing as one of the most famous clans, and thus I would like to elaborate why I put so much credibility in eF:

1. They KNEW what they were talking about. Most of the other accusations and suspicions were from clans that are unlikely to have cheated at the point, and given the desolate information the broad community was given about cheats in 2000 and even 2001, (remember I didn't wrap it all up in this article until 2005) none of them are credible. eF KNEW very well how cheats operated, how they could be concealed and how easy it is to use whatever, even on Lan-parties. That alone gives their accusation more credibility than anything else encountered.
2. They didn't have a motive to badmouth Tamm. Yes, they were cheating, but they did it right from the start to see how far a clan can get that systematically cheats. They did with the intention to learn more and go public after a while, and if there is anything coming close to a 'noble' motive to cheat, there you have it. Why would a clan that cheats only for journalistic reasons have an interest in falsely accusing a living Legend like Tamm?
3. They were never caught. They simply had their coming out after a while. If they had been caught they might accuse other clans to distract from their own case, but this is not what happened. They admitted cheating out of the blue, as a final statement and reasoning for leaving Counter-Strike, and leave a Legacy to the players. Other clans were caught later and quickly went on to accuse pretty much everyone they ever played against. Not eF.

For these reasons, I can only give the highest credibility rating to eF. In fact, I can only think of two more clear hypothetical events that would weight heavier.

1. TAMM get physically caught cheating. However this is impossible as they left CS "for personal reasons" right when anti-cheat measures started to become effective.
2. Former TAMM members admitting they had cheated. That may or may not ever happen.

I salute eF. This is the only incident ever where I can say a cheater clan did the right thing.

So therefore I can conclude, given all the circumstantial evidence and a highly credible testimony, I can conclude: Tamm had the means, the motive, and the opportunity. Tamm have cheated, without the shadow of a doubt. But with them being legends, there is of course a lot of bad blood from (former) TAMM fans that simply refuse the idea of their childhood heros having cheated. They do not do so for objective reasons but solely for their own bellyfeel.

Therefore I pledge for the re-entry of the TAMM sections into the article. However I would agree with the sections in question being slightly toned down. Tamm ARE a piece of history of cheating in Counter-Strike, if their fans it want to be or not.

The only objective reason I can think of why the TAMM parts should not belong into this article is because it is mostly an european, and german at that, phenomenon.

Thank you for your time reading.

• I've not got any huge problems with this section myself. Thanks for going into more depth about the eF thing than I could tell from the link though, it probably is the best thing to reference since a CB or deCL/ESL link would be a bit of a joke considering so many people have been blindly accused on those ladders (you & I included).

Personally I have no problem with it being added back in so long as it is toned down. My biggest problem with the original are these two parts

1. " Tamm were hailed as new superstars by most people who did not know the nature of their talent at that time. " — This implies that the nature of their talent is known to be cheats.
2. " the standard tactic for professional Counter-Strike cheaters everywhere: insult the one who called them "cheater" as a 'n00b.' " — And this I feel also has a biased slant on it, plus the information is fairly useless considering falsely accused clans are just as likely to react in exactly the same way.

Without proof that they cheated it shouldn't be stated in the article but due to the time of the accusations (when top level CS was getting more serious) the accusations themselves are probably worth including. The article should have an example or two of high level cheating but there are better and more verifiable examples out there. —FlooK 18:12, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

I agree with you that the Tamm section should be toned down somewhat. As you have displayed the skills needed, I would like you to rewrite it. TAMM's section was always and has been in the history section of the article for good reason, as they are an incident relevant to the history of cheating, and little else. What I miss are some really good examples of cheating from the USA or anything but europe. As an european I am mostly familiar with the scene in europe and much less so with american clans or even asian ones. If you, FlooK and Whisper could bring up good, high profile case studies from the USA or Australia, it would add a lot more desirable internationality to the article and make it less europe centric. We could then add another section to the article, "Case Studies" or something where examples are given of well known, high profile clans systematically cheating. Dabljuh 02:03, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

If there was a solid clue that $CLAN cheated, it should be toned down somewhat. If there was definite proof that they did, it should go back in as it was. As long the accusations can only be backed up with "I know it" and name-calling, it should stay out. --80.145.103.138 19:37, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

One more thing to think about concerning eF's accusations: Why did they win?

They were a fairly average clan, had no previous experience with cheating and only used some cheap public cheats (according to their statement). But still they managed to get to the top of the league undefeated and within weeks. In an enviroment controlled by clans with players who are not only veteran players but also expert cheaters using highly sophisticated private cheats, this sudden success would have been (nearly) impossible --80.145.103.138 20:27, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

You should stop insisting that you hump your mother. What are you arguing about? That back in 2000, not everyone in the league was a cheater? I don't doubt it. Read "Paradigm Shift", about until 2001, even in leagues, organized cheating was a rather isolated phenomenon. This is about wether TAMM cheatet not. What are you criticising? Shut up please, finally. Dabljuh 10:23, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Now I'm really impressed...you can use other "arguments" than my nationality. Unfortunately, calling me a mother... is rather inept, even "necrophile" would not work since her body was never retrieved. --80.145.104.1 10:38, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

Cheat Site Links

I would love to include a few cheat sites with downloadable, working public cheats. Most anti-cheaters consider the spreading of cheat sites to something very evil, to be morally condemned. I couldn't disagree stronger. One reason why we do have so many private hacks is because cheat sites are popping up and go offline before many of the anti-cheat coders can get their hands on them. If only those self-proclaimed anti-cheaters would finally realize that spreading cheats sites would reduce the probability of those cheats to stay below the radar of the anti cheat coders, that understanding and using cheats is just as important to anticheaters as it is to cheaters. The only ones who want cheater sites to stay undetected are the cheaters themselves. They have the hacks already, now all that remains for them is to stay below the radar. There are cases where an 'update' war between an AC coder and a cheat coder wages. In those cases, again, the cheaters already have the website known where they can get the latest version of their cheats if an AC detects it.

Cheaters always seem to be one step ahead of the anti-cheating community, because the anti-cheat community choses to limit the amount of information going into and through them.

Personally I am not against 'hacking' per se, that means, altering the game experience or giving someone an unfair advantage as long as all players agree with it going on - it could be used to give a weaker player an advantage so to enhance gameplay over stronger, more experienced opponents. Even for the sheer sake of learning about cheats, it is important that people do have access to hacks. There are dedicated cheater servers for the purpose of hacking that I am fine with. Hacking however becomes cheating, and morally wrong, if players start cheating on regular servers for the sheer sake of destroying the gameplay for the others, or to pretend ones skill wouldn't be based on a program.

Now whatever you can download from any of those websites that I could list, they are all, by definition, public cheats. Valve and UnitedAdmins have access to those sites too, and are able to block those public hacks, effectively preventing anyone from using them on secured servers or in a competitive environment. The real cheats, that real cheaters use, are never going to be detected by VAC or CD- they are either greatly modified public cheats, or homemade from scratch, maybe with some codebase added from other cheats. These types of private hacks usually cannot be downloaded anywhere except for the (albeit) rare cases where a cheat site stays below the radar and the website disappears shortly thereafter.

The reason why I am not going to include links to cheat sites is because those hacks often contain malicious code - transmitting CD-Keys to the author, or potentially even installing a trojan. Comparatively, if I wrote a primer on hacking or anything, I would not link to a website that exploits your internet explorer and formats your HD right away if you click on it. Some people just don't read and click on anything. And additionally to that, cheating violates the Half-Life EULA.

Thank you for reading, Dabljuh 22:29, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Links to cheat sites continued

Just a sugestion: if cheat sites are transient, then the article should probably not link to them. 217.146.109.253 21:02, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

Cheat sites should generally not be linked to in the article. I've tried to create a separate article that contained lists of actual, publicly available cheats and a list of notorious urls where to get those, but it was eventually deleted because it was linkspam. In the talk page, it should be ok however if cheat sites are linked to informally. Dabljuh 05:58, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

Removed this link from the main page: EliteCoders.org Multiplayer cheat downloads for Valve games, which both doesn't exist and violates the decision here not to include cheat site links. --Habap 14:24, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Fixed up some things about VAC and Cheating Today

I hope the changes are satisfactory It keep the article up to date Cheers Whisper555 16:26, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It is very much appreciated Dabljuh 15:58, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Well I updated the Cheating Today Section and was reverted. wtf?

--Whisper555 17:21, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

I think this post is too early to be referring to my changes to this section but I've altered it to sound a little less subjective. Some recent stats or comments by Valve would be really useful references for this section as I agree it does need some current information and an better explanation of VAC2. —FlooK 18:12, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Flook as a GSP Game Operator I can say I base my opinions on the following:

I do not see cheats on our Source Servers

Nobody complains about cheats in our Source Servers in our IRC chat channels

We do not receive cheat reports (demo + screenshots) on players in our Source Servers (maybe 1 a week and we never see that person come back anyhow, yay VAC2)

Now compare this to my current experience with out CS 1.6 Servers.

Pick any random CS 1.6 Server we run and you can usually find 1 or 2 blatant cheats

People complain constantly in our IRC chat channels about cheats in CS 1.6

We constantly receive valid cheat reports of people cheating on our CS 1.6 servers (several a day. Hello VAC2, are you even working?)

We have 20 SRCDS & 20 HLDS running of more or less the same sort of map/server setups so it is a fairly reasonable comparison, and this does not include our bookable servers, which are extensive in number, and also serves to explain why the opinion was partially subjective but also objective as well.

--Whisper555 04:02, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

The biggest change of VAC2 over previous anticheats and VAC1 however is the delayed
banning system, that gives any detected user a high, but not 100% probability to have his Steam
privileges removed by the end of a several-weeks cycle, depraving the mainstream cheaters of accurate
informations on which cheats are currently detected and how.

The main drawback for this approach is that a large number of cheaters are rampaging public servers,
unaware that they will be banned at a later date, or even while aware, exploiting the time given to
them for destructive behavior. This means that often while public servers appear cheat-free at the
beginning of the week, they seem 1.6ish at the end.

The large amount of experience with the cheats-anticheat race and the very large number of cheaters
in Counter-Strike additionally seem to have spoiled many cheaters. In a lucrative turn of events for
Valve, incidents are known where cheaters get 2 or 3 legitimate steam accounts banned, only to cheat
happily with their newest one.

Most of this is just plain wrong or makes very little sense. Vac has ALWAYS used delayed banning, the only difference being with VAC2 is that they seem to be using an extremely long ban delay, but never the less, the underlying principles have not changed.

Delayed banning has always had the drawback of making it appear VAC (which ever version) is not working, even if it is. It also allows cheats to run around on a server for quite sometime before anything is done to stop them.

The Last paragraph leaves me completely confused as to what the hell the point, whoever wrote it, was trying to get at?? --Whisper555 06:02, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

Probably you don't see any cheats in Australia, but here in Europe they're fairly rampant.

Oh and VAC1 didn't alway use a delayed banning system. I got myself banned once attempting to test a range of cheats for their vac-proofness and forgetting about the ban (I used to do that back when I scripted for CSGuard). And it was immediate and for 1 year, although it originally said 5 years.

What I was trying to get at was that VAC2 is very different and way superior to VAC1, and that the cheaters don't "get" it and still pretend its VAC1 where they just have to get a newer key and be a bit more careful about the "VAC-Proof" cheats. Because: With VAC2, there are no "proof" cheats. Dabljuh 21:41, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

The fact of the matter though is, VAC1 has nearly always operated as a delayed banning system despite your own personal experiences.

Also, can you have another crack at that last paragraph, as I still don't really get what you are talking about.

Thanks --Whisper555 04:16, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

Ok, supersimpledumbeddown

VAC2 has the ability to detect ANY cheat, even private/nonpublic hacks.

Thus:

There are no VAC2 proof cheats. Anyone who says different lies or is badly informed.

A drawback of the VAC2 cheat detection method is that its detection speed is much slower. It CANNOT detect any hack instantly. It does so over a very long time, which makes delayed banning another necessity.

Updates to VAC2 are still needed, but they do not add detection to previously undetectable hacks, instead, they just speed up the detection.

THERE ARE NO VAC2 PROOF CHEATS.

Cheaters are stupid and don't get it and still think the VAC1 rules apply. Thus they get banned by the thousands and don't learn, thinking they made a mistake of sorts but basically VAC1 rules apply anyway

Thus they get banned over and over.

Why? BECAUSE THERE ARE NO VAC2 PROOF CHEATS!

Dabljuh 06:25, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

NOSTEAM

Quite a few of us are almost 100% sure NOSTEAM is still an issue

How to prove without giving away cheat site locations?

In actual fact Valve have stated that VAC2 will detect NOSTEAM as a cheat, which indicates to me at least, that they haven't been able to block the underlying ability to bypass STEAM Authentication correctly.

Personally I have no problem posting links to cheat sites. I'd really like to see a comprehensive and extensive list of cheat-sites. I attempted to do something like that, but the article was eventually deleted because it was mostly linkspam. There's no problem posting sites in the talk section, though. I wonder how VALVE wants to detect NOSTEAM users, anyway, since the idea of NOSTEAM is to make the games usable without being tied to the Steam network, like the name implies. So will steam search the plate for a nosteam-steam installation on the harddisc? wouldn't that, I don't know, violate privacy rights somewhat? Dabljuh 18:26, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

They can already check on files, so I expect the EULA says something about waiving your rights to that information. It's not like they're scanning for random information (credit card numbers, compromising photos or such), but only for specific game-related files and, even then, only some characteristics of the files (filename, size, time-stamp, etc). Kind of like the gate keepers at sporting events checking your bags to make sure you don't bring in your own food or drink. I am sure their lawyers have looked over the whole thing. --Habap 14:26, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

Factual Clarification

I just wanted to clarify some technical points. I also think that you need to back up your statements and remove a lot of the subjective material from the article, but I won't be specific on that since it seems to run through the topic as a whole. Remember that you are writing this article for people outside the community -- and even many people within the community would consider the use of "pwn" or "n00b" to be a sign of immaturity and unprofessional writing.

Replacing client.dll and datafiles This old method was actually not too different to client hooking. The original client.dll was never replaced (at all times, Half-Life was able to detect a modified client.dll in the mod folder through checksumming). Originally, it worked by putting the wrapper DLL in the valve\cl_dlls folder and writing a batch file or other program that would 1) delete cstrike\cl_dlls\client.dll 2) start the game 3) replace cstrike\cl_dlls\client.dll. Due to the way Half-Life worked, the net effect of this was that the game defaulted, upon being unable to find the mod client, to the original HL client which it assumed was in the valve\cl_dlls folder -- which would actually be the wrapper DLL. Then, before the client could be checksummed with the game server, your batch file or program would replace the original mod client, and that file would be the one used in the checksum. After Valve fixed this, the wrapper DLL was loaded by intercepting and replacing the parameter of the LoadLibrary call to load a different DLL file. This worked right up until the introduction of Steam and the custom PE format.

To summarise: These work the same as client hooks, except that they wrap every DLL function rather than just a few. The entire client is never replaced -- your wrapper simply loads first and then pulls in the original client, intercepting every function call. The reason this no longer works is not because of the client/server checksum, but because the current client.dll is not a standard Windows executable, and so can't be loaded with LoadLibrary or wrapped simply. These early wrapper DLLs did not simply offer addition script functionality -- they had access to all the same options that current cheats do. OGC and HLH were originally wrapper DLLs.

Hooks Client hooks no longer work by using the Windows API to intercept calls. They haven't done so since the client module was encrypted (before VAC was released). The current hook method is usually v-table modification, which is not specific to Win32 but a symptom of many OOP languages on most platforms. Colour aimbots were the earliest cheats, and were not client hooks. I never used one, but I don't believe they hooked anything at all -- they simply ran in parallel with the game and read the pixels from the video buffer. XQZ et al effectively made them obsolete.

To summarise: The Windows API and DLL system is irrelevant today. The modular nature of Half-Life is still relevant

Driver manipulations OPENGL32.DLL is not a video driver. OpenGL and DirectX are APIs, not drivers. Your video driver will provide an implementation of each API, but the modules manipulated by most cheats are not drivers themselves. Intercepting OpenGL calls is not driver manipulation -- if you have to give it a name, it's really API hijacking or just "OpenGL hooking" or "DirectX hooking". There are a few cheats that manipulate the video driver directly (usually its OpenGL or DirectX implementation), but they are by no means widespread and none have reallly made an impact. I have never seen mouse drivers manipulated -- usually, the Windows API is used to move the mouse for an aimbot.

To summarise: This is not driver manipulationg but graphics API hooking.

Proxies Cheats in which the crosshair does not correspond to the position of an aimbot shot are not proxies. They're simply a type of aimbot -- one that manipulates the player's aim angles without also changing the player's view angles. This is related to the spinhack, which works in the same way. These cheats are usually client hooks, but that isn't a necessity -- the same effect can be achieved to a lesser extend in pure OpenGL hooks by manipulating glRotate, but this OpenGL hooking results in some visual artifacts where the game fails to draw all the visible polygons, since it thought you were looking in another directly.

To summarise: I don't think this section needs to exist. There aren't any cheats that work by manipulating the network stream exclusively -- mainly because everything can be accomplished with client hooking.

---

Immature players

This whole section is a lot of personal opinion and unqualified statements (How many CS players actually have ADD? How many veteran CS players have you polled about the realistic guns attracting immature players? How many players can you prove turned to cheating because they weren't as good as the older players?). I think you can talk about how CS players are perceived by other game communities, but almost none of these claims or viewpoints can be backed up by facts -- the CS community, like many, is large and varied. Most evidence for this kind of thing is anecdotal, and has no place being stated as fact in Wikipedia.

---

Modern, LAN-proof aimbots

Again, your use of the term proxy is wrong here. These aimbots are simply forms of client hook. This type of aimbot doesn't have a specific name.

---

Tips on how to detect a cheater on a public server

Points 5 and 6 have no place in this article. Neither is qualified, and neither, in my experience, is at all true.

---

If you want, I can go ahead and make all these changes.

Excellent!

You are very much invited to change and go into more detail. You also seem to have read an earlier version of the article, it's split in three now, they've been cleaned up somewhat, and look better and more professional than ever. I hope.

Some most excellent and valuable additions. I was aware that Opengl highjacking isn't technically a driver manipulation, but I did not want to go into this much detail. What I wanted to point out is that essentially any (executable, or rather executed) file on the system can work as a cheat. I am unfortunately not a programmer, and while exploring the technical details would be highly interesting and beneficial, I am not certain that me or the casual reader would understand it. However, be certain to add everything you find important enough to mention, as some programmers absolutely will read these pages, just like everyone else may.

About proxies: The oldest known aimbot for the quake engine was a proxy. Seeing that the half-life engine is just quakeworld with a vengeance, it is very naive to think that there are no network (proxy) based cheats for halflife just because one can't download them at mpcdownloads or <enter any other notorious site here>. Understand that professional cheaters can have money in the 5 digits available to pay for their own, private and totally undetectable hack, which will never leak to the public. I know, many amateur cheaters think that all that professional cheaters use would be 'upgraded' recompiles of OGC and hexed XQZs, but I've seen and used stuff that makes both of them (well, OGC at least) look like what they really are by comparison - flashy toys for kiddies.

About the naming, this being an (almost?) encyclopedic article, I found it necessary to establish some sort of vocabulary. Yes the terminology is often my own creation, as the public cheat scene's vocabulary is not sufficiently distinguished. E.g., for aimbots I've found 'lock on' not to be distinctively descriptive enough, as any aimbot will 'lock on' if only for so short, so I've chosen the word 'slave' over it which is much more clear about the difference. If you find a better word for something, change it, but then change it in all instances necessary in order not to confuse the reader.

One last comment: I am myself a very avid CS player. 5.56mm ammo and shotgun shells are running through my veins, and thus I might be slightly biased about describing the general, perceived maturity of CS' players. Seriously, while I have made a lot of friends and have gotten to know a lot of great people, I also have seen the definite worst the internet and the entire of mankind hast to offer. If god would've ever come down to his creation and start playing Counter-Strike, he'd smite the Internet after a few hours, and maybe end a bit more over 6 million human lifes. In fact, I could have written that 90% of all CS players should be impaled and burnt to death, and still not perceive it to be biased in any way. I mean, seriously. The game is great, but the people who play it are a shame for humanity most of the time.

Ok, one very last comment: You look like you could indeed add some valuable info to the article(s) and maybe the rest of wikipedia. Why not register yourself? It would make it easier to identify yourself.Dabljuh 21:14, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Current article is great!

Well, I've taken your advice and registered. I think the article as it stands now is far better than the original version. I apologise if I seemed a little terse with my original post -- that wasn't my intention. I agree with you that the article shouldn't get bogged down in the technical issues of cheating, so I'll try to think of a way to express what I've already written in this discussion in a way that's more accessible. I used to be fairly active in the cheat programming community, so perhaps I can write some additional content that could explore different facets of the topic.

I agree with you that a network-stream aimbot is perfectly possible in Half-Life (while different to Quake, the Half-Life netcode has been taken apart and analysed by several people and with the delta-packing information provided by the SDK it wouldn't be hard to extract or insert information). However, I don't think any such aimbots are widespread today, simply due to the redundancy issue. With the current anti-cheat technology around, there's no disadvantage to using a full client hack, so any form of limited packet-modifying proxy cheat would be much less effective. I'd like to go into more detail on the non-view-altering aimbot (and invent some kind of a name for it, hmm) in the main article, since it could definitely become an important aspect of league cheating in future, which its near-invisibility at LANs and in personal demos. HLTV usually provides the best means of catching it, since while watching with HLTV or through first-person spectating, the view certainly does move and in much the same way as any other aimbot.

I wonder if the best course of action could be for me to write a companion article detailing the technical aspects of cheat programs, rather than try shoehorn explanations in laymans terms into the main article. I don't know enough about Wikipedia to know if this kind of thing is done, or how, though. Perhaps some people wouldn't want too much detailed information to be available on a large site such as this? I think that any kind of technical information should be freely available if possible, but I'm willing to listen to opinions on the subject. --Deaf-mute 22:54, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

---

Try not to skimp on the actual technical details if you can. Trying to get a straight answer out of Valve about very basic issues is like extracting impacted wisdom teeth. The spirit of the Wikipedia almost demands that as much detail is provided as possible or if not, you reference information held else where with the Wikipedia. Currently I do not see many, if any topics that explore the whole Online Game Cheats and Hacking creating and use outside of what has been descibed here, and any decent explanation that takes us from knowing a little to at least getting a reasonable understanding with correct vocabulary used in the right context makes the article all the more stronger --Whisper555 15:33, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

H4x0red USB Mice

Your changes are again a bit premature imho. While it is likely that the 'mouse hack cheat' is merely an urban legend, as I don't know if anyone has ever seen such a mouse in action and even the possibility of the technique is questionable, a lot of pro gamers seem to believe it and insist on forcing everyone to use ps2 mice instead of usb. It may be a sort of superstition but blankly omitting that part isn't exactly wise, as, see, I do not know if this is just an urban legend or something that someone actually did, and you don't either. I figured it would be most wise to include it but clearly state that this is probably just an urban legend. Why are you insisting on removing it? Dabljuh 12:09, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Such a hack is impossible to design. Until someone can provide credible documentation of proof of concept, such hoaxes should be dismissed out of hand along with the "Good Times" virus which operates under a similarly jargon-filled, yet technically nonsensical M.O. There is no way to hide rouge software in a mouse, and having Wikipedia suggest to Counter-Strike tournament managers that they forbid USB mice is perpetuating the scare tactic that was likely begun by urban pranksers the likes of myg0t.

I would like to clarify that I am not insisting on removing this portion of the article entirely. I would be satisfied with the last revision I made, which mentions that the "mouse hack" is a myth and does not contain the suggestion to ban USB mice. Also, should we move this to the discussion page of the article itself? --Malathion 12:15, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Not being a l337h4x0r, I would not know how realistic the claim is. I can believe it is possible to execute code from an USB device on a windoze machine when an USB device is plugged in. The thing that makes this claim doubtable in my opinion is that I don't know how hard (or even possible) it is to modify the code on the mouse. Some mice may contain programmable chips that have enough capacity to contain the normal operating parameters of a mouse as well as the injected hack. I can't say it is impossible to design. And about unlikeliness, 5 years ago, I would have thought it was unlikely that the entire pro gaming scene is dominated by cheaters, but here we are.Dabljuh 12:29, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Added why USB is EVIL anyway. Its EVIL I TELLS YOU! Hope you can live with the current version, it should be clear that it is most likely a hoax although it has not been debunked properly, and gives you a reason to disallow USB anway. Dabljuh 13:09, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I'm sorry, and I'm really trying to find a way not to be too blunt here, but if you find such claims "believable", it's because you do not understand how these things operate, as you admit. Let me put it this way: Since you don't know how realistic this claim is, do you really think it's a good idea to make recommendations based on such speculation? I'm sorry, but given your limited knowledge of computer hardware, I might be able to convince you that it's possible to hide a radio transmitter in my shoe that "injects" the hack over wireless ethernet, and thus we should ban shoes from tournament competition. Such a hoax hack is no more implausible than one that can be stored in a USB mouse but not a PS/2 mouse.

But really, this is what happens when people make concrete claims without sources. Please reference your sources and find actual evidence of such a hack existing, or remove the recommendation. --Malathion 08:13, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I think its an urban legend amongst cheaters. But USB has a much more complicated device detection routine than PS/2, to allow hotplugging. Additionally, USB devices contain modifiable firmware. MS and Windows is known for its lack of regard for security, and a buffer overflow in the routine is well within the realm of possibility. It would even be possible that windows intentionally lets USB devices execute code on a kernel level when plugged in, knowing the general code of conduct of MS for such things. Claiming it was impossible without concrete proof for either, is not better that claiming it was possible. I'm happy with the current revision, which states that it is most likely an urban legend, but tells you why you should disable USB anyway - because of tiny USB drives that can be smuggled and plugged in with great stealth. And you can definitely store more than just a hack on those.Dabljuh 10:13, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Can you actually cite evidence of a mouse with the memory to make this even theoretically possible? I am aware of one that Razer will be releasing with a small amount of flash memory but it isn't even released yet and even when it is I doubt that would allow it to execute code. Actually, is there any evidence that this is even an urban legend among gamers? As for disallowing USB gear or disabling USB ports I've never heard of that and it's certainly not the case in most tournaments. There is a tendency among some to use PS/2 mice for technical reasons but if anything USB peripherals are encouraged for ease of hot-swapping, for example note the popularity of USB soundcard headsets in the competitive gaming community due to the consistency across different computers they provide. I'd really like to see some sources on this and some of your other more extreme claims. --FlooK 15:35, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

First understand that most of the material I brought together in the article dates back to 2002 to 2003 when I started seriously researching the issue of "what the shit happened to my favorite game?!?". Most of the conclusions I've reached are relative to that time period, and 2 or 3 years are a terribly long time in today's gaming. However, as should be clear from reading the article, the cheating problem is systemic and inherent to the principle of the game, and with the exception of the slow developement of cheating-detection systems like Autoban or HackCam, nothing has changed much within this systemic sphere.

So, during my research on the topic 2002-2003 I have nonformally interviewed many 'Pro Gamers' to gain more insight into the inner workings of the progaming/cheating scene. When I first heard about USB mice containing hacks, I thought the guy was just messing with me. Then I heard it a second time, from a different source, and was intruiged. When I heard it a third time from yet another clanner, I came to the conclusion that there either is something about it, or its a (deliberate?) hoax amongst some pro-gamers. I am not familiar enough with the inner workings of USB mice that I can technically refute the claim, (although I believe it is bull) and I have come to conclude that certain clans would benefit from the notion of being able to cheat even in situations where nothing but mouse and keyboard may be taken to the tournament. It is important to understand that 'the other guy is cheating' can be a devastating blow to the morale of a player that is unable to cheat. So, no, there is (probably) no external source that may verify this urban legend, all you have is me and my research. I can write it up somewhere else and link to that if you feel better about that. Interestingly I have received two types of criticisms for this article so far. First, there is the apparent progamer or 'fan' that disagrees with the notion of clanners cheating in general. Secondly, there is the computer geek, that disagrees with the USB mice being used for cheating, mostly because he has never even heard of such a preposterous thing. So I'm gonna assume you're more of an outsider to the scene. You'll have to take my word for it. I might be a sad loonie, but I don't make up shit like that. Its probably just what some paranoid / superstitious pro gamers whisper to each other prior to a tournament in order to frighten the opponent, ready with some technical details to make it sound credible. Dabljuh 11:59, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

I don't mean to suggest you are making it up at all, I'm just not sure it is widely believed enough to notable, many things are said in jest or speculation but few of them deserve room on wikipedia. Since you mentioned it my criticism actually comes from both angles, I have played Counter-Strike casually for years and competed in other games so I am therefore exposed to it's community and am aware of the happenings in it's competitive scene. Also I am a computer engineering student and I find the technical aspects to be implausible.

I must make it clear for this discussion and to explain my edits to the article (see cleanup/merge thread) that I do not disagree with the idea of cheats being a problem with Counter-Strike at all. I believe it is present at some degree at any level except controlled professional events (and I do mean professional/semi-professional rather than just competitive), however in my experience cheating in online gaming is the action of a noticeable disruptive minority rather than the norm.

The technical side is fairly undisputed, I am only wondering if it really is widely enough believed to feature in the article since despite hearing many technical inaccuracies in this area from gamers over the years it is not something I have ever came across. --FlooK 14:40, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

I appreciate that you can rattle off some facts about the USB interface, but "knowing the general code of conduct of MS" is making me think you're really trying to inject your bizarre anti-Microsoft, anti-USB (before today, I never knew there was such a thing) POV into this thing. I'm not going to get into a revision war with you over this, so this will be my last reply- but again, I strongly suggest that you search for references for any of what you're saying. I assure you that you will find none exist. Your blind speculation about "Well, Microsoft programs security holes, so there MUST be one in the USB interface too" is not good research, let alone Wiki NPOV. --Malathion 16:50, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

"Anti USB POV" lmao, you just made my day. And saying Microsoft produces insecure software is factual and in accordance with the general consenus. Saying Microsoft produces shit ass software that will be infected 3 minutes after connection to the internet, forcing you to format C: every 2 months because the crapshack slows down continously and using half a dozen extra tools just to keep the OS sane and the registry magically fails, would be factual as well, although with a tiny hint of POV. Dabljuh 20:44, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Resolution?

I've rewritten this section to say that this is a rumour (not necessarily false) and probably an urban legend (false) due to inaccuracies in it. Although it is probably too far-fetched to be true, the rewrite uses it in a different way to show that CS players are willing to believe something like this due to the widespread presence of normal cheats. Do the others involved in this dispute believe this rewrite is an acceptable solution? —FlooK

Good work there. I was planning to reformulate that section. Good work!Dabljuh 22:15, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

Screenshots needed

Some screenshots of cheating similar to what these guys have done would be great. --Avochelm 12:44, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• I think we could actually use those screens on the grounds of fair use. —FlooK 19:56, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

Merged Pages (August 2005)

Following the merge with the other pages I think the article could be organised a little better. Even though there are disputes over content at the moment I think most of the current contributors to this article would agree that it would help to have all the technical cheat information under one heading, all the anti-cheat information under another, etc. Other information might be a little harder to classify so I'm just creating this heading should people want to discuss possible structures for the article. --FlooK 15:46, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

Today I've went ahead with reorganising the article. Essentially I've gotten rid of the analysis section by breaking out some of the sub-sections and writing some of the other details into other sections. I've went ahead with making the descriptions of cheats and anti-cheats sections by themselves too since it is such a large chunk of this article. I've tried to avoid changes that would be too controversial, most of the disputed sections are removed at the moment anyway. I've also copyedited and rewritten sections and removed inconsistencies in the English (made it all American English with the reasoning that Valve is an American company). —FlooK 19:56, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

Changes to CS report link

The first page of the CS report contains a pair of radio buttons for setting the bandwidth used by the in-page video. If chapter 8 is linked directly, all readers will see only the low bandwidth (low quality) videos. Toby Douglass 10:44, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

I thought it would be better to link directly to the relevant section, partly because I didn't realise the contents page actually had links on it. Since I was wrong about that and because of the video setting I've changed it back. —FlooK 13:21, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

A3D

Nothing in the article about A3D positional sound giving noises about twice the distance of EAX? Toby Douglass 22:20, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

maybe because A3D is built into the game and NOT a cheat, also it is extremly difficult to get your hands on the hardware these days, not to mention the fact that it is near impossible to get it working in windowsXP, perhaps only 1 in 10,000 actually still use a3d. my advice: get over it.

There is a programme called Fake A3D. You can use it, with a normal soundcard. No special Hardware required :)

"maybe because A3D is built into the game and NOT a cheat...", well the majority of early wall-hacks and ESP code was also "built" into the game or rather accessable, and is definately considered a cheat. As far as im concerned i deem hacking/cheating to be anything in which "a player uses or modifies code/scripts for a purpose other than it was originally intended or to gain specific advantage over other players."

Of course, i would not count buy-scripts or for some games, team-join scripts in this argument, as that is what they were intended for.

Nerds.

NERRRRRRRRRRRRDS!!!!

True dat! Dabljuh 05:48, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Sure baby we known it!

• high five*

Screen Shot Client ?

Um... PB had a screenshot function and it barely took a week for the major multihacks at the time to circumvent it. Plus since I've never ever heard of it I doubt its widespread at all (or is it a 1.6 only thing?). As a cheating detection method, it sucks imho. Does this belong in the article? Dabljuh 04:42, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

PBSS is basically not a Counter-strike cheat-detection method. I believe it was used initially in the early days of counterstrike when PunkBuster was still used. These days the only game/s that come to mind that use PBSS are Call of Duty, and i believe America's Army. Although i wouldn't be surprised that the majority of games that run PunkBuster have PBSS's available.

Dates

Please put at least a month and year when discussing a date, believe or not, its not the same season everywhere on the planet at the same time.

polymorphic hacks

a new wave of hacks are being made to be "polymorphic" see the wikipedia article about polymorphic viruses for more info...

coders such as patrick are borrowing ideas from the virus community to effectively hide their programs from VAC, while VAC works by scanning the memory for known cheats, polymorphic cheats work by constantly changing the actual program while it's in memory. the coder of some of these cheats claimed in MPC forum that the 1.6 version was capapble of morphing into 500,000 unique variants of the byte code. This number is likely to increase as polymorphic hacks are still in their infancy.

I've read those too. IMHO it is more of a Buzzword than anything else. The CS crackers have for a long time now claimed they had found easiy ways to hide their cheats from VAC. This buzzword is probably just the latest step in the developement of "Cheats that are Public yet 100% VAC-Secure". It never worked.Dabljuh 12:09, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Polymorphism provides a perfect defense against detection methods that checksum entire executable modules in order to identify known cheats, which is one of VAC's main detection methods. It doesn't, however, effectively defend against pattern-matched code fingerprints since there is no guarantee that at least one byte of the fingerprint will be altered in every possible permutation -- though VAC doesn't do this anyway. There have been polymorphic cheats for a good 2-3 years but they were never as popular before since there were other, far easier, methods to bypass VAC's module detection.

"Buzzwords" only exist to idiots that do not understand what they are talking about, Valve Aimbot uses polymorphism to prevent VAC detecting it via checksum. The Valve Aimbot has never been detected by VAC. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Elvva Majes (talk • contribs) .

Elvva, please remember WP:CIV. --Habap 23:25, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Split article?

Wow guys. this article is HUGE. i was curious about the topic going into the article, but i just don't have the patience to read all this. have mercy on the rest of us and consider this option: provide a general history of the form of cheating and its controversies in CS in the article, and have this article link out to separate articles describing or expanding on the original topics. As it stands, this is just too much for me personally to swallow. Shaggorama 08:07, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

Heya and welcome. I originally wrote the article, and also had it split in three parts: The Main Cheating Article, Analysis and History eventually. However there were even voices that Cheating in CS shouldn't be a separate article from the CS article itself. Ultimately the split parts were remerged into one big-ass article. So, the idea isn't exactly new, it just seems that Wikipedia apparently prefers to have 1 article for such a, um, fringe topic. If you're really too lazy to read it all, I can sum it up for you: "CS is totally fucked and everybody cheats and nothing can be done about it". Dabljuh 09:00, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

New cleanup

I'm sorry guys, but I think that we really need to reopen this to cleanup. The section in the middle (history) is atrocious; there are blatant incosistencies (first claiming that cheats were not a problem, then elaborating on the effect of cheats) as well as breakdowns in sentence structure (using the word "both" to refer to a group of three, for instance).Isopropyl

Yeah er, clean up the sections in question. I can understand if it isn't perfectly clear all the time. What it should mean was: Cheating was there from the very beginning of the game, but it changed its nature fundamentally over time. First, there was a bit of cheating, but it wasn't a big problem. Then there was lots of blatant cheating. Eventually it became lots of subtle cheating. Dabljuh 17:12, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

NPOV/Dispute

Throughout the article, there are references to Counter-Strike being "the synonym with cheating that it is today". I would like to dispute this claim; regardless, the point is definitely not made with a neutral point-of-view. My recommendation is that we replace the phrase with something less colloquial. Isopropyl 02:24, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Well, in my understanding, when it comes to online gaming, CS is pretty much synonymous with cheating. But what do you suggest? Dabljuh 09:36, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

I am confused. In what way is it colloquial? Is it too informal? Is it too conversational? I'm not trying to ridicule, I just don't understand what you're saying. --Habap 12:08, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

col·lo·qui·al Pronunciation Key (k-lkw-l)

adj.

1. Characteristic of or appropriate to the spoken language or to writing that seeks the effect of speech; informal.
2. Relating to conversation; conversational.

"Let me explain. In the light of having someone quote the dictionary for me, I would like at the very least for the sentence to be restructured with less hyperbole. I suppose that it isn't colloquial in the sense of "the problem with cheating is so bad you could stick your fist through it" but I see it as rather opinionated.

"My bad. The complaint I have is not in word choice but the claim that is being made. I do not agree that cheating is equivalent to CS. From the article itself, "As of August 2005, cheats in Counter-Strike:Source have almost disappeared from VAC2-enabled Source servers". The problems in CS pale in comparison to those in other online games, such as the original Age of Empires, where one could not play a single game without being black death'd.

"I'm not saying that CS hasn't had its fair share of problems, but what game hasn't? There have been cheats, at times they've been bad, but there has always been an active development of countermeasures, as opposed to Diablo, where Blizzard fired-and-forgot while moving on to crank out a sequel. I hate to pull the I've-been-playing-since-beta-3 card, but I have been playing for a long time, and cheats never rendered the game unplayable for me.

"Sure, cheating's always been a concern. But that's like saying the internet is synomous with viruses. They're out there, they're a problem, but it would bereave me to hear someone make as outlandish a claim." Isopropyl 14:44, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. Now I understand. Yes, it is hyperbolic, but I have to leave to others whether the hyperbole is justified. I am so unskilled at CS, I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between cheaters and those are just better than me (most everyone). With the August 2005 statement, it makes it difficult to see how we can leave the claim in and not seem to contradict ourselves. --Habap 15:36, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Well, CS:Source is almost playable nowadays (although not a day passes without me seeing a lot of subtle and not so subtle cheaters) but what about 1.6? Now I don't even play it anymore but from what I know, it is still "Cheat Inferno 1.6"... But back to what you are actually criticising: That CS has a cheat problem so big that it becomes synonymous for cheating.

The problem is, in 2002 or so, there was this saying:

Kill 5 people in a row in UT - "Monsterkill", in Quake: "Excellent", in CS: "Kicked by Console"

Of course, Classic Diablo, and many other games will also be a hackfest today. But CS, being hailed as the "new big thing" by all gaming outfits, was played by everyone and his dog in 2000, only to utterly disappoint due to the rampant cheating in 2001. So even though objectively, there are games that are worse affected by cheating and hacking, CS is pretty much the synonym for cheating for the mainstream. I can understand that you don't like that - And I don't like it either but more so because I still see a truckload of cheaters every day playing on secure servers. But that's just the way it is. Dabljuh 19:14, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Done Cleanup

So I did the cleaning up part.

Most of the ugly bulleted lists are gone. Removed a lot of redundant (and stupid) crap, hopefully the article is more readable and more useful now. I have taken the liberty of removing the cleanup tag, which has been there for 4 months. Enjoy! 84.75.130.173 00:31, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Should the article contain links to cheat sites?

Should the article contain links to cheat sites? This has long been an important question for this article, and I have been very reluctant myself to accept the inevitable question for a very long time.

Lets see... Pro cheat links in the article:

1. What people want from the article
2. WP:NOT
3. Perfectly good content for this article.

-Undisputable.

Contra:

1. Cheats are evil and nobody should use them
2. Cheats contain spyware that steal your steamID and your car keys
3. Cheats violate Valve's TOS

Which is all irrelevant to Wikipedia

1. Wikipedia doesn't care about good and evil according to WP:NPOV
2. We point that out several times in the article
3. Wikipedia is not run on Steam, last time I checked.

But ultimately, cheat sites will be added - again and again, by many different people. The article is linked somewhere in a cheat-relevant forum, a hundred people visit the article, and everyone adds their favorite cheat site. Of course, some cheat site operators who wish to gain in google ranking will also add their site to the article.

So the real question would be, "Should cheat site links be removed?"

Objectively, there is no reason to. Subjectively on the other hand, most gamers are used to environments where links to cheat sites are immediately censored by medium administrators and moderators. This has been a practise for a very long time, and combined with the notion that "Cheats are evil", accepted by most people.

Even neutral mediums reporting on cheats very much tend to shy away from linking to cheat sites even when doing a report on cheats, probably avoiding being accused of "propagating cheating".

Cheat site forums on the other hand, excluded from mainstream boards by these restrictions, tend to react to this kind of hostility to even the mentioning of cheats with a sort of masturbatory "We are cool/l337/super" circlejerk.

This, just little observations that do not actually add anything relevant to the topic.

The issue is, Wikipedia is not a game site. Wikipedia is not a cheat forum either. Wikipedia is supposed to provide as much good information as is in the capability of the editors - the editors in this case, being everyone. Information such as links to cheat sites. That is true neutrality.

Now, everyone can find a couple cheat sites, some better, some worse, doing a simple google search. But by the same logic, Coca Cola shouldn't contain a link to [coke.com]. It is a goal of Wikipedia to offer as much information as possible in an easily accessible form (these two goals are sometimes opposed to each other - too much information can reduce accessibility, the solution is structure)

Now, imagine a gaming world where cheat sites are freely mentioned in mainstream gaming forums. Where you can talk about cheating. Suddenly you realize that would make the entire situation grow up instantly over the way it used to be not long ago. Wikipedia is a "grown up" information site. We do not (should not?) censor information purely because we personally don't like it. Wouldn't you be disappointed, if you looked up cs cheats and wouldn't find a single cheat site in the article? I would be. Not surprised. But disappointed, still. Now look at this. Cheats! We just post links there like its the most natural thing in the world! Because it IS. Its not Wikipedia's fault the gaming community acts like children.

Yes, it takes some to get used to. But eventually you'll love it to grow up about the issue. Linking to cheat sites, or talking about the cheats isn't the problem. Censoring these things however is.

Back to the first point. These cheat sites get added, right? Now when you remove such a freshly added link, you are essentially telling a potential Wikipedia user "Sorry, everyone can edit is a misunderstanding. Only stuff that I approve of can be added". That is a bad thing to happen. Just leave it there - The article is pretty big and a couple more cheat site links won't hurt it. And what do you know, next thing is the guy in question reverts a vandal edit, or registers to write a small article about a subject he particularly cares / is knowledgeable about. We want people to add good content to the article, to all articles on Wikipedia. They are happily invited to do so. We must overcome our infantile objections over things like this and allow people to contribute. If we don't do that, we just ask to create vandals.

So...

1. Allow people to contribute productively, even if you think their contribution is not of great value!
2. Overcome your irrational objections to seeing cheat site links publicly!
3. It is a good thing we have these links in the article!

84.75.130.173 10:03, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Msxsecurity

The website fails the guidelines

• WP:SPAM,

1. Contribute cited text, not bare links. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a link farm. If you have a source to contribute, first contribute some facts that you learned from that source, then cite the source. Don't simply direct readers to another site for the useful facts; add useful facts to the article, then cite the site where you found them. You're here to improve Wikipedia -- not just to funnel readers off Wikipedia and onto some other site, right?

• and WP:EL:

Links to normally avoid

1. In general, any site that does not provide a unique resource beyond what the article here would have once it becomes an example of brilliant prose.
2. Sites that primarily exist to sell products or services.
3. Sites that require payment to view the relevant content.

OK, guidelines should be followed and if they aren't there needs to be a good legitimate reason, yet I haven't seen you produce any. Apart from the article used the website as a reference, but you still haven't shown me where...--Andeh 12:00, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry but your opinions cannot just put aside wikipedia guidelines.--Andeh 12:27, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Obviously I can't speak for Andeh, but my objection to the msxsecurity link wasn't that it was a link to a cheat site (I'm not saying they should all be removed, though I'm sure more can be pruned from both lists), it's for the reasons given above by Andeh. Therefore, I will continue to object to it's re-insertion. I haven't had time to look at all the other links, that's my judgement on that particular one. Petros471 18:10, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry but trying to invoke WP:SPAM in this case is not legitimate. I've tried to show you how spam looks like. Using WP:SPAM to remove the link is in no way different from using WP:VAND for reverts. The style guide is merely a guide - not a policy. It provides suggestions on what could be good practice and what is not, but in no way binding in any way. There is no excuse required to ignore a style guide. What _you_ can do is point this style guide out to me - I have acknowledged it, and find the particular tips it provides do not apply to this case. As such, the paysite-for-cheats is by itself an unique ressource, and should be included.

The Wikipedia article requires a list of good links to cheat sites in order to be a complete article. And this list would simply not be complete without msxsecurity. 84.75.130.173 23:52, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Third opinion

While I think it's a bit strong in the arm to cite WP:SPAM in this case; the link seems to have been added in good faith. Nonetheless, I think it fails WP:EL. It's not a key example of the subject being discussed, nor does it give people any more information on the subject being discussed without payment. Frankly, I think a lot of these external links should go with it. --Scott Wilson 11:28, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

WP:EL is a style guide only for a good reason: Sometimes it should be ignored, when this constitutes better style. And in this case I claim it does. There's no point in randomly removing working, and topically, impressive links. In this case it is especially of interest that people appear to be willing to pay for publicly available cheats. Its not here as a commercial link "go buy" but more like "fuck what has this world come to, a paysite for cheats?"

By the way, something useful would be figure out where the fuck XQZ's interview has gone again. That one seems to move to a completely different location every year or so... Hope that Archive.org has something 84.75.130.173 14:59, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Never mind, link is back up... 84.75.130.173 15:00, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

• The "fuck what has this world come to, a paysite for cheats?", as you so eloquently put it, side of things can be served better, in my opinion, by simply mentioning the fact in the article - as is already done. Style guides can be ignored, but now two users against your one have opined that it does, so you're not just ignoring a style guide, you're ignoring consensus, and that cannot be done. Now, if you really want to continue disagreeing, we could throw things open to a wider audience, and make a request for comment --Scott Wilson 20:45, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

I am ignoring consensus by disagreeing with two people? I think the concept you think of is voting or polling, not consensus. See, I am extremely familiar with the subject of the article, as well as the general concept of the article, and the people objecting to my judgement are not. Similiarly, an RFC would be of little help since it would essentially get more people who have no clue involved. Instead, contact the people who have contributed with expertise with the subject of the article (You might find some of them on this very talk page) and get their opinion instead.

The external links should cover a certain ground when it comes to the subject, this means, instead of 5 pages that basically mirror each other, it is more beneficial to have 3 pages that cover very diverse aspects. Having 10 links limits the amount of diversity of course. But see:

IPs come here and add their favorite cheat site. They've done so for as long as the article's been known. This the difference between a static site, and a wiki. By arbitrarily removing some or all of those links, you essentially destroy the functioning principle of the wiki. If you can't handle having those links in, I suggest you copy the Article to some third party page, where it cannot be edited. But if you do it here on WP, you just insult people who try to contribute valid and useful material to the article, making them more inclined to instead contribute , well, shit like "JOHN IS GAY". 84.75.130.173 23:02, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

I was going to point up above, where Dabljuh also argued in opposition to cheat links (since some links may have code that compromises your security just by clicking the link), but I see he was permanently banned last month. (Looks like his temper got the better of him and everything spiralled out of control from there. It's a shame because he was very helpful and knwoledgeable here, if not in those conflicts.)

I am undecided on links. I would suggest that an RFC to determine a consensus might be prudent. --Habap 23:43, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

I apologize for not having made myself clearer earlier: I have changed my initial opinion regarding cheat site links - I am now massively in favor of having them in the article. As, I believe, I have said earlier: censoring cheat sites ultimately benefit only the cheaters, not the legitimate players. I do think that the article should contain a good list of cheat sites - if there is a moral issue over cheat site links, then it is only their censorship of them that is bad and counterproductive. This does not mean the article is supposed to become linkspam, containing references to every obscure cheat site ever in existence. That, however, is not a moral issue but one of readability and usability. 84.75.130.173 13:09, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

-I do not have a wikipedia account, but I feel that not allowing the interviews with maz to be published is just favortism at this point. It is well known that many "free sites" dislike msxsecurity for capitalizing on game hacking, but to not publish links to interviews with him because of bias seems ridiculous. As far as it being a paysite, this is true- But how is it any different than sites like elitecoders and mpcforum both which force donations, or bombard you with popups? Does it make a difference how a site makes it money, or should all cheating sites be completely not for profit. I call for all to make another vote based on this matter. I can assure you that msxsecurity will not benefit in any way from this, as they are already #1 for almost every hack term on google as it is. To omit the truth is just as bad as lieing about it. Lets not also forget that in a article about 'water' you would expect to perhaps see external links to dasani, poland springs, etc. Just because a site is commercial does not mean it has nothing to offer. I also revert back to the point hat almost all the sites listed below use popups and advertisements to create revenue, whereas msx does it through subscription packages. If you are going to ban msx based soley on the fact that it sells goods, I urge you to investigate the many websites you already link and examine them for the "honest" sites they are claimed to be. Here are the links that were deleted by *andy pandy* Last but not least, I speak the truth when I say that despite its system, Msx still has more members, more traffic and more posts than any other forum for game cheating that there is. To not include at least the interviews is just ignorance. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cheating_in_Counter-Strike&diff=next&oldid=70942453

The issue is not that people are angry with maz for making money from cheats -- plenty of other people do that and are still well respected in the community. The reason I don't think an interview with him would be encyclopaedic is that he hasn't actually produced anything original or noteworthy -- all of the cheats his site sells are taken from other cheat sites or leaked to him by people in the cheat community (not the original authors), rebranded and sold on to people that don't know enough about the cheat community to know where to get the original versions for free. There are other interviews with cheat programmers like Vasily Pupkin and Joolz that are far more relevant and encyclopaedic because those people were relevant to the history of cheat creation. To put this in the tired form of a car analogy, if we were writing an article about Ford cars, we would not expect to see an interview with a second-hand car salesman. Deaf-mute 19:20, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

So, I thought I would go look at Water to see if Poland Springs or Dasani were linked there. They are not. Not a real good example, I guess. --Habap 14:04, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Kurrupt Inc. links

This site has no or very little content and is certainly not notable compared to most of the other linked sites. I've removed the link once but it seems like the site owner restored it. The wording of the link and the fact that he puts it in both lists, combined with the relatively unknown and empty nature of the site makes me think this is just a plug. There is no citation on the claim that the site brings together cheat and anti-cheat authors and I don't see the names of any cheat authors involved in the site. Is there any consensus on this? Deaf-mute 20:25, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

I wondered the same thing, as KAC is clearly not as well-known as VAC/VAC2. Infact i bet in an average CS/CSS server if you asked people what KAC was you would probably just be bombarded by a series of insulting ancronyms than an actual answer. Maybe Kurrupt Inc. feel the need some of VAC/VAC2's thunder.

Remove links to cheating websites

All the links to sites where cheats can be downloaded at the bottom of this article should be removed. Cheaters in online games are extremely annoying, and we don't need more of them.

I disagree, cheating in online games is not illegal and it is not Wikipedia's job to make online gaming enjoyable, especially at the expense of citation and completeness in the article. Deaf-mute 14:18, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Uhhh, cheating in online gaming when it contradicts the EULA or breaches the TOS is likely illegal, although it is highly unlikely a company would ever bother to enforce their EULA by dropping by your house with some police to arrest you for breaching a License Agreement.

If you ever saw the commotion drawn by the America's Army cheating issue.

The Army said in fairly rough terms, and im paraphrasing here,

If we ever find a cheater in the real world, we'll shoot him!!.

Although i don't think breaching a EULA/TOS would allow you to be shot.

EULAs can't "make something illegal". The EULA just defines the terms of the software license -- without it, using the software is usually a breach of copyright by default. If a EULA disallows cheating, it isn't the cheating itself that's illegal, it's using the software without a valid license. Since this is an article about Counter-Strike, I think the Steam Subscriber Agreement is the most relevant and that does not specifically disallow cheating, it just advises that Valve's anti-cheat software may ban players from some servers for doing so. Deaf-mute 09:32, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

A more important question would be - why are we providing links to either cheating, or anti-cheating resources? These do not seem to fall under the guidelines listed in Wikipedia:External Links, so I not think they should be included. They do not add anything to the article that is not already explained in a more objective tone, and serve primarily only to promote their products. In order for a link to be included it needs to contain material that is unique and adds to the article. These do nothing of the sort, and have no real encyclopedic purpose. --Haemo 05:18, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

NPOV Dispute - KAC Section

With the introduction of VAC2 however, KAC was pushed out by the corporate monkeys, and faded away. Kurrupt Still works with KAC and uses it on its own servers, with a very low hack to no hack ratio. Sounds pretty opinionated to me... --Roguelazer 05:53, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

I posted a little above about the "Kurrupt" links, but Kurrupt and "KAC" are basically non-entities that no one would have heard of had people from Kurrupt not advertised them in places such as Wikipedia. The only person involved with Kurrupt that I know of is banned from most of the cheat coding sites for being an idiot. They certainly don't have "cheaters and anti-cheaters coming together" as the link states. I think all mentions of Kurrupt or "KAC" should be removed. Deaf-mute 06:43, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

I've removed the links and the paragraph. Until that poster explains here why we should include information on something so marginal, I suggest we all delete the references. --Habap 13:05, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

The article is in serious need of a rewrite

Yo all. I believe the article is in serious need of a rewrite. The article is good in terms of content, but a very poor read. I think it should be possible to reduce the whole article to about 2/3rds of its current size without sacrificing actual content. The biggest problem is the basic structure: The "History" section is rather good, although possibly a bit too detailed. But it becomes a bigger problem when anti-cheat- and cheat measures are explained, and glaringly obvious towards the end with stuff like "Why do counter strike players cheat" and the whole section analyzing why counterstrike is a popular target for cheats - The whole thing becomes very redundant and substandard even for Wikipedia... I think that a part of the problem is that the article was originally intended to be split in seperate parts, another part being that every fringe coder thinks his totally irrelevant cheat / anticheat deserves a mention, regardless of how unoriginal it is. Stuff like that is what the external links are for! Put forward some suggestions, I'll be thinking of how to reconcile all of this in a new article concept in the meantime. 84.75.130.173 12:57, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Definitely in need of a rewrite. The article is far too long - I largely agree with most of your comments here. As a kind of general guide, I think this template might work to trim this down to size:

• The "History" section is good, but has been said, too detailed. Trim some sections down, as many parts are explained in later sections.
• Severely trim, or even eliminate the sections of "Why Players Cheat" and "Why Counterstrike is a target". These are far too long, and should probably be totally eliminated, or deprecated into external articles - (I'll bet they already exist)..
• The sections on "cheats" and "anticheats" need to be trimmed. Many have external links, and the details are not really that important, for the focus of this article.

Anyways, I don't really think "neutrality" is a problem here, though some of the section approach a NPOV problem in some cases. I'll probably get back to editing this either later tonight, or in the near future. If I forget, remind me! --Haemo 05:07, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Rewrite

definitely needs a rewrite. can't see anything wrong with its neutrality though... leave the rewrite to you! Bold text — Preceding unsigned comment added by -jmac- (talk • contribs) 20:52, 19 October 2006 (UTC)