Despite several efforts to stop cheating in the gaming world, there are still several ways for those who want to win prize money with dirty means – even when the matches are played on a physical stage in Sweden’s top league. This is shown by SVT’s new documentary series “Esport from the inside”.
Cheats that allow the player to see through walls or aid in aiming have eluded the Counter-Strike community since the original game was released in 1999.
- The game developers are in a nightmare position – they have to stop all the different cheats, while on the other side there are thousands of players who only need to get past a single game developer, says Simon Engstrand, producer at SVT and one of the creators behind the series.
In the documentary, Simon Engstrand first tests using an obvious cheat online. It takes three weeks before the game developer’s own anti-cheat system detects him and blocks him from further play.
Can cheat the system
But when he upgrades to a more advanced and discreet cheat that costs 90 € a month, he escapes detection – even when more advanced protection systems are activated.
One example is Faceit’s system used in the online qualifiers for the big major tournaments where millions of dollars are at stake. Simon Engstrand could easily cheat with the system activated.
Hides code in the keyboard
But the big tournaments are, after all, played physically on-site in front of an audience and tournament organizers – getting away with cheating must be next to impossible, right?
With the help of two computer security experts, Simon Engstrand has managed to hide software in a keyboard’s internal memory. Code that could just as well be exchanged for a cheat.
Security could have been significantly better if players were banned from bringing their own keyboards and mice to the tournaments. From a privacy point of view, it would have been best if the organizers handed out new equipment directly from the packaging instead
Simon Engstrand
Source: svt
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