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Updated 15.05.2024 21:51
Guide

Cheats and how we fight them

About cheats for the STALCRAFT game

Our team is actively processing your feedback to find out what concerns the gaming community have. There is a strong concern about cheaters and the fight against them.

We haven’t told much about this side of development, as many of our methods need to be kept secret, or they become useless. However, the lack of communication with developers on this issue has created a lot of myths and gossip. This article should dispel most of them, and give you an overview of anti-cheat methods.


Cheaters either get blocked or get scammed

Any use of cheats will result in the blocking of all player accounts without the possibility of review. Most cheats are tracked automatically, and in this case it is possible to get away with a 7-day warning ban and a permanent message in the player's “PDA” profile.

If you are given a fresh version of a cheat that has not yet been monitored by the developers, you are likely to be subject to a wave of mass permanent bans.

Our team carefully monitors the Internet for the appearance of new cheats, so if you find a publicly posted cheat, it's either already broken, or it easily detects by our anti-cheat and almost immediately blocks you.

According to our experience, almost all cheats contain software that steals your logins and passwords. Frequently, this brings the cheat creators much more money than selling it.

Nowadays, it's hard to find functioning cheats for STALCRAFT, as they require constant maintenance due to our automated mechanisms. Only “Private Cheats” survive, as they are continuously maintained by the developers and sold on a subscription basis.

Nevertheless, even using them does not save you from being permanently banned.


Public and popular anti-cheats

Cheats are a problem for every game, especially for online shooters. No one has come up with universal ways to fight them yet, so each company is working on its own in this area. Some develop their own anti-cheats, while others outsource the work.

Many popular shooters use public anti-cheats. For example, such as Easy Anti-Cheat from Epic Games. This is a protection system that makes it much more difficult to develop cheats, but it does so at the expense of player comfort. Such anti-cheats require admin rights and attempt to control all processes on the computer, creating an additional load and reducing the performance of the game. Some other problems also occur, such as errors with “dll” files or conflicts with antiviruses.

However, the developers of Easy Anti-Cheat write that their system does not guarantee total protection and is mostly effective in conjunction with the game's own protection methods.

This is therefore only a supplement rather than a full-fledged solution to the problem.

For this reason, we decided to rely on our own methods, limiting the EXBO Launcher to a simple file swap protection, which does not complicate the player's life in any way.


About our EXens anti-cheat

Over the many years of the project's existence, we have developed our own system that combines multiple methods to combat unfair play — EXens. Our own anti-cheat is tightly integrated with the game and uses a multi-faceted approach to deal with malicious players, consisting of:

  • Validation of all player actions on the server;
  • An automatic system for detecting third-party software;
  • Automatic mechanisms that force regular updates of the cheats;
  • Analytical tools that help identify unfair play.


Validation on STALCRAFT servers

All player’s actions, physics, hits are counted on the server. All the game client traffic sent to the servers is controlled, so it is physically impossible for the player to use cheats to move, fly and/or interact with items.

By using this system, we have cut off a huge number of potential cheats, such as SpeedHack. However, server action validation is useless against WallHack and AimBot. These two types of cheats are a huge problem for online shooters, and even the big companies have been unable to solve it.

The problem is that such cheats use data that is already sent to the game client from the server, and operate within the limits of the actions available to the player. The server's counters against WallHack are limited to not sending information to the game client about enemies behind obstacles. This approach creates an additional dependence on a stable internet connection. Without a perfect connection, enemies will simply appear out of nowhere. Therefore, such solutions are not suitable for dynamic first-person shooters like STALCRAFT.

The various AimBots basically don't do anything that the player himself cannot in theory do. The fight against them on the server side comes down to analysing the statistics of each player's actions, as we have been doing with a certain amount of success for a long time.


Automatic cheat detection system

While there is no escape from WallHack and AimBot, all that remains is to quickly detect and block intruders. We study all new cheats in detail and train our automated system to detect their use. However, it does not block them right away. That is why there are cases in the game where an obvious cheater can go on the rampage for days without a trace.

The reason for this is that it takes some time from the moment a cheat is detected until it is blocked for use, so the cheat developers cannot register the exact moment that our system recognizes its use.

By blocking cheaters upon detection, cheat developers will quickly learn the algorithms of the detection system and adapt to it, making it subject to regular updates.

Players who do not hide their use of cheats can be manually blocked more quickly if a lot of complaints start to be received about them. We are working on various tools to speed up the manual response. For example, analytics tools and a player complaint system.

The first time a cheat usage is detected, the system blocks the player for 7 days in order to cut off cases where the player has been tricked into running the cheat. If it happens again, the lockout will be permanently issued.


Benefits of using cheats

The more popular a game becomes, the more abusers seek to profit from it. It is the demand by some players for unfair play that encourages cheat developers to offer their solutions. We fight it just as seriously as we fight the fact that they offer them.

In addition to a strict policy of blocking accounts without the possibility of review, we also penalize those who assist cheaters with their money-making schemes.

All transactions in the game are controlled with convenient monitoring. Even throwing items on the ground won't keep intruders from the attention of our experts.

We have extensive experience in counter-trading for real money, which, combined with an increased focus on the actions of cheaters, allows us to quickly identify any of their affiliates.


Conclusion

The gaming industry is dynamic, but cheats are evolving along with it. New ways of defending creates new ways of circumventing. The fight against cheats is a never-ending race with no end in sight.

The STALCRAFT game is a shooter with an accent on PvP, so we understand the importance of leading the race for us, and of course for you. We will do our best to keep cheats for STALCRAFT as expensive and difficult as possible, and to reduce their number significantly.

 

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