Trick or Cheat

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Cheats never prosper, although they do have all the fun. Whether you've got hoes in different area codes, scribble stuff on your elbow before college finals or con unsuspecting pensioners out of millions via dodgy timeshare deals, any excursions from the moral path are sinful, but they can be forgiven. At least, they can be forgiven after a lengthy spell in prison or a fierce back-alley hiding.

Mind you, when it comes to cheating in PC games, miscreants might as well be branded with '666', placed in stocks and fed Pedigree Chum. Online cheaters are evil incarnate, and people like Phil DeLuca, executive producer of America's Army, have gone as far as drawing parallels between cheating and Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, before threatening to phone the FBI.

What's the big deal? If you create fake accounts in order to rank up on Battlefield 2's global leader board, or disconnect from Command & Conquer: Generals at the last minute to avoid a shit score, or use a wallhack in Counter- Strike, it's not exactly Stock Exchange fraud. "For any player who's been defeated by someone cheating, there's no question that this is serious," retorts Adrian Pedley, of anti-cheat honchos DMW. "E-sports has developed to a point where a player can win large amounts of cash if they're good enough. With incentives like that, it's not surprising that some players use any method of gaining an advantage."

Tony Ray of PunkBuster - protective software behind F.E.A.R., Far Cry and Doom 3 - continues: "Once cheating becomes widespread, a game's online community dies. Players move on out of frustration. Others stay, but start cheating because 'everybody else is doing it'. Many great online multiplayer game communities have been decimated in this way."

DIRTY SCOUNDRELS
But surely cheating and games go hand-in-hand, like Ant and Dec? From developer's cheat codes to entire magazines on the subject, aren't most of us wicked at heart? Nope, argues Tony Ray: there's a line between single-player and multiplayer deception.

"For a real-world analogy, consider sports. No-one cares if you take a mulligan when playing a round of golf by yourself, but try fudging your score during a tournament with prizes and see what happens when you get caught."

Online players take this issue as seriously as death and taxes, so arguing is futile. Before Activision's release of Call of Duty 2, the game's fan community "began to compile a wishlist of additions and improvements that they would like to see included. At the top of the list was an effective multiplayer anti-cheat system," says curiously monikered faux-WWII trooper Butch Cassidy. "What transpired was that Infinity Ward got caught up in a race to release COD2 as an Xbox 360 launch title, and the PC version didn't have anti-cheat included." Pissed off, Butch instigated a full-blown server strike, rousing the masses like Winston Churchill fighting 'em on the beaches. The online community were up in arms, mostly because cheaters in the first COD had behaved like the Manson family at a garden party.

Always use protection, then, although anti-cheat tech can still be a pain in the hole - like Blizzard's Warden device for World Of Warcraft, which detected cheats but also allegedly read quite deeply into the inner workings of your PC. Thankfully, DMW and PunkBuster have universal approval from (honest) gamers and developers alike. "The release of Medal Of Honor: Allied Assault was the main impetus for the development of DMW," says Pedley.

WHO YOU GONNA CALL?
PunkBuster, launched after a request by id Software, "is similar to a virus scanner", explains Tony Ray. "While you're playing the game, it walks through the computer's memory and looks for patterns of known cheats. Our research team is constantly watching cheat sites and chatrooms so that PunkBuster can be updated." However, PunkBuster is also on the frontline of attack. Ray grimaces: "Many of the cheat writers are very nasty people. I guess they just don't like to lose and will do practically anything to avoid it. Our staff members are threatened, our servers are attacked and many of the advanced hacks try to disable PunkBuster's capabilities."

Like Charles Bronson in Death Wish, fans have formed their own powerful vigilante death squads. Counter-hack.net - laying down the law since the late 1990s - watches out for suspicious gameplay and adds Steam ID's to a master ban list. Even Butch Cassidy's server strike forced COD2's developers to introduce anti-cheat tech. A Counter Hack spokesperson says that despite the strength of Valve's Anti-Cheat 2 tech, cheaters have discovered less complex and less detectable ways to be shifty. "These include altered game models, textures, sounds, manipulation of memory or code. For example, you can replace your normal map file with an altered map that includes transparent walls and entities - without the risk of detection."

KEEP IT SAFE
As MMOGs become increasingly social, so the field opens up to confidence tricksters and dodgy dealers, transforming the definition of cheating. Recently, a WOW funeral for the death of a real-life player was crashed by a guild who annihilated all the mourners. Bad taste trickery or dark agit-humour? You decide.

Punishment is also changing to suit the crime. In Roma Victor, for example, wrong-doers are crucified. Lovely. "The character Cynewulf - an electrical engineer from Flint, Michigan - found it a painful experience," brags developer Nick Witcher. "The punished remain attached to a cross for long periods, unable to move or communicate, but they can see the world carrying on around them. For a seasoned barbarian warrior like Cynewulf, it was difficult to watch the Romans pass beneath his feet."

UNLUCKY FOR SOME
Jesus Christ! What did this sparky do to warrant being nailed to a cross? "He was waiting near a spawn point killing any and all Romans that came along," Witcher retorts. Second Life offers a less painful punishment in the form of banishment to a cornfield, where there's sod all to do beside ride a 5mph tractor.

Which leaves one final question: who are the miscreants causing all this bother? Cheat communities gather at sites such as www.mpcforum.com and www.cs-hacked.com, while the 'AC' community hangs out at www.sharedbans.com and www.unitedadmins.com. But as Counter Hack's spokesperson points out, it's not all black and white.

"Both communities have our own agendas, but the battle line is far from drawn. The Counter Hack staff are largely comprised of ex-cheaters and cheat-coders. I myself frequent and am active in several cheat communities. As you progress up the ranks, you find that the lines blur a good deal, and the leaders of both the anti-cheat world and the cheat-world are not so far apart." Who are the cheats? They're us...

Pavel Barter