Banned accounts suggestion

#1

@pgCampusLifer
First, let me thank you profusely for your clear and concise explanation of your work banning cheaters, and your steadfast attempts to make the game more fair.

I have a suggestion: Would it be possible to post a summary of the users that were banned, a brief description of the evidence, and the team they were on? Something like your comments on the evidence about why the player you addressed directly was banned.

PlayerName TeamName 9 attempts between date and date, N rollbacks, cheats in the last 3 months: 439 (or whatever)
Cheater2 TeamTwo, etc…

This could go a long way towards discouraging cheating, especially when exploit information is distributed to an entire team.

#2

I think they can only do that if the player that receives the ban specifically allow CL to disclose the information publicly or privately unless of course, the banned player keeps on insisting publicly that he is innocent like what happened to the other fellow.

That’s what CL always say in the old forum. so pretty much say the magic words and the door will open.

#3

They will never go for a name and shame list

#4

at most i think they can only say like for example, i got banned:

K * * s * * * i

It’s my name, but you won’t know it until I admit it. still, it’s public shaming.

#5

That’s not a bad idea… just obfuscate the name, but still provide the info to the community. Might also prevent the “I didn’t really cheat, prove it” bull that the cheaters try to defend themselves with.

#6

I’d love this as well, but I think CL has mentioned in the past that this would show cheaters what they can get away with and what they cannot.

#7

Maybe I’m missing something but what purpose or gain does knowing the team and player who was banned. The only people who know what has really happened is PG. I wonder if these type of post will reduce seeing that the forum is now linked to the IGN. Maybe better having a weekly summary saying 180 banned this week eg

LVL 170 - banned due to x
Lvl 10 - banned due to x

But even with this what does it help or change. We know that @pgCampusLifer is actively dealing with this.

#8

Would be good to provide such info to the banned player, at least. When the player is banned.

#9

Obviously you don’t want the cheaters to know how they’re being detected… but deterring a potential cheater before they’ve cheated is important, because the cheaters are affecting other players negatively, by stealing resources (with unfairly obtained or levelled dragons), winning wars (and thus taking ranking points and egg tokens away from legit players), etc.

#10

I don’t understand how we could “warn” a potential cheater that cheating is a bannable offense without telling cheaters how they can cheat and not get caught.

Just don’t cheat and stop looking for ways to exploit the game. If you see an issue, report it. If you keep getting sync errors when doing something in a “particular way”, that’s the game warning you that you’re about to exploit the game in a bannable way.

#11

Knowing the player that was banned lets the players that were harmed by the cheater that at least some justice was done.

Knowing what team they were on will hopefully discourage team leaders from encouraging cheating, and also encourage team leaders to establish no-cheating policies.

I’d also like to see a policy where if a majority of players on a team were banned (say for using airplane mode), the team wins of that team would be reversed. Another strong incentive for teams to police themselves.

#12

Oh, I’m sure that cheaters have figured out by now that if you start getting a bunch of sync errors, they must have found out a way to detect that you were cheating. I really wish that part of the forge story hadn’t been shared (though I like that the fact that it was discovered by combing through logs was revealed).

I’m not proposing that cheaters be warned that they’re cheating, I’m proposing increased transparency so that the legit player community knows that the problems are being addressed, and that the players that might cheat if they thought they could get away with it will decide to not cheat.

#13

I think it’s a privacy concern as to why PG doesn’t say “Player was Banned” outright. However, if you look at this account in game and they are level 1 with no base and no medals, they were banned.

I am iffy about sharing what team they are on, because sometimes a leader doesn’t know.

Also, they are trying to fix airplane mode but right now cannot detect it with accuracy or stop it. They said they are trying though.

#14

Yeah, I acknowledge the privacy issue – companies cannot reveal PII, especially if they are active in the EU and especially in Germany, which has crazy-strict privacy laws. BUT, I still want greater transparency from PG (not just about cheaters, but about everything), while acknowledging that it takes work/time/effort to provide that transparency. @pgCampusLifer is doing a great job of communicating his anti-fraud efforts, I’m just looking for a little more info, so that social effects against cheating can kick in.

#15

So what happens if you had a cheater on your team and you had no knowledge of their cheating or they cheated prior To joining your team? Suddenly your team would be black marked as a harbourer of cheaters even though you may not have know.

Knowing the players name wont change the fact that they have been banned and all it will encourage is anger towards the last or previous teams they were on, whether those teams knew.
This doesn’t even take into consideration that a player might be banned incorrectly, as happened before, and they would have been named and
Shamed incorrectly.
Ban the players and let us know how many each week would suffice. But I do agree that if any gains are made from this cheater, such as war rewards or league promotions this should be considered to be reversed

#16

I agree that you need to watch out for false positives and that cheating can certainly occur without the knowledge of the team officers. But if a team has a large number of cheaters on it who were using the same exploit, and that team benefitted because of that, then those illegitimate gains should be reversed.

Perhaps only revealing the team’s name if a certain percentage of the team’s players have been caught using the same exploit would work? I know we’ve been in wars where the opposing team was using the airplane mode exploit over and over again, and we lost the war because of it. I’d very much like to see that team exposed, and have those war losses returned.

There’s a fine line between revealing a users PII, and utilizing social pressure to discourage cheating. The post where @pgCampusLifer responded to a user who claimed that they weren’t cheating, and the detailed account of that cheaters behavior as gleaned from the logs was presented struck me as particularly effective. There’s no way that particular cheater could deny what they’d done in the face of that evidence – and I’d like to see that transparency more often, without tipping off the cheaters beforehand, and without revealing customer PII.

#17

Hi guys

Ethics / privacy issues aside, this sounds like it would be a lot of work for me to build the initial version and then a bunch of ongoing work for me to operate/maintain. I’m currently already super behind schedule on my existing commitments. Sorry, I’m not in a place to take on a bunch of new responsibilities right now.

#18

No worries, just a thought. Thanks again for all you do!

#19

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