Take Action Against Cheaters

[drobbinsjr]

Okay my fellow die hard HONORABLE players hear is the deal. I have had enough of the Cheaters taking over our game. Bernhard Falk, Andreas Katzig, Maximililian Dienersberger and the rest of Rivio are LIMP in taking action so its time to take matters into our own hands. Almost all players are posted on Facebook. So what I suggest is that when you come across a Cheater you tag them on their Facebook page asking why they feel that they need to Cheat a online game. Lets SHAME them out of our Leagues.

Topic

[firedragon]

Actually, Rovio can set a threshold on tournament score, player’s HP and parameters. If the parameters are “too good to be true”, Rovio can ban such players enter the tournament.

[Strategia55]

I’ve recommended the very action. Is there any sign then are implementing it ?

[MVNLA2]

@drobbinsjr — [Major edit] After reading some more recent posts, I totally changed my response:
I am worried about starting a social media war. Plus, who knows what a cheater might do in revenge if they are a great hacker???
BTW — Last week was my first week in stone, and this week I’m in silver. I don’t think I’ve encountered any cheaters in wood or stone since the Epic update. So far the silver league looks good, but too early to tell. Make sense that the cheaters have already made their way to the higher leagues.

[MVNLA2]

@drobbinsjr — Forgot to ask: Did you actually contact the 3 people you mentioned? I sent a tweet to Peter Vesterbacka 2? days ago, so I know at least one member of the management team knows about the problem of people playing in multiple leagues (not their fault, but by Rovio’s design). I haven’t however sent anything about cheaters. If you give me a tweet sized message to send, I’ll send it. You could send it yourself also, but Peter knows who I am.

[Immortal… Larry]

Think I triggered a moderation thing with the uncensored quotes in the post I just submitted… (yes, it contained foul language)

[Immortal… Larry]

@drobbinsjr, I understand your frustration, believe me. However, I don’t think this is the right approach. It’s a poorly developed online feature for a free game.

Bothering family members because someone cheats in an online game is not the right approach. Just imagine what your response would be to a message like that about a cousin or something. You’d just block that person.

Besides, all you have got to go on is the facebook picture, nothing else. Then there’s privacy settings which prevent you from even figuring out more. Finally, someone like that only has to block you.

As a matter of fact, with the anonymity of Internet, I don’t think the players are the ones to address here at all. It’s Rovio that allows these holes to exist. Go after them.

Most people playing a game which has holes in it will use them, as long as there’s something to gain. Whether it is an achievement or in-game stuff (like many in here have been using gp friendrolls in the past or the LC’s now). It’s the developers who don’t patch things, not the players using the holes. We don’t like the cheaters in the arena, but it’s Rovio who’s letting it happen.

The following is a response I got after carefully approaching one of the hacked accounts owners to enquire about what they could or could not do. I was looking for this info for the assembled first post in the cheaters thread. Just asking assistance, without even using the term cheating, fingerpointing, blaming or anything else. Literally only asking for information.

This conversation is unedited and just copy/pasted for your info.
Me:

First of all, I hope you don’t mind me approaching you directly. I’d like to ask you for some input regarding a forum topic which I am maintaining in the Angrybirdsnest… blablabla (without the response, the entire text is unnecessary) Thanks, Larry

This is the response I got:

[Removed by admin for being horrible. Larry’s point is well made.]

I got a few more like these. It simply shows that many of these players simply couldn’t care less about your good intentions.

[FreckledPig147]

@drobbinsjr

So what I suggest is that when you come across a Cheater you tag them as well as one of the family members on their Facebook page asking why they feel that they need to Cheat a online game. Lets SHAME them out of our Leagues.

+1 to Larry.
It is not fair to that family member because they probably have little business in the cheating. No one should be blamed or harassed for raising a cheater, ESPECIALLY in a mobile game. It is just the cheaters and partially Rovio due to their insufficient efforts to improve PvP.

[drobbinsjr]

My purpose for shaming them and ask that anyone who is a game friend, un-friend them. We all need friends in this game to produce essence. Let take away their ability to obtain essence.

[KerrAvon]

I certainly would not advocate this approach.

I think shaming may work for some. I have no idea how facebook works, but why stop at tagging one family member – why not tag all of their friends. This is not about being fair to their family members, it’s about showing the cheats up among their friends and family for their poor character and morals.

But as @larry’s response suggests, cheaters cheat for their own reasons and may not care or they may even be abusive or vindictive in their response. If they are hackers who knows what they might do.

The repercussions are unknown and may even be bad.

[Immortal… Larry]

Internet is anonymous and Rovio seems make sure that the contestants on the leaderboards are not friends. Many social research and experiments have proven that when an opportunity to cheat presents itself, many people will actually cheat. This is especially true when people are anonymous. Even more so if cheating already occurs. This is just human nature.

Here’s some literature about it.
http://www.spring.org.uk/2010/01/cheating-does-deindividuation-encourage-it.php

Why Do Cheaters Cheat When The Stakes Are Low?

Punch some keywords in google if you’re interested and you’ll find a lot more info on this.

It really does not make any sense at all to chase after the cheaters. You simply cannot blame anyone for cheating in a free game (remember, nobody’s forcing you to pay anything!!!). The only ones you can blame are the developers.

@all, Don’t go around hassling people throughout the internet. There’s more important stuff in the world to agitate against.

Instead, focus your energy at Rovio. Rovio needs to take proper action.

Here’s some links:
Rovio Support Team
Rovio AB Epic on Twitter
Rovio on Facebook
Blanca Juti (Chief Brand Officer @ Rovio) on Twitter
Peter Vesterbacka (brand ambassador @ Rovio) on Twitter
Second twitter account for Peter Vesterbacka

So, to conclude my little call for riot, I would suggest that if you want to make noise about the cheaters, exploits and cloned presences across leagues, do it where the noise needs to be heard.

Not the bottomless well of the internet but at the door to the developers.

[Immortal… Larry]

Apologies, the not-working tags should have been @maker (mtuppurainen), @r2 (4R2), @the-robin (The Robin) and @wensi (seekavenue)…

[seekavenue]

Hi, Thank you Larry for @ing me.
I am not active at all here anymore, since i stopped helping the Marketing/Custome Service team. I then moved to publishing team.

[Immortal… Larry]

@wensi, Cool that you replied in here. Honestly, I didn’t expect anything! Conratulations being the first one to receive the noise… :)

Any chance you can help out and make some noise from within? The cheating and cloned accounts are causing a ton of grief in the nest. The silence from Rovio is deafening while people in here are finding more and more disappointments. It would help a lot if there was even the slightest involvement from Rovio in this forum.

If you feel like it, read up on it in the cheaters and multiple leagues threads.

The issues are serious enough…

[MVNLA2]

@larry — 4R2 is no longer at Rovio.
Last time I mentioned all the Rovio members in public, I got my hand slapped by the admins. Not to mention most of your list was deleted, and most of those in your latest post are no longer active.

[FreckledPig147]

@drobbinsjr

My purpose for shaming them and ask that anyone who is a game friend, un-friend them. We all need friends in this game to produce essence. Let take away their ability to obtain essence.

It would be pointless to do so. They can still hack FE to get trillions of them. I actually doubt they’d need a FB Friend to do so.

[Immortal… Larry]

@freckledpig147, absolutely right. I tested the hacked account method and hacked accounts have pretty much unlimited resources of everything. Besides, when you have a gaming-only account, you’ll probably have hundreds of epic players in your friend list. I just cleaned up my own friendlist (removed anyone with 250+ friends) and got rid of more than 1000. I’m still left with well over 300 players. No way a few nesters are going to have an impact on that.

[Immortal… Larry]

@mvnla2, I don’t really get it. What could be wrong with mentioning the Rovio members? There’s a list in the badges section which is visible for anyone in here. If it should not be public info, then why put it there? Oh well, we’ll find out if it gets moderated.

[KerrAvon]

@larry That’s an interesting post on cheaters. I thought you’d be done with this – cheater burn out – but you’re now thinking up other angles.

I think cheating in the arena kind of works like game theory. In this case the consequences of cheating are very low, so cheating is common.

I still put a lot of the blame on the cheaters themselves. They have to know that other EPIC players have put a lot of effort (as they themselves have done) into this game to develop and advance their bird teams. So they must realise they are really irritating other players. Sure, there is variation within a population for a willingness of individuals to cheat. But I think, put simply, the people cheating in this game are people of poor moral character. But so long as there are no real consequences for them, they will go on cheating.

Rovio have removed the timezone objective reset cheat method and they have addressed the hacked bird teams. As far as I am aware, hacked teams are not showing up as opponents. I do wonder if those who created the hacked teams are still able to battle in the arena, or if their bird teams are prevented from fighting.

But as you say, they have not addressed the other cheating method that we are aware of for resetting objectives or players who hack the scores. This does rest with Rovio. They are the only ones who can change the game to stop these cheating methods.

Something they could also do is to work on some consequences for the cheaters. A number of ABN contributors have mentioned that it would be easy to identify arena scores that could not be achieved under normal playing conditions. Why not identify these scores and act. I also think there should be a big “I” for “information” on Terence’s head in the arena nest, so that people know to look for information here. And on the information page there could be a tab that lets people know that the arena is a cheat free zone and the consequence is your game account is frozen or reset or something similar. Of course, they could word it nicely.

[Angry Johnny]

But as you say, they have not addressed the other cheating method that we are aware of for resetting objectives or players who hack the scores.

@kerravon I have reported one other method of reseting objectives with a detailed explanation on how to do it. The response from the support was that they were able to replicate it and reported it to the development department so it will be fixed.

[FreckledPig147]

@kerravon I like the “info” idea. The punishments should be harsher than just a rare demotion down one league.

[MVNLA2]

@drobbinsjr @larry @kerravon @all
A couple of interesting tweets:
‏@pvesterbacka

@MVNLA we hear you. I play the game myself, hate the cheaters as much as anybody. We have to fix this.

‏@huzzonen

@MVNLA Hi there. I saw the threads on the nest today but will take a closer look tomorrow and get back to you.

This second one is in response to the 2 tweets I sent yesterday; the second was about the “ghost” players.

[MVNLA2]

Not sure if this one is about cheaters or ghost players; have asked.
‏@huzzonen Mar 12

@MVNLA Afraid we don’t have a fix just yet – please bear with us as we figure it out. We’ll let the community know as soon as it’s sorted!