All of us are aware with the immense ruckus that is going on with Battlefield 3 Beta. Since its release a few weeks ago, constant news have been flying around about the game. Mostly with the complaints and discontent that DICE EA has been getting from its fan base, and most recently, the hacking, cheating, scams and fraud that has been going on in and around the game.
Just a few days ago, unofficial servers popped out around the place offering cracked version of Battlefield 3 Beta that offers the ability to play in a different game mode and supports up to a mind-boggling 250-player gameplay. EA has already addressed that issue with a previous warning to Battlefield 3 Beta testers not to participate and join any unofficial EA servers, as this will lead to disciplinary actions with their EA Accounts.
Now, a few days after that straightforward warning, the issue is getting even worse with game hacks appearing and even the official Battlefield 3 Beta servers are getting susceptible to these third party software. This has caused a flurry of complains over at the official Battlefield 3 Community Forums and EA DICE is looking to end this ruckus once and for all.
Official Battlefield Forums community manager Ian “crash7801” Tornay created an official thread where players can lodge their complaints against these cheaters. All the reported cheaters will be investigated and placed under probation, and if proven to be guilty – Tornay notes – “The hammer will fall swiftly and accurately”
DICE explained through a thread post that Battlefield 3 Open Beta was intentionally made to run without anti-cheating countermeasures because the publishers were looking to monitor how players react and behave in the situation, and ultimately determine what players will do with this opportunity. Now that they know what they are facing, EA DICE said that it will have a better idea on how to prepare themselves and prevent possible cheats with the full game.
So this was like cheese bait for the rats. The little pests come, take the cheese, then DICE follows them to their holes and blow up the place – pretty swift move.
Rian Quenlin
Clever to do that, but more automated ways to catch cheaters would be clever, like taking a screencap and uploading it when you perform a specific action which would normally be impossible. This could easily expose wallhackers and people with aimbots, as well as showing the skills of the more advanced players.
Andy Codina
I think that is how complaints are being reported in the thread, by fraps or video but it wont really prove anything much. It wont be able to show the cheater’s side, if he really is using any third party software or whatever – it wont really show his screen so they can argue with it.
There really is no sure way to catch them in the act unless they post pictures like the ones we have here – this guy is probably done by now.
Its a pretty tricky process, these guys can still plead their innocence when they get accused, there’s just no way to get hard evidence since there is no anti-cheating/anti third party software used on BF3 Beta.
They are probably going to track reported accounts, maybe they can trace it from their side(DICE) though I cant imagine how without any software that can track if the BF3 client is being modified by another software.
Rian Quenlin
MD5 comparisons can work for textures, but nobody seems to use it.
Wiging199
In BF2 you could see play from the offending players point of view and see how he was doing things. Their behavior was recorded in battle on some servers and could be replayed. So the tools are probably in place but rarely used. I’m thinking there are some tricks that can be used because PC power is so much more than it was six years ago. It just is a question of do they want to implement it and what the impact to game play might be.