Fighting cheaters is complicated

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:00]Let's talk about cheaters. Cheaters have always existed in online gaming and this is nothing new. Games have changed a lot over the years and so have the cheats.

[00:00:07]People create cheats because it makes them money. In order for people to use things [music] like cheats and trackers, they typically have to pay for them. And as games iterate and improve their anti-cheat systems, [music] the people making the cheats iterate and improve on those as well. If you try to ban each cheater the moment that they're spotted, it's like playing a game of Whac-A-Mole that you'll never win. The devs need to find a way to detect cheaters, but they need to do it in a way that doesn't tell the cheater how they got caught. If you ban a person too quickly for cheating, the person who made the cheat will know exactly what change it was that got them caught, making it easy for them to iterate an improvement. This is typically why cheaters aren't banned immediately even if they're very obvious. [music] And this is the reason why ban waves happen in the way that they do and why massive amounts of cheaters get purged all at the same time. One of the things I've heard online is other companies have better anti-cheat, which might be true, but those companies use different systems and those same employees don't work for NetEase. I'm a 3D artist and I can look at 3D art from other games and I can generally understand how it's made. But that doesn't mean I can immediately replicate everything I see other people do. It would take me time to figure out even if conceptually they told me how it was done.

[00:01:06]>> [music] >> Even if I could do exactly what another artist had done, it would still take me time to implement. And this is not a short process as it takes time to learn and iterate. You also cannot just hire more people to solve the problem. The hiring process takes time [music] and catching someone up to speed takes time.

[00:01:20]And each company has its own code that works in its own unique way. So even when a new person comes in, they have to work with the existing code structure that's there. So even if hypothetically you wanted to take a system from another company and bring it over to another studio, they can't just transfer [music] over. You would still need time to implement and iterate on that system. It is wild to think that NetEase isn't taking this seriously either. It is absolutely a priority for them, but change takes time. They know better than anyone the effect this could have the longer it goes on. And while the solutions might seem simple on the surface, are a lot more complicated when you actually have to implement them, especially when you want long-lasting solutions. When it comes to detecting cheats, the conversation of privacy also comes up. How much access to your computer should a private company have?

[00:02:00]The greater the access, the more protection there might be. But at the same time, the more information that company has about what's on your computer. And if the company ever got hacked, that would put your information at risk. With NetEase being a Chinese company as well, I don't think people or governments would be too comfortable with them having access to all that information. That all being said, the more intrusive the cheat detection system is, the more it'll affect your performance. Because in order to run those sort of anti-cheat programs, they also have to run continuously in the background. And even with those incredibly invasive anti-cheat programs, people still find ways around it and find ways to cheat. Cheat detection is not as simple as people think that it is. As for point compensation, I don't know why it's not working or if it's been fully implemented at all yet. It could be a bug that maybe they've just only realized or maybe there's problems [music] with it. There could be a very valid reason as to why it's not working and we can simply just ask what's going on. I get that losing points to a cheater sucks, but at the end of the day, this is just a video game. Let's not call for people to lose their jobs over it. All of this stuff takes time to fix. [music] In less than 24 hours being in the top 500, people were already demanding changes over the weekend. And NetEase issued a response already on Monday. And I'm betting people were probably working over the weekend and people were still upset. Real long-lasting changes takes time to implement. I understand the frustration, but please understand that there are real people who work on this game. They deserve their weekends and they deserve time to figure out what the problem is and what the solution is. If the problem persists and the communication stops, then okay. I can understand your frustration. But it's unfair to demand so much in so little time. This also mostly affects high elo players and not the majority of the player base. I saw that there were cheaters over the weekend and I chose to do vod reviews instead. I can choose to take a break while they figure out what to do. This is a live service game, which means it's under constant iteration. You're going to have good days and bad days.

[00:03:39]Sometimes problems pop up, but it's possible to report a bug or report an issue without being a dick about it. I know what the dev experience can be like. Sometimes there's limitations on what you can do. Being a dev is not about just doing your job. It's about problem-solving and finding creative solutions to those problems. And what sucks is when you're trying your best and you have gamers calling for you to be fired as you're actively working on the problem for [music] them on what should be your time off. And I get that right now you'll probably bump into a few more cheaters than usual, but they still don't make up the majority of the games played. No one wants to lose to a cheater, but you want to know what I see more of? People using trackers and stream sniping and prominent streamers advertising that. People whining at heels and throwing after the first bad team fight. [music] People insta locking, refusing to swap, and refusing to work together. People running it down for 20 to 30 minutes and calling it strategy. People target banning their own teammates. The biggest [music] problem this game faces is not cheaters.

[00:04:28]It's its own player base. Some of the biggest influences display some of the worst behavior, and that then travels to the rest of the ranks. This affects [music] your ranked experience far more than cheaters. NetEase can work to do something about the cheaters, but the community at the top could also be better examples for everyone else.

[00:04:43]People can also do better and not support the content creators that encourage these shady practices to win or encourage toxic behavior. The more we prop up bad behavior, the more we encourage it. I don't want to hear the excuse of "Oh, this is what gaming is."

[00:04:55]No, gaming wasn't always this way. I'm old enough to remember. This is what gaming has become. We can choose to be better than this and be a place that's deserving of more respect, but it starts with us demanding better from our own communities. The alternative is that NetEase has to be more strict about their bans and moderation, which means that some of you will be affected by it.

[00:05:12]So, it's up to us to decide, do we want to police ourselves or do we want NetEase to do it? Let's be patient while the devs figure out what to do about the cheaters and at least give them time to figure out solutions. We can definitely help make a better product by alerting them to bugs, issues, and cheaters, but it's also very possible to do that without being rude. NetEase has been incredibly quick to respond to player feedback. That's not something displayed by a lot of other game studios, and I think they deserve more credit. I don't agree with every decision that NetEase makes, but at least they're very quick to respond, and they're very quick to iterate on what they think isn't working. And let's not pretend that if we fix this cheater problem, Rivals is suddenly going to get better, because the cheaters is not the biggest problem that Rivals faces. Rivals is a great game that I love to play. But what keeps me from playing some days is not the cheaters, the matchmaking, or the balance. It's the players. And to truly make this game a better experience, it starts first with us.