When are you going to begin addressing the rampant cheating that happens in your game?
A study by Irdeto surveyed 9,436 online gamers in China, Germany, Japan, South Korea, UK, and the US. The results were staggering. According to the survey, a total of 37% of gamers openly admitted to cheating (3% "always", 9% "often", 13% "sometimes", and 12% "rarely"). And given there is no incentive on being honest with themselves, let alone a survey for that matter, and the fact that cheaters know cheating is wrong, yet, cheat anyways so lying would not be outside of the realm of reasonable possibility, these results are likely to be considerably higher, like in the 90% range, in reality.
Day after day, week after week, month after month, my friends and I come across and report cheaters on a near daily basis in Red Dead Redemtion 2 Online. From people being invisible on the map, to being absolutely unkillable while their ability cards are set to damage builds, to people teleporting across the map, always just out of range, yet never dying.
We frequently find that after reporting, even with video evidence, these cheaters fail to be punished, still the in the game the next day, still up to there their same cheating way, day after day, week after week, year after year. Many of the reports are never responded to by Rockstar, even to inform us that they have really looked at it.
One particularly vile cheat is players hijacking IP addresses of other players and using that to boot them from a lobby... What The Actual Fuck Is That? This could be a joint problem between Rockstar and Microsoft... but it is a real problem.
According to a Forbes article, "Of the online gamers, only 12% have never had their multiplayer gaming experience negatively impacted by other players cheating. In other words, about 9 in 10 players have had a negative experience because of cheaters." And 76% of the Irdeto respondents also stated that it is important for them that multiplayer games online are secured against players with unfair advantages. “Gamers across the globe clearly feel that they are not being sufficiently protected against cheating and malicious plugins.” said Rory O’Connor, Irdeto's Senior VP of Cybersecurity Services.
So why should Rockstar care?
If cheaters are allowed to succeed and continue circumventing the game's expected performance, mechanics and rewards to gain unfair advantages over other players, this can lead to players moving on to games with lower rates of cheating. This lowers game traffic and subsequent decreased engagement leads to a decline in profits for the particular game. In other words, the games where cheating goes completely unchallenged, like Red Dead Redemption, begin to fail.
And this is where Rockstar needs to note.
Read Dead Online is still in its infancy. At a year old, the game has included only one major update that included content that was more than just an expansion on PVP mechanics, a mechanic of play where cheating is rampant (as can be seen in the example video above).
So, Rockstar, what is your game plan here?
You have been free with the ban hammer and other punishments for cheating in Los Santos, when are you going to begin bringing that level of justice to the Five States? When are valid reports of cheating, especially with supporting video evidence (like above) going to properly dealt with?
Honest gamers really want to know.
Because in the end, responses to reporting players through the support page, like this one...
"For the Players are exploiting you have to report to the players ."
... these responses are not cutting it.
Sincerely,
All Honest Gamers
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