Fighting cheaters: Part I
Soldiers!
Today we start a series of publications uncovering the details of our fight against cheats. In this first article we want to talk about our efforts against the spread of cheats, and later we will highlight more complex aspects. The main purpose of these articles is to answer your questions in as much detail as possible.
FOREWORD
Needless to say that the fight against cheats at the software level is our top priority. It allows us to identify and block offenders, yet also complicates the further development of cheats, reducing their total number on the market. We will speak about this side of our work in the future, while today we talk about our fight at the level of cheat distribution.
WHO ARE THE CHEAT DISTRIBUTORS?
The spread of cheats is rarely done by their developers themselves with intermediaries taking the stage. Most often, distributors use widely known resources, e.g. YouTube.
They create channels to sell cheats. Of course, we cannot ignore this fact, and for many months we have been preventing such actions. Complaints are sent monthly to dozens of YouTube channels. But only a part of them is blocked immediately.
There are also some imposters in social networks who pretend to be representatives of the administration to send you a Trojan virus or to steal the game account information. Remember the safety rules!
YOUTUBE AND CHEAT CHANNELS
With YouTube things can go difficult. Each time there is a complex process of copyright verification and determining the proof that these rights were violated. Our success in this direction has been growing. Every month, upon our requests, about fifty channels selling cheats for CIS and EU/NA regions are blocked. But some still remain active for reasons beyond our control and eventually become large.
YouTube is not always eager to help, and not always a fair, in our opinion, decision is made. There were cases when previously blocked channels were restored and continued to work. But the hope must not be lost!
YOU CAN HELP, TOO!
The community itself came to the rescue and it seems that a new way to deal with such YouTube channels was found. It happened at the initiative of some popular Russian bloggers.
What did these bloggers call for? They suggested the players to massively flood the channels of cheat distributors and send complaints on behalf of the game community. Before, we did it only on our own, sending one complaint from the official channel. Now, thanks to bloggers, a huge gaming community has joined this fight, and the amount of complaints became impossible to ignore.
It is too early to judge, but the method looks simple and effective. There is no guarantee that YouTube will not unblock the channels of cheat distributors again, as before. But we hope that these actions will be effective, and the number of violators will be significantly decreased.
WHAT ARE THE OTHER VECTORS OF OUR FIGHT?
In addition to the work with the mentioned websites, we also successfully block the websites of violators and their contextual advertising. As you understand - this is not an instant process and there is no magic button. But a huge amount of work in made following this vector.
To achieve a complete victory, the fight with the distributors of cheats is not enough. We will continue to work in various directions.
IN CONCLUSION
We would like, once again, to thank the video bloggers and players for their indifference and initiative. We, on our part, will continue to send daily complaints against the channels of violators, but the result will be much better if players continue to support us in that.
Suspect someone of cheating? Found a cheat channel or website? Report it to us!
Stay tuned for our new articles. We wish you a fair game!
