School of hard knocks
Teachers were a little more fierce when I was a lad, the rules of engagement were heavily weighted in the favour of the educator and some were infamous for their harsh ways of dealing with young urchins that broke the rules. However for all the diabolical methods employed (such as filling a bucket with spit or copying out the Yellow Pages) one in particular really made my blood boil. When it wasn't clear who the culprit was (and said cretin would thump anyone who squealed) one teacher would punish the entire class in hope to flush out the perpetrator: it was the injustice of this method that made it work so well.
Ok flip forward a few years (decades) and let me explain why I'm wittering about old school stories. For as long as there has been game code, hackers have been able to cheat (and promote cheating) to varying degrees. Pre-Internet nobody really gave two monkeys because gaming was small fry and largely a single player affair. These days the gaming industry is worth tens of billions and is enjoyed by the same amount of people across the globe. Hackers are now able to bring the biggest games to their knees by running bots, scripts and even injecting their own code into the game thus allowing a whole range of unfair benefits. The game developers are painfully aware of hacking and while some do seem to want to stamp it out, the sad fact is that the kids who do it are often cleverer than the developers who wrote the game in the first place.
As games become more multiplayer focused, as we always knew they would, cheating gamers become a far more pressing matter. If back in the day little Johnny was playing Doom in god mode with infinite ammo, well frankly who cared right? However if a group of four friends spend weeks in The Division, clocking up many hundreds of hours to forge the perfect armour and weapon: just to be mowed down in less than a second by little Johnny and his infinite damage hack... it's a classic case of a small minority ruining it for the rest.
Cause and effect
We often see the PC version of a game getting released months or even years after its console counterpart, optimisation is the usual line trotted out, but we all know it is because developers know as soon as the game is out in the wild it will be hacked, cracked and free to download in no time. One day developers may figure a PC version of a game is just not worth the hassle: some already do.
One side effect of gamers who cheat is that it's not always obvious who is and who isn't. Sometimes you will go toe to toe with another player who puts up a fantastic fight, but is this because they are using an aimbot or wall-hack? Most of the time you just don't know. There is no worse feeling when playing against other players knowing that some of your enemies may have an unfair advantage, it makes you feel like throwing in the towel and many do. Some gamers who ordinarily would never have considered cheating in games do so just to keep up with the ones using hacks. This is how unscrupulous cheating can spread through game communities like wildfire and leave the stench of mistrust in the air.
These last few weeks The Division has been getting destroyed in the media, hackers are rife and the honest gamers out there seem to be leaving in droves (and I can hardly blame them). Some industry experts have offered the opinion that the ease at which The Division has been saturated by cheaters is partly down to the sloppy way which the game has been built. I am not going to profess a deep knowledge of how hackers do their thing, but I will link one of the articles here for your viewing pleasure. Of course, it is not just The Division, most multiplayer games I've played in the last two years have had some kind of cheating going on whether it be bots swamping the economy in the MMOs I play or hybrid games like Dark Souls 3.
One of the greatest strengths of the PC as gaming platform is its open nature. When a game gets dropped on us in a broken state we can usually do something about it. The resourcefulness of some PC gamers/communities out there is awe-inspiring: often treating the task of repairing games like a full-time job and certainly a labour of love. However this freedom and power comes with a price: this is exactly how hackers and cheats can also exploit the games we play.
When everyone is special
Microsoft has recently set their sights on PC gaming as something they might be able to monetize and control. The platform they would do this with is called Universal Windows Platform (UWP) and if people got onboard it would pretty much make the Microsoft key holder for PC gaming. The ability to makes mods, to fix broken games and pretty much the beating heart of PC gaming would be stripped away in one fell swoop: so bad then. Well hackers, cheats and pirates are giving Microsoft (and others) the perfect justification for imposing their soul-sucking DRM on us. Furthermore, when hacking is prolific in certain games they really can ruin a community that could otherwise have gone on for years. This not only sucks but can cost people their jobs and turn a game they have worked on for years into an unplayable mess. Ok enough complaining, what can we actually do?
Well, I firmly believe that any community worth its salt should have the ability to get its own house in order. Most gamers out there that hack or use glitches download the script from well-known sites, thus they might not be the hacker but are obviously giving the hackers work some form of purpose. If you love PC gaming and can't imagine the games industry without it then this is your fight. There is no hard and fast way to make the kind of changes I am talking about because, at the end of the day, we are talking about a change in human behaviour. It may sound condescending but educating gamers as to the effects of their actions could be one possible action. My own online community has a charter with clear rules on cheating, in short if you cheat you're gone. However these standards take time to enforce and don't exist outside our digital boundaries.
Summary
So let us just come out and say it: pirates and hackers pose the single biggest threat to PC gaming there is and stands to ruin a platform that has unlimited potential. The PC is also far more important than many people realise because for all we know one or more of the major consoles could call it a day when the next generation rolls around. If PC has been run into the ground where would the games industry be then?
I know, there will always be gamers that will cheat if given the opportunity but damn it I want to help make it as difficult as possible. I look forward to the day technology can make cheating impossible and where everyone plays a fair game. The trick will be to achieve this and still let creative gamers craft the mods that make PC gaming such a hotbed of innovation and the bastion of freedom.
Thank you for reading my article, I hope you enjoyed it. Please add me to your favourites and come back soon. If you have a game you feel I should be reviewing please let me know at riggedforepic@gmail.com. You can also follow me @riggedforepic and find my YouTube channel under the same name.