Comment by tomxor
4 years ago
> but I also like to know that the others in the game are not cheating. and that is impossible without an inaccessible black box, the Xbox
Ignoring the fact that reverse engineering is just a matter or time and pressure, eventually people will start hooking up image recognition auto-aimers to the input/output of these devices... what then? do we enter some kind of minority report era of gaming where you have to get your eyeballs replaced with "unhackable" ones - hope they don't burn out your retinas in an update. Point is, a black box is actually not a complete solution - as long as you can play the game, there will always be a way to cheat.
There are various online FOSS games that are completely open and hackable, where it's very easy to download the source and literally set a condition in the make file to enable "wallhacks" (because that is in-fact a useful debugging feature - talking about ioq3 specifically)... those communities just deal with it the old fashioned way, new players get treated with more scrutiny, admins get good at recognising cheaters (most cheaters are not good at hiding it, and experienced players who would better conceal wall-hacking behaviour etc are less likely to want to play with hacks way anyway). It's far from bullet proof, but so are so called "black boxes" despite their cost to the user.
> do we enter some kind of minority report era of gaming where you have to get your eyeballs replaced with "unhackable" ones
yes.
Retinal fingerprinting with VR. you can jtag your headset, and be locked out.
the answer is "yes", because of market forces.
I want to play against other players, with an assurance that the game is fair.
I will pay money for this. A Company will deliver on this, and those who seek to infringe upon this, will be legally coerced into submission.
... wow.
I'm not usually one to judge what others spend their time/energy/motivation on, but you may want to re-evaluate your priorities.
Is having a game with that level of "unhackability" - because lets be honest, there's no such thing as unhackability - really worth everything that would have to be given up, from right to repair, right to own your hardware, the ability to not arbitrarily be locked out of something you put money into because <you were injured and lost an eye|your hardware broke and misread something|You develop a lazy eye| n number of anything else>?
If it's that important to you, play a game where cheaters are dealt with the old fashioned way. I'm ready for a break from corp hosted game servers, give me a server I can run myself.
Yes, and millions of others too.
Some people want to play games, and enjoy themselves in a competitive environment, and pay for the privilege.
If that doesn't appeal to you, that is your priority.
Don't like it?
dont buy a fuckin xbox.
telling others they shouldn't enjoy a game because "muh hardware" is literally a borderline bad-faith statement, and a shallow attempt at virtue signaling.
buy a computer to compute.
buy a console for an assurance of a fair playing enviroment.