Activision Takes Action Against New Cutting-Edge, AI-Powered Auto Aim Cheat Software

[Tsing]

Image: Activision



Reports regarding a new, cutting-edge auto aim cheat software that leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning to help unscrupulous gamers cheat their way through popular FPS titles such as Call of Duty began surfacing this week. While it was initially unclear how effective the new cheat program’s auto-aim, auto-lock on, and other anti-competitive features actually were, Activision has now begun taking action against it, which suggests that the software is a real threat that likely works as advertised. A video shared by Anti-Cheat Police Department on Monday revealed that the cheat program is so advanced that it even works on consoles.



Ladies and gentlemen, I present you the next generation of cheating now available on console, and has been for a while but lately its been becoming more popular and more of a...

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[Zarathustra]

As much as this sucks for online gaming, eventually stuff like this is going to be unavoidable, sadly.

If these hacks are designed right they could be completely undetectable and won't require any modification to the code base.

They could design an AI powered hack resident on a second computer (using an image capture card) that works based on image detection and provides mouse input using the HID protocol, just like a human would. Apart from lighting fast response time (they could even program it to slow you down a little so it is more believable)

There would be nothing for a cheat scanner to detect on the machine running the game

Considering how many streamers out there already stream from secondary computers, I don't think this is a stretch at all. All it would take is some software ingenuity and a USB mouse adapter dongle going from computer to computer so one computer can provide mouse input to the other.

The only way to catch something like this would be to either be in the cheaters room while they play, OR to use some sort of AI analysis trained on mouse input trying to distinguish between human mouse input and cheating software's mouse input, and it would probably be relatively non-trivial to program in variations in mouse input movement such that it looks less mechanical and more human...

They could also try to fight it legally at the source, but it might be a stretch legally since they would not be making any modifications to the original games files. They might have a legal leg to stand on when it comes to marketing their cheats using trademarked product names of titles, but that is easy to work around, and even if they can't then the distributors can just move to countries where they cannot be reached.

Moving to another country just to sell a cheat seems almost ridiculous to us old geezers who think of game cheats as something some geek in his parents basement works on, but game cheats in the era of wealthy streamers willing to pay to keep up their fanbase to protect their google income have become big big business making lots of money.

Online gaming has already gone downhill from where it was back in the day, due to a combination of issues like more prevalent cheating, streamers just ****ing around and trying to amuse their followers instead of playing game objectives, and official servers with automatic matchmaking removing the forced community aspect around community servers. AI enabled cheating might be the last blow that completely kills it.

I stopped playing online multiplayer games about 4-5 years ago. It just wasn't fun anymore because of the above.

 

[Burticus]

On console? So some type of device that plugs into the controller somehow?