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Epic Games, the developer of Fortnite, has filed a lawsuit against a 14-year-old boy who used cheating software for Fortnite Battle Royale and uploaded a video to YouTube showing others how to use it. The boy filed a DMCA counterclaim after Epic Games tried (successfully) to take down his video, and then uploaded a second video doubling down on the cheating (here is a third intact video from the YouTuber explaining the situation, 7m16s). The original video was ultimately removed and resulted in a "strike" against the YouTuber's account. The boy's mother has filed a letter with the Eastern District Court of North Carolina blasting the lawsuit and asking for it to be dismissed. She says that Epic Games failed to bind underage users with the EULA for their free-to-play game and claims that she did not give parental consent for her son to play the game. She also points out that the software in question is easily obtainable online and that her son did not modify the game with his own code:
Epic Games, the game developer of the massively popular Fortnite survival shooter, now finds itself at the center of a heated debate around the ethics of punishing cheaters after filing a lawsuit against a 14-year-old boy. In response, the boy's mother filed a legal note tearing down Epic's lawsuit and calling for it to be thrown out. The ensuing debate has been fierce, with some praising Epic and others decrying the legal measures as excessive and heartless, suggesting this case could become a touchstone for how game developers of highly competitive online titles handle cheaters and licensing agreement violations in the future.
[...] Epic, which has banned cheaters only to see them develop more robust workarounds, has responded by suing both distributors of the software and, now it seems, at least one user of it. Suing an individual user instead of simply banning them is an unorthodox and controversial move because it echoes the misguided actions of the music recording industry in its attempt to crackdown on piracy. That parallel was only further cemented by the note submitted by the 14-year-old's mother in the Eastern District of North Carolina.
[...] "This particular lawsuit arose as a result of the defendant filing a DMCA counterclaim to a takedown notice on a YouTube video that exposed and promoted Fortnite Battle Royale cheats and exploits," Epic told The Verge in a statement. "Under these circumstances, the law requires that we file suit or drop the claim. Epic is not okay with ongoing cheating or copyright infringement from anyone at any age. As stated previously, we take cheating seriously, and we'll pursue all available options to make sure our games are fun, fair, and competitive for players."
Here's some analysis from a copyright attorney (10m53s, starts at 5m45s). He is not impressed with the mom's letter.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by meustrus on Thursday November 30 2017, @02:45PM (3 children)
It should be possible to detect cheating on the server, right? It ought to to simple enough to build cheat detection into the matchmaking system to pair cheaters and suspected cheaters together. Then they can go play a different game while the non-cheaters play the game as intended. It works even if your detection system isn't super accurate. I can imagine Amazon selling an AI product to back this.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2) by infodragon on Thursday November 30 2017, @02:57PM
The cheaters then enter a meta-gaming game of competitive cheating rather than competitive play. In some ways that would rock, in other ways that would totally suck because competition breeds a better product and that may lead to cheats so good they are EXTREMELY difficult to detect... So the cheating pool of players would be a breeding ground for uber cheats and the cheating creators would then enter an arms race. This is the true reason SkyNet will be born!
Don't settle for shampoo, demand real poo!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 01 2017, @12:27PM (1 child)
Most cheating is only possible because the server sends more data to the client than the client ought to know, for performance reasons. How much of this "performance reasons" are actually still needed these days, I'm not sure that's a question anyone has considered recently, it may very well just be a case of "that's how we've always done it".
Then there are things like aim-bots, developing a piece of code that's actually better at playing than the actual player. These cannot reliably be detected, an aim-bot does not need to be perfect, for most cheaters an aim-bot that's worse than top players would still be a huge boost. And then comes the discussion about whether aim-bots are really cheating in the first place. Are self-driving cars cheating? Are those automatic gun turrets at the North/South Korean border cheating?
It becomes a question of how you define the game in question. Is it a sport, like soccer? Or a fight to win, like a war? Something like Call of Duty, it would be hard to convince people that it's a sport, not a fighting like a war.
In the end, the solution is probably to give up on the whole "sports" aspect of fighting against people you can't see and with no referee.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Friday December 01 2017, @02:44PM
Game logic is not hard to process. There is no excuse for sharing concealed information with the client. Honestly, I would think it would make performance worse to send the client the locations of all opponents; without that information, nobody gets rendered right?
But concealed information aside, a matchmaking system that's doing its job should handle aim-bots just fine. Maybe the aim-bit cheater ends up in a higher bracket than he should be based on skill alone. He's still not a great player at the higher bracket, because there's still (hopefully) room for tactics. It just might prevent you from making aiming the primary challenge of the game, which...let's face it, the ability to aim well with a controller or even with a mouse and keyboard is just not enough to carry more than a tech demo. Might as well be playing Link's Crossbow Training at that point.
Relying on that mechanic also makes it impossible to create good AI for single player, since without simulating the hands and the input device there's no way the computer will have any kind of nuanced difference between "aimbot sniped you peeking out of cover from across the map" and "stormtrooper misses so much you'd think it was trying to let them escape".
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?