Notice A statement on cheating in Elite Dangerous.

[The Replicated Man]

Yeah, he's not the peaceful martyr that he was painted by some to be.

Basically took the entire community For a Ride...

 

[Alfred J Kwak]

So a player that has used it for months , most likely been reported , only got banned when showing it on a life stream to make a point.
Says allot about frontiers reaction to cheaters.
But they must have been to bussy about the complaints of cheaters on combat loggers.

 

[rootsrat]

Hello Commanders,

We wanted to take some time to address some of the concerns the community has raised regarding the use of cheats in Elite Dangerous.

Cheating in our game is something that we take very seriously, and do not condone. Using a cheat engine, mod, hack etc. is in direct violation of the Terms and Service and EULA agreed to by all players upon setting up a Frontier account. We support honest competition between players, different playstyles and each Commander’s ability to blaze their own trail, and we strive for them to be able to do this in a fair, safe environment.

We continuously work alongside our development and support teams to combat the tools that make cheating possible, and to take action against accounts found to be using them.

As with any online game, combatting cheating is an ongoing process, and something that we are always working against. We work continuously to review and improve the tools, tracking and the safeguards required in order to tackle issues when they arise. We are not able to discuss the specifics of tools and processes that we have, as this would give the cheaters a significant advantage in being able to circumvent these efforts.

When it comes to taking actions against accounts we have identified as using cheats, we review every report on a case by case basis. While there has been a level of discussion regarding these cheats within the community recently, we can assure people that the number of people using these are a very tiny number of players. We are still working on new and improved ways of stopping these cheats and tracking and measuring activity now and in the past.

We strongly advise that no player runs Elite Dangerous using a cheat client, hack, software mod etc as this will put your account at risk now, and in the future.

We also advise against promoting or publicising of any programs which claim to mod/hack or cheat for Elite Dangerous. Doing so can give players a false sense of legitimacy regarding these programs and ultimately lead to increased risk to players accounts. Rest assured that we continue to actively work on and address cheating in all forms and will continue to do so.

If you come across a player you suspect is cheating, please do use the in-game reporting tool to send us that information. You’re also welcome to contact our support team via a ticket to provide supporting evidence such as photos or videos.

Thank you for your time, and fly safe.

With all due respect, literally nothing new was said. This is pretty much an exact copy of Will's post from Ryan's thread, but with more words.

Not sure where this is coming from, but whoever was the author and approver of this clearly doesn't understand the core of the issue, which is complete lack of any information whatsoever.

I'm sorry to say I find this "statement" 100% pointless

::EDIT::

Let me correct myself. I can actually see this statement being useful for people who want to know FDEV's stance on cheating. However I think that most of the users that are interested in the topic and are visiting the forums were hoping for some sort of an UPDATE, rather than repeating what was already said before multiple times. Hopefully this better reflects what I was trying to say.

 

[The Replicated Man]

Remember the engineering cheat/exploit 1 material tier 5 god roles. Frontier would punish those players remove all engineerd equipment, ban players. Havent seen any of that .
Frontier havent done any thing against those cheaters.

Well how would you know? Do you have someone at Frontier feeding you information on people being banned? Considering they are very quiet on banning but it does happen. They don't have to publicize names or a list of players who were banned. Despite that being handy for the rest of us.

 

[Northpin]

Guess nothing will please the community.
Unless maybe FDev decides to shut down the game on PC platform (or at least decouple it from BGS/PP and remove open play) and offer everyone a onetime transfer to consoles

 

[The Replicated Man]

Really? OK ... I heard his interview and he came across as a very reasonable person. If what you say is true then I've misjudged both him and Frontier and made a of myself in the process!
I'll go back to SRV racing.

I am afraid most of us share your feelings Alec. He pulled the wool over most of our eyes and I was pretty saddened when I heard the news

 

[Chaparral]

When it comes to taking actions against accounts we have identified as using cheats, we review every report on a case by case basis.

That is the elephant in the room. The mechanic here seems to be that unless overt evidence is presented, there does not seem to be a systemic anti-cheat effort. Even when that evidence is presented (BGS-botting), it does not seem like there is a concerted effort to combat cheating.

Perhaps some statistics on the number of bannings would help the community believe that FDEV is "taking cheating seriously".

Would it be better to have some set of filter defining the range of possible stats, and any account demonstrating values outside of that range is autobanned, with autogenerated email defining the reasons for the ban, with an autogenerated support ticket?

 

[Sir.Tj]

Irrespective on how you feel about this subject, let's keep it calm and civil please.

 

[sgurr]

I am afraid most of us share your feelings Alec. He pulled the wool over most of our eyes and I was pretty saddened when I heard the news

Likewise, I listened to (some) of his interview with Plater and he came across as reasonable.

However, it does beg the question if he'd been using the cheats for months why wasn't he banned before?

 

[Slange Lands]

Would a software developer ever openly admit that they have explored all the options, but have found none satisfactory?

 

[Alfred J Kwak]

Pssst dont tell frontier things they dont want to hear, and certainly dont make live streams or YouTube videos about those issues to prove and give evidence on things wrong with the game or how frontier ignores warnings.

Frontier created this environment and culture now has to live with it.

 

[Vardaugas]

2.8% I heard

3.6 last I heard.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Perhaps some statistics on the number of bannings would help the community believe that FDEV is "taking cheating seriously".

The community doesn't have the means to assess any statistics Frontier gives on the matter, though, and based on previous behaviour would just disbelieve any numbers that didn't match their personal beliefs of what the numbers "should" be.

Let's say - hypothetically, I have no access to any relevant data - that Frontier tells us that 113 players were banned for cheating in May 2019. Is that good? bad? catching 99% of them? missing 99% of them? We have no idea.

If they then tell us a month later that 89 players were banned for cheating in June 2019, what does that mean? Is it good because fewer players are cheating? Bad because fewer are getting caught? Neutral because the same proportion of players are cheating but there were fewer players in general in June? We still have no idea.

 

[Rich32uk]

"And remember we're in the top 1% of recognising an issue but doing didly squat about it"

 

[CMDR-ss47ply]

Thanks for the update but it wont stop the few who love to yell THE SKY IS FALLING but i think theres meds for that

 

[The Replicated Man]

Likewise, I listened to (some) of his interview with Plater and he came across as reasonable.

However, it does beg the question if he'd been using the cheats for months why wasn't he banned before?

Thats the million dollar question. I am afraid FDEV can't tell unless someone flags a person for cheating, or they start messing with more obvious things like jump range, fuel consumption, speed etc.

If FDEV can't tell who is cheating, and are just investigating based on reports, that would be a very scary situation indeed. Considering their Cut and Paste response, that may very well be the case.

 

[Ian Skippy]

Nah, they never said they would ban anyone if I recall correctly, just remove the offending modules which as I understand, they did.

They said they would remove all cheated plus all of the same type, legit or not. So if you had one cheated C4 beam and five legit, you'd lose them all.

They never mentioned bans. That is just people making stuff up and then railing against their own imagination.

 

[Alfred J Kwak]

Frontier made botting even easier , you want to see the bgs bots look at the powerplay leaderboard , when it became public about the bots and cheats several high profile powerplay groups suddenly slowed down 10 fold .
And that is weird as some have 2 different squadrons and both where doing the same numbers. and now suddenly there is a large difference.

Wonder what happend there.

 

[Northpin]

... and are just investigating based on reports...

Exactly - just report everyone acting suspicious, preferably without complaining on the forums to give the potential cheaters hints that they've been spoted, and let FDev investigate.
And do not start again with "we reported combat loggers for months" because this is not of the same order of magnitude

 

[babelfisch]

Thanks.
There isn't any new information in your post though, which makes it kinda pointless. Still better than nothing.