Få ting kan ødelægge en god spilsession som en spiller, der snyder. Wallhacks og aimbots spreder sig ofte som en steppeild over serverne, når nye multiplayerspil rammer markedet. Derfor kan vi kun klappe i vores hænder, når forskere kigger nærmere på dette frustrerende fænomen. Et spritnyt forskningsprojekt fra Cornell University i USA har kigget på 12 millioner Steam-konti, hvoraf 700.000 kontoer er markeret som snydere. Projektet viser, at snyderne har tendens til at være venner med andre snydere på Steam-netværket. Desuden spreder snyderiet sig som en virus. Jo flere af dine Steam-venner der er snydere, desto større risiko har du selv for at falde for snyderiet. Forskerne opdagede også, at en spillers sociale status falder drastisk, hvis han bliver markeret som snyder. Det er et yderst interessant studie, og du kan læse deres opsummering ved at klikke dig ind under denne nyhed.

Online gaming is a multi-billion dollar industry that entertains a large, global population. One unfortunate phenomenon, however, poisons the competition and the fun: cheating. The costs of cheating span from industry-supported expenditures to detect and limit cheating, to victims’ monetary losses due to cyber crime.
This paper studies cheaters in the Steam Community, an online social network built on top of the world’s dominant digital game delivery platform. We collected information about more than 12 million gamers connected in a global social network, of which more than 700 thousand have their profiles flagged as cheaters. We also collected in-game interaction data of over 10 thousand players from a popular multiplayer gaming server. We show that cheaters are well embedded in the social and interaction networks: their network position is largely undistinguishable from that of fair players. We observe that the cheating behavior appears to spread through a social mechanism: the presence and the number of cheater friends of a fair player is correlated with the likelihood of her becoming a cheater in the future. Also, we observe that there is a social penalty involved with being labeled as a cheater: cheaters are likely to switch to more restrictive privacy settings once they are tagged and they lose more friends than fair players. Finally, we observe that the number of cheaters is not correlated with the geographical, real-world population density, or with the local popularity of the Steam Community. This analysis can ultimately inform the design of mechanisms to deal with anti-social behavior (e.g., spamming, automated collection of data) in generic online social networks.

Kilde: Cornell University

2 KOMMENTARER

  1. Jeg har sku aldrig set nogen hængt ud som snydere på Steam… Men det er fedt med en offentlig gabestok!

    Men har det en effekt, at man bliver hængt ud som snyder? Jeg ville ikke gå tilbage til dydens vej, hvis jeg først er hængt ud…

  2. #1
    Dine VAC bans på Steam bliver stående i den offentlige del af din profil, så alle kan se, at du har fået et “klip i kørekortet”, men jeg mener ikke der står specifikt hvad du er blevet napset for.

    Og ja, man bliver ofte hængt ud. Jeg har oplevet flere gange i en Left 4 Dead lobby, at hosten lige pludselig konfronterer andre spillere med “Hvorfor har du en VAC ban?”, som ofte er resulterert i et kick.