Legal Action on Hackers [Archive]

View Full Version : Legal Action on Hackers

Nuke

Apr 30, 2006, 08:50 AM

Cant they take Legal Action on hackers?
Broomop for instance?

linkzone

Apr 30, 2006, 09:02 AM

forget legal action. lets burn their houses down. and if there midgets, oohhh god help them if their midget hackers. but in all reality, tracing a hacker isnt easy and i dont thing anyone would really take the time to do it.

coomdoom

Apr 30, 2006, 09:23 AM

well broomop lives in london in the UK, there is some help

lostinseganet

Apr 30, 2006, 09:48 AM

On 2006-04-30 06:50, Nuke wrote:
Cant they take Legal Action on hackers?
Broomop for instance?

If They hack the servers they can take legal action. Another plus to server side saving.

DamonKatu

Apr 30, 2006, 10:58 AM

get your torches, tools, and weapons folks because Hackingstine has apeared! XD but seriously, Hackers have been herassing PSO (and other online games, of course) for way too long. The game guard on PSO:BB really helped pervented coruption and the frozen screen from happening but I wounder how long before that shield program shaters to heavy hacking? Thats why its good to layer the wall as much as you can but make sure nonthimg slithers under that wall.

Inazuma

Apr 30, 2006, 11:10 AM

they should at least ban the credit card number used in the cheaters/hackers account. or even better, charge a $500 cheater fee on their cc.

PrinceBrightstar

Apr 30, 2006, 11:16 AM

Where have I seen this before...
...
Blue Burst!

Don't worry guys, its a brand new architecture for the game. It won't be able to create the first hacks. And that offline hack doesn't really do anything except allow players to see the character creation screens.

[ This Message was edited by: Jonathan_F on 2006-04-30 09:18 ]

peenk

Apr 30, 2006, 12:06 PM

lol broomop isnt a hacker...
hacker is someone w/ more skill than to crack a VIDEO game

lol i wonder if he has a job? ...

PhotonCat

Apr 30, 2006, 12:07 PM

Game companies will never ever take legal action against players who hack. It has never been done before and never will.
Your going to have to deal with it. Hacking/duping WILL happen eventually. It is up to Sega whether or not they feel like banning those players or not.

Im tired of people thinking that players who hack/dupe/sell game items/buy game items are "illegal" and they can get sued/jailed. It's never gonna happen. I played a lot of online games, it's always thousands of players who do it. Game companies don't have the time or money to spend on court cases. Most of the time they are afraid of trying to take legal action because if they lose then it gives other people the incentive to continue to hack/dupe/etc because it shows that it isn't "illegal" like the companies want you to belive.

Jack

Apr 30, 2006, 02:36 PM

On 2006-04-30 07:23, coomdoom wrote:
well broomop lives in london in the UK, there is some help

London is a city covering over 600 square miles. We've definitely got him pin-pointed there.

Apr 30, 2006, 02:44 PM

Now you just need his real name, address, and maybe his number and you got him!

But the only thing Broomop did was make that crack to enter the character create and that was as far as he got.

Kimil

Apr 30, 2006, 02:57 PM

Why Not Have a line in the hunters liscense agreement saying something like:
"if you, the player, happen to hack our servers in rder to cheat, you will be fined 100 dollars and you will have your character data deleted instuntaneusly"

Authenticate

Apr 30, 2006, 03:18 PM

$100 is a bit excessive. What if you get hacked and the hacker starts messing with the server on your account? Someone could screw over a totally innocent person like that. There's no need to be THAT zealous against cheaters. Just ban 'em if they start causing problems.

Kimil

Apr 30, 2006, 03:26 PM

That's the thing though, Sega will never full heartedly ban someone, because they'll loose that's person's monthly fees (their income). If there was ome sort of fine, then they wouldn't care if they had to ban them, because they'd still get some money out of the cheating bastard

patient

Apr 30, 2006, 04:33 PM

On 2006-04-30 13:26, Kimil wrote:
That's the thing though, Sega will never full heartedly ban someone, because they'll loose that's person's monthly fees (their income). If there was ome sort of fine, then they wouldn't care if they had to ban them, because they'd still get some money out of the cheating bastard

Wow... People are really scared from PSO hackers/dupers/cheaters. As someone said earlier, it’s a new day and age. The days of DC-PSO hacks and Diablo 2 cheaters are gone. Bans are Swift and severe which they should be and most MMOs monitor activity through the client even on a packet level nowadays.

Blizzard recovered from a nasty cheater reputation to become one the strictest MMO companies around, I am sure Sega will do the same. A MMO security consultant has probably been on board since the conception phase. 'The Themis Group' anyone?

As for being lenient against cheaters, I don't really agree with that idea. If one person disrupts 10 people with unlawful activity that’s 10 people that pay for your product that potentially might leave. Anyone that violates any Clause marked "Severe" under the EULA should get a 'Kick-Ban-Cancel-No Refund.'

What I really want to know is how seriously sega is going to pursue Gold Farmers/Secondary Markets/IGE etc. That crap absolutely infuriates me and to be honest is more bothersome in my opinion than people that kill steal bot etc. There hasn’t been any announcement of a open market type system in PSU yet (Auction house - Players stores etc), but never the less those @#$! Leaches will no doubt be in the game anyway.

I left FFXI because of how bad it was at one point. All the Fish-Botters, Rare stealers made you want to puke. The entire Windurst starting area was covered with like 50 Fish Botters. World Of Warcraft is getting just as bad, Auction house prices are controlled by people that are not even legally allowed to play in the country they reside in.

Hopefully Sega makes it so that A) You cannot trade Currency to anyone. Or B) A great Open Market that is heavily policed and strictly enforcers.

Nuke

Apr 30, 2006, 04:43 PM

Good Points http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/anime1.gif^^

linkzone

Apr 30, 2006, 04:45 PM

i hate hackers. oh and do you think that you will be allowed to buy currency for the game? i hear they do that with other online games. pay real money to get online currency.

lostinseganet

Apr 30, 2006, 04:53 PM

On 2006-04-30 14:33, patient wrote:

On 2006-04-30 13:26, Kimil wrote:
That's the thing though, Sega will never full heartedly ban someone, because they'll loose that's person's monthly fees (their income). If there was ome sort of fine, then they wouldn't care if they had to ban them, because they'd still get some money out of the cheating bastard

Wow... People are really scared from PSO hackers/dupers/cheaters. As someone said earlier, it’s a new day and age. The days of DC-PSO hacks and Diablo 2 cheaters are gone. Bans are Swift and severe which they should be and most MMOs monitor activity through the client even on a packet level nowadays.

Blizzard recovered from a nasty cheater reputation to become one the strictest MMO companies around, I am sure Sega will do the same. A MMO security consultant has probably been on board since the conception phase. 'The Themis Group' anyone?

As for being lenient against cheaters, I don't really agree with that idea. If one person disrupts 10 people with unlawful activity that’s 10 people that pay for your product that potentially might leave. Anyone that violates any Clause marked "Severe" under the EULA should get a 'Kick-Ban-Cancel-No Refund.'

What I really want to know is how seriously sega is going to pursue Gold Farmers/Secondary Markets/IGE etc. That crap absolutely infuriates me and to be honest is more bothersome in my opinion than people that kill steal bot etc. There hasn’t been any announcement of a open market type system in PSU yet (Auction house - Players stores etc), but never the less those @#$! Leaches will no doubt be in the game anyway.

I left FFXI because of how bad it was at one point. All the Fish-Botters, Rare stealers made you want to puke. The entire Windurst starting area was covered with like 50 Fish Botters. World Of Warcraft is getting just as bad, Auction house prices are controlled by people that are not even legally allowed to play in the country they reside in.

Hopefully Sega makes it so that A) You cannot trade Currency to anyone. Or B) A great Open Market that is heavily policed and strictly enforcers.

I feel that sega should allow you 1 day to change your mind in a trade. That way jerks will cheat out jerks, and they will buy much less. When someone you give real money to can take it back, and you are screwed.

[ This Message was edited by: lostinseganet on 2006-04-30 15:10 ]

peenk

Apr 30, 2006, 04:55 PM

patient,
Lets face it. Those things that you mentioned as infuriating WILL happen.
And I wouldnt say that Blizz recovered from cheater reputation, I cant say they had any bad reputation but they certainly not doing anything better they did 5 years ago. (just my $0.02, I still cant get over how sh!tty WoW is)
What I say is kinda racist but mainly farmers from China ruin MMOs via farming. I wish they wouldnt allow anyone from China(Chinese ISPs) to play on ANY US servers. The only Chinese people I like are those who dont live in China. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_frown.gif

EDIT: i am sorry but .. post above me i didnt get that at all

[ This Message was edited by: peenk on 2006-04-30 14:57 ]

lostinseganet

Apr 30, 2006, 05:13 PM

peenk

Apr 30, 2006, 05:24 PM

Sorry lol I still dont get it.
Sounds like this:
1. you pay real money for someone to trade you an item in game
2. you pay real money and person trades you that item in game
3. about 23 hours later that person just canceles the trade and you dont get the item and you get your money taken anyway

is that what you mean? lol

Sev

Apr 30, 2006, 05:45 PM

Don't see how currency trade is supposed to flourish in this game...

For one... Your running through instanced missions. Anyone can get money and or items, simply by repeating the mission correct? This isn't like WoW or FFXI, where your competing heavily with other people for a certain item. The only ones there are your teamates IF you even have any. And again, you can always make aggreements with players before hand on what type of items you want and how you'll split them etc etc.

People keep overlooking the fact that this game doesn't run like either FFXI or WoW. To bot PSU will take ALOT, because it doesn't seem like just anyone would do it. Even so, if you're doing it you really have no life. I never let people ruin my time in game, if there are problem report them and then stay away from them. It sounds really simple and for a game like PSU, it should be really simple.

And if you think currency farming is only a Chinese thing... You're sorely mistaken. Anyone in the world can decide to pick up this type of business. On FFXI my friends have run into problems with French gil farmers, and there's other farmers that speak PERFECT English. It sounded a bit racist because it is a bit racist. Doing something like that wouldn't get anyone anywhere. It would also make alot of players feel uneasy that they can simply be generalized like that. Don't need that kinda negativity in a game.

But this is PSU we're talkin about. It wouldn't be itself without the negativity surrounding it. Especially by those that haven't played the game.

Edit: And PhotonCat's correct about legal action. If I'm not mistaken, Gravity took legal action concerning Ragnarok and from what I heard... They actually lost the trial. So now private servers are more abundant then before the times they took action. You would first have to find a court that would hold up the claim that violating the TOS would in fact be illegal. That's why it always says you can be banned or removed. FFXI's TOS states that using real currency to get something in game is not tolerated. Doesn't stop many people, but they had a huge mass banning of accounts and such.

[ This Message was edited by: Sev on 2006-04-30 15:52 ]

patient

Apr 30, 2006, 07:19 PM

On 2006-04-30 14:55, peenk wrote:
patient,
Lets face it. Those things that you mentioned as infuriating WILL happen.
And I wouldnt say that Blizz recovered from cheater reputation, I cant say they had any bad reputation but they certainly not doing anything better they did 5 years ago. (just my $0.02, I still cant get over how sh!tty WoW is)
What I say is kinda racist but mainly farmers from China ruin MMOs via farming. I wish they wouldnt allow anyone from China(Chinese ISPs) to play on ANY US servers. The only Chinese people I like are those who dont live in China. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_frown.gif

EDIT: i am sorry but .. post above me i didnt get that at all

[ This Message was edited by: peenk on 2006-04-30 14:57 ]

Rock on everyone! Glad to see everyone is just as concerned as I am.

I could not agree with you more Peenk. WoW is borked beyond belief.

As for the bad reputation I am referring to the famous perma-ban of 100,000 plus users for cheating.

Except from BBB.org: http://www.bbb.org (Blizzard Ent.)

"... Recent complainants allege the company closed accounts on 130,000 users without providing notice, and accused them of using "hack" techniques to cheat on gaming. Most of these complainants deny any illegal usage, and in some cases, they challenge the company to provide them some proof of the alleged violation.

[Snip]
The company addressed a few complaints regarding account terminations by issuing the same letter in each instance of complaint, accusing the complainant of cheating, lying or using hack programs."

Ouch 130,000 bans in one day.

Someone was bold enough to mention the infamous "Chinese Farmers" (Please don’t make this a race argument...) who have in some cases completely ruined Online games. I was a bit too cowardly to mention it as it usually turns into a “But how do you know they are Chinese!?” Or “You’re racist” thread. That’s not the point.

For those of you that don’t know: Certain companies such as http://www.Ige.com outsource smaller companies in China who employee kids to farm virtual currency in games, for real life wages. These "Farmers" in turn proved IGE and other companies with the Virtual Currency who then sell it on their websites for money. You pay the website $20 and then a person contacts you in game and “Trades” the currency to you.

Someone asked whether or not that could even be a concern due to the mechanics of PSU as we know it now. Well, you would be surprised. If lets say some clothing costs 5 figures to buy, requiring a player to grind and save for a few weeks to purchase it, then there WILL be demand for companies such as IGE. Unfortunately not every player shares the mentality that we all do here and instead of working hard and obtaining items through dedicated teamwork, others will choose to pay $20USD to easily obtain what they want.

It’s not only a reality, but it really sucks for us gamers that like to do things the honest way. Seeing some assclown walk around with equipment and items that you have been working towards for a month who simple entered in Mothers credit card number to get them really chaps my ass.

Let's hope that Sega takes at least some of the following measures into consideration.

- Implementing a detailed logging system between player - player trades from the get go. (Playonline did not do this and paid for it severely)
- Ip ban Chinese Subnets. (Hate to be the one to say it, but exporting laws govern that Chinese gamers cannot play games that are not hosted by Chinese censor approved ASPs anyhow.)
- Make certain items not tradable. Especially the rares. (Limits secondary markets from selling that for real cash or bought currency)
- Tradeskill materials are farmed not bought. Limits need for purchased Currency. (Ie. Cannot buy Rare Synthesis materials or Uber weapons, you have to obtain them by achieving difficult goals)
- Eliminate player to player currency trading all together. That eliminates begging, secondary markets and the problem all together. (Downside is that you can’t trade items with your friends or lend some cash.)

Kimil

Apr 30, 2006, 07:37 PM

I've NEVER even heard of this problem before

Nuclearranger

Apr 30, 2006, 08:05 PM

um if its anything like psos currency then theres nothing to worrie about

peenk

Apr 30, 2006, 08:22 PM

patient,
I would say that I agree on the point of baning subnets from some countries which are NOT suppose to be on the servers.
But I think everything should be traded and god forbid they make something like that STUPIDAZZSYSTEM of soulbound items in WoW. OMFG I hate that.
Making certain items really hard to get will only encourage people using real money to buy in game items/cash.
Thats why I am against things like Section ID, which thankfully, they got rid off.
I am also for making items MUCH easier to find than they were in PSO games. Lets take WoW for example: NO ONE in their concious mind was paying much money, much less real money, for 'green' items. While they were paying insane ammounts for 'blue' and 'purple' items in WoW.

I played stupid azz WoW for about 4 months and I didnt have a single final-purple item because I just didnt want to do the stupid instance for like 20-40 times just to get ONE item if I am lucky. (I was playing Shadowbane and thought WoW might offer better PvP... boy was I wrong but thats another topic.)

Making items easier to find would also discourage duping since it would be better to find your own spread needle or olga flow than to dupe it from a friend who used IGE to get one for himself.

And no one can call us racist for KNOWING the fact that Chinese players are the ones that ruin mmorpgs' economies. Its a fact.

[ This Message was edited by: peenk on 2006-04-30 18:25 ]

Kyunji

Apr 30, 2006, 08:58 PM

On 2006-04-30 18:05, NuclearRanger wrote:
um if its anything like psos currency then theres nothing to worrie about

But it's not. From what I've heard, it can take several missions just to earn enough money to buy a new saber and outfit.

On 2006-04-30 18:22, peenk wrote:
patient,
I would say that I agree on the point of baning subnets from some countries which are NOT suppose to be on the servers.
But I think everything should be traded and god forbid they make something like that STUPIDAZZSYSTEM of soulbound items in WoW. OMFG I hate that.
Making certain items really hard to get will only encourage people using real money to buy in game items/cash.
Thats why I am against things like Section ID, which thankfully, they got rid off.
I am also for making items MUCH easier to find than they were in PSO games. Lets take WoW for example: NO ONE in their concious mind was paying much money, much less real money, for 'green' items. While they were paying insane ammounts for 'blue' and 'purple' items in WoW.

I played stupid azz WoW for about 4 months and I didnt have a single final-purple item because I just didnt want to do the stupid instance for like 20-40 times just to get ONE item if I am lucky. (I was playing Shadowbane and thought WoW might offer better PvP... boy was I wrong but thats another topic.)

Making items easier to find would also discourage duping since it would be better to find your own spread needle or olga flow than to dupe it from a friend who used IGE to get one for himself.

And no one can call us racist for KNOWING the fact that Chinese players are the ones that ruin mmorpgs' economies. Its a fact.

I disagree in some respects. First of all, although I have never played WoW, judging by the way you are using the word "soulbound," it sounds like you mean non-tradable, non-buyable items. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as it has been done successfully in such games as Kingdom of Loathing. I don't know about colored items, but making items easier to find entirely defeats the purpose - rares are called rares for a reason. If they are easy to find, then they are no longer rare. Besides, a Phantasy Star Online game without rare and extremely rare items would be no fun for people who play legitimately. Also, you are incorrect about it being a "fact" that the Chinese ruin the economies of gamess. Anyone can buy and sell gil, put up an auction for a rare in-game item on eBay, etc. Perhaps Chinese players do so more often than American ones, but they do not entirely "ruin" game economies.

[ This Message was edited by: Kyunji on 2006-04-30 18:59 ]

peenk

Apr 30, 2006, 09:56 PM

Kyunji,
Soulbound means you will not be able to trade the item after you equiped it. Its 'soulbound' now. So you can buy item but if you used it you cant trade it again, just sell it to vendor for some lil cash or store it in bank and etc. Also some items can only be picked up ONCE. So lets say a rare sword droped and everyone in group rolled for that item, who ever won, gets that sword automatically soulbound. Very stupid system, imo, and I am 99% sure SEGA wont impliment that kinda system.
And you cant argue that PSO wouldnt have been fun w/o super rare items since neither you nor I have played PSO where you can easily find any type of item. I say it would still be as good especially for people who like to make more than one character and want to have a lot of good weapons on all their characters.
Dont forget that it would eliminate duping once and for all and prevent item-farmers from profiting.
Selling in-game items for real money is ruining in-game economy. If you played WoW/L2 you'd know.
And WHAT do you call people who sell in-game items for real money who reside in here (http://www.maps-of-china.com/china-country.shtml)? ... yeah I thought so.

[ This Message was edited by: peenk on 2006-04-30 19:58 ]

Authenticate

Apr 30, 2006, 10:08 PM

In a game like WoW, I liked the soulbound system and it made sense. In PSO/U, it would be too restrictive and a hassle. The farthest thing they should get to soulbinding things in PSU is like how Guild Wars does it, in my oppinion. Make binding a choice for a damage or PP upgrade or something.

peenk

Apr 30, 2006, 10:23 PM

On 2006-04-30 20:08, Authenticate wrote:
In a game like WoW, I liked the soulbound system and it made sense. In PSO/U, it would be too restrictive and a hassle. The farthest thing they should get to soulbinding things in PSU is like how Guild Wars does it, in my oppinion. Make binding a choice for a damage or PP upgrade or something.

You are right. GW is ok game. I'd like it more if lvl cap was something like 100... after I hit 20 I didnt play at all.
I mean nothing personal but I simply hate WoW and anything Blizz did with it. It was my biggest waste of time (4 months) and I am still cranky. I only wasted one month on L2.

PhotonCat

Apr 30, 2006, 10:24 PM

WoW is not "full of farmers" as you make it out to be, All MMORPGs are quite frankly. You also only played it for 4 months, that isn't long enough to give your "valid" opinion.
The prices aren't that high. Maby on specific servers but not all of them. If you don't want to buy something because its too high then don't, farm it yourself. Most of the stuff on the AH isn't worth buying anyway.
And it's not like your supposed to get hand-outs of "blue" and "purple" items. They are rare for a reason.

It is very racist to call all farmers "chinese". Not all farmers are. They come from all differnt countries.
Banning IPs wont work because like I said, they are from all over and there is farmers in USA and Europe as well.

Making items/money non-transferable will hurt the game. I want to be able to trade with my freinds. Or if we go on a run and all of us pick up stuff to prevent the "lag bugs" from taking our stuff, at the end we would want to sort it out.

About the Soulbinding, they did that so the market wouldnt be over-flooded with items and "hand-me-downs". I don't like that either but I doubt they will use that idea in PSU. Other MMOs are using it though, unfortuantly.

But oh well. No matter what there will always be cheaters/hackers/dupers/farmers in any MMO.

_Tek_

Apr 30, 2006, 11:13 PM

Sometimes online RPG's jus take so fricking long that some people just don't want to put so much time into it, so they get bots and such.

patient

May 1, 2006, 12:30 AM

On 2006-04-30 19:56, peenk wrote:
Selling in-game items for real money is ruining in-game economy. If you played WoW/L2 you'd know.
And WHAT do you call people who sell in-game items for real money who reside in here (http://www.maps-of-china.com/china-country.shtml)? ... yeah I thought so.
[ This Message was edited by: peenk on 2006-04-30 19:58 ]

Ding ding! You nailed it.

I think I played L2 for 4 days until I had heard enough "Rang! Rang!". I think it took about a month for that game to be infested by Secondary market employees.

As for FFXI, Fairy server got so bad we actually made a Linkshell whose entire purpose was to bother Gil Farmers. I was the 4th founding member of the Linkshell "TakeBack" which had when I left about 100 Players in it dedicated to MPKing Chinese... Erm.. I mean "Players that Farm Gold that happen to only speak Chinese".
If you don't believe Virtual Currency Companies such as IGE ruin economies that's fine, but the sure as hell ruin players trying to have fun and enjoy the game how it was meant to be played.

Remembers the horrible feeling of walking into the cave where Argus spawns only to be greeted by 25 Toons controlled by the same person all scripted to get him before me.
Sheesh that sucked.

Sev

May 1, 2006, 11:02 AM

FFXI, Fairy Server. There's more then just Chinese farmers. Especially considering the fact that a considerable amount of them were banned. I don't think they got many of the fish-botters, but a good bit of people were banned, and the AH's prices became reasonable again. I know this, first hand. I also of course know that although we had a good bit of farmers that were chinese on our server... It's not like it'd be hard to pose as whatever you wanna be... Any race can do broken english, and I think american's do broken english the best. It's not as racist as it's simply ignorance, and I really don't need to have this kind of problem on an MMO as I have it enough in real life. It's like this...

PSU is instanced... No ones going to bot your mobs and steal from you.

If someone has an item that you wanted... Oh well. They have it, you don't. You don't need to be worried about it in anyway. I've had tons of people tell me that I've bought currency simply because I was better off. People do this all the time, it's called envy.

Players are a big part of this problem as well. Guess what... If you don't buy currency, they don't make money, they don't have a business. As long as a service is being offered and people pay that service, it's not gonna go anywhere.

As you said, IGE also outsources. Meaning that all of their workers aren't located in China. Making the previous comment kinda ridiculous. Especially since there's more companies then just them. And moreso, the fact that it's essentially people exploiting the low wage payment they can give to a chinese worker. Do you really think they get a good bit of money in the end? They're the ones being used. And for the most part, it all starts elsewhere doesn't it?

People can try to ruin the game all they want. All you really have to do is stay away, report problems, and let ST do their jobs. If they don't do them, then you should probably just quit right away if you can't take it. And yeah, although there are farmers ruining economies on all games... We keep it up. We buy things for those ridiculous prices, and I sure as hell know people take advantage of it all the time. There's always a way around it. Simply put, it's too much work sometimes... And that's when people start to purchase currency. It's out of their own "need" for a certain thing. At least currency buying is more justified then buying someones account... Still not right though.

peenk

May 1, 2006, 01:31 PM

I'm sure you guys speak from your past experiences but ... so do I and Patient obviously.
I'm glad you guys did not go through that farming crap but that doesnt mean it doesnt exist.
Dont believe me? ... Try and google an article New York Times did on .. guess what? farmers in mmorpgs that just happen to only speak Chinese as Patien nicely put it (still LoLing that one).
Need another source? .. try PC Gamer's articles where they explain why they will never again allow ads that feature websites where people can buy in-game items for real money.

Itsuki

May 1, 2006, 03:30 PM

I think the whole "farmers come from china" thing stems from the fact that in china, they actually make businesses out of it. You can never make enough money to make a living off of farming in most countries, but in china, there have been multiple instances of businesses, with cubicals, and people making their living off of farming MMO currency. Some of these places have even been forced to shut down, though my understanding is not by legal means.

As for the Ragnarok Online thing, that was an entirely different beast. Gravity has had multiple run ins with hackers, and been severely hurt by them. Probably more than any other MMO. And I don't mean in game economy hurt, I mean directly being the cause of the company almost going bankrupt. But the private servers came later, and originally used a leaked version of gravity's own source. Gravity couldn't do anything about that, since it wasn't really maintained by anyone, it was just an old version of their server code. But through that server code, a new server was made, that basically reverse engineered the code to server. But they didn't have anything in their TOS that said that you couldn't use their client for personal use, and the new server didn't use their code, so they had no claim over it. These people didn't hack Gravity's servers, and didn't dupe or anything like that. So its in its own league.

Its also a misbelief that the company can't take legal action against the hacker. The problem here is that legal action doesn't really solve anything. It takes alot of time and alot of resources to track down and acquire enough evidence against one person/organization in order to take legal action. This means that its not impossible for the company to take legal action, just highly highly unlikely. Especially if the person/organization is in another country. It just becomes even more resource intensive. Its far more effective to ban accounts and credit card numbers.

Alexandrious

May 1, 2006, 04:47 PM

Ill say the same thing ive said in the Vanguard Forums, EQ2 before release forums and other upcoming mmo forums whenever a Topic like this occurs.

BANNIFICATE the hackers as much as possible, keep them out of the game since they dont have the skill or patience to play the game the real way.

BANNIFICATE the RMTs, mainly buyers so it will discourage other would be buyers to risk losing their account, having to pay for the game, and the subscription fee again and start all over losing their work. That way their will be less sellers.

Vanguard devised a special GM Division to seek out and BANNIFICATE hackers, RMTs, exploiters to keep the game safe. I hope ST will devise something like this too. Its the only answer.

peenk

May 1, 2006, 07:37 PM

You people need to get the facts straight as well. Ill try and get back to sort of main topic of this thread and PSU.
Think PSO and PSOv2. Was cheating/hacking/duping fixed even a little in v2 over v1?
IMO not at all.
Think to release of PSO EpI&II. It got hacked in just a few months. Same thing w/ the rest.
SEGA didnt 'learn' anything about cheating/hacking/duping then, and I doubt anything will change this time around.
Only thing I think counts towards a more secure environment is the fact that online characters will be saved on a server.

When I learned that they were making PSU game I was overjoyed. For about 2 seconds. Then I realized they were making the game for PSfreaking2. I wish they had waited and released the game for PC/PS3/360 instead of PS2. PS2 has been around for soooo long that people already EMULATING PS2 games (some games already playable) on PC. I just hope some idiot w/ codebreaker (or wtf-ever you have on PS2) wont supply duped items to people on PS2 AND PC.

Serverside saving better work otherwise ... you would have to pick and choose who to trade with and make rooms with passwords so no one can NOL you.

kassy

May 1, 2006, 08:04 PM

On 2006-04-30 08:58, DamonKatu wrote:
The game guard on PSO:BB really helped pervented coruption and the frozen screen from happening but I wounder how long before that shield program shaters to heavy hacking? Thats why its good to layer the wall as much as you can but make sure nonthimg slithers under that wall.

Heh, Gamegaurd did no such thing as "prevented corruption and the frozen screen from happening", Gameguard is just a detection program, not much else, some people give it a load of underserved credit and seem to think it's some sort of a wondrous program that hunts out and destroys cheaters. When all it does is detect programs that you shouldn't be using while playing PSO BB, like hex editors.

On 2006-04-30 14:45, linkzone wrote:
i hate hackers. oh and do you think that you will be allowed to buy currency for the game? i hear they do that with other online games. pay real money to get online currency.

Yes it 'could' happen, but it will never be endorsed or encouraged by Sega, it will most definitely be against the PSU Terms of Service. Yes, it happens in other online games you've heard about, but it's not actually allowed, so there's your answer; it's considered a form of cheating, buying game goods in exchange for real life currency is against the ToS of any respectable MMORPG, but it still happens http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_razz.gif