Board Game Arena

Hi everyone, recently a lot of people join on BGA because of COVID-19 and while a lot of popularity come in agame, a new type of cheaters come in, they called the modders (well know in GTA (old gens (PS3, Xbox 360)).

They are well know to make people rage and they are extremely not fair.

Please make an update for having a report for modding behaviour.

Do you have any specific table numbers for a game which was affected by this cheating?

It's actually quite difficult to cheat on BGA, because the browser isn't responsible for running any of the game logic, that's all done at the server and never leaves BGA's control. Even if you open the javascript code in the debugger and look at all the internal values - or even if you send fake responses - you can't influence dice rolls or see hidden cards, or really do anything which ought to have any influence on the game.

shadowphiar wrote: ↑23 May 2020, 23:38 Do you have any specific table numbers for a game which was affected by this cheating?

It's actually quite difficult to cheat on BGA, because the browser isn't responsible for running any of the game logic, that's all done at the server and never leaves BGA's control. Even if you open the javascript code in the debugger and look at all the internal values - or even if you send fake responses - you can't influence dice rolls or see hidden cards, or really do anything which ought to have any influence on the game.

Any game that there is not a lot of randomnees like Hex.

Uhh yeah, unless the devs of this site are totally incompetent (AFAIK they aren't) everything should be server-side. Besides bot automation I'm not sure how you could possible cheat here ...

It's not a question of competence, it's a question of priorities. As long as cheating isn't rampant, there is little reason to spend your time fighting it instead of actually implementing the games.

I don't know anything about the architecture of BGA and BGA's games but I could imagine that your browser would contain information that is supposed to be hidden for you or that it wouldn't check for the legality of a move. If anyone makes illegal moves, they will be caught by the players themselves.
The use of hidden information, that is more annoying because 99%+ of the time, if the opponent does something that seems logical only if he has information he shouldn't, it is either that he played poorly (and got lucky) or took his chance or he is much better at remembering everything that happened and what cards/tiles/... should remain in the deck and deduct hidden information based on open information that you give him credit for or even think possible based on your own limited skills.

If you think someone modded a game, first file a bug report maybe ? Give the table and turn # and explain what is the problem ?
Maybe, before doing that, wait for the game to end and watch it back from their perspective, action per action ?

Phoxtrot wrote: ↑25 May 2020, 08:10 I don't know anything about the architecture of BGA and BGA's games but I could imagine that your browser would contain information that is supposed to be hidden for you or that it wouldn't check for the legality of a move.

No, this is not supposed to happen.
BGA's guideline for game developers are clear:

• No hidden information should be sent to players, even if the game interface doesn't show it (because some cheaters could have access to it)
• All moves legality should be checked server-side even if they are checked client-side (because some cheaters could hack the game to send illegal moves)

I can't swear that all developers strictly follow this rule for all the moves in their games, and I believe the source code is not checked by peers as much as other open source softwares. But I'm pretty confident that these rules are at least almost always respected.

TheClaudeQc wrote: Please make an update for having a report for modding behaviour.

If you think that a game don't check for illegal moves or send hidden information, you already have the possibility to report this: use the Bugs section.
If you only have suspicions, you can share them in the forums to see what other players think about it. But please in both cases, provide complete informations. Because this:

TheClaudeQc wrote: ↑24 May 2020, 00:13

shadowphiar wrote: ↑23 May 2020, 23:38 Do you have any specific table numbers for a game which was affected by this cheating?

Any game that there is not a lot of randomnees like Hex.

will never be enough. You can't say that there are cheaters just because you lose.

Of course, those are common sense guidelines and we expect them to be almost always respected.

My points were first that it makes sense that developers would concentrate more on functionality than security for games until there is an actual problem so that any mishap about security doesn't mean "incompetence" and second that you shouldn't claim that there is cheating when something "weird" happens that can be explained by luck, lack of attention, stupidity or your own lack of expertise.

I will add that to what you said that should you think that something "weird" warrant discussion here, you should still phrase it not as a "is there cheating ?" but as "can someone explain why/what/...".

By the way, if you look at all the bug reports, you'll see that many of the "rule broken" reports are rejected because they simply reflect that fact that the reporter didn't understand the rules (sometimes because the rules are not well written or translated...).

Well, one beginner on hex (not popular game) just destroyed me like a master, while that is extremely suspecting.

TheClaudeQc wrote: ↑25 May 2020, 13:14 Well, one beginner on hex (not popular game) just destroyed me like a master, while that is extremely suspecting.

This player may be a beginner on BGA but not in real life, this game has been invented more than 70 years ago, of course there are masters that never played on BGA before.
And, I just read (quickly) the rules and, except if I missed something, how on earth could you think that it's possible on BGA to cheat at this game? Just explain me, not "it's strange because I lost" (and maybe think a little bit more before getting angry)

fafa-fr wrote: ↑25 May 2020, 14:18

TheClaudeQc wrote: ↑25 May 2020, 13:14 Well, one beginner on hex (not popular game) just destroyed me like a master, while that is extremely suspecting.

This player may be a beginner on BGA but not in real life, this game has been invented more than 70 years ago, of course there are masters that never played on BGA before.
And, I just read (quickly) the rules and, except if I missed something, how on earth could you think that it's possible on BGA to cheat at this game? Just explain me, not "it's strange because I lost" (and maybe think a little bit more before getting angry)

Why on earth, do people want to not believe you, this is getting way too far like any other popular old gens console games.