Board Game Arena

As far as I can tell there isn't a way to report someone for cheating/hacking and there is more than likely a chance that it is happening on this site. Why isn't there an option to report it especially since this site has an Arena mode that is supposed to be a competitive space? It just feels like someone could easily take advantage of the lack of such a feature.

Currently you can give people a rating (thumbs up or thumbs down) and even add some text about a player after a game.

My main question is, how do you know the person cheated?

You certainly don’t want to start accusing or reporting people because you have a feeling?!

I treat games on BGA as if I was playing at a real table. And just like in real life. You run the risk of cheating. No different here.

Where do you report the person when playing with them at a real table somewhere?

My advise. Just move on and don’t play with that person again.

Cheating as in exploiting a bug? You can report that. If there is no bug, first report the bug.

If you don't know what the bug is, but you suspect someone might have found one, there's a precedent here: https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=22199 TLDR: You'll need pretty solid evidence and some admin/developer willing to look into it in detail.

Kinda hard to just avoid a person if you're playing in Arena mode. A space that has leaderboards and is highly competitive.

You can report cheating. Simply file a bug report for the game on which cheating occurred. Be prepared to explain how you could tell there was cheating.

The larger problem is that people are quick to yell "cheating!" without any proof. So far in this thread, you've not articulated what the actual problem was. You're not alone; search the forum for the tons of threads in which people blame the random number generator (RNG) for having biased results, despite a large sample proving that they're just fine.

It's easy to blame something else, but a closer look consistently shows it to be bias on the reporter's part. Maybe this time is an exception?

RiggerRabbit wrote: ↑30 March 2023, 15:07 Kinda hard to just avoid a person if you're playing in Arena mode. A space that has leaderboards and is highly competitive.

You can red thumb them and report them for cheating.

But which game was it and what happened? Are you sure it was cheating and how do you know?

I'm convinced that this site has no security measures in place at this point.

RiggerRabbit wrote: ↑02 April 2023, 01:38 I'm convinced that this site has no security measures in place at this point.

Can you explain how you arrived at that conclusion? I'm develop games on BGA and I put in a lot of work to make sure people can't cheat in my implementations. If you've found a way to cheat, what is it?

So far, you've thrown out accusations of cheating and the site being awful, but steadfastly refused requests for specific examples and information. Not only does this make it impossible to fix the situation you want addressed, but it's starting to make you look like you're making stuff up. I'm sure you have a reason for believing that cheating has occurred -- why not share it?

I'm assuming RiggerRabbit's post is in reference to the cheating that is going on with the game Catan. If that is the case, then he is 1000% correct. With the amount of kingmaking/team playing going on, there is absolutely zero reason to play the game on this platform. And I hate to say that, given how great BGA is.

I strongly encourage BGA to explore any possible solutions to this problem. I understand all games can have varying amounts of cheating, but this amount is really unacceptable. That is what is driving this BGA version into the ground.

IMO, kingmaking is not cheating. I mean, it does not break the rule of the game.

It's "just" a (very) bad player behaviour.
Then you can red thumb those players and not play with them again.
Or even (as some did for Hanabi), you can create a group of "good players" that you know they won't have a bad behavior, and open your table only to that group.