My Disappointing Experience with Support's Handling of Cheaters

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
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TLDR: I want to share my frustration and disappointment with the game support’s handling of cheaters. After reporting a blatant cheater with extensive evidence, I only received unsatisfactory responses, and the cheater is still active. This raises serious questions about the effectiveness of the in-game reporting function and the overall commitment of support to combat cheating.

At the beginning of this week, we once again encountered a cheater in a team game. During the game, we noticed that he had found an unusually large number of sheep, and I jokingly told my team that we were playing against a cheater. We won the game, but decided to review it from his perspective, and it quickly became clear that he [林睾头天下吴迪 – AoE4 World] was using map hacks, which is likely the only reason he currently ranked in Conqueror 2 in team games . Naturally, after reviewing the replay, we made it our mission to get this player banned, and so we attempted to…

First Report: The reporting began with the in-game function, followed by a support email in which I provided extensive details about the cheater. This included the cheater’s Steam ID, a link to their AoE4World profile, a link to the game in which the irregularities were noticed, and a detailed description of the cheater’s actions. Despite this carefully compiled evidence, the response from support was disappointing: “Unfortunately due to technical limitations we were unable to confirm a violation of our Code of Conduct, the Microsoft Service Agreement or the Xbox Community Standards. Due to this, no action has been taken at this time.” However, this response did not discourage us. We were determined not to give up so easily.

Second Report: For the second report, my mate created a video (luckily otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to see it after the patch) to make it as easy as possible for support to evaluate the evidence and substantiate our accusations. This video was shared with support along with all the information (Steam ID, etc.). You can view the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXjoMk1qFQ8&t=18s.

The response from support came surprisingly fast, within just 10 hours, and read: “Thank you for submitting this report to us regarding (cheating / verbal abuse / griefing) that you encountered in Age of Empires IV. We have investigated this issue and determined that it was a violation of our Code of Conduct as well as the Microsoft Service Agreement and the Xbox Community Standards. After our investigation, we can confirm that appropriate actions have been taken against the reported player. Thank you for helping us to maintain a safe and enjoyable gaming community!” This message made me almost certain of victory over the cheater, and that they would no longer have the opportunity to undermine our “enjoyable gaming community” on this account. However, less than 10 hours later, this player continues to play on it´s account and still cheats. I wonder what measures were taken? Did you send him an email telling him to stop? Did they give him a 20 minute timeout? Did they tell him to hide it better?

To be honest, i am shocked and question the whole reporting system, or generally the support of aoe4 in the topics cheating or bugfixing…

Expectations of Support: From game support, I expect transparent communication and serious investigations of cheater reports. There should be a clearly defined and communicated process that shows players that action is being actively taken against cheaters.

Speculation About Reporting Players Only Through the In-Game Function: I fear that reporting players through the in-game function carries no weight and leads to nothing. It seems as though these reports disappear into a black hole, without any serious investigation or actions being taken. This experience makes me strongly doubt whether the intended process for reporting offenses is an effective method to protect the gaming experience and actively combat cheating.

And one more thing, [林睾头天下吴迪 – AoE4 World], believe me, we will catch you, even if I have to write to support three more times…

Have you ever experienced something like this or how has it worked for you so far when you have reported cheaters?

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Thank you for bringing this to everyone’s attention. Please keep us updated with what happens. Its kinda of funny how they said they will take care of it and did nothing. Everytime they post new patch notes i look hopefully for something about the cheating and nothing. Not sure why we support a game that doesn’t take cheating seriously.

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Cheating for the first time, banned for 1 month. The second time, banned for three months. The third time, permanently banned!

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I am sure they have plenty of false positives on a daily basis that they need to sift through. From what I have observed, players who I report in game stop playing about a week after being reported.

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Sorry but I would say “cheating for one time, permaban”.

Doesn’t seem to be a too hard since it violates the terms of use and the rules.

The people who cheats knows that, so just ban them.

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Having a series of escalating punishments is an appeal to mercy. It is not always effective, some people do not adjust behaviour with punishment, but there is potential for someone to change their behaviour after receiving hard boundaries. It can be frustrating to see this as someone who has been victimized by the hackers, but hard stances have less potential to adjust behaviour.

I completely agree with this. There is a conversation happening in the community about cheating almost continuously between forums. It’s something that is definitively hurting the community, some form of recognition may at least help people feel it is being addressed.

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Every time after i have reported a cheater, they sent me email ask for information. Usually I see that email only 1 or 2 days after.

i think they should shutdown the in-game reporting function, and add all useful fields for cheater reporting, so they shouldn’t even need to ask anything in email.

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Big agree.
It’s just a bait into people wasting their lifetime.
Because no human is processing these ingame reports.
All that happens is an automatic message being sent.
Noone looks into the hacker’s profiles or matches that people report.

hackers
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the general problem is that the CS is not effective … yes they have “banned” the cheater now, but only for 3 days and he continues as before… He was banned for 3 days and we had to write 4 emails and make a video.
It simply makes no sense to report someone via the support or the ingame feature if there are no consequences…
It is also very questionable that there is no open communication about actions, when I asked about the general action policy I only got the statement that no information can be given here.
Not that I want to encourage anyone to cheat, but if you do it, it simply has no negative effects on you.
So it seems that the support is an external agency that has no idea of what it is doing.

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I have always recommended that if you are not 200% sure (and with very solid evidence) that the player is cheating, it is better that the report is not public. In your video there is no doubt that he cheated.

I’m not writing as a mod in this thread, but as a user who is fed up with seeing this situation and no hard measures are taken and I understand that this fed upness is reflected in the forum, Reddit or other RRSS. In my opinion:

  • Using third party software to benefit in game in quick or competitive matches = Permaban.

  • Constantly causing sync errors = Ban for several months.

  • Abusing exploits (not fixed yet) that break the game = 1 month ban.

  • Inflation of the elo in teams who allows himself to lose in order to benefit his playmate in other games.

Remember that the evidence in the report, through a video showing the reasons, is much more effective.

Hopefully the sanctioning policies on this matter will be changed once and for all. This hurts the game experience.

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100% should be enough :wink: if you find the proof in one game you will probably find it in the 2nd… and then at some point it’s no longer “luck” to find sheep or something similar…

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Cheater = permaban

Better to lose a cheater than the game’s credibility, which will end up moving away the vast majority who don’t use cheats.

PS:

You did great as a mod.

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You understood what I meant by “200%”. There can be no mistake.

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It was only in response to the thread (fixed). I’m still in moderation until the WE workers kick me out one day xD.

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I just reported 2 guys via email to support, probably they will get banned, but I’ve noticed they are lvl 0 in steam, and had no games, so they are playing with the family share, and if they got a ban they will just create another account and continue cheating.

They need to disable the family share, or limit to singleplayer until they fix this.

Of course, even if they got banned it has 0 impact, since create another account and buy a 0.5€ game to activate family share is enough.

I’m tired of lose against some low level guys, who are cheating, and sharing account with family.

Right now I have 40% win rate in team ranked, can’t pass from diamond 1 (I was in conqueror II last season), because I get paired again and again with premades of hackers, almost 1 of 5 games I play is against cheaters, and 3 out of 5 games are very very unbalanced games.

Like in my team gold-plat guys and conquerors in the other team… Hackers and unbalanced matchmaking is making me want play less the game to the point I’m already playing other games more than this.

Still they punish dodge, but no one is willing to play a game of 3-4 random platinum dudes against 3-4 team of conquerors. I don’t care about the famous “just play the game you will lose 3-4 points”, but the waste of time. If I’m playing competitive I want the game to be competitive, I don’t want to play a game where your goal is check how much can you hold.

Also I’ve noticed all people dodges games when they think they are a bit unbalanced. Every game my team is “a bit superior” in rank, someone of the other team dodges. People only want to play when they have a great advantage. I can understand dodging a game when the other team is crearly much superior (like premades of diamond players vs random platinum guys), but not dodging when just the other team has 1 rank more in average. But people doesn’t want to take risks.

All my friends had left the game, and just one is still here, and I think we won’t take this for much longer. We get desperated day after day because the matchmaking and the hacking experience…

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Good news there is that I heard from others that they indeed are able to ban family share accounts as well. Meaning someone said that when their main was suspended, they weren’t able to login with their family share alt either.

Bad news is that they tend to use temp ban for 12-48 hours.

More bad news is that the chance of them actually taking action is pretty slim. Coz of “technical limitations” (meaning, they don’t have the manpower to open the fucking game and check out someone’s latest game):

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I have already experienced that the ban only lasts for 2-3 days for the cheater. Which makes it kind of pointless to report people, because they can continue playing after 2-3 days and apparently no further checks are carried out on the known cheaters, so the cheater can continue as before after his ban.

I am also aware that it is very time-consuming to do this manually, but there are also solutions that can be taken.

  • Anti Cheat Software
  • More people in the support team
  • Help from the community (players with the necessary knowledge, support the support team in controlling/identifying cheaters) (of course these players must be trained etc.)
  • Analysis of game data (e.g. player x “finds” an unusually high number of sheep in each of his games compared to others, and is placed under observation)
  • tougher penalties for confirmed cheaters (exclude them from online play and not after 3 days let them free / flag them in-game as having already violated the Code of Conduct)
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This is incorrect, as repeatedly stated by the devs and community team.

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Hi, good to see you on the forum.

I don’t understand why that player is still playing after months, knowing that players like Corvinus have 2 clips (watched by hundreds of people) where he reports him, apart from other reports he will have from other players.

P.S: I really understand it, but I can’t assimilate it.

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Yup, that’s my beef with this. Even if there are eyeballs checking out these reports, there’s no excuse for not being able to verify these and take appropriate action, especially with the information provided.

If the chance of getting caught is 0.1%, and the penalty 2 days or less. People will obviously keep on cheating.
If the only way to actually getting a report actioned is by providing a friggin youtube video, then the time investment for players is disproportional. And in case of OP, the cheater got 2 days suspension, 2 days… I’d argue that’s actually worse than the actual cheating.
In case of Corvinus, plenty of his reports went unanswered/unactioned despite video evidence. Inexcusable.

Reporting players only to be met with these kind of reactions and no real action taken, disincentives players to report at all. It comes across as if the leadership does not care.

It’s also likely there might be a lack of tooling to quickly replay reported games, so there might be some time investment needed from developers to facilitate that.
As a software dev this pains me so much, coz a little bit of time investment can make things sooooo much easier. Like verifying my report probably takes a human under 5 minutes, with just a regular game instance (without special privileges) and aoe4world. With a little bit of tooling that’d be 2 minutes or less.

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