Z8Games Official Ruling on recent Carbon Controversy

Saidin

Attention competitive players.

Recently some new videos were brought up by our competitive community which accused one of the Carbon players of cheating in the finals match vs Hammertime for the Final Four elimination tournament to determine who goes to China.

While we are confident that the team who won that day was playing legitimately, we wanted to make sure that we addressed this issue with full disclosure so that we can put this issue to rest in either case once and for all.

This is going to be a long multi-post issue with a lot of walls of text. Reading all the details will help explain everything. Not reading the details will keep your biased opinion that, a biased opinion and not to be used as a valid point of argument.

I'd like to first start out by saying the following which will help clear some of our Bias. The original video was brought to my attention by players within the competitive community who have a direct relationship with me from past events and competitions. I trust those people and immediately took the evidence seriously. While the method of communication was not appropriate, the subject matter was very.

Yesterday I had a discussion between the management team and myself, which included people as high up as the CEO and official Smilegate representatives. It was decided that after an investigation and review we would take action, but that action could be as drastic as eliminating the player and team from competition, cancelling the plans to attend CF Stars for North America, or perhaps even finding a replacement team. At the very least removing the user in question has never been 'off the table'.

I want to repeat that because it may not have sunk in. The result of the investigation could have an impact on that players ability to play the game, our team decided that if we find the user guilty of cheating in this match the least that would happen is that player removed from the trip to China and the competition and their game accounts closed.

About May 9th

On the evening and through the night between May 9 and May 10 2013, the forums and community here filled the space with spam posts and hackusations based on their own biased conclusions. G4Box as a whole operates on regular business hours. While we are always on call to look at server issues or deal with other aspects some people (like myself) do not have Cross Fire loaded up 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Spamming the community forums do nothing but hurt the case more than help it, especially when it was over night and nothing directly could be done about it. We're dealing with a serious accusation involving integrity of a company and an international competition with prizes in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Yelling and screaming at 11:45pm is not going to accomplish anything but make people, and official people more upset than they need to be and ultimately could even hurt the case more than help it.

Lastly, the evidence on this ruling will be posted below. This will be a final stance on this particular matter. Things could change in the future, but regarding this competition and this ruling and the subsequent consequences are all complete after this.

We will not tolerate forum spamming about this, or needless hackusations to get attention. We ask for everyone's respect in this matter and will leave this thread open for intelligent discussion on it. Other threads will be removed or closed, and if necessary this thread will be locked as well.

And a point about our support system. Reporting youtube videos does not constitute enough evidence to support a hack ban in the game. There are 'bust' videos for just about every pro player out there, and they will be quick to point out they didn't hack. In the history of the game, we have received reports on all the known hackers some even with replays and we are confident in the decisions

We have tried to remove all bias when it comes to this case, and are attempting to post as much information that we have and our process for proving or disproving each individual example. I've broken down this case into the various avenues that we took for this investigation

Please read the posts below for the evidence, our investigation and the final verdict.

Sub Sections:
Case History
Actual Hack type Investigation
Game Functions
"Hackusation" video analysis
Intuitive Thinking and Conclusions
Verdict

Edit History:
Spelling/grammar
Added to Video Analysis

Saidin

History of the Case

History of the player involved
xfam0usx has been a competitor with a checkered past. Many people in the competitive gaming community have been attempting to accuse xfam0usx of hacking in the past.

xfam0usx is also missing his Honorable Soldier ribbon, which would prove that he has done something bad within the game. It should be noted at this time that losing this ribbon does not always equal a ban for hacking. And as many players will attest to, sharing accounts can often lead to losing the ribbon or other bad things happening.

This player has had his honorable soldier ribbon removed from his account for the following:
A chargeback on this account which occurred in 2009 and was subsequently paid back, which is why the account was unbanned.

Additionally this account was linked to a REZ file modification that took place more than a year ago in 2012 when the game was hit with a very large issue with rez file modification. Many forum and game accounts were banned for 3 to 7 day periods when tied to rez file modification.

Rez file mods weren't auto picked up by X-Trap at this point, manual bans were issued for people who were promoting this particular modification. The file modification could also only be seen from the perspective of the person playing and was difficult to tell unless the player was not smart enough to keep it private. In the cases where players were not this smart, we were able to track them down and issue a temporary ban.

In this particular case, I have no doubt there is remorse from the player, as there is in many of these cases. Rez file modification in this case was often used to simulate the texture of another weapon on top of a weapon you owned. For example your video or screenshot contained you using the M4A1 Spring when all you had on your account was an M4A1 Adv.

Please note that many people were banned for this, including a lot of people in the competitive community. It is not our goal here to point fingers at specific people, but this needs to be taken into account to create less of a bias against one person. There was a lot of "power abuse" complaints coming from these players.

REZ File modification is against the Terms of Use and using these to simulate other weapons, even though you weren't doing anything but changing the texture of a skin is not something we wanted to see, or see promoted especially by players in the competitive community. Players were warned, but continued to troll and those who we had proof for were issued the appropriate discipline.


Match Day, April 24th 2013
The history of this case dates back to the finals which took place on April 24th, 2013.

On the evening of the matches, while rounds were taking place reports were coming in that there was a particular player we should be paying attention to.

At that time we used the resources we had available to us to start checking for suspicious activity. This included paying specific attention to the broadcast featuring famous as well as watching the replay footage as the rounds were happening.

We were under a time constraint at the time, however we used the resources we had to initiate the investigation.

The replay footage at the time was inconclusive for anything worthwhile. Competitive players use voice communication often which makes traditional indicators of prefiring or shooting through boxes/doors/walls ineffective as a means for judging. This is not the only method we use to determine hackers from replays, our hack team has a whole process during the investigation of a reported hacker, we're confident in our decisions when we issue bans. However given the timeframe and the presented information, at the time it was determined that there was no hacking going on and the matches were allowed to proceed.

After the conclusion of the match xfam0usx uploaded his bandicam and webcam footage to the internet. He also said that he was uploading the footage to youtube as well, to make the videos public.

He demonstrated full disclosure of all materials once the match was concluded. And the material was quickly reviewed at this time.

At this time we could not see any particular evidence that suggested an obvious hack based on our 4 year working knowledge of the hacks within CrossFire.

Once the match was concluded the team was joined by the casters and myself to discuss the match.

In addition to the Carbon team, one representative from Hammertime also joined for post-match discussion. At that time there was no clear indication that Hammertime was protesting this match, nothing direct was communicated to the administration running the tournament that suggested we needed to go deeper than we already had.

Saidin

G4Box Hack Team Investigation

Hack Team History
G4Box has had a dedicated hack team for CrossFire North America for over 1 year. Prior to that, we have had anti hacking measures built in to the other jobs here at the office.

In the far past we all had to be jack-of-all trades. Now because we have expanded teams and a more clear direction in our working environment we can dedicated personnel to the anti-hack effort.

The goal of the hack team is to find, test and report working hacks to Wiselogic (X-Trap) and Smilegate (HGWC and CrossFire).

Each day we send a report with the working hacks and then each day both x-trap and hgwc get updated and hacks then get blocked. This window has been shortened to less than 12 hours at this point in time.

This process controls the majority of our auto-ban system. And we've seen great success in that. Coupled with changes to how accounts are made we've seen a reduction of hacking across the board. Please note that we still remain vigilant in continuing to reduce that number even further.

Hack Team Investigation of a "red dot radar hack"
In the past code has been released for a potential ESP hack that shows enemy positions on a radar. This code has been reported to the developers and as such is raw and unverified to be functional.

In addition to that the hack CF PRO, which has many different variations of the same base code, and which is detected by X-Trap and banned for contains a 2D radar function which shows enemy and friendly locations.

However this function within this hack requires that the hack menu must be active in order for it to display those positions. The colors that are typically used are Green and Blue to denote friend and enemy. This was confirmed and tested and as mentioned, most versions of CF Pro are detected and picked up with auto banning.

Example screenshot included here:

Saidin

Normal Game Functions
The game displays a certain amount of information to the player already. This information changes depending on what mode you are playing on or what side (black list or global risk) you are on.

For the purposes of this investigation I am only going to discuss the Radar. Since this is the only point of information in contention for being a hack, it only makes sense to discuss only it's features.

For Search and Destroy the following information is presented on the Radar:

Global Risk

• Your location (chevron shaped object in the middle of the map)
• A Site and B Site markers
• Team mates (denoted by white dot markers). Please note that the direction the player is facing is denoted by a white line somewhere on the side/top/bottom etc of the white dot.
• Player voice commands echo from dots when the player uses a voice command.
• Team Death notifications - note these stay up for ~8 seconds
• Bomb Site when bomb is planted - The site marker changes from Orange to Red when the player gets within a certain distance of the bomb site (this distance can range)

Black List

• Your location (chevron shaped object in the middle of the map)
• A Site and B Site markers
• Team mates (white dots)
• Player holding the C4 (red dot)
• Team voice commands
• C4 Location (large red spot on the map)
• Bomb site when bomb is planted

Saidin

Posted Video Analysis
On May 9th a video was posted to youtube which seemingly shows a CF Radar "Red Dot" hack for the game.

This was analyzed by another competitive player based on a webcam footage of xfam0usx which was shot by xfam0usx of him playing the matches for the CF Stars Qualification tournament.

Here is our analysis of the videos, kept in point form.

• The video is a remastered version of an original video, in both cases the radar is very blurred at the top left corner.
• There is no video enhancement going on in either of the videos (the originals or the remastered accusation video).
• There is no describable argument being presented by the video itself. The user is simply pointing out red dots in a seemingly random aspect.
• Often times the user points out a red dot, and sees "another red dot" they previously didn't even notice.
• The user points out impossible scenarios within the videos.
• The user points out that he has recorded 'red dot' sightings and then subsequently doesn't see them in the video, and asks the user to assume they are there.
• Each scenario and point was analyzed. I will demonstrate one of those example analysis with the following.

Example brought up at approximately 18:20

The case here is for a Red Dot on sub base. The argument begins with:
"...Here is a red dot. This is actually the C4 so it's kind of hard to tell anyways..."
At this point it is stated that it is "...hard to see...", and that the bomb is hiding a further blurry red mark in addition to the bomb.
From there the point is made that a red mark or 'dot' moves away from the C4 to a south position next to the stars approaching A point.
It is then concluded that this mark is a hack and that it shows the position of an enemy player when xfam0usx rounds a corner and sees a player to record the frag.


Please click here for the full size image

In testing we recreated the scenario with the C4 in a similar position. Then we tested the following 3 scenarios:

1) A player just on the outside towards the sub so the Black List player could not see.

2) A player standing on the C4

3) A player already crouched at the stairs.

It is shown in this example, the C4 on the ground. The C4 is on the ground which is blinking which is said to muddle other red spots.
xfam0usx is peeking the bomb at time stamp 1:16 and sees no GR player. And between time stamp 1:17 - 1:19 (1 second) xfam0usx moves towards the stairs. and subsequently collects the frag.

If the hack was active, we would see a "red dot" on the right side, towards the sub, beyond the wall. Or we would see the player on the C4 itself because he peeked.

If the hack was toggled off, then it had to be off then on then off again in the 1-2 seconds it took to walk towards the stairs.

If the hack was on, we would see the red dot evidence of the player elsewhere. And if the player was running full stride from that wall he would have to time it so that he wasn't seen while peeking, the hack being turned on, then he would have to get to the corner on the right below the stairs and turn and be ready to shoot anyone coming down the stairs.

This sequence of actions takes more than 4 seconds to accomplish. The actual game time for this was between 1:16-1:18 with the frag being at 1:19.

In this particular case it is physically impossible for the player on GR to accomplish this feat. It is more likely that the C4 was dropped (as we know from the stream) and the player was killed after by a GR player on their way to A site. Which information was subsequently transmitted. As xfam0usx approached the stairs the only logical spot the player would be in is in the nook next to the stairs.

Each scenario was analyzed in this way to an eventual conclusion that the red dots being sighted had nothing to do with the actual game events.

Edit: Please understand that this report would be 500% larger if we included every analysis. Over time we may post these, but it is not our obligation to do so. We will discuss further details as the case gets wrapped up.

Players were shown as red dots to be in positions they weren't, when comparing footage from the stream.

There is no conclusive evidence that can be determined by phantom red dots on a radar, too many "godlike" scenarios would have had to have happen to actually confirm the use of a hack.

Regular playing from competitive players of all kinds shows them to be intuitive to where other players on the map are. xfam0usx in this case is demonstrating the same intuition that other players in the competitive community get accused of cheating of as well.

Simple Color Analysis
We analyzed the colors used on the Radar in Mexico.

There are a lot of colors displayed on Mexico that fall within the red spectrum of the color wheel.
The radar itself displays the direction you are facing with a red tinted overlay.
Video compression will see the average colors and attempt to display as closely as possible. This combined with other stronger colors such as the Orange from the Site markers will cause video compression to fake more red tones than any other color tones.
It is harder to accurately represent the spectrum of colors that the radar undergoes in a game which is why these phantom spots appear.


This is a basic example, while it doesn't show "red dots" it does show that compression will start to blur colors, and different terrain within the map will show the difference in colors that a radar goes through. If you were videotaping this while moving you would notice that the compression would show those artifacts as potentially red dots.

You can simulate this compression in Photoshop by blurring a photo and then saving the photo as a jpg with zero quality. Example:

Saidin

Intuitive Thinking Conclusions
We feel that it is important to note some intuitive thinking within this investigation.

By using logic and reasoning and Occam's Razor we can deduce some general conclusions.

Consider the following:
1)
The existence of a red-dot hack with a toggle ability that only considers the active killed target and no other player, that has only been coded for private use and that no one else in the game is using this hack.

Or that a hack this specific simply doesn't exist.

2)
The user spends more time toggling hacks on and off to only show enemy positions on the radar. And that xfam0usx still has to spend time clicking a mouse, aiming and fragging the target.

Or that he simply does not hack and sees the targets based on the information presented to him throughout the game from team mates, game radar and then subsequently has the focus to properly aim and kill the target.

Consider the following:
The webcam footage is blurry, and using a webcam to film a monitor results in multiple compressions of the video and general will always be of poor quality.

How is it that the webcam footage is so blurry about everything else but it clearly shows red dots?

Player positions as analyzed through the replays, the cast footage and the webcam footage show that enemy players were in completely different positions at the time that the red dots were pointed out.

The observed 'Red Dots' always seem to coincide with C4 locations or Site Markers. The red dots always seem to appear from these places as pointed out numerous times within the accusation video.

People will always see what they want to see. If the bias is to treat the situation negatively then the player will find evidence to support that fact. If the bias is to find that he is legitimate then the evidence clearly supports that side of the case as well. In the example video the author tells us in one case that there is blur and in another case there is a red dot. The author also suggests on multiple occasions that xfam0usx may have received information from his other team mates, but "that does not matter."

The player also demonstrates that there are "too many red dots" on an occasion.

In this case, we have shown to disprove the accusation contained within the video. Blurry webcam footage of the map to draw conclusions about an ultra complex hack is not enough evidence to convict this player of hacking.

Saidin

Final Verdict and Conclusion

During the matches between Hammertime and Carbon for the 2013 Final Qualification matches for the CrossFire Stars tournament we have found that xfam0usx has not been hacking/cheating.

There is too much logical evidence and logical reasoning to use any of this footage as footage against the player.

1. The information displayed in the youtube videos is incorrect.
2. Player positions do not line up.
3. Player actions that are described are simply impossible to do within the physics of the game.
4. Compressed Video footage will eliminate pixels and build on color ranges which can create optical illusions.
5. The Game Radar already shows "red dot" information, which again works in conjunction with blurry footage to create illusions.
6. In the years G4Box has published CF we have never seen a hack that does specifically what is described that it must do in order to work.
7. Our Hack investigation team sees no specific hack with the functions listed.
8. While there has been some punishable past on the player, in this particular game he was not hacking.
9. The person who created this hackusation video has not presented viable information other than an assumption that other players will support his argument.
10. There has been a biased opinion of xfam0usx based on previous history which is inadmissible in this case. For example, xfam0usx performance in another tournament has nothing to do with his performance on that day.

Saidin

Bumping this thread because this took all day to compile.

Please discuss this verdict here. Keep it calm and civil. Other community members have provided examples, which were looked at, in both for and against.

Our ruling on this will be final for this case. Subsequently Carbon as listed will go on to Represent CF NA at the CrossFire Stars competition.

We continue to monitor evidence as it is submitted, and will look at all options. We take this seriously and we hope that this analysis has proven as such, whether you agree with it or not.

WaffleMunzta

No one will know for sure or not he cheated. Couldn't really tell by the video. But if he was cheating... xrad4rx

GoinFishing

Thanks to our efforts we've just helped his ego 10 fold.

traceokuhn

goinfishing wrote: »

thanks to our efforts we've just helped his ego 10 fold.

^ .

Empaierrr

saidin thanks for the thread btw i heard taht famous is gonna upload a video is that truth?

[Denxi]

Also this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3J7VN8TAJ3Q

Andre_j

Thank you for this it was well needed.

Fizzeq_

So, he was not cheating, to conclude.

Thanks for the effort and clear-up.

bertman_1g

Next time reinforce your own rules, especially for a big tournament like this.

lionwcyd

fg_BERT wrote: »

Next time reinforce your own rules, especially for a big tournament like this.

Please explain how rules weren't enforced?

bertman_1g

lionheartban wrote: »

Please explain how rules weren't enforced?

Thought bandi was being used, nobody asked team hammertime if it was okay for him to use a webcam. Doesn't help when his own teammate allowed it without anybody else's approval.

warhawkEGEBT

[GM]Saidin wrote: »

Intuitive Thinking Conclusions
We feel that it is important to note some intuitive thinking within this investigation.

By using logic and reasoning and Occam's Razor we can deduce some general conclusions.

Consider the following:
1)
The existence of a red-dot hack with a toggle ability that only considers the active killed target and no other player, that has only been coded for private use and that no one else in the game is using this hack.

Or that a hack this specific simply doesn't exist.

Read your PM in a few minutes

anoke_1g

Damn i knew he was legit

lionwcyd

fg_BERT wrote: »

Thought bandi was being used, nobody asked team hammertime if it was okay for him to use a webcam. Doesn't help when his own teammate allowed it without anybody else's approval.

The issue was that people accused him of cheating on bandicam (using overlays or something like that) so he was using a webcam to record way before the CF stars tournament began to disprove that theory.

Andre_j

lionheartban wrote: »

The issue was that people accused him of cheating on bandicam (using overlays or something like that) so he was using a webcam to record way before the CF stars tournament began to disprove that theory.

there's no winning

noway222

Finally,thank you so much [GM]Saidin and the Z8 staff for clarifying a lot of things

Creative_E

[GM]Saidin wrote: »

Bumping this thread because this took all day to compile.

Aww.. Poor thing xD

rsNNNNNN

Hahahaha nice try mav

feenom1

Well, I'm pretty sure he was cheating.... just.. uh.. well w/e

Apexcf

anokeALT wrote: »

Damn i knew he was legit

Legit my ass! he cheats!!!!!

feenom1

1Peterr wrote: »

Legit my ass! he cheats!!!!!

I support this.

Latinjerre

I am no part of the competitive community and I see myself as unbiased.

I watched maveloff's vid. And I didn't believe for one second that xfam0usx is actually cheating.

Even in the opening "bust" with the 1v2 cluch at Mexico A site; the red dot that appears is all the way to b site and thus not even close to were the last guy was (behind the tractor in A site). It was quite obviously the B site sign showing on the minimap.

Reading the comments under the video on youtube is simply saddening. Dozens of respected competitive players (not necessarily from this version of CF) are insulting and turning away from fam0us, completely going with the story of him cheating.

There is no doubt that the damage done by this video on xfam0usx' fanbase is HUGE and for a large part permanent. He risks the community never taking him serious anymore, which will have repercussions on his future CF career. Mav should quite honestly put a sorry video on where he excuses himself and admits being wrong. Even though Mav entirely believed himself to be right, what he did to fam0us is devastating and, baring in mind how popular and respected Mav himself is, extremely unprofessional. It should not just be left like that.

Mav, honestly, if you still believe being right: even i can call out where you are making the mistakes in most parts of your video.

stMaL

Just want to put my two cents in.

At this point, there is ABSOLUTELY NO POSSIBILITY TO PROVE THAT FAMOUS IS GUILTY, OR NOT GUILTY. The event has already been done, and there's no way to turn back time and take second precautions. That is to say, unless famous himself admits to cheating, we can't conclude to a final verdict that he is innocent.

"During the matches between Hammertime and Carbon for the 2013 Final Qualification matches for the CrossFire Stars tournament we have found that xfam0usx has not been hacking."

-- [GM] Saidin

This is an eye opener for Z8 that they need to focus on the competitive technicalities rather than the actual competitive events.

While there may not be any consequences or any turn arounds with a "re-tourney" for the NA spot to represent CFStars, it is too late to make any changes now. Yes, we may have someone that has a case open for potentially hacking, but the most that will happen now is tarnishing a name and reputation.

I conclude my statement saying that we can't say that famous is innocent, given the sources that we currently have, nor can we say that he is guilty. For future reference, ESPECIALLY for an event this big, (fly-off trip to China to compete against other countries for thousand of dollars grand prize), Z8 games needs to be able to fund a LAN event to determine LEGITIMATELY who represents CFNA.

ThePurv

boratCARL0SS wrote: »

Well, I'm pretty sure he was cheating.... just.. uh.. well w/e

1Peterr wrote: »

Legit my ass! he cheats!!!!!

You 2 need to read before you post.

If you can come up with some legit evidence then talk.

stMaL wrote: »

Just want to put my two cents in.

At this point, there is ABSOLUTELY NO POSSIBILITY TO PROVE THAT FAMOUS IS GUILTY, OR NOT GUILTY. The event has already been done, and there's no way to turn back time and take second precautions. That is to say, unless famous himself admits to cheating, we can't conclude to a final verdict that he is innocent.

"During the matches between Hammertime and Carbon for the 2013 Final Qualification matches for the CrossFire Stars tournament we have found that xfam0usx has not been hacking."

-- [GM] Saidin

This is an eye opener for Z8 that they need to focus on the competitive technicalities rather than the actual competitive events.

While there may not be any consequences or any turn arounds with a "re-tourney" for the NA spot to represent CFStars, it is too late to make any changes now. Yes, we may have someone that has a case open for potentially hacking, but the most that will happen now is tarnishing a name and reputation.

I conclude my statement saying that we can't say that famous is innocent, given the sources that we currently have, nor can we say that he is guilty. For future reference, ESPECIALLY for an event this big, (fly-off trip to China to compete against other countries for thousand of dollars grand prize), Z8 games needs to be able to fund a LAN event to determine LEGITIMATELY who represents CFNA.

Another LAN eh? I'm right on it!