ESG - The Current Situation & Preparing For The Future
Hello,
I know some of you really dislike me, and I'd like to work to change that. In light of the recent topics that were posted, I have some announcements. I would like to publicly apologize on behalf of myself and ESG for the situation that happened regarding michaeldrk. If you do not know about this, then you can read about it here : http://forum.z8games.com/showthread.php?t=289491
I’m not going to lie or try to cover anything up here, what you see is what you get. I will explain why this happened and how it has been fixed for now, and what we will be doing in the future to prevent this from happening again.
Sometime back in April, michaeldrk was banned from ESG for cheating. At some point after that, he created a new account “cfget5” and began playing in ESG events with the same IP address and same HWID information. It appears the script we used to check for ban evaders was not working correctly, so it will all be done manually in addition to the script and the new safeguards I am implementing today.
But the blame still ultimately lies with me, not ESG, not Iceman or Polleus. It was my job to make sure all aspects of our website and anti-cheat system were running at 100% all the time. I failed to do that, and it has lead us to where we are today.
So in order to open up ESG to offer a little transparency, we have come up with a few ideas, some of which I think will be welcomed with open arms:
If anyone has any other ideas on how we can improve or gain your trust, please let me know. And try to keep it serious, we are trying to work for you, the least we ask for is sincerity.
I know some of you really dislike me, and I'd like to work to change that. In light of the recent topics that were posted, I have some announcements. I would like to publicly apologize on behalf of myself and ESG for the situation that happened regarding michaeldrk. If you do not know about this, then you can read about it here : http://forum.z8games.com/showthread.php?t=289491
I’m not going to lie or try to cover anything up here, what you see is what you get. I will explain why this happened and how it has been fixed for now, and what we will be doing in the future to prevent this from happening again.
Sometime back in April, michaeldrk was banned from ESG for cheating. At some point after that, he created a new account “cfget5” and began playing in ESG events with the same IP address and same HWID information. It appears the script we used to check for ban evaders was not working correctly, so it will all be done manually in addition to the script and the new safeguards I am implementing today.
But the blame still ultimately lies with me, not ESG, not Iceman or Polleus. It was my job to make sure all aspects of our website and anti-cheat system were running at 100% all the time. I failed to do that, and it has lead us to where we are today.
So in order to open up ESG to offer a little transparency, we have come up with a few ideas, some of which I think will be welcomed with open arms:
1.) Every match will still go through the automatic anticheat detection scripts, and we will continue to fine tune them to make them even better. But starting immediately, every single log will now be manually checked to ensure no mistakes are made on our part. We will manually check to see that every player in a match has first run the client, that no cheats were used, and that they are not smurfing or a previously banned player. It is a lot of work for one person to do, so I will have Iceman and Polleus help me out a bit with that. Due to our short staffing, we will be opening up hiring for anyone who wants to volunteer to help out with ESG as a game admin. We will detail that more in a later post.
2.) There will be a live “Who’s Online” list that all players will have access to see, it will give updated information(there may be a 1-5 minute delay to conserve resources on the site and clients from checking in) of all clients currently connected. In addition, All Players will have the ability to lookup previous matches starting with this week. So you will be able to tell what players were on client, sorted by date and team. This will help the community keep ESG in check, because you will now have access to information that proves if a player was not on client.
3.) We will be putting up a public banlist, and with any future bans, we will be providing some form of proof to back up our cheating bans. If the player used a public cheat with a known name, we will give the name of the cheat and the version. If it was a private cheat, we will tell what type of cheat and how it was detected.
4.) This final idea is something that I’m still toying with, but I’ll post it to see what everyone thinks. I’d like to put up a page where you can search based on playername, and view all the screenshots the anticheat client took for that user based on date. Since the client only takes screenshots when the game is focused, it should only give screenshots that only show crossfire. All other screenshots show up as a black screen for us. This would allow the community to review the screenshots for any rule violations, or even flag the screenshot if you see a cheat being used. This would help offer some transparency as the community would then have 100% definitive proof that the player cheated, and it would help ESG because it saves us time from having to look at that players logs.
2.) There will be a live “Who’s Online” list that all players will have access to see, it will give updated information(there may be a 1-5 minute delay to conserve resources on the site and clients from checking in) of all clients currently connected. In addition, All Players will have the ability to lookup previous matches starting with this week. So you will be able to tell what players were on client, sorted by date and team. This will help the community keep ESG in check, because you will now have access to information that proves if a player was not on client.
3.) We will be putting up a public banlist, and with any future bans, we will be providing some form of proof to back up our cheating bans. If the player used a public cheat with a known name, we will give the name of the cheat and the version. If it was a private cheat, we will tell what type of cheat and how it was detected.
4.) This final idea is something that I’m still toying with, but I’ll post it to see what everyone thinks. I’d like to put up a page where you can search based on playername, and view all the screenshots the anticheat client took for that user based on date. Since the client only takes screenshots when the game is focused, it should only give screenshots that only show crossfire. All other screenshots show up as a black screen for us. This would allow the community to review the screenshots for any rule violations, or even flag the screenshot if you see a cheat being used. This would help offer some transparency as the community would then have 100% definitive proof that the player cheated, and it would help ESG because it saves us time from having to look at that players logs.
If anyone has any other ideas on how we can improve or gain your trust, please let me know. And try to keep it serious, we are trying to work for you, the least we ask for is sincerity.
Comments
-
Hello,
I know some of you really dislike me, and I'd like to work to change that. In light of the recent topics that were posted, I have some announcements. I would like to publicly apologize on behalf of myself and ESG for the situation that happened regarding michaeldrk. If you do not know about this, then you can read about it here : http://forum.z8games.com/showthread.php?t=289491
I’m not going to lie or try to cover anything up here, what you see is what you get. I will explain why this happened and how it has been fixed for now, and what we will be doing in the future to prevent this from happening again.
Sometime back in April, michaeldrk was banned from ESG for cheating. He created a new account and was caught, and that account was banned as well a few days later. At some point after that, he created a new account “thrill_” and began playing in ESG events with the same IP address and same HWID information. ESG logs both IP and HWID to prevent this sort of thing from happening, but michaeldrk was able to bypass that. How? It turns out the script that I used to check for multiple accounts with the same HWID was bugged, it could not parse an underscore. So when it got to “thrill_”, it only read “thrill”. This allowed him to play for many weeks undetected. I have fixed the bug so that now all characters are read normally, that should at least prevent this from happening.
But the blame still ultimately lies with me, not ESG, not Iceman or Polleus. It was my job to make sure all aspects of our website and anti-cheat system were running at 100% all the time. I failed to do that, and it has lead us to where we are today.
So in order to open up ESG to offer a little transparency, we have come up with a few ideas, some of which I think will be welcomed with open arms.
1.) Every match will still go through the automatic anticheat detection scripts, and we will continue to fine tune them to make them even better. But starting immediately, every single log will now be manually checked to ensure no mistakes are made on our part. We will manually check to see that every player in a match has first run the client, that no cheats were used, and that they are not smurfing or a previously banned player. It is a lot of work for one person to do, so I will have Iceman and Polleus help me out a bit with that. Due to our short staffing, we will be opening up hiring for anyone who wants to volunteer to help out with ESG as a game admin. We will detail that more in a later post.
2.) There will be a live “Who’s Online” list that all players will have access to see, it will give updated information(there may be a 1-5 minute delay to conserve resources on the site and clients from checking in) of all clients currently connected. In addition, All Players will have the ability to lookup previous matches starting with this week. So you will be able to tell what players were on client, sorted by date and team. This will help the community keep ESG in check, because you will now have access to information that proves if a player was not on client.
3.) We will be putting up a public banlist, and with any future bans, we will be providing some form of proof to back up our cheating bans. If the player used a public cheat with a known name, we will give the name of the cheat and the version. If it was a private cheat, we will tell what type of cheat and how it was detected.
4.) This final idea is something that I’m still toying with, but I’ll post it to see what everyone thinks. I’d like to put up a page where you can search based on playername, and view all the screenshots the anticheat client took for that user based on date. Since the client only takes screenshots when the game is focused, it should only give screenshots that only show crossfire. All other screenshots show up as a black screen for us. This would allow the community to review the screenshots for any rule violations, or even flag the screenshot if you see a cheat being used. This would help offer some transparency as the community would then have 100% definitive proof that the player cheated, and it would help ESG because it saves us time from having to look at that players logs.
If anyone has any other ideas on how we can improve or gain your trust, please let me know. And try to keep it serious, we are trying to work for you, the least we ask for is sincerity.
cliffs pls -
Sometime back in April, michaeldrk was banned from ESG for cheating. He created a new account and was caught, and that account was banned as well a few days later. At some point after that, he created a new account “thrill_” and began playing in ESG events with the same IP address and same HWID information. ESG logs both IP and HWID to prevent this sort of thing from happening, but michaeldrk was able to bypass that. How? It turns out the script that I used to check for multiple accounts with the same HWID was bugged, it could not parse an underscore. So when it got to “thrill_”, it only read “thrill”. This allowed him to play for many weeks undetected. I have fixed the bug so that now all characters are read normally, that should at least prevent this from happening.
Now, to further embarrass your joke of a league, I will say that michaeldrk did play in ESG in the spring, however is WAS NOT under the name thrill(or any variation of this name.)
To protect my friend and get a few more laughs, I will not tell you his current IGN/ESG name.
To everybody reading this thread:
XsL's thread gave light to many serious fault's in ESG's system. This thread, by ESGMike, is a thread trying to admit to some of those faults(which he again made up), and to give some credibility back to ESG
inb4 my team gets banned from ESG/post gets removed/i get banned -
This is 100% false.
Now, to further embarrass your joke of a league, I will say that michaeldrk did play in ESG in the spring, however is WAS NOT under the name thrill(or any variation of this name.)
To protect my friend and get a few more laughs, I will not tell you his current IGN/ESG name.
To everybody reading this thread:
XsL's thread gave light to many serious fault's in ESG's system. This thread, by ESGMike, is a thread trying to admit to some of those faults(which he again made up), and to give some credibility back to ESG
inb4 my team gets banned from ESG/post gets removed/i get banned
haha -
This is 100% false.
Now, to further embarrass your joke of a league, I will say that michaeldrk did play in ESG in the spring, however is WAS NOT under the name thrill(or any variation of this name.)
To protect my friend and get a few more laughs, I will not tell you his current IGN/ESG name.
To everybody reading this thread:
XsL's thread gave light to many serious fault's in ESG's system. This thread, by ESGMike, is a thread trying to admit to some of those faults(which he again made up), and to give some credibility back to ESG
inb4 my team gets banned from ESG/post gets removed/i get banned
This doesn't particularly make sense.
1. My friend uses the same IP address, and didn't get caught!
2. Oh you checked his IP address, and now he got caught? Oh well you're wrong, that isn't him.
In other words,
It's far more likely that you're lying and they banned the correct person,
than it is that they're lying and they banned a random person to save face. -
I like how you're trying to justify your ac not catching cheaters or people that are banned in the league playing by lying on the forums (or you're actually that clueless)
Your ac doesn't work and you shouldn't be in charge of anything, stop trying. Thanks!
Sincerely, "thrill" -
Definitely a step in the right direction
People are going to have to accept that mike made a mistake with the anti-cheat, but it happens. The important thing is it was figured out now instead of later. Lets face it ESG is the best thing for CFNA right now and if we don't learn be cooperative than we may end up with just ESL weeklys to look forward to. -
Ellustrial wrote: »This doesn't particularly make sense.
1. My friend uses the same IP address, and didn't get caught!
2. Oh you checked his IP address, and now he got caught? Oh well you're wrong, that isn't him.
In other words,
It's far more likely that you're lying and they banned the correct person,
than it is that they're lying and they banned a random person to save face.
Now, to further embarrass your joke of a league, I will say that michaeldrk did play in ESG in the spring, however is WAS NOT under the name thrill(or any variation of this name.) -
michealdrkk wrote: »I like how you're trying to justify your ac not catching cheaters or people that are banned in the league playing by lying on the forums (or you're actually that clueless)
Your ac doesn't work and you shouldn't be in charge of anything, stop trying. Thanks!
Sincerely, "thrill"
Please realize that - even if their Anticheat did nothing - they could very easily verify that the account (your old account, which was banned) shared the same IP as the new account (thrill, which is now banned) through their ESG website.
In other words, pretending that they have now banned the wrong account is simply sad. Especially when they could verify it was you through no means more difficult than the tools available to a free********* designer. -
Please look at the dates. http://imgur.com/iBbApV0
In that screenshot, I ran a search based on michaeldrk's known IP address. It pulls up a list of all the accounts he has logged into the ac with. Most recently you can see the account "thrill_" logged in. No other accounts using that IP or HWID other than what is shown in that screenshot I provided.
I can back up what I'm saying, can you Konrad? -
Please look at the dates. www.esportsgenesis.com/thrill.png
The owner of this website (www.esportsgenesis.com) does not allow hotlinking to that resource (/thrill.png).
On a more direct note,
This saddens me. "Your guys anticheat does nothing, congrats on banning the wrong player!"
If you're going to discredit ESG, at least try to do something remotely believable. I ask you, again, what makes more sense?
1. Mike is lying, and banned a random player, risking the outcry from that player / his teammates / potentially losing z8games as a business partner.
2. Korrupt (someone who has been venomously anti-ESG since the start) / Micheal-drk- (som\eone banned from ESG) are lying in an attempt to further their year-long war against ESG. -
Please look at the dates. http://imgur.com/iBbApV0
.....
inb4 proxyEllustrial wrote: »
2. Korrupt (someone who has been venomously anti-ESG since the start) / Micheal-drk- (som\eone banned from ESG) are lying in an attempt to further their year-long war against ESG. -
Harboring a cheater LOL
not like he is protecting him in his house, tons of comms are public.
Although he is pinging in the 160s it's probably a proxy.
Im getting ddos'd by a 5 foot 3 asian kid named flow because I banned him from mumble -
Harboring a cheater LOL
not like he is protecting him in his house, tons of comms are public.
Although he is pinging in the 160s it's probably a proxy.
He's pinging in the 40s/60s
Server is in Texas, since the team is EST/PST, so we all get 60 ping
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