We're at that point that some rules must change to get rid of trophy hackers

[ChristianHenares]

Good morning and merry christmas to you all.

 

As I've been watching on the last 10 months we're reaching a ridiculous point of no return do to hackers getting free trophies on all PlayStation consoles, where PSVITA is the star of the show. I'm holding right now some Nº1 speed runs and other world records outside PSNProfiles and I'm checking twice a week each one of them because I'm finding a lot of users getting all of them trophies in impossible times. But the thing is the reports are being made but many days can pass and they're still at the top. 

 

Here's the list of faster achievers in Slain: Back From Hell (Universal version, separated from Japan version) and as you can see, three users got all trophies in 20 seconds (which is absolutely impossible for legit ways).

 

I reported two of them just minutes ago and found out the other one was already reported but I can't be able to know when it was.

 

I know holding a website is not an easy job at all, specially of this kind with so many users. I'm guessing moderators are volunteers and don't know how many of them there are and website managers/administrators have to identify them in order to get them powers to be on the moderator team. But I'm hoping you can try to make more and better solutions for this purpose.

 

PSNProfiles is the main reference for trophy AND achievements hunters database in the entire world, knowing others like trueachievements, exophase, mygamerprofile and so on, none of them have this almost 7 millions users recorded. Although nothing is perfect and some things should change in many ways, forum, discord chat, database, hackers, etc, some of us here don't want PSNProfiles to become an untrusted site for the matter, and sadly all these things were not that common 3 years ago, but now are extremely common and the feeling now is just different. I guess I'm not the only one trying to get all my challenges legit and done properly and thanks to PSNProfiles, thanks to the objectivity and good judgment of this website for the last years, you've been part of it too.

 

Probably everything started to collapse when external programs were authorized for "jumping chapters" and changing users for save slots, but I prefer not to point out this for discussion right now.

I hope you enjoy these holidays getting more trophies and spending time with your beloved ones. Thanks for reading.

Edited December 25, 2023 by Stevieboy
name and shame

[HuntingFever]

The CRT are only 4 people and can only do so much in a day when they also have their IRL lives to live so cut them some slack please. Also, the auto-mod removes a lot of cheats before anyone even notices.

Edited December 25, 2023 by HuntingFever
Update.

[ChristianHenares]

28 minutes ago, HuntingFever said:

The CRT are only 4 people and can only do so much in a day when they also have their IRL lives to live so cut them some slack please. Also, the auto-mod removes a lot of cheats before anyone even notices.

As I said in the main message, I know it's hard and the team is limited. This topic was not made in order to attack them by any mean. Please don't take it that way because it was not meant to be taken like that.

The auto-mod can remove a lot of users but sadly there are more hackers out there every single day.

Also one thing I didn't mention was the fact that there are too many games now and specially with the amount of 6+ different stack versions and kinda shitty games there are, we reached long ago that human limit of checking them all one by one. That's something that we need to aknowledge in this case.

[FishOfPain]

Maybe it's because I just woke up, but I can't really see any suggestions in your posts of what rules you want to change to deal with the hackers. Is it harsher auto-moderation you're after? 

[ChristianHenares]

16 minutes ago, FishOfPain said:

Maybe it's because I just woke up, but I can't really see any suggestions in your posts of what rules you want to change to deal with the hackers. Is it harsher auto-moderation you're after? 

My only take here is to add more members to the moderator team and maybe changing the rules so literally any game below 1min will get banned if it's not auto-pop and with the exception of Slyde which is a game you can do in 18sec as far as I know.

Too many factors here to be aware of. Auto-pop up games kill a good possible measure that would be to autoban or autoreport every single game below 1min obtainable trophies. Human study on each game is necessary, I'm aware of it.

Another thing have to be, at some point,talk about external apps and people doing Life is Strange under 3 hours, which is impossible on normal and legit methods, but maybe that's another topic.

[PunisherXD]

31 minutes ago, ChristianHenares said:

My only take here is to add more members to the moderator team and maybe changing the rules so literally any game below 1min will get banned if it's not auto-pop and with the exception of Slyde which is a game you can do in 18sec as far as I know.

You know it's funny, if some auto-moderation such as hiding someone's games on the site when completion time is under a minute was implemented, it would fix autopop controversies, most VITA hacks and leaderboard inflation. People would be more satisfied with the state of the main leaderboard and CRT could possibly have less work to do. However this is probably not gonna happen, theres a few problems I can think of that would arise 🙃

Edited December 25, 2023 by PunisherXD2006

[Super-Fly Spider-Guy]

100%

 

I was checking some Vita games the other day, saw Lego Jurassic had a ridiculously high percentage completion and I checked the fastest...then clicked their profiles and they were loaded with tonnes of 5 second plats. Numerous other games too.

 

Couldn't even be bothered reporting lmao.

 

Meanwhile ol' mate Dylan has been banned almost a decade for screwing around with backups and shit to make LittleBigPlanet 2 pop in a fun way, after doing it legit (oof to me when I realized changing my PSN name killed all LBP records). There's enough easy AF plats you can get on Vita, and considering the hackers are probably not buying the games anyways, why not just pirate a shitload of easy plats and rock that out, at least the trophies are legit. 

 

Stumps me how you'd go to the effort of hacking trophies, but not bother making the timestamps even remotely believable.

[ChristianHenares]

9 minutes ago, Super-Fly Spider-Guy said:

100%

 

I was checking some Vita games the other day, saw Lego Jurassic had a ridiculously high percentage completion and I checked the fastest...then clicked their profiles and they were loaded with tonnes of 5 second plats. Numerous other games too.

 

Couldn't even be bothered reporting lmao.

 

Meanwhile ol' mate Dylan has been banned almost a decade for screwing around with backups and shit to make LittleBigPlanet 2 pop in a fun way, after doing it legit (oof to me when I realized changing my PSN name killed all LBP records). There's enough easy AF plats you can get on Vita, and considering the hackers are probably not buying the games anyways, why not just pirate a shitload of easy plats and rock that out, at least the trophies are legit. 

 

Stumps me how you'd go to the effort of hacking trophies, but not bother making the timestamps even remotely believable.

Exactly, thanks. I mean, something must change, right? This is the main reason I made this topic, because we've been seeing this for at least 2 years now and it's disgusting. It's killing the good criteria of the website.

[Edusbr]

24 minutes ago, Super-Fly Spider-Guy said:

100%

 

I was checking some Vita games the other day, saw Lego Jurassic had a ridiculously high percentage completion and I checked the fastest...then clicked their profiles and they were loaded with tonnes of 5 second plats. Numerous other games too.

 

Couldn't even be bothered reporting lmao.

 

Meanwhile ol' mate Dylan has been banned almost a decade for screwing around with backups and shit to make LittleBigPlanet 2 pop in a fun way, after doing it legit (oof to me when I realized changing my PSN name killed all LBP records). There's enough easy AF plats you can get on Vita, and considering the hackers are probably not buying the games anyways, why not just pirate a shitload of easy plats and rock that out, at least the trophies are legit. 

 

Stumps me how you'd go to the effort of hacking trophies, but not bother making the timestamps even remotely believable.

True, that's what bothers me the most. They would have tons of plats by doing just that, but instead they go out of their way to hack the trophies just for the sake of it.

Edited December 25, 2023 by Edusbr

[DEMONICRUBLE18]

3 hours ago, ChristianHenares said:

Good morning and merry christmas to you all.

 

As I've been watching on the last 10 months we're reaching a ridiculous point of no return do to hackers getting free trophies on all PlayStation consoles, where PSVITA is the star of the show. I'm holding right now some Nº1 speed runs and other world records outside PSNProfiles and I'm checking twice a week each one of them because I'm finding a lot of users getting all of them trophies in impossible times. But the thing is the reports are being made but many days can pass and they're still at the top. 

 

Here's the list of faster achievers in Slain: Back From Hell (Universal version, separated from Japan version) and as you can see, three users got all trophies in 20 seconds (which is absolutely impossible for legit ways).

 

I reported two of them just minutes ago and found out the other one was already reported but I can't be able to know when it was.

 

I know holding a website is not an easy job at all, specially of this kind with so many users. I'm guessing moderators are volunteers and don't know how many of them there are and website managers/administrators have to identify them in order to get them powers to be on the moderator team. But I'm hoping you can try to make more and better solutions for this purpose.

 

PSNProfiles is the main reference for trophy AND achievements hunters database in the entire world, knowing others like trueachievements, exophase, mygamerprofile and so on, none of them have this almost 7 millions users recorded. Although nothing is perfect and some things should change in many ways, forum, discord chat, database, hackers, etc, some of us here don't want PSNProfiles to become an untrusted site for the matter, and sadly all these things were not that common 3 years ago, but now are extremely common and the feeling now is just different. I guess I'm not the only one trying to get all my challenges legit and done properly and thanks to PSNProfiles, thanks to the objectivity and good judgment of this website for the last years, you've been part of it too.

 

Probably everything started to collapse when external programs were authorized for "jumping chapters" and changing users for save slots, but I prefer not to point out this for discussion right now.

I hope you enjoy these holidays getting more trophies and spending time with your beloved ones. Thanks for reading.

 

Something I've noticed particularly with Vita hacks it's usually every Vita game on their profile I find it best just to dm a CRT member with profiles I find that have multiple hacked games it's usually removed within 24 hours, I also find it's faster on all sides just an added profile to the list of CFW profiles less reports to look through to find it. 

1 hour ago, ChristianHenares said:

My only take here is to add more members to the moderator team and maybe changing the rules so literally any game below 1min will get banned if it's not auto-pop and with the exception of Slyde which is a game you can do in 18sec as far as I know.

Too many factors here to be aware of. Auto-pop up games kill a good possible measure that would be to autoban or autoreport every single game below 1min obtainable trophies. Human study on each game is necessary, I'm aware of it.

Another thing have to be, at some point,talk about external apps and people doing Life is Strange under 3 hours, which is impossible on normal and legit methods, but maybe that's another topic.

I think 1000 Top rated is similar, and I kinda agree with this but instead of all platforms just narrow it down to PS Vita only as that's the main platform getting hacked and has very little auto pop lists. Also no games on it that I know of that can be done in under a minute I think the fastest Vita game is 5 minutes. 

 

Also VR games with THL coming up I've been getting VR games in preparation for it and checking the times on a few games I've noticed a few CFW profiles, as far as I know with VR anything under a minute shouldn't be possible. 

Edited December 25, 2023 by DEMONICRUBLE18

[diskdocx]

1 hour ago, Super-Fly Spider-Guy said:

100%

 

I was checking some Vita games the other day, saw Lego Jurassic had a ridiculously high percentage completion and I checked the fastest...then clicked their profiles and they were loaded with tonnes of 5 second plats. Numerous other games too.

 

Couldn't even be bothered reporting lmao.

 

Meanwhile ol' mate Dylan has been banned almost a decade for screwing around with backups and shit to make LittleBigPlanet 2 pop in a fun way, after doing it legit (oof to me when I realized changing my PSN name killed all LBP records). There's enough easy AF plats you can get on Vita, and considering the hackers are probably not buying the games anyways, why not just pirate a shitload of easy plats and rock that out, at least the trophies are legit. 

 

Stumps me how you'd go to the effort of hacking trophies, but not bother making the timestamps even remotely believable.

 

57 minutes ago, ChristianHenares said:

Exactly, thanks. I mean, something must change, right? This is the main reason I made this topic, because we've been seeing this for at least 2 years now and it's disgusting. It's killing the good criteria of the website.

So the solution is to report these profiles. I always flag one game, then note on the report that the user has multiple hacked Vita games earned in seconds. Profile gets banned and removed entirely every time.

 

I'm not sure what the solution is, if users can't be bothered to take a few seconds to report these profiles, why do you want a rule change? The suggestion to have these games auto-hidden is worse, because the hackers remain on the leaderboards for other games. Current system, while it takes a small amount of effort, will have these cheaters removed entirely.

Edited December 25, 2023 by diskdocx

[sepheroithisgod]

53 minutes ago, diskdocx said:

I'm not sure what the solution is, if users can't be bothered to take a few seconds to report these profiles, why do you want a rule change? The suggestion to have these games auto-hidden is worse, because the hackers remain on the leaderboards for other games. Current system, while it takes a small amount of effort, will have these cheaters removed entirely.

While I don't think this is necessary or practical, I think a lot of people expect some type of confirmation that their request is being reviewed and the status of it with a confirmation when it either is approved or denied. I think this would just slow the CRT down, so I don't think it is a good idea, but making the system feel more responsive is important.

 

That said, they only have four people, I think a good first step is expanding the team.

[DEMONICRUBLE18]

7 hours ago, diskdocx said:

 

So the solution is to report these profiles. I always flag one game, then note on the report that the user has multiple hacked Vita games earned in seconds. Profile gets banned and removed entirely every time.

 

I'm not sure what the solution is, if users can't be bothered to take a few seconds to report these profiles, why do you want a rule change? The suggestion to have these games auto-hidden is worse, because the hackers remain on the leaderboards for other games. Current system, while it takes a small amount of effort, will have these cheaters removed entirely.

I forgot that they remain on the Leaderboards with this I was thinking they get kicked from the leaderboards entirely 

[Kittens Are Awesome]

I think you are 100% right. Something does need to be done. We need to get rid of this ridiculous notion, that's been thoroughly debated in favor of all or nothing, that there's a difference between open source and closed source revived private servers. 

 

Also, there should be no human element. Have a list of unobtainable trophies and games where a certain number of trophies pooping within seconds just get automatically removed. No flagging full profiles. Just remove cheated lists. Ambiguous trophy time stamps should just be let go. If it's not 100% positive, let it be. 

 

You guys thinking you catch a fraction of cheated trophies is laughable. Only the ignorant and lazy are caught. Cheated trophies are undetectable, and anybody thinking they can detect them are ignorant and arrogant as to what can be done. As proof, I've seen known hackers challenge the community to flag them. They never were. 

 

I'll never understand this obsession over what other people do with their trophy lists. Why? Why care? If it's that arbitrary rarity number you're chasing after, that's really sad. I can't even think of a reason why anybody would care. Nothing comes to mind that makes rational sense of this whole nonsense. Yall need another hobby.

[EqualityEarth]

11 hours ago, ChristianHenares said:

PSNProfiles is the main reference for trophy AND achievements hunters database in the entire world, knowing others like trueachievements, exophase, mygamerprofile and so on, none of them have this almost 7 millions users recorded.

Technically (and most ironically, given the subject matter of legitimacy) the site didn’t “earn” this number of recorded profiles, at least not during its early days. Unless what I’ve heard is wrong, once upon a time, adding your profile here would also automatically add the profiles of everyone in your friends list. @Kittens Are Awesome may elaborate as he knows more properly on this.

[kindajustin]

 

Quote

I think you are 100% right. Something does need to be done. We need to get rid of this ridiculous notion, that's been thoroughly debated in favor of all or nothing, that there's a difference between open source and closed source revived private servers. 

Totally hear this. If an approval process is still beneficial by all means have one, but we need transparency and a little more leniency on this one. Are the CRT well-versed in games and trophies or are they coders? Because if they're not coders they don't understand the game at the code level and showing them the source code is as useful as showing your dog math homework. I'm not super educated on this point, but multiple closed source coders I know have expressed frustration with this and I haven't been around that long, relatively speaking. I know enough to know open source is better for different reasons, but I just want this revived server stuff to be a little less rigid.
 

Quote

You guys thinking you catch a fraction of cheated trophies is laughable. Only the ignorant and lazy are caught. Cheated trophies are undetectable, and anybody thinking they can detect them are ignorant and arrogant as to what can be done. As proof, I've seen known hackers challenge the community to flag them. They never were. 

This needs to be talked about more. These valiant white knights of the old trophy guard are only catching the people who are dumb enough to be willing to get caught. I've lost count of how many people on this site have openly professed hacking trophies and don't seem to have any flags.

Edited December 25, 2023 by kindajustin

[ChristianHenares]

On 12/25/2023 at 11:18 PM, Kittens Are Awesome said:

I think you are 100% right. Something does need to be done. We need to get rid of this ridiculous notion, that's been thoroughly debated in favor of all or nothing, that there's a difference between open source and closed source revived private servers. 

 

Also, there should be no human element. Have a list of unobtainable trophies and games where a certain number of trophies pooping within seconds just get automatically removed. No flagging full profiles. Just remove cheated lists. Ambiguous trophy time stamps should just be let go. If it's not 100% positive, let it be. 

 

You guys thinking you catch a fraction of cheated trophies is laughable. Only the ignorant and lazy are caught. Cheated trophies are undetectable, and anybody thinking they can detect them are ignorant and arrogant as to what can be done. As proof, I've seen known hackers challenge the community to flag them. They never were. 

 

I'll never understand this obsession over what other people do with their trophy lists. Why? Why care? If it's that arbitrary rarity number you're chasing after, that's really sad. I can't even think of a reason why anybody would care. Nothing comes to mind that makes rational sense of this whole nonsense. Yall need another hobby.

Maybe I'm not getting your point or your question or completely misunderstanded it, but did you just ask why anybody would bother to catch hackers making trophies for free?

If you ask for a single reason to do so, I can give you that. Some of us worked hard for getting a world record speed run on trophies, which are only one-try-a-time for an account. With some offline games you can try on another console without internet and try to beat your own time, or that was what I heard years ago but never tried it. And having to wait several days for three users to be flagged and marked as cheaters shouldn't be happening. On the other hand, using external programs in order to get imposible things is something allowed here on PSNProfiles and some of us have to disagree on this decision. This is an example, I didn't sleep for this entire time but at the end it doesn't matter because somebody with an external program and planning could just killed my time. There is no human way to beat all those 4 games in less than 23 and a half hour, but hey, this guy did it on 8 hours and let's laugh everyone else, right?

Thanksfully there are some games that are impossible to do something like that due to online trophies and more things, and luckily I was able to do an almost perfect run on this really hard game here and made it through. Theory is, it can be done better, but prepare for something really hard and kinda "lucky based" as well. I had to use my second account on it, sadly, but as I said, there is only one try for each account, and that's something good and bad for many reasons.

 

I just gave you a reason, but there are many more. You don't like people to be brave enough to point at cheaters or you prefer cheaters for unknown reasons, in any case, I'm not trying to convince anybody here, we all have our own point of view and should be respect. But definitely some of us are trying to preserve and protect the truth and the sacrifice, that should be out of question.

Edited December 26, 2023 by ChristianHenares

[JAK-KRIEG]

I think some people take this hobby like it's life or death have a drink smoke or whatever you do to calm down. I agree that cheaters should be removed the crt do mostly a good job imo, but some people will die of stress related illnesses I fear in the process.

[Fing3rButt3r3]

On 12/25/2023 at 2:29 AM, ChristianHenares said:

knowing others like trueachievements, exophase, mygamerprofile and so on, none of them have this almost 7 millions users recorded

the numbers a little misleading as I dare say not a whole lot of is even active anymore or auto updated...

and in the beginning this site collected that many users because when you add one person, it was able to collect their friendlist and add those users automatically. Later removed because Sony did not like what was being done here.

 

I kinda would like to see a new leaderboard with active users but that's just me.

[Sparklebun1996]

On 12/25/2023 at 11:59 AM, ChristianHenares said:

My only take here is to add more members to the moderator team and maybe changing the rules so literally any game below 1min will get banned if it's not auto-pop and with the exception of Slyde which is a game you can do in 18sec as far as I know.

Too many factors here to be aware of. Auto-pop up games kill a good possible measure that would be to autoban or autoreport every single game below 1min obtainable trophies. Human study on each game is necessary, I'm aware of it.

Another thing have to be, at some point,talk about external apps and people doing Life is Strange under 3 hours, which is impossible on normal and legit methods, but maybe that's another topic.

There's a lot of games you can do in less then a minute legit with no hacking involved. Mostly shovelware but you can't ban legit players for playing them.

[B1rvine]

Trophies are 100% broken as a "competition." There's almost no point in managing the leaderboard in it's current form.

 

I'd say the only real fix is a leaderboard system that's not based on the honor's system - and other major changes.

 

[MMDE]

Be happy with the ease of which you can tell a lot of the time.

[MonaSaxPayne]

rules definitely need revamping, especially when they contradict themselves 

[Dragon_Lord502]

Considering I've cheated over 350 vita games, without a single report. PS vita really needs looked at, something BIG that that automated system misses is vita games from multiple regions. If last trophy to first trophy from eu to hk is like 3 minutes they didn't switch regions, that's CFW.

 

Besides that, I've cheated around 30 ps3 games. The leaderboards are worthless, though haven't they been since the shovelware

 

EDIT: Must not be clear that this is my alt... I'm not going to straight up out myself. After all the years and $$$$, though I really don't care to stay. Just though I'd make it clear that it's easy to hide.....

Edited December 28, 2023 by Dragon_Lord502
alt

[Jeanolt]

I think I said it before, that's not a work for only 4 people, is way more than that. If the CRT wants I can join and help with the reports, although 5 members will not be a huge difference. If you want them to investigate that much in what is actually a free service, then that's a misconception. 

 

Edit: With "investigation" I meant the amount of time they can dedicate to each game. For example, if there are 4 reports and each one of them takes one, then they can take their time with the report to take the best decision. In this case there are dozens, and they have lifes outside PSNP (like all of us), so mistakes can happen. This can be reduced by expanding the amount of members.

Edited December 28, 2023 by Jeanolt