Cheaters Policy

[ionstorm777]

as for boosting all boosting is cheating since you are not doing it the way you supposed to period

dont matter if the trophy has crazy requirements

then you should excuse me too for using the save

I just thought of another anology regarding boosting, but you don't wan't to hear any of it anyways.

I should NOT excuse you for using saves. (ALERT: This is my personal opinion.)

[Sir_Bee]

I'm a lawyer so I can argue against it. If today the law passed that kissing on the street is illegal you can't be punished for doing that last year. There have been no rules that using save, boosting, asking someone else to help you out, trading, buying or using whatever means is against the rules. But I don't support the idea either that you should be able to have 1 hacked game. I gave an idea that would be more reasonable a few pages back. But I also know that it will not be implemented.

There were rules saying it is cheating. If you had asked people, the vast majority would call it cheating. There just wasn't any punishment in place. If it was generally accepted as good practice before, and now that has changed, I would agree that you could not be punished for what you did in the past when it was ok. The point is that it was never 'ok' or following the rules. It was always cheating, you just weren't punished for it, and now you are.

a bad choice is a bad choice

cheating is no different since i chose to use a save

as for boosting all boosting is cheating since you are not doing it the way you supposed to period

dont matter if the trophy has crazy requirements

then you should excuse me too for using the save

and please enough with the university, i finished it 13 years ago

A bad choice is a bad choice, but the resulting consequence is completely different. One is you choosing to break a rule, one is you forgetting something, or making a mistake.

If you think that boosting is cheating, then you don't have to do it. I think that driving with a blood alcohol level of anything above zero should not be tolerated as it impairs you, so I chose to never drive if I have been drinking. That does not change where the rule is drawn, and in the end that is Sly's choice. He drew the line somewhere you disagree with, so go somewhere else where your views are reflected. This isn't meant to be hostile, It is just the way life goes. If the rules had been set up as something I disagreed with this strongly, I would go somewhere else.

And again, the University analogy fits, just because you are out, doesn't mean the whole world has nothing to do with it anymore. I seriously hope that was a joke, and if it was, I will gladly take this back.

This is a complete train wreck. I'm finally posting to break up this elementary mess.

Sly, I'll say a few things.

Firsly, I suggest closing this thread.

This is unprofessional. A professional admin or owner of something, when issuing something, will issue it...and that is that. We can compare this to a "press release"; just put the word out there and lock the thread. The decisions have been made and you don't need this extra pressure and stress.

There is nothing of contribution to be said here, and now things are going very off-topic and people are throwing insults at each other.

The PlayStation Network community as a whole as far as anti-cheating is still in it's infancy.

Of course, Sony still is silent on the matter, while the only other on-topic entity, YourGamerCards, is too lax and of course the profiles are left intact to the unknowing eye.

You have to understand the position of power PSNProfiles is in to influence the future stance on cheating across the entire PSN community.

I want you to take a look at something. www.TrueAchievements.com

That is Xbox 360's main achievement stat site by the community.

And they have an "Investigations Team". So when cheaters are reported, it is routed to a member of that team. What I'm saying is, you do not have the manpower alone to handle the upcoming reports when you put in the manual reporting feature. You need to recruit at least a handful of trustworthy individuals to start managing this. Sly, your work on the site is impeccable, and one man alone is not enough to do all the coding, upgrading, etc plus cheater management.

TrueAchievements also is very strict when it comes to cheaters --- and that was influenced by community demand. Zero tolerance is the only way.

When a cheater is removed from T.A., their entire profile is branded as a cheater AND MOST IMPORTANTLY all of their stats and achievements are removed from the site.

When a cheater is removed from PSNProfiles currently, an unknowing individual will not even know for sure. Cheaters can still brag and link their card in sigs and have all their stats intact there as well as on their profile.

PSNProfiles, when someone is removed from the leaderboards, needs to have everythig removed on the profile. The profile will still exist, but no trophy lists will be shown, no level stats, etc.

There is also no need for a "dirty" leaderboard on PSNProfiles. This is admittance to giving in to cheater demands. Do not reason with cheaters. This lighthearted approach will not change anything. If things are strict, the attitude will eventually channel to Sony and they will start resetting cheaters as what happened with Xbox Live and Microsoft. The cheater community on PSN is shaking in their boots right now and again, the position of power PSNProfiles is in right now is incredible. Zero tolerance and things will definitely change very quickly on PSN.

Take a look at what a profile looks like on T.A. when a cheater is flagged/removed:

Here's a mock-up idea of what PSNProfiles should look like:

I’m up for negotiation, but at the minimum their trophy list and statistics cannot be shown. It ends here - the use of PSNProfiles as a cheater’s showoff method.

PSNProfiles for PSN has the means to be what TrueAchievements is to Xbox Live.

We have hackers coming in here out of the woodwork, some even seem to have been influencing Sly.

And others not contributing anything of worth.

I have various suggestions and such to contribute but I will make this post short.

I will at least summarize a few things --- what you have in place with auto-flagging is brilliant. This will evict a giant mass of cheaters alone. However, more games need to be added to this and you can not only take the community's word on this, since cheaters will twist words on what is a "legit" time.

This combined with a competent investigations team and manual reporting, PSNProfiles will be very legitimate.

Secondly, there is no need for a "dirty" leaderboard - PSNProfiles will continue to be a hacker hangout if so. This is all a project to evict cheaters from the site and ultimately improve the anti-cheating attitude across PSN.

Cheaters are using up a giant chunk of your bandwidth, what with linking their cheat card on cheat forum sigs, updating their cheat profile manually, and refreshing their profile many times a day for their delusional vanity. Cutting out the auto-updating on flagged profiles would be very helpful. Disabling the ability to be tracked/update alone would lift a giant weight from your shoulders, and most importantly the minds of the honest players.

I already see the signs of Sly giving into cheater demands (removing the cheater flag text and putting a color change on auto-flagged games) making everything more invisible. Just what they want. I have to step it to prevent these things.

The cheating “community” has been building up over time, and they have nobody telling them, “what you’re doing is wrong”.

PSNProfiles has that position of power.

I will work with you to streamline and simplify all of this. It's my calling to do so, after being existant on PSN since the beginning, seeing the trophy system fall. PM me.

Agreed.

[Roughdawg4]

I love their logic well whats the difference if you boosted this one thing rather than hack it. If you just hacked that one trophy, we probably would never know, but guess what you got caught because you probably hacked them all. Take Fuel for example, could someone please explain to me how boosting this game would make it easier? How about Socom? White Knight Chronicles? I can keep going

Most of you were busted because you did something in minutes what took others 100 hours to do (whether the boosted or did it legit). I cannot believe that some of you even have the audacity to even compare boosting to hacking trophies. If you want to believe boosting ruins the game, fine I will give you that because thats your opinion. But please, do not insult our intelligence by stating hacking is the same as boosting, glitching, etc.

Edited August 24, 2012 by Roughdawg4

[mattybell2117]

I agree that this thread should be closed. We're just going around in circles and these stupid people that think that boosting is cheating aren't getting us anywhere. Say boosting is cheating. How do we go about identifying boosters? What happens to em? Almost every single trophy hunter has boosted one trophy or another, are you suggesting we ban the whole leaderboard? Your idea is flawed and idiotic. There is a complete difference between using someone else's work to instantly get you the platinum without you having to do anything and boosting a trophy, whereby you're still having to control your character and complete the trophy requirement.

[R_e_m_y]

There were rules saying it is cheating. If you had asked people, the vast majority would call it cheating. There just wasn't any punishment in place. If it was generally accepted as good practice before, and now that has changed, I would agree that you could not be punished for what you did in the past when it was ok. The point is that it was never 'ok' or following the rules. It was always cheating, you just weren't punished for it, and now you are.

I admit that I could be wrong there as I have never been that kind of person who did the trophies to show off. So I don't know what rules were in place.

[Rhy10]

I just can't understand how one can say boosting = cheating.

Boosting = taking an easier road by arranging the trophy with your friends.

Cheating = automatically getting the trophy without fulfilling the requirements, be it with an external device or a hacked save.

[AlteredFormula]

Well fuck me gently, 14 pages in and here we are in the same place as the last thread. Cheaters bitching about being caught out, non-cheaters trolling, and only a few sensible posts in between.

Firstly, I'd like all of you to go back to the first post in this thread, see the guy who posted it? He kind of runs this place, so if that is how he says its going to be, then that is how its going to be. We had all the debate in the last thread, this thread is the policy, not a debate the policy thread.

Secondly, I'd like you to go back and read that first post again (I know, I'm fucking crazy right?!) See that line about manual reporting coming soon... that's the one... that means, soon you will be able to report on cheats. for those of you that are confused that does not mean tell tales and point fingers in this thread.

Finally... This is happening, nothing will change that, quote Shakespeare, Shelley & Keats if you like, it wont change our stance. We want you all to enjoy this community, but if you really are that concerned about being excluded from the (clean) leader boards, The only thing you can do is start with a clean profile and do it legit.

Those of you that are trolling, (be it Anti-cheat, pro-cheat, whatever) behave yourselves and get a grip. Don't give me an excuse to abuse my holy power of the internet.

[Sly Ripper]

Snip

Don't worry about the manual flagging and a team, it's (getting) sorted.

I have no interest in deleting a flagged users profile, just separating it so that clean users don't see that user. They cheated before PSNP existed, they'll still do it if they aren't on it.

I wished that Sony cared about trophies but they really don't, nor do they really care about doing anything the community wants.

The message that tells you someone is a cheater will return in a nicer position with a decent description soon.

Flagged users stats are completely separate to clean users, hence why the SOCOM: Confrontation platinum dropped over 2,000 achievers and 5% rarity.

But yeah, this thread has run it's course, locked.