Vita CFW users should be banned?

[Xionx]

I dont have problem with them staying on leaderboards as long as they earn them legit way.

I dont see much advantage only because they have bigger libary of games, they still have to play the games and earn them.  I would never cfw my vita , but im kinda jealous. I saw many many people dreaming of region unlocked vitas. Now people complain about it?

They still have to buy and play the games , so i dont see a problem .

[Lady_Galleth2]

Another of those What If scenarios?  We can't tell if they really cheated those trophys or not. But if CFW is no for this site then its breaking the rules. So ban, remove from leaderboards. Very simple.

[NaRayquaza]

It doesn't matter if you have a CFW on your console as long you don't ruin the fun to other players. You want modz on GTA V even on PS3? Fine, but don't be a dick online, do it offline and, if you want to play online, do it legit. You want the undub version of some games because you hate english voices? Why should it be a problem for someone?

 

CFWs are "bad" because if you pirate your games Sony won't earn money anymore (I said Sony, but it is the same for Nintendo, Steam), that's why they aren't allowed on consoles, even if you are actually buying the games, and I can understand that. But come on, this WILL NOT stop piracy.

Let's say I am using a CFW and I get banned. I'll lose all the games I bought, right? What if I say I'll format my system (or buy a new one if it is locked too) without going online and I'll start pirating again?

 

But no, we aren't talking about piracy here. It seems no one cares about it here, all I am seeing here is "Dudes with CFW can earn Trophies I can't earn so they should get banned". Let me ask this then: what if those dudes never synced their Trophies? Would you still care?

[Kittet3]

This thread specifically states banning CFW users. From what I understand, we don't ban CFW users unless it's a case of extreme CFW usage and, even then, it's done solely by Sly. So no, we shouldn't ban CFW users from this site based on the fact they have VITA games from different regions. We can continue to discuss whether or not they should be allowed on the leaderboards or if they should be flagged, but I think the discussion about banning them from being tracked or participate in gaming sessions is, in my mind, out of the question.

[DaivRules]

I’m relieved to see the amount of logic and reason making its way into this thread. Gives me hope for the future of the forums. 

 

Evidence of actual cheated trophies is the only thing that should be considered.

[MMDE]

2 hours ago, Kittet3 said:

If we start flagging these games, are we also going to start flagging people that made accounts for other regions? I understand the technical differences, but if we start using Sony's TOS as a reference for flaggable offenses, then I'm pretty sure my owning JPN and EU accounts with fake addresses are violating them.

 

Not really, as anyone can do this without running custom firmware... It's not just about Sony ToS.

 

2 minutes ago, DaivRules said:

Evidence of actual cheated trophies is the only thing that should be considered.

 

And they aren't cheating if they earn trophies they can't possibly earn without running custom firmware on their console? Oh and the guy you "supported" last night, he was a troll. He came to chat and did the same stuff there, and eventually admitted he was just trolling.

12 minutes ago, Kittet3 said:

This thread specifically states banning CFW users. From what I understand, we don't ban CFW users unless it's a case of extreme CFW usage and, even then, it's done solely by Sly. So no, we shouldn't ban CFW users from this site based on the fact they have VITA games from different regions. We can continue to discuss whether or not they should be allowed on the leaderboards or if they should be flagged, but I think the discussion about banning them from being tracked or participate in gaming sessions is, in my mind, out of the question.

 

"extreme CFW usage"? lol what is even that? 

Edited March 28, 2018 by MMDE

[Kittet3]

13 minutes ago, MMDE said:

 

Not really, as anyone can do this without running custom firmware... It's not just about Sony ToS.

 

 

And they aren't cheating if they earn trophies they can't possibly earn without running custom firmware on their console? Oh and the guy you "supported" last night, he was a troll. He came to chat and did the same stuff there, and eventually admitted he was just trolling.

 

"extreme CFW usage"? lol what is even that? 

I agree there's more considerations to be taken in account. However, I think we should steer away from stating that it should be flaggable because it's against Sony's ToS. Alot of things we do are against Sony's ToS. I just want the discussion to be focused on the other aspects- like fair play and such.

 

Lol, that's probably not the correct way to phase it. I'm talking about when the system auto-bans people for putting timestamps into the future. Besides Sly manually doing it, I'm under the understanding that's the only way to get 'banned' from the site since the flagged disputes have lots of people using cfw and that are still able to view their profile. You can correct me if I misunderstand or if the system has changed. 

[B1rvine]

2 hours ago, ars said:

 

CFW allows running any software, including pirated copies of the game. But that's beside the point, someone wants to hack their devices it's their prerogative. MMDE already established It's not gonna fly on the leaderboards because site rules, though.

 

However this thread is about banning those CFW users outright, ie. some elements of the site would like to throw out people for having a hobby.

 

@B1rvine if I get to do playful jabs too I'm loving your reasoning, PSNP tracks close to 7000 trophy lists currently with no one beating but a fraction of them, and you want to ban people for having access to a dozen visual novels  Unfair advantage! I can't wait to hear what you'll do to children living at home with siblings or *gasp* people who are unemployed!

 

So I don’t know if you read the other thread or not about Gonespy...

 

I’m taking a friendly jab at ProfBam not because of his opinions about CFW Vitas, but because I made an argument that the existing rules at the time prohibited Gonespy, and if we start changing rules based on popular vote, what about all these other hypothetical issues that could arise from the change and put two existing rules in conflict.  The universal response was “that will never happen and let’s worry about now.” But here we are about one week later and two of my scenarios aready exist. This really isn’t too much different than the Gonespy situation on an ethical standpoint, but I bet, honestly, at least one supporter of Gonespy won’t support this. 

 

Not sure why siblings or unemployment is relevant, but my stance is, using Sony banned software to earn unobtainable trophies they couldn’t earn otherwise should *not* be allowed.

 

Disclaimer: Not trying to get Gonespy banned or anything, just pointing out similarities. (Yes I know it’s not exactly the same.)

 

 

[mako-heart]

Unless someone is doing it to get high on boards, I don't care. But I barely care about leadboards as is.

 

Going after casual users feels like a waste of staff time. (as long as the trophies themselves are legit, even if game isn't)

... does that make sense? Probably not lol.

[Sergen]

What I'll throw out here is: How do you know that these games were NEVER available on that person's PSN Store? Have you looked at the PSN Store every single day since those games were released? The PSN Store is no stranger to weird glitches, like games randomly going free or the free trial/demo ending up actually being the full game. 

 

I'm also willing to bet you've never been to Japan, China, Hong Kong or any other country where the games could be exclusive, what if some of the VNs that you think are only available digitally on those stores are actually physically available in their country but not importable because they were incredibly unpopular? 

 

If they're not the only person that has legitimate looking time stamps for those games, you don't know if they have legitimately purchased the game at some point in their life and been able to play the game. 

 

Also, the world is full of people having unfair advantages, having 2 PS3s to self boost a game is an unfair advantage against people who only have 1 PS3, you do the grind 2x faster. People who were recently grinding Valor Grand Cross on Killzone 2 had up to 15 people helping that one person grind at a time, while others only had maybe 2 other people helping, that's an unfair advantage that is allowed on the leaderboards. I'm sure everyone who says people have unfair advantages have probably also boosted the multiplayer trophies and created alt accounts on PSN and so on, no trophy hunter is without using an unfair advantage to get a game done faster. 

 

With Gonespy, nobody has an unfair advantage because those servers aren't being run and closed at random times, the person who made it happen has given people the necessary instructions so they can get online on those games whenever they want and none of the stats for those games can be modded to get the trophies faster. 

 

Unless you can prove the games have never been available physically or even digitally, you shouldn't be accusing people, did you even ask the people who have those trophies how they got the games? 

[DaivRules]

54 minutes ago, MMDE said:

 

And they aren't cheating if they earn trophies they can't possibly earn without running custom firmware on their console? Oh and the guy you "supported" last night, he was a troll. He came to chat and did the same stuff there, and eventually admitted he was just trolling.

 

No. They may have fulfilled the in-game requirements of earning the trophies, you don’t know they didn’t. That falls exactly in-line with Slys comments on Gonespy. 

 

My “support” wasn’t for trolling behavior and still stands for everyone. I did see a couple of your comments on that status trolling them though. So it’s okay if you troll a troll, but not okay if they troll first? I seem to remember you running a script of reloading my profile page every couple seconds for several days to troll me. Should we keep bringing up subjects irrelevant to the topic?

[MMDE]

11 minutes ago, DaivRules said:

 

No. They may have fulfilled the in-game requirements of earning the trophies, you don’t know they didn’t. That falls exactly in-line with Slys comments on Gonespy. 

 

My “support” wasn’t for trolling behavior and still stands for everyone. I did see a couple of your comments on that status trolling them though. So it’s okay if you troll a troll, but not okay if they troll first? I seem to remember you running a script of reloading my profile page every couple seconds for several days to troll me. Should we keep bringing up subjects irrelevant to the topic?

 

You don't know the history between us AKA none, and me actually sending him PM a second later and telling him sorry and it was just a joke, and eventually it turned into him talking about me getting anally penetrated by my own grandpa etc. And second comment was at your suggestion of thinking you're better than everyone. You got hosed bro, tis all I wanted to say.

 

Gonespy doesn't require custom firmare to run on the console for people to use it.

Edited March 29, 2018 by MMDE

[DaivRules]

12 minutes ago, MMDE said:

 

You don't know the history between us AKA none, and me actually sending him PM a second later and telling him sorry and it was just a joke, and eventually it turned into him talking about me getting anally penetrated by my own grandpa etc. And second comment was at your suggestion of thinking you're better than everyone. You got hosed bro, tis all I wanted to say.

 

Gonespy doesn't require custom firmare to run on the console for people to use it.

 

Both of these comments display your inability to see what is actually in front of you, rather than what you want to see. 

[MMDE]

8 minutes ago, DaivRules said:

 

Both of these comments display your inability to see what is actually in front of you, rather than what you want to see. 

 

Whatever, I just wanted to inform you about you being hosed by that dude.

 

Gonespy doesn't require custom firmware to run on the console to earn the trophies, which is something I think is a main point here. Everyone who would want to accomplish what they did would have to do the same, run custom firmware on their console, and this is not something supported when earning trophies and is against the leaderboard rules.

Edited March 29, 2018 by MMDE

[AffectatiousDonk]

It is good to see the moderators / enforcers of the rules taking a careful approach to this. No doubt they are informed by their own sources but I would be very surprised if more than a few players could actually provide the truth behind what is happening here, and I imagine they are not going to share. 

 

In the meantime from what I see on here regularly it is the mid level gamers that are getting flagged. Top leaderboard players have invested a large amount of resources into their profile, I am sure the majority of them would think very carefully before trying any dodgy stuff. I wouldn't mind betting that if an audit was done of the top 2000 players compared to the 2000-4000 the later bracket would expose far more " suspicious " activity. 

 

At the the end of the day your playing yourself, if you can't police yourself then your problem is far greater than cheating at trophies.

Edited March 29, 2018 by cjshaitan

[x1rh0]

So I am seeing lots of people with JP Visual Novels that take 30 mins to complete these days.... When I make the connection I think most of them are loading them with CFW...

So how thats fair? Hack your Vita + sideload 300 VNs from torrents = EPICWIN?

How can I compete with that?

 

[NaRayquaza]

6 minutes ago, x1rh0 said:

So I am seeing lots of people with JP Visual Novels that take 30 mins to complete these days.... When I make the connection I think most of them are loading them with CFW...

So how thats fair? Hack your Vita + sideload 300 VNs from torrents = EPICWIN?

How can I compete with that?

 

If you can't beat them, join them.

[AffectatiousDonk]

18 minutes ago, x1rh0 said:

So I am seeing lots of people with JP Visual Novels that take 30 mins to complete these days.... When I make the connection I think most of them are loading them with CFW...

So how thats fair? Hack your Vita + sideload 300 VNs from torrents = EPICWIN?

How can I compete with that?

 

 

This is quite possibly true, there is also a rumour that many of the top players on the leaderboards bribe this site a large amount of money each month to retain their spots. I always just assumed they were probably wealthy Xbox gamers that didn't even own a Sony console just out for a laugh.

[B1rvine]

1 hour ago, Sergen said:

Also, the world is full of people having unfair advantages...

 

With Gonespy, nobody has an unfair advantage because those servers aren't being run and closed at random times, the person who made it happen has given people the necessary instructions so they can get online on those games whenever they want and none of the stats for those games can be modded to get the trophies faster. 

 

Unless you can prove the games have never been available physically or even digitally, you shouldn't be accusing people, did you even ask the people who have those trophies how they got the games? 

 

I'm genuinely curious what you think about using CFW Vita software to earn these types of trophies, if said games have been proven to not have existed on their region. Your post didn't say.

 

Anyway, there's a difference between an advantage, and an unfair advantage. For the purposes of a leaderboard, everyone should have the same opportunity to earn trophies equally, as opposed to specific trophies being obtainable for some and those same trophies being unobtainable for others.  CFW Vitas (and Gonespy) create a situation where this is the case. I feel the rules as a whole, should put everyone on exactly equal footing.  They don't do that now...  so making a new rule to put us further away from fair rules shouldn't be the answer, but rather fixing the current issues.

 

In any case, either decision by PSNP is fine by me, even if I prefer one way over the other.

 

Edit:

Rebuttal Question (since I'm sure someone will point it out) : 

Q: Different regions already create an unfair situation, based on game availability, so doesn't that void your point?

A: No, anyone can sign up with any region if they choose, for competitive purposes, so its their choice for what edge they get or not at the beginning.

Edited March 29, 2018 by B1rvine

[Sergen]

1 minute ago, B1rvine said:

 

I'm genuinely curious what you think about using CFW Vita software to earn these types of trophies, if said games have been proven to not have existed on their region. Your post didn't say.

 

Anyway, there's a difference between an advantage, and an unfair advantage. For the purposes of a leaderboard, everyone should have the same opportunity to earn trophies equally, as opposed to specific trophies being obtainable for some and those same trophies being unobtainable for others.  CFW Vitas (and Gonespy) create a situation where this is the case. I feel the rules as a whole, should put everyone on exactly equal footing.  They don't do that now...  so making a new rule to put us further away from fair rules shouldn't be the answer, but rather fixing the current issues.

 

In any case, either decision by PSNP is fine by me, even if I prefer one way over the other.

 

I think you haven't looked much into Gonespy, however it is a project that allows anyone to host their own multiplayer on their network and the instructions have been frequently updated to include things that other people who got it to work have brought up. Sure, it's not going to be something that people manage to do on their first try, because some people don't initially understand things like opening Administrator Command Prompt to a specified file location and executing a java file and so on. But the instructions have been clear enough for multiple people to get online on those games. 

 

The rules for CFW have been clear from the beginning, so of course people will be flagged for it. But nobody has been documenting every single PSN Store update since these games were released and nobody has been to every game store in those regions to see if the game is a hidden gem that is available physically. I would be against using custom firmware on your console to achieve trophies, mainly because the only reason people would do it to legitimately earn trophies would be by pirating the game which is illegally possessing the product without paying for it. 

 

When someone uses Gonespy, they use their purchased copy of the game, it doesn't require custom firmware on their console and it has been something anyone has the access to do, granted they have Windows 7, 8 or 10 which I think a high number of people on this website likely have by default. Game companies still sell DLC for defunct multiplayer games, so I think it's fair that if someone bought the game and DLC then they should have the access to the content they purchased. 

 

This game: https://psnprofiles.com/trophies/1216-scene-it-movie-night had DLC that was released, but it was pulled from the PSN Store only a day after it was released because it breached copyright. Ptkush is the only person in the world who has that DLC on his console, who's to say there weren't one off store updates that included games from other regions being randomly available? The store has glitches that cause games to be free when you only download the trial/demo. Until someone archives every single PSN store search for these particular games from the date they are released, you never know if they could have been available for a one-off time. 

[Azelais]

18 minutes ago, x1rh0 said:

So I am seeing lots of people with JP Visual Novels that take 30 mins to complete these days.... When I make the connection I think most of them are loading them with CFW...

So how thats fair? Hack your Vita + sideload 300 VNs from torrents = EPICWIN?

How can I compete with that?

 

 

The actual number of JP VNs that the VITA piracy scene has (and had) public access to is far smaller. I'd be hard pressed for a fairly precise number right now (at 4 at the morning), but I feel confident about that the number of JP-language (pure/non-hybrid) VNs available is in the lower double digits. 

[MMDE]

12 minutes ago, cjshaitan said:

there is also a rumour that many of the top players on the leaderboards bribe this site a large amount of money each month to retain their spots. I always just assumed they were probably wealthy Xbox gamers that didn't even own a Sony console just out for a laugh.

 

I can assure you this is not true.

[DaivRules]

7 minutes ago, B1rvine said:

 

I'm genuinely curious what you think about using CFW Vita software to earn these types of trophies, if said games have been proven to not have existed on their region. Your post didn't say.

 

Anyway, there's a difference between an advantage, and an unfair advantage. For the purposes of a leaderboard, everyone should have the same opportunity to earn trophies equally, as opposed to specific trophies being obtainable for some and those same trophies being unobtainable for others.  CFW Vitas (and Gonespy) create a situation where this is the case. I feel the rules as a whole, should put everyone on exactly equal footing.  They don't do that now...  so making a new rule to put us further away from fair rules shouldn't be the answer, but rather fixing the current issues.

 

In any case, either decision by PSNP is fine by me, even if I prefer one way over the other.

 

How would you compare your concept of opportunity to limited run physical prints with unique trophy sets? Should those be banned as well since not everyone has the same opportunity to access them?

[MMDE]

9 minutes ago, Sergen said:

This game: https://psnprofiles.com/trophies/1216-scene-it-movie-night had DLC that was released, but it was pulled from the PSN Store only a day after it was released because it breached copyright. Ptkush is the only person in the world who has that DLC on his console, who's to say there weren't one off store updates that included games from other regions being randomly available? The store has glitches that cause games to be free when you only download the trial/demo. Until someone archives every single PSN store search for these particular games from the date they are released, you never know if they could have been available for a one-off time. 

 

I really don't think archiving all updates is needed, and we're not talking about digital versions. They would have to release the digital version in another region for a few days and then pull it, but don't pull all versions etc. Yeah, I don't think so. And we're mostly talking about figuring out if the games got a physical release. If a mistake is done, they can always dispute it with their physical copy or whatever. Not that a big problem tbh. And this is more interesting to direct at people who got a lot of these games that you already suspect is cheating.

 

The person who first brought it up to me mentioned Roughdawg4. They mentioned things like the Korean versions, but personally I couldn't find a single game that didn't have a physical release. I didn't dig all that deep though, but whatever.

Edited March 29, 2018 by MMDE

[Sergen]

1 minute ago, MMDE said:

 

I really don't think archiving all updates is needed, and we're not talking about digital versions. They would have to release the digital version in another region for a few days and then pull it, but don't pull all versions etc. Yeah, I don't think so. And we're mostly talking about figuring out if the games got a physical release. If a mistake is done, they can always dispute it with their physical copy or whatever. Not that a big problem tbh. And this is more interesting to direct at people who got a lot of these games that you already suspect is cheating.

 

I think a way to control this is to ask the person for evidence showing that they own the game, either physically or digitally. If it was a one-off store update then the game might stay on their download list, but with the Movie Night game, the DLC was actually taken away from their download lists, but Ptkush still has the game update file with the mode available to him, or so I think. But aside from that, I think vita CFW can't be removed without removing the game, so if the game is on their vita, but they show all their apps to show that nothing like Henkaku is on the vita then maybe that would also be a fair way to judge. It should also only take one person proving it to get everyone else off the hook, as long as their time stamps are legit then nothing would have been stopping them from all doing the same thing. Remember people, if the game isn't on your list but you want to report them, you could always message @MMDE and @grimydawg to let them know.