Guild Wars 2, Cheating, and Spyware: As The MMO World Turns
By Jason Fanelli ·
Guild Wars 2 and its creator ArenaNet have stirred quite the pot with news of using spyware to catch cheaters, and we take a look at the reactions across social media.
When news broke that 1,500 Guild Wars 2 accounts were banned for cheating, most gamers didn’t think twice about it. Cheating in MMOs has always been a problem so the occasional banhammer won’t surprise its players base. Furthermore,1,500 banned accounts, while nothing to sneeze at, isn’t a huge number. ArenaNet thought it would just send them to exile and the story would be over...but that’s when things got weird.
See, a savvy Redditor by the name of “fwosar” had some questions. While the user has admitted to using bots and the like in other MMOs like Final Fantasy XIV, he insists he never did so in Guild Wars 2. He started digging, and what he found turned the entire community upside down: ArenaNet had been using spyware in order to see what their players were also running while playing the game. This, for some players in the community, is a big ol’ no no.
This particular spyware, per the handy “TL;DR” section of the Reddit post, sounds pretty scary: “Arena silently shipped a spyware component as part of one of their updates on March 6th that submitted hashes of all processes running on your system to their servers, compromising your privacy, degrading your system's performance as well as potentially flagging a bunch of innocent users to be banned. The component was silently removed again on the 27th. The purpose of the component is most likely to flag users for the banwave that just hit.”
Naturally reactions were all over the place, ranging from over a dozen reports on the post calling it “creating drama” to this commenter who just wanted to let fwosar know he was appreciated:
Who says online discussion can’t be cordial? Of course, one of the comments on this comment brought things right back to form when “KyrgysManas” replied “I second this. And now OP stop cheating in other games I play too occasionally. Don't be a dick.”
Some couldn’t believe ArenaNet would take these steps particularly in the climate we’re currently living in, like user “Lon-ami” who made a great point: “I can't believe ArenaNet would pull this in the middle of a huge privacy controversy, specially [sic] after they already made the mistake of pushing lootboxes in the middle of another controversy. Talk about timing.” Others went into self-preservation mode, worried that they will be next. As “XephyrGW2” puts it: “That's kinda scary, I run cheat engine for single player games, guess I gotta make absolute 100% sure it's closed everytime I launch gw2, because I don't wanna lose my 6 year old account with over 7k hrs invested over something like that.” While we do not condone cheating in any form, some users thinking “uh-oh, am I next?” certainly makes sense.
A few even went so far as to defend ArenaNet’s decision, like this post from “moonshineTheleocat”:
The kerfluffle has raged since the original information has been discovered,, ArenaNet’s defenders and detractors all touching on the same basic question: what is an acceptable countermeasure for alleged cheating? ArenaNet wants to weed out those who would take advantage of the game it’s created, but the system to do so is far from perfect as this reply recounts. Are we as gamers willing to accept spyware on our PCs if it means cheaters can be more efficiently weeded out, or do we need another system? Would a new system need to be proven to have a near-100% accuracy rate in order to even be taken seriously? How would that work? The questions mount, but the answers won’t come for years.
Personally, I’m alright with a little monitoring to ensure that cheaters aren’t taking over the game I’m trying to enjoy, but only when I’m actually in-game. I don’t need some random company pilfering through my computer while I’m not playing the game, that’s pointless. Making sure I’m a legit player while I’m playing is fine, completely understandable and I’m sure part of the EULA I accepted without reading, but leave my PC alone when I’m not logged in. If you’re cool with that, game companies like ArenaNet, then I’m cool with you taking measures to ensure fair play.