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A comment on Guild Wars 2 distributed spyware in order to detect cheaters. Parent comment

Re:Guild Wars 2 distributed spyware in order to detect cheaters by sgift on Monday April 16, 2018 @01:12PM (#16850714)
I have a really hard time equating botting with cheating. I don't do it myself, but in my opinion if your game can be botted you botched your game design. Also, MMO cheating implies for me some damage to other players which I don't see either with botting.

Anyway: Whether he botted or not is not the point of the thread. Even if everyone they caught would have cheated (according to their and your definition) that's still a pretty significant privacy intrusion from ArenaNet.

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Re:Guild Wars 2 distributed spyware in order to detect cheaters by EpicEng on Monday April 16, 2018 @01:56PM (#16851149)
>but in my opinion if your game can be botted you botched your game design.

That has nothing to do with the commonly accepted definition of cheating. Using in game mechanics which harm the player base in some way is considered cheating in every competitive game ever made. "The devs messed up" is not an OK to do whatever you like, that would ruin these games.

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Re:Guild Wars 2 distributed spyware in order to detect cheaters by iooi on Monday April 16, 2018 @01:55PM (#16851140)
> if your game can be botted you botched your game design

So Starcraft, Counter Strike, and PUBG all have botched game designs? Please..

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Re:Guild Wars 2 distributed spyware in order to detect cheaters by pvg on Monday April 16, 2018 @01:27PM (#16850852)
MMO cheating implies for me some damage to other players which I don't see either with botting.

The more you participate, the more stuff you get (for various values of 'stuff') is the central design conceit of just about all MMOs. Breaking it is one of the most drastic and damaging ways to cheat.

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Re:Guild Wars 2 distributed spyware in order to detect cheaters by freehunter on Monday April 16, 2018 @02:33PM (#16851514)
Agreed. And GW2, like other MMOs, has a trading post where players can sell to other players. If you're cheating, you can crash the in-game economy which certainly does have an impact on other players.
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