To be honest I think this IS pro-consumer. The amount of cheating from peripheral devices is ridiculous. For example triggers that make semi-automatic weapons fully automatic, or using a M&K for Halo where headshots are instant kills on Swat/Snipes game modes and the advantage is ridiculous. People have been complaining against third party controllers for years and I'd be happier playing online when I know everyone is using the same rules. Game developers have never managed to solve this, and it is killing off games for a lot of people, so if this is required to stop cheating I'm for it.

For people downvoting, you've never played a fighting game against someone with a modded controller to do frame-perfect combos with a single button press.

>> or using a M&K for Halo where headshots are instant kills on Swat/Snipes game modes

By this do you mean a mouse and keyboard? And you consider this to be cheating?

For the others, I feel like banning all third party peripherals is just going to disadvantage kids like I was who always had hand-me-down madcatz controllers because we couldn’t spring 3x the price for the official sony ones.

If this is such an issue, perhaps the game makers could balance it out a-la mario cart and detect likely cheaters and handicap them until the game balances out?

> By this do you mean a mouse and keyboard? And you consider this to be cheating?

Yep! The way they tried to get around this was by allowing you to only play with people using the same type of controller, but you can mod your keyboard to look like a controller and get in regardless. It is a HUGE advantage for those game modes. I played pretty competitive Halo 3 for several years, including a couple tournaments, and on a controller I get completely steamrolled by a decent player with an M&K. There are other games with other examples but the ability to point and click vs using your thumb to make similar micro-movements on a thumbstick is just night and day. Apex Legends had similar issues where particular movements aren't even possible on a keyboard! If you have to register with a controller I think that could solve a lot of these issues for gamers.

I do understand what you're saying about madcatz though, and appreciate that controllers are expensive. What I'd really like is to introduce this limit to official controllers and then slowly allow third-party companies to offer official alternatives. Or, even better, only have this restriction for online gaming. I don't care what people do offline!

It's very funny to me, as in the 90s when console FPSes first started coming out there were always debates on PC vs Console in school, and whether mouse and keyboard was better than joypad, I guess now everyone knows the answer

I don’t think anyone ever thought joypad was better for first person shooter accuracy. Especially in the 90s when console FPSs barely involved aiming.

They really did. The amount of PlayStation people who talk about how they would "smoke" PC players if cross play ever happens.

30 seconds of searching. https://www.reddit.com/r/modernwarfare/comments/sc8blk/contr...

Ah right. Should have posted my reply here. "Cocky console gamers".

MWII ramped up the aim assist so much that MnK is the inferior option, regardless of platform.

Oh yeah, when a pro gamer uses a controller it's notable (Can you believe X uses a controller too?!). And some game modes which were just clearly designed for a controller (one shot to the head kills, no reticle bloom, no need to zoom) become completely broken when you have both.

Was that ever in question? Perhaps to cocky console players who never used a mouse, but not players that started off on PC with mouse & keyboard...

I grew up playing Quake back in the mid 90s with M&K, so when the PS2 and XBOX came out and multiplayer shooters became really big (Halo, CoD, Medal of Honor...), I had a lot of experience playing these kind of games, but most people in my school had a console. It wasn't even cocky players, every one of them thought that mouse & keyboard was worse.

I never got to show them they were wrong, me and a few friends offered to run a LAN tournament but they never took up the challenge... Now it looks like they post on forums complaining about M&K "cheaters" :).

The problem is really that this wasn't how it worked initially. To make a meaningful dent on cheating controllers it won't be possible for most controllers to be updated to be compliant as they don't have the hardware required to implement the correct protocols, and any simple software workarounds for specific controllers to continue working will just be exploited by those designing cheating controllers.

If M$ had done this initially then the "madcatz controllers" of this generation would probably have been compliant already, and maybe would cost a few cents more to manufacture as a result.

I'm on your side, cheating is a huge issue for multiplayer games today and something needs to be done about it, but it sucks that it might cause some less fortunate people to be caught in the crossfire.

> By this do you mean a mouse and keyboard? And you consider this to be cheating?

It's common for games to be tuned specficially for controller, and using mouse and keyboard 'gets around' the shortcomings of the less precise controller but still take advantage of the affordances games give controller (like increased aim assist or magnetism)

Thing is, it won't stop modded controllers / M&K convertors. Modded controllers have been a thing since at least the 360 days and back then they were official controllers with a microcontroller soldered in.

The older K&M convertors would require a wired controller to be connected to them (so they could pass the auth check).

All it will do is send it back to those days and remove choice for gamers who want to use unofficial controllers such as fighting sticks.

Yes, it would be really easy. You "just" have to be able to buy thousands of official controllers and solder a microcontroller on them. And then resell them. Without getting sued.

Or teach people to solder the microcontroller themselves.

Yes, there will always people cheating no matter what. But as long as you reduce their numbers substantially, it is worth it.

> Yes, it would be really easy. You "just" have to be able to buy thousands of official controllers and solder a microcontroller on them. And then resell them. Without getting sued.

That's exactly what people did back in the day, First-sale doctrine allows for this (Heck some modders I knew back in the day simply brought them in bulk at wholesale). Modders either brought controllers retail, modded them and put a mark up on them, or people would send in their own controller to be modded.

But those selling wired K&M convertors just decided they would pass though the challenge/response commands to a offical wired controller the user would have to purchase themselves (saves the manufacturer the need to purchase them).

> Or teach people to solder the microcontroller themselves.

There were plenty of sites with open source rapid fire microcontroller firmware and install guides for those who didn't want to pay others to mod their controller for them. It was simply VCC, GND, each of the trigger inputs, a connection to the sync button, and a connection to one of the LEDs to give feedback to the user which mode the controller was in. Heck it was on the skill level needed to mod a PS1 and those services were ten a penny. Heck it got to the point where drop in PCBs where being created where castellations on the PCB were in just the right spot to solder.

Not loving the way you steamroll through the already super sensible super easy path & project the ultra hard mode as the only option.

> The older K&M convertors would require a wired controller to be connected to them so they could pass the auth check.

This seems like it'll barely be a speed bump. A bunch of folks will have to get new cheating gear, which will be a temporary reprieve, but most probably will do just that.

Personally I’ve been out of the whole controller modding scene for a while, but the xim devs ( they made one of the first mass market K&M converters) don’t seem too worried about this update because they require the use of an official controller to handle the auth challenge & response.

It seems as of now, MS are only targeting unofficial controllers that circumvent the existing auth check (which some of the full custom built cheat controllers as well as other unofficial 3rd party controllers.

So (imo) it will have very little impact on cheat controllers at all and will mainly affect those who just tried to save a few bucks.

You don't even need to do that: the Xbox Adaptive Controller accepts generic 3.5mm button inputs. So you just need to make an adapter that plugs into that.

Then they could block it for online play only.

Why can’t they just crack open the official controller and wire up to the buttons, while leaving all the communication logic intact?

I couldn't do that myself! I might be able to buy one of those, but then if there's a chance they could be banned at any time if they're detected is it a viable business model?

Not including the fact if you control the hardware you know things like max trigger presses per second, so if you detect an order of magnitude more than you assume possible you'd catch hackers there too.

Edit: I'm not saying I have all the answers here, but modded controllers and M&Ks made to look like controllers have been a bane in my online gaming life for years so I'm keen for any steps moving towards fair (competitive) gaming.

Aren't most console games single player ?

The best selling games are almost entirely online focused. Not all, for example Assassins Creed, but Apex Legends, Pubg, GTA V, Halo, Fifa, Minecraft, Roblox, Battlefield, Forza, are all primarily or only online.

Perhaps Microsoft should start addressing that by pulling their own fully certified "build your controller" kit [1] from the market, or banning it from online multiplayer games. If they really want to get serious about it they could even add anti-tamper seals to their controllers to stop cheaters from opening them up and soldering wires to the button pads, which is still a surprisingly common thing to do. Granted, both approaches require expensive parts and a lot of work, but I would argue that cheaters are a minority and are going to cheat no matter what (and most of the more advanced cheating devices I have seen are not particularly cheap or easy to buy either).

Third-party accessory manufacturers are the real target here. While I appreciate Microsoft's desire to crack down on cheating and make sure players will only use high quality peripherals rather than AliExpress specials, enforcing cryptographic attestation to lock competitors out is not the right way to accomplish it.

[1] https://www.xbox.com/en-US/accessories/controllers/xbox-adap...

What's stopping those cheat device vendors to use boards from licensed controllers and modify it?

I only play Xonotic these days. A ridiculously old game, pure adrenaline arena shooter. Everybody uses keyboard and mouse, apart from one guy who uses a game controller. He's extremely good, knows the game extremely well and has been playing Xonotic for years I think. But he just can't compete with the better players who are (presumably) using standard PC controls. I've seen forums where console gamers think that mouse is "basically cheating, worse than aimbots". But when it's a flat playing field and everybody is using a mouse, there's such a chasm between the top 5% of players and the rest of the field. There's one regular player who is constantly accused of cheating. Even seasoned players think it but most aren't brave enough to say it. Some players absolutely hate him and start shit-talking him as soon as he joins. People take this stuff seriously.

> People take this stuff seriously.

Yep! And let's not forget eSports is booming and these online tournaments have real cash prizes nowadays. There are incentives to cheat and reducing third-party hardware might help reduce that.

This is a hopeless fight.

You cannot mod a real-life machine gun to shoot 10x as fast by changing the trigger; the whole design would resist the attempt. You cannot make a real-life human body make a 180° turn in 10 ms and then stand still; the laws of mechanics won't allow that.

If you want a guaranteed balanced game, the game code should observe these limitations, no matter what controller is used. What is possible in the game world should not depend on that.

As long as games allow for inputs that give an unfair advantage, people will find ways to use that unfair advantage. They will take apart a certified controller, connect the buttons to devices that produce fast repetition, connect the thumb joysticks to devices that allow faster movement, etc. There is no way to plug this hole, like the analog hole in sound recording. The only way is a correct model.

You can do both! Neither work in isolation.

One of the common modifications for controllers is thumb-stick extenders that simply make the analog input more precise, not "faster". I don't think you can detect this using your strategy, since there is no change to the electronics of the controller. To the console and game software it just looks like the player is more accurate than others, and reducing the in-game look and movement speed wouldn't remove the advantage.

Some combination of heuristics (target acquisition time, moving target tracking, etc) would probably be the only way. But what if a player is genuinely exceptional - should they be punished for that?

You can’t mod a machine gun to shoot faster by modifying the trigger (probably?) but you can mod a non automatic weapon to basically become automatic

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bump_stock

A bump stock is barely a weapon modification. There are videos of people using nothing but a wooden dowel to bump fire.

And?

Couldn't they just detect the controller used, and make rooms that only allow people using official controllers for example? And rooms allowing any controller, so that people who want to use a modded controller can still have their fun. Fun is the main point after all.

This is obviously possible since they're able to ban unofficial peripherals

Xim users destroying the integrity of multiplayer FPS causes this, unfortunately.

The fact of the matter is if you’re allowed to plug in any peripheral into a game console, you can and will get prolific cheaters in a multiplayer environment.

Maybe only bring in this check if your console is not in offline mode? And please make it cheap to actually get certified.

Regular accessories that don’t alter gameplay can and should always be an option for a user. If a certification process has to happen to use the accessory online, so be it, but I hope this doesn’t hurt the market too much.

Edit: I’m aware that Xim currently uses controller authentication to work and therefore this specific change may not affect it. I wasn’t claiming that this would get rid of Xim, but arguing that a huge reason for this change is to begin the process of cracking down on rampant cheating in online multiplayer games (shooters in particular).

Except that you have fundamentally misunderstood, like so many who decide to defend big corps, the actual impact.

XIM and similar tools are grey market - they do not care for compliance, nor do they mind breaking the terms of service to work. Thats the entire fucking point. They are workarounds for people wanting to either cheat or who want to hack their device for greater freedom of input.

These people will.be unhindered by this change, because XIM has an excellent history of spoofing a controllers input to the console. The people who will really miss out are the younger or poorer people who will have cheaper 3rd party controllers or unofficial adapters. Less freedom for the user. More money for corpos.

Sometimes I wonder if this is hackernews or corponews

Everyone who makes this kind of comment must not play video games online.

The "money play" is a cut on digital sales, and balancing subscription fees with the cost of services rendered. I can't imagine how little they make on accessories/certification to be the reason behind this move. I think this is the start of set of changes that culminates in hardware verification for the (leaked) revision of the console.

> because XIM has an excellent history of spoofing a controllers input to the console

That it does now, but Microsoft can upload firmware to their devices and have full control of the software it runs on.

Call of Duty is one of their biggest games, and I think being a platform that nullfies Xim and Cronus will convince people to play those games on that platform, especially with Crossplay off and the games being free on Game Pass. This makes more sense as a "money maker" to me (i.e. fuelling Game Pass subs).

Couldn't game designers make a toggle that the game won't run with unofficial hardware? Seems like it's a but overkill if this was simply the problem.

> Maybe only bring in this check if your console is not in offline mode?

Or only if you're playing a multiplayer game?

Leave that up to the game devs. Expose a platform API call with all relevant information about the accessories currently plugged into the console.

That way a game can check that API whenever cheating matters for that particular game - which may mean different things: playing with strangers, playing certain 'competitive' modes, getting achievements or high scores, etc.

That would be the best outcome, I agree.

Microsoft will happily sell you a fully certified controller breakout box [1] into which you can plug whatever you want, including your cheating device of choice. Sure, devices like Xim might be cheaper and more convenient, but cheaters are clearly not the main target of this move.

[1] https://www.xbox.com/en-US/accessories/controllers/xbox-adap...

> Yet another move by MS contrary to the ‘see we arent the same company as we used to be’ vibe they’ve tried to cultivate.

I'd wholly bought into that narrative. Over the past year, I've become so opposed to Microsoft that I'm likely to make my next laptop purchase a MacBook, even though I'm a longtime PC gamer. I just refuse to use Microsoft products anymore. Apple might have their own issues, but at least they're up front about who they are.

Go Linux / steam / steamdeck. It's really good

Main driving linux for dev for years. Kept a dualboot at home for gaming. Switch to full linux last year. It works better and better. Proton is a bless. Thanks wine and thanks valve.

But that's a bit of a fallacy, as Proton just makes it possible to start Windows-targeting games on Linux. So you're still benefiting from a Microsoft-dominated gaming industry whether you like it or not.

Which needs Windows software to keep going, as not even game studios targeting Android/NDK care about GNU/Linux.

>Yet another move by MS contrary to the ‘see we arent the same company as we used to be’ vibe they’ve tried to cultivate.

If you believe their claims about that, I have a bridge to sell you...