Any professional competition, regardless of whether the playing field is made of grass or computer graphics, requires strict regulations. Sponsors and spectators alike can turn away from a league if it comes to light that software was used to achieve victory, or that a team took a dive for money—even though both are discovered and dealt with differently.
With recent bans passed down in both the Fortnite 
World Cup and even across various professional leagues, The Esports Observer spoke to professionals working in the field of anti-cheat technology, and esports integrity.
Anti-Cheat Technology, from Online to On Stage
Marcel Menge is the SVP Play & Platforms at ESL , and MD for Turtle Entertainment technology. Having joined the company originally as an online referee in 2001, he is currently responsible for all ESL online platforms and tournaments. He said that when it comes to refereeing, one of the key tasks is preventing access; no rogue connections to the internet in the warmup area or on stage, or allowing the use of keyboards or mice that would allow code to be installed.
Compared to traditional sports, where a referee might have a broader view than just the five or so screens of an esports game, there is a higher chance of missing something. “But I would say, over the course of a full match, there are enough situations and interactions to see it,” said Menge.
“Having multiple spectators backstage as well, plus having the POV streams online for each player position, there are enough eyes on all situations to make sure that if something is fishy, it can be instantly reviewed and checked.”
Even with a high level of scrutiny at major events, there are several landmark cheating cases to point to. One that Menge brought up was during the German ESL Pro Series in 2008, in which a player who came up through qualification played sensationally well online, and a lot worse in person. ESL staff used analytics from the player’s replay data to show he was using both an Aimbot (which provides automated targeting in shooting titles) and a Wallhack (which makes walled surfaces transparent or nonsolid).
The player was given a two-year ban, which he and his team fought against in the district court of Cologne. At the time there was a lot riding on this case; ESL was relying on in-game demos, rather than its own anti-cheat software, and there were concerns that if the ban was overturned, it would have far-reaching consequences. Ultimately, the German courts didn’t make any statement on whether the player had cheated or not, but did determine that the measures and checks ESL had taken were enough reason to ban the player.
“By now, we are much further on the technology side,” said Menge. “There’s all our anti-cheat algorithms, machine learning on the server side that looks into such situations, and looks into whether something is fishy on the memory or in the process logs.”
He notes that while this technology is adept at finding commonplace cheats that can be bought for around $20-$35, the custom made hacks—which can cost the would-be cheater thousands—are harder to detect in the midst of an event. “That usually happens after the games,” said Menge. “Both people who understand and know Counter-Strike on the high level look into it, but also engineers directly dissect the anti-cheat logs and game files of that player.”
The Valve Anti-Cheat System (VAC) was originally introduced in 2002, and today operates on a number of titles on the developer’s Steam platform. The software automatically scans a player’s computer for one out of an ever-growing list of identifiable cheats—any positive result yields a permanent, non-negotiable ban.
However, according to Menge, a publisher’s attitude towards cheating is far removed from that of a tournament organizer. The latter is concerned about halting the 1%-3% of top players looking to get an extra edge, while game-makers are more concerned with players who like to cheat for the sake of ruining other players’ fun. “That’s the main enemy of the publishers, and game developers,” he said. “So they really focus on those people and try to prevent, instead of detect, most of the time.”
Around ⅕ to ¼ of ESL’s technology budget now goes toward anti-cheat measures, according to Menge. Aequitas, ESL’s own tech, was replaced by ESL Wire in 2010, while other tournament organizers like FACEIT created their own software.
“For esports, we can say that if you want to compete, you need to accept that we have this anti-cheat, with a deeper level of intrusion to players system,” said Menge. “We have to make sure, which is something that publishers don’t want to do for a broad audience.”
The conflict against cheaters could be the basis for the script of a crime series. ESL has people who are not, on paper, related to the company; going undercover into online cheating boards. Similar to the virus industry, the goal is to get the latest cheats and reverse engineer then. “We basically have a cheating lab setup,” he said. “It has its own internet connection, so none of our IP addresses can be linked to that room. Stuff like that is required to really compete with the cheat developers. It really is a big market.”
To ensure accuracy, it’s important for any anti-cheat measure to have as near real-time analytics as possible. In a world continuously wary of data protection, Menge added that while collecting information on players is the price for anti-cheat, all of ESL’s measures are GDPR compliant. As soon as a player is clean, the data is deleted.
“We’re working with data protection officers and legal firms to make sure everything is compliant with our terms of use,” he said. “Without data we can’t make sure if a user is cheating or not. If you want to compete, then you have to accept that.”
A Tough Call for Cheating Regulators
While finding and exposing cheaters is a decade old practice in esports, the industry is still pretty young when it comes to consistent punishments. Almost every game publisher has written a set of rules for their respective titles. While some rulebooks are officially kept from public view (such as the Overwatch League), even slightly more transparent companies Riot Games still keep their arbitration processes behind closed doors.
When determining and issuing punishments, a handful of esports companies work with the Esports Integrity Coalition (ESIC), a not-for-profit association established in 2015 to detail with what it labels “integrity challenges” to esports. Among the many integrity challenges to esports, ESIC identified the following as the main threats (in order of priority):
- Cheating to win using software cheats
- Online attacks to slow or disable an opponent
- Match-Fixing
- Doping
The organization deals with these by publishing a Code of Conduct (for cheating to win), an Anti-Corruption Code (for match-fixing), and an Anti-Doping Policy. ESIC has a unified Disciplinary Procedure that applies to each of these codes, which are implemented individually with its members, that include ESL, DreamHack , Liga de Videojuegos Profesional (LVP), and NODWIN Gaming .
“As a general proposition, most esports companies work on the absolute edge of their resources, both in terms of cash and man-hours,” said Ian Smith, integrity commissioner for ESIC. “Getting them to focus on this issue without there being a crisis is very difficult.”
Though many stakeholders in esports implement their own systems to monitor betting fraud and for arbitration, ESIC maintains an open dialogue with several competition runners, and has helped several non-members with their own integrity processes. Smith adds, however, that there are many organizations that not only aren’t engaging with ESIC, but whom he believes do not have adequate systems in place.
“I’m not going to name those guys, they know who they are” he said. “They are hopelessly unprepared for a crisis of this nature, both in terms of what rules they have in place, what education they give their participants, and what procedures they’d adopt if there was an incident.”
One of the more infamous incidents of cheating in recent esports memory concerned an Indian Counter-Strike player named Nikhil “forsaken” Kumawat, who was caught cheating in the eXTREMESLAND 2018 Finals competition last year. What made this case notable was the broadcast footage clearly showed Kumawat brushing aside a tournament administrator in order to change something on his PC.
The exact moment when admins at #eXTREMESLAND2018 caught forsaken and he attempted to delete the hack pic.twitter.com/rZG7aYBdbD
— CSGO2ASIA (@CSGO2ASIA) October 19, 2018
However, while the gaming audience had quickly rendered a guilty verdict, as integrity commissioner Smith was required to provide tangible evidence of foul play. He asked ESL India to investigate whether Kumawat had also cheated in its own India Premiership Fall Finals, the previous September. “My instructions to ESL India were very much ‘look, if we’re going to be able to take action, we need to make sure this evidence is solid.’”
By chance, the solid-state drive (SSD) cards capturing his performance from that event had remained untouched, when normally they would have been reused, changed, or returned by then. Smith asked for everything to be videod and timestamped as it was being collected.
The commissioner then asked the aggrieved Indian tournament organizers to do a CS:GO expert analysis on Kumawat’s match play, to look for obvious moments of his use of the various hacks. “That’s not in of itself conclusive, because match play is notoriously difficult to spot deliberate underperformance, as much as it is overperformance,” he said. “In terms of how a cheat would affect how the game looks in action, and in particular when you slow it down, it seemed fairly conclusive to me.”
The result was a five-year ban for the player. It was a controversial decision, given that ESIC rules dictate a lifetime ban for a second offense. However, Kumawat’s previous sanction had involved his ownership of a VAC-banned account, that he alleges was sold on to another user i.e. he was not the one cheating at the time of the ban. Smith said that trading accounts is a common practice in India, and highlights one of the many intricacies of delivering punishments for bad player behavior.
Just last week, ESIC handed down a 12 month ban to an Indian Clash Royale player, Jimit Bhatt, “for account sharing, boosting and acquiring rank, rewards and qualification by deception.” For those unfamiliar with these terms; Bhatt’s game account was being used by multiple players, an absolute no-go if you’re a professional competitor.
“Strangely, I get an awful lot more queries from players about account boosting,” said Smith. “Usually there’s not much I can do, because it’s not a situation where I’ve got any jurisdiction.”
When it comes to incidents of cheating in online tournaments, ESIC is typically required to look into about one case per month, but getting to the bottom of these has proved difficult, purely because of the evidence available. “There’s often reasonable in-match evidence, but then you’ve got no software evidence,” he said, echoing Marcel Menge’s words on competing with the cheating software market. “When you’re dealing with a perpetual arms race, it makes life very difficult.”
“When you get to the higher levels, it’s not that the anti-cheat is any better, it’s that the accusations—from your opponents in particular, and sometimes from the viewers and audience—are far more accurate and compelling. I just think that the risk is much higher the higher up the ladder you go.”
