• Light/Dark
  • Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.

Fall Guys devs did an experiment called Fall Guys Cheater Island™

Captain of Outer Space

Captain of Outer Space

Come Sale Away With Me
Member
Oct 28, 2017
11,288


Bunch of tweets in between



Full text of the thread since it's so long:

I've got lots of spicy content for you this week - The Dev team have been super busy on the new update

For now...

BUCKLE UP

Let me tell you a wild story

It's called

The RISE and FALL of Cheater Island Tagging

@Netflix incase they want to make a film or series out of it
----
At launch, we had some of our own cheat detection built into the game

We weren't banning anyone at this point, just gathering data carefully

We wanted to be 100% sure that our cheat detection would only catch people who were legitimately cheating

No false flags!
-----
After we confirmed that it was working - We secretly launched

Fall Guys Cheater Island™

It was a magical place where cheaters could happily compete against themselves for the Cheater's Crown*

*Literally just a normal crown but tainted with a hollow feeling of guilt and regret
-----
Remember, at this point, we had data on who was cheating, but we weren't acting on it

Fall Guys Cheater Island™ had a population of 0

So, very carefully, over time, we started to lower the threshold on the cheat detection
-----
If you passed the threshold... you were tagged as a cheater

It's worth pointing out at this stage - Cheaters are very smart

If they know they've been tagged as a cheater - they'll work out what caused them to be tagged - and they'll tell other cheaters
-----
Our threshold was originally really tolerant

Cheaters would get caught... but not be insta-banished

We hoped that they might realise cheating kills the fun

Most continued

We want people to have fun, but not at the expense of others So we kept lowering the threshold
----
So...

If you were tagged as a cheater... you'd be able to finish the game you were in

Then, the next time you tried to matchmake... you would ONLY be able to matchmake with other Cheaters (Without realising)

You were there...

You'd made it...

Queuing for Cheater Island™
-----
Now, if you can imagine:

You need 40+ players to actually populate a game.

Cheater Island isn't a location in the real world...

Cheater Island had it's own set of global servers

You'd need enough cheaters in your region in order to start a Cheater Island game
----
If there weren't enough cheaters... you'd all just be falling forever...

There were a few genuine bugs that would cause similar things to happen...

But mostly, when people said they were "Falling forever"...

They were cheaters and we didn't want to give them extra info
----
I'm sure you've noticed...

We try to be super open and upfront with you in all of our communications

It's been very difficult to talk about cheaters though... because everything we say... gives the cheaters more ammo

They were using any info to improve their cheating...
----
For a long time, there weren't enough cheaters to actually start these matches up

As we lowered the threshold on our detection, more and more cheaters were getting caught

But still... no Cheater Island matches

Cheaters were all falling forever and saying the game was broken...
----
At this point...

Cheaters started to realise that they could team up with friends who weren't cheaters... and they could matchmake with them...

They were escaping Cheater Island

Oh no

We raced to patch this out before they all realised
-----
Cheaters also realised that they could use family-sharing to share their game to another account... and then use the other account to bypass Cheater Island

We disabled Family-Sharing to fix this problem

Dealing with cheaters is difficult... they're honestly very crafty
----
During all of this time... we kept increasing the thresholds on our cheat detection. We were 100% confident that anyone being flagged as a cheater was DEFINITELY cheating.

This was super important to us.

We didn't want to falsely ban anyone.
----
Last week... something exciting happened!

There were finally enough cheaters to actually matchmake and create Cheater Island matches!

Here's a new problem though...

People were uploading videos that we *think* are Cheater Island...
-----
Somebody actually uploaded this video to Reddit with the title:

"Ever played a round of Fall Mountain where all the players are cheating?"

The problem is... this LOOKS like Cheater Island but we can't be 100% sure

[Video In Embedded Tweet Above]
----
Here's another video that we think is Cheater Island

The person recording isn't cheating...

Either they didn't cheat, just for the video...

Or it's a genuine server and a legit player...

Either way, it makes the game look bad

[Video In Embedded Tweet Above]
----
We DO know that Cheater Island matches were happening

We just DON'T know if that's what those videos show

For that reason, we have closed down Cheater Island

Instead, cheaters are now unable to login

We are continuously improving the threshold on our cheat detection too
----
Our cheat detection system was good... but we hadn't expected so many players... and we had no idea the lengths that some players would go to cheat

We tried to create a system around "Honesty"... but as soon as we realised we were in an ARMS RACE we called up the experts at Epic
-----
Now...

Our next update is called:

BIG YEETUS AND ANTI-CHEATUS

I'll tell you more about the Yeetus part later

But the Anti-Cheatus part...

We're actually adding Epic's Anti-Cheat which will be a huge step forward as we continue to improve things!

COMING SOON
----
I realise this has been an insanely long thread...

But...

That's the story of Cheater Island...

And the reasoning behind why we've been so cryptic and vague!
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
 
Gustaf

Gustaf

Banned
Oct 28, 2017
14,926
why do you implement "cheater island" and you cant even identify if the game being played is a "cheater island" game?

seems stupid
 

FantaSoda

Member
Oct 28, 2017
1,992
On cheater island instead of giving a Cheater's Crown to one of the cheaters at the end, they should have given it to a randomly generated player that wasn't even in the game.
 
Com_Raven

Com_Raven

Brand Manager
Verified
Oct 27, 2017
1,103
Europa
That is concept that quite a few games have used over the years (I think Max Payne 3 may have been one of the first prominent examples?). it would be interesting to see someone do a study to see if being on the receiving end of other cheaters can lead to some cheaters being reformed, or if they just keep doing the usual thing of setting up a new account, and diving right back in.
 
cyrribrae

cyrribrae

Chicken Chaser
Member
Jan 21, 2019
12,723
Heh. Interesting. It's clever, but I see immediately how it backfired lol.
 
Clark Zuckerberg

Clark Zuckerberg

Member
Mar 23, 2018
503
Gustaf said:
why do you implement "cheater island" and you cant even identify if the game being played is a "cheater island" game?

seems stupid
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

because I doubt they keep a searchable record of every game played with every player name in said record so they can verify if the video they're watching is a cheaters island game. How else would they verify? They don't want to say for 100% certain because they're basically saying the person who posted the video is 100% a cheater, which would be a bad look if not the case.
 

Deleted member 11985

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
4,168
Good. Let them suffer in their own hell they created.

Gustaf said:
why do you implement "cheater island" and you cant even identify if the game being played is a "cheater island" game?

seems stupid
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

There's no way to identify which specific server instance of a game is being played just by looking at video of it. The devs would need to know an account name and approximate time the game took place, assuming they log information about each game played.
 
Fisty

Fisty

Member
Oct 25, 2017
20,180
Ah man they should keep it. Now that we know Cheater's Island exists, there is no reason to be concerned about those videos making the game look bad.

"Wow every one is cheating, look at my video proof"

"Yeah because you are on Cheater's Island you damn cheater" repeat to infinity
 
Shaneus

Shaneus

Member
Oct 27, 2017
8,891
Can they do an experiment called "Let's get matchmaking working in the morning for Australians using Steam"?
 
lazygecko

lazygecko

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,628
Using these kinds of detection methods to sideline and ridicule cheaters, hackers and/or pirates is something I can never really condone so long as there is even a minuscule chance it will result in false positives. I don't really find it good for anything beyond mere catharsis and at worst it risks backfiring immensely in a way that will alienate customers.
 
Static

Static

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
6,107
Gustaf said:
why do you implement "cheater island" and you cant even identify if the game being played is a "cheater island" game?

seems stupid
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It literally just matchmakes them together. That's the only difference. The whole point of it was that it was supposed to be largely invisible to the players it was happening too, like shadowbanning. If the player could clearly tell they were in a Cheater Island game, that's a problem.
 
EagleClaw

EagleClaw

Member
Dec 31, 2018
10,648
wait, they locked cheaters to a "cheaters island" without telling them?

haha, that is great....

kinda like those bugs that only were in the pirated game version of games, i loved that.
 
Squid Bunny

Squid Bunny

One Winged Slayer
Member
Jun 11, 2018
5,339
Gustaf said:
why do you implement "cheater island" and you cant even identify if the game being played is a "cheater island" game?

seems stupid
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It's just a video of someone playing, they can't know for sure if it was cheater island or if, coincidentally, everyone was cheating on a normal match.

Honestly, going through all this effort to cheat at FALL GUYS seems to be such a waste of time for everyone involved, but mostly the devs that have to handle it.
 
Lobster Roll

Lobster Roll

signature-less, now and forever
Member
Sep 24, 2019
34,256
It's crazy to me that people would cheat in Fall Guys. It's a whole different flavor of pathetic.
 
N64Controller

N64Controller

Member
Nov 2, 2017
8,304
Bundle cheaters together, bundle fighting game rage quitters together.

Make the games a better place for everyone, and make their lives miserable in the process!
 

Deleted member 8468

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 26, 2017
9,109
This is a fun way to handle cheaters. It sort of reminds me of the games that would present gamebreaking bugs only if it was a pirated version. Can't think of any good examples any more, but it led to people looking for 'fixes' but in reality they were just outing themselves as pirates.
 
Batatina

Batatina

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,262
Edinburgh, UK
I remember playing Medal of Honor: Allied Assault back in the day and there were dedicated cheat servers, where everyone had cheats like wall hack or even autoaiming. It was super fun because once everyone has the same cheat, the meta of the game becomes different, for example the whole strategy of Wall hack was that you needed to find ways to lure your opponent out of hiding. I would spend minutes in a staring competition with someone behind a wall, trying to find a weakness.
 
enzo_gt

enzo_gt

Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,299
Com_Raven said:
That is concept that quite a few games have used over the years (I think Max Payne 3 may have been one of the first prominent examples?). it would be interesting to see someone do a study to see if being on the receiving end of other cheaters can lead to some cheaters being reformed, or if they just keep doing the usual thing of setting up a new account, and diving right back in.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
PGR4 and maybe eve PGR3 used it beforehand.
 
Roytheone

Roytheone

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,135
Baconmonk said:
This is a fun way to handle cheaters. It sort of reminds me of the games that would present gamebreaking bugs only if it was a pirated version. Can't think of any good examples any more, but it led to people looking for 'fixes' but in reality they were just outing themselves as pirates.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Arkham asylum did this where the glide was "broken" on illegal copies.
 
Burai

Burai

Member
Oct 27, 2017
2,078
I guess this explains why I was consistently finishing in the top ten, then suddenly kept getting wiped out in the first round for a few days, then back to finishing in the top ten again.

Lobster Roll said:
It's crazy to me that people would cheat in Fall Guys. It's a whole different flavor of pathetic.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

It's GAAS with time-limited rewards. Of course people are going to cheat to get those rewards.
 
JustinBB7

JustinBB7

Member
Nov 16, 2017
2,334
Wish they'd hurry up with actually doing something against cheaters though, since every game I play always has one and I have to restart to hope I get lucky and not have one. Restarted 3 times earlier to have a game without cheaters and then reached Fall Mountain and the guy cheated only in the final..only reason I kept playing the first rounds was because I thought nobody was cheating this time. But every game has 1 it's so frustrating to play this game.

It's weird it's usually just 1 player per game too.
 
werezompire

werezompire

Zeboyd Games
Verified
Oct 26, 2017
11,299
This reminds me of Titan Quest and how they implemented an anti-piracy system that would cause the game to crash at certain points in the game. The game got a reputation for being buggy because people didn't realize that a lot of the people who were complaining about bugs had pirated the game.
 
SteveWinwood

SteveWinwood

Member
Oct 25, 2017
18,673
USA USA USA
VAD said:
So they did all this work to just end up using Epic's system?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Yeah it just didn't work out. And them slowly lowering that bar was super frustrating because you'd keep seeing cheaters and there was no way you could report them. The reason there is two fold in my opinion. One they were just super overwhelmed by the response the game got and there was no way they had the staff to handle the influx of potential reports (not really their fault). Two they made it so you couldn't even identify individuals on the PC version, because people were abusing names and they replaced them with 4 digit numbers. So potentially thousands of people had the same identifier (this is a problem of their own making).

They were also actively telling people to not report people because they were so confident their solution was working and they would be "banned" right after their first cheating match. Which obviously wasn't happening if you noticed the same guy in the next game you matched with or the fact that they were always wearing 10 crown costumes.
JustinBB7 said:
Wish they'd hurry up with actually doing something against cheaters though, since every game I play always has one and I have to restart to hope I get lucky and not have one. Restarted 3 times earlier to have a game without cheaters and then reached Fall Mountain and the guy cheated only in the final..only reason I kept playing the first rounds was because I thought nobody was cheating this time. But every game has 1 it's so frustrating to play this game.

It's weird it's usually just 1 player per game too.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It's been a lot better the last few days in my experience, once they actually just started banning people.
 
headspawn

headspawn

Member
Oct 27, 2017
14,605
Should've just kept it up, that's hilarious. Let them compete over who has the fastest cheat software.
 

Skeff

Member
Oct 29, 2017
1,628
Baconmonk said:
This is a fun way to handle cheaters. It sort of reminds me of the games that would present gamebreaking bugs only if it was a pirated version. Can't think of any good examples any more, but it led to people looking for 'fixes' but in reality they were just outing themselves as pirates.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

My favourite was the game dev tycoon, where if you were a pirate after 3/4 big hits your next game would be a commercial failure because everyone pirated it.
 
Grand Galvantula

Grand Galvantula

Member
Nov 14, 2017
2,834
Burai said:
I guess this explains why I was consistently finishing in the top ten, then suddenly kept getting wiped out in the first round for a few days, then back to finishing in the top ten again.



It's GAAS with time-limited rewards. Of course people are going to cheat to get those rewards.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
See that's what I'm curious about, though. Are there not cheats out there to just gift the player 10000 coins and crowns? Seems like it'd be a much quicker way to get it if that's why they're cheating.
 
dunkzilla

dunkzilla

alt account
Banned
Dec 13, 2018
4,762
Gustaf said:
why do you implement "cheater island" and you cant even identify if the game being played is a "cheater island" game?

seems stupid
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
how on earth would you expect them to know what server a 5 second video with no real identifying features is on? they're developers, not wizards.
 
Dreavus

Dreavus

One Winged Slayer
The Fallen
Jan 12, 2018
1,722
I haven't played this game but cheating is always a scummy thing to do, bleh.

However, I can see why they turned it off. If a bunch of vids pop up and it's like "look at all these cheaters!" I could see it putting people off the game, even though it's potentially a "cheater island" game.

The clandestine cheating response makes for a great reveal at first (like the broken Batman glide, everyone complaining was outing themselves), but for an ongoing MP game I think a more permanent solution is needed. Now that it's known, finding yourself on cheater island as a cheater just becomes a fail state that tells you you need to refine your cheats, nothing more.
 
Actinium

Actinium

Teyvat Traveler
Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,787
California
These systems are always a fun gotcha when revealed as streams and twitter accounts get outed for winding up in forever falls and cheating only queues, but ultimately a cheater is just going to treat being flagged and quarantined the same way they would being traditionally banned by buying a new copy of the game and finding some new cheating software, except with the added negative that the devs had to design and implement and update this other system on top of the regular detection/work around arms race that all anti cheat has to suffer through.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.