this post was submitted on 31 Dec 2025
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Fair online competition has been dead for quite a while. The cheaters won. My friends and I just stopped buying and playing those games. Not as a statement, it just sorta happened over the years after dealing with the rampant cheating in, well, every competitive fps. I miss Apex, Warzone, Tarkov, etc. But game companies just do not care about solving this problem since it costs money and talent.
Competitive multiplayer games are lazy because they rely on other players to be the content. And they are perpetually vexed when their customer/ labor don't perform their intended function.
This is why I've always hated having to do pvp in a pve game for whatever reason (not often these days but mmos still sometimes) I'm bad at pvp and hate being content for other better players! I want to play a game, not be farmed for kills! Guh.
I think that's a rather shallow way of looking at. Would you describe something like chess as 'lazy' then?
A good competitive game has to put a lot of thought and care into its design to make it so that two players trying to make each other miserable actually ends up coming out the other end as a fun experience.
Chess is lazy. When you could play a real game like go.
But would @yesman@lemmy.world's statement also apply to go?
Go game devs were super lazy, couldn't even design interesting shapes for the pieces.
It's all recolored asset flips.
I hear cheat providers offer subscriptions now.
Cheats have been sub based for 20 years.
Terrible to read. So instead of going after the money, companies install kernel level "anti-cheats" that don't really do anything other than farming more data to sell?
Maybe in just one specific genre, but other kinds of competitive games do exist. It's worth noting that fighting games have never had even a single cheating scandal.
Fighting games have massive cheater problems tho...? Just cause it doesn't happen at the professional level doesn't mean that casual or ranked online play isn't full of filth.
The difference is not the genre of game, but whether it is played in person or online.
In-person fighting game tournaments are generally free of cheaters, just like in-person FPS and MOBA tournaments. The few who try to cheat in these scenarios are quite obvious, and instantly caught.
Meanwhile, online fighting game tournaments are plagued by lag switches, macros, defensive overlays, frame data mods, etc.
Don't forget the CSGO LAN cheating scandals where players were loading cheats into their mouse RAM
Pff never existed bro. Youre dreaming.
Back in like 2000 aimbotters were more plentiful than now. Some all-seeing eye privately servers lol
Youre idealising history you never experienced
This is true, online games have always been full of aimbotters and cheaters.
If they seemed less plentiful it's because of the Admin:Player ratios. Back in the day, the game company didn't host the servers they just provided you with a server executable and instructions. So any servers that you played on were paid for by a person or group and that person or group usually moderated them pretty actively.
It wouldn't be unusual to play on a server where 2/3rds of the players had the ability to kickban cheaters. Now, you're lucky if a human admin ever sees a single match that you've played.
Exactly this.
It's deeply ironic that replacing private server lobbies with "competitive matchmaking" is the direct cause of rampant cheating.
Back in the day, you'd find a server with a ping, map rotation, and culture you liked and add it to your favourites list. Then, you'd choose the server you wanted to play on.
I was a huge fan of the 24/7 Hunted server in Team Fortress Classic and a pair of Warcraft Mod Counter Strike 2 servers back in the day. Playing a night elf with life leech and the root special (prevent enemy movement for a few seconds) or an orc with up to 8× grenade damage? So much fun.