BS: Gaming-biography: Where are you from and how did you get into FPS gaming?
RB: I am from Arkansas in the U.S.A. I have been involved with FPS gaming
since the Doom3D and DukeNukem days. This was back in the day when
on-line gaming consisted of point-to-point playing using a dial-up
modem. Needless to say, I spent endless hours playing and have been
hooked ever since. The military has taken me to many locales and I have
been in Arkansas for the past 9 years. My on-line gaming didn't start
back up until I picked up a copy of SoF2. When it started to die out,
we moved to the CoD series and had servers for CoD, CoD:UO, and CoD2. I
am now heavily involved with CoD4 and waiting for the next exciting
game to roll out.
BS: What is PBBans and how did it start?
RB: PBBans was formed in 2003 to provide the community top-notch
PunkBuster™ end-user support to game server admin and players. My
friend CJ and I were tired of all of the hackers that felt they should
pay our server a visit. We decided to create PBBans to offer other
server admin the ability to protect their servers and provide a private
community for everyone to share information on new cheats and detection
methods. PBBans offers players, server admin, League Admin, and other
anti-cheat admin many tools to fight against cheating. Some of them are:
PBBans Hub: Offers "live" streaming and server protection to include
live bans, player checks upon joining, MD5 and CVAR management, in-game
ban messages, player greetings, and several other options.
Master Ban Index (MBI): Easily described as a list of the players caught cheating in the servers streaming to PBBans.
Master Player Index (MPI): Displays vital data on all players visiting
streaming servers. The data consists of the PB GUID, IP address, and
aliases used. There are several other functions offered in the MPI.
Master Streaming Index (MSI): This Index provides a list of all servers
currently streaming to PBBans. It is a great tool to find a server to
play on that is "protected" by PBBans.
Master Config Index (MCI): You will find the current MD5Tool and CVAR checks for each game located in this index.
Master League Index (MLI): This is an excellent tool used by
participating leagues and is used to link players registered on the
leagues to our MPI and MBI.
In the past 5 years, we have surpassed many of our goals and will
continue to do our best to protect the gaming community for years to
come.
BS: Why does the FPS community need PBBans?
RB: As the cheat coders evolve with more cheats running outside of the game
directory, so must the anti-cheat movement continue to make adjustments
to their detection methods. Since the roll out of the unique PBBans Hub,
we are breaking new grounds in the anti-cheat world. The PBBans Hub
utilizes PBUCON and has given us a myriad of extra features that help
keep even the most modern cheats at bay, both public and private/paid
for cheats. The PBBans Hub also gives server admin the ability to
dual-stream to PBBans and other anti-cheat sites of their choice. The
PBBans Hub is truly a "live" method of streaming and the flexibility of
what it can do is a constant source of amazement, even to us. All this
combined with an easy to use team account interface, gives the admins
that use our services a lot more choice and control over their servers.
Since the introduction of the PBBans Hub, we have seen our streaming
admin increase from 120 to 3000+ and rising daily. It is very apparent
that a lot of server admin like what they see and continue to spread
the word about PBBans. Server admin can use our MPI to look up any
player and see a cross index of GUIDs, Aliases, IP Addresses and bans.
We also run a chat channel in IRC (Quakenet and GameSurge #pbbans) and
most of the staff idle here 24 hours a day. .
BS: What is the relationship between PBBans and EvenBalance?
RB: EvenBalance created the PunkBuster™ software and tools for server admin
to use in managing their game servers. PBBans takes this a step further
by providing a central location for server admin to work together to
help keep the cheaters out of their servers. They make the software and
we provide end user support. We rely on their input and technical
expertise to resolve issues as well as provide them vital feedback on
newly released cheats and issues other game server admin encounter.
BS: Who do you have helping out with PBBans?
RB: Each of the site admin and staff members have their own reasons for
wanting to have a part in PBBans. The site admin and staff were
hand-picked based upon their enthusiasm, knowledge, and desire to take
part in PBBans and help the community. All of us all share the same
common goal..."exorcising" the cheaters. Regardless of the individual's
skill or knowledge, PBBans has a very well-rounded bunch of folks who
want to make a positive difference in the online gaming community.
BS: What is the Master Ban Index? How does one get added to
that Index? What are the minimum requirements? Does it always take a PB
violation to get on the list?
RB: The MBI is a comprehensive list of banned players. The bans originate
from servers streaming to PBBans. They include many of the standard
PunkBuster™ violations as well as bans for CVAR and MD5Tool checks,
screenshot and demo bans. The only requirement is the ban must be
backed up by solid evidence and the validity of proof is confirmed by
streamed PunkBuster™ server logs. If a ban submission is lacking
evidence, it does not get added to the MBI. The MBI lists are updated
live and publicly available from the PBBans website. PBBans also has a
GUID checker on the main page of our website. Site visitors can simply
enter the full or partial GUID and it will tell you if it is listed on
the MBI. If so, the system will provide you a link to see the ban
information. Whether it is PunkBuster™ logs, screenshot or demo, the
proof is indexed and stored at PBBans for future reference. There is
even an appeal process in place for those that feel they have been
incorrectly banned.
BS: Where, in your opinion, do you draw the line with cheaters? What
constitutes cheating for you? Contrast this with EvenBalance's
philosophy :
RB: The
Admin and Staff at PBBans are all volunteers and do our work purely out
of motivation to support the gaming community as a whole. PBBans is a
staunch supporter of the Zero Tolerance Policy and are vocal advocates
of this policy to anyone who uses our services. There are only a few
things that we do not concern ourselves with and one of those is
in-game glitching. This is a problem that is solely the responsibility
of the game developers. No matter how hard we try, the anti-cheat
community will always be needed. Cheaters create havoc in the games we
enjoy and over the past 5 years it is very apparent that the majority
of them are repeat offenders. You seldom find a "reformed" cheater.
Our goal is to continue the fight for as long as it takes!
BS: A few weeks ago there was a DDoS attack on your website -
what happened and what steps have been taken to prevent another outage?
RB: Yes,
in fact, there were two DDoS attacks within a weeks time. The first
attack was massive and took out an internet backbone router and this
caused a domino effect that crippled many businesses. Our host, nor his
provider, could offer us any hope of survival. We had been with our host
for 5 years and this DDoS attack made us consider closing our doors
forever. MaydaX quickly got a temporary site going on another host and
kept the community informed of our dilemma. We then managed to get our
servers up and running again but were dealt a second DDoS. The word
spread quickly through the PBBans community and the overwhelming
support that followed gave us new hope. We decided to pack up our
servers and have them shipped to a new data center and within a couple
of weeks we were back online. Our new host is considerably larger and
offers us a greater protection against any further DDoS attacks. There
have been a few DDoS attacks since we moved but with no impact on our
servers or services.
BS: As for CoD4, do you see any trends regarding the size of
the cheating problem? How many players have been put on the index? Is
this typical or are there more cheats in CoD4 per capita than any other game?
RB: This is a very hypothetical question. You have your avid cheaters that
all they want to do is cheat and then you have your one time "testers".
Too many players these days cry hack as soon as they meet someone who
is a lot better than them. Placing a statistic on the perceived number
of cheaters would be a bad thing. Let me put it this way, there are a
lot more non-cheaters playing today than vice versa. You only find out
when you catch the cheaters. It seems that games based on the Quake 3
engine have the most cheats, as a cheat for one game can often be
modified to work on others rather easily. Some of the newer games with
newer engines probably have fewer cheats, simply because they haven't
been around as long and the cheaters haven't had the time to code for
them YET. There are a lot of people out there that have probably used
cheats, or at least tried to use them. As long as there are demands for
cheats, there are going to be coders out there more than happy to
supply them.
BS: What can game developers do to stop the cheating phenomena?
RB: Game
developers should incorporate PunkBuster™ into new games from concept
phase onwards, and deliver the game with PunkBuster™ "out of the box".
PunkBuster™ is by far the leading anti-cheat technology and experience
has shown integration of PunkBuster™ after initial release or running a
second anti-cheat system causes more problems than it helps. Game
developers best bet against piracy and cheating is contracting
EvenBalance to use their cd-key validity checking technology. All games
should include fully functional RCon (Remote Console) support, to ease
admin's work rather than setup limitations. The choice of the game
engine should be future-oriented and based on reliability and security
rather than price only. The maintenance of a released game will profit
from a consistent policy setup as a vital part of the development to
be sustained throughout the whole life cycle; as a random example, the
game should keep cheat protected cvars truly protected at a default
value and not allow e.g. Mods to change these value against the default
setting.
BS: Anything else you would like to add or comment on that I might have missed?
RB: Spreading the word about PBBans is a good means to continuing the fight
against cheaters. I hope that more server admin out there will sign up
with PBBans and join the fight. Thanks for the chance to speak about
our organization! See you at PBBans!
