Jimmy Broadbent, professional shed dweller turned irl racing driver turned investigative journalist.

@grigorioschristodoulou5229

Жыл бұрын

Coffee?

@High.on.Life_DnB

Жыл бұрын

Investigative F1 simulator journalist*

@casuallycanada1631

Жыл бұрын

Shedzilla

@Nickearl1

Жыл бұрын

Jimmer is the man!

@andrewsolesbury115

Жыл бұрын

I know right, I vote for Jimmy as irl F1 tv pundit or better yet, in race commentator.

The bit about cheaters accusing other people who are faster of cheating rings true to me from the speedrunning world, with loads of examples like how the guy who exposed Dream of cheating in Minecraft was also cheating himself

@Gatitasecsii

Жыл бұрын

That sounds hilarious, can you direct me to a source talking on that?

@netgamersk

Жыл бұрын

Love your speedruns! Been long time fan of yours!

@swilleh_

Жыл бұрын

and then you hire scientists to prove that you are cheating lmao

@netgamersk

Жыл бұрын

​@@Gatitasecsii Karl Jobst did videos regarding this topic. Not sure which title is it but it should be pretty easy to figure out

@Einveldi

Жыл бұрын

@@Gatitasecsii Matt Parker's video on it is also very informative.

As an experienced modder of the F1 game, I can say that it is so easy to mod the game in a way to give a performance improvement in a practically invisible way. Not only are we talking things such as 0.5% grip increases etc... we are talking; Better fuel consumption, Better tyre wear, Better tyre temperature working window, Bigger ERS battery Capacity, More ERS harvesting, More effective DRS, Less drag, Improved suspension, More grip on grass/marbles. All things that I have already modded (for videos) in the past and if I just improve any of those attributes by 0.5%+ or multiple attributes it will be visibly undetected.

@ToneRetroGaming

Жыл бұрын

Would love to hear your take on all of this!

@mb2776

Жыл бұрын

yeah, it still pathetic how easy the modder was able to bypass the lame security control of the game.

@Imshittingmypants

Жыл бұрын

Yeah and at the pro level this would be insane. The number of people able to get within half of second of the world record is over 1000z. So a very talented sim racer can just go from regular top 5% in the game to a pro.

@HowsYourFaceFeel

Жыл бұрын

@@mb2776 which is why all of these official leagues are bullshit. NOT LAN and not on a decent game. Its all a weird sham right now.

@damp2269

Жыл бұрын

its weird the game would take a snapshot of the client stats to compare in the future. why not compare it to an master sheet in a codemaster server?

I won't speak for smaller events, but when it comes to absolute top tier racing, they need to be LAN events on in-house computers. We're talking about teams with millions of dollars to spend, surely they can fly drivers out to LAN events. Doesn't even need to have spectators, just a standard competitive arena.

@jimmydesouza4375

Жыл бұрын

This doesn't give you absolute safety either. People want to use their own components like wheels and pedals, forcing them to use one they're not familiar with is a massive hamstringing. Unfortunately that hardware can have cheats embedded in to it as well. This has been a problem with LAN events for other games for years.

@Miragexe

Жыл бұрын

Problem with esports is the massive rigs involved that the drivers are using and that they are all over the world, imagine the virtual 24h race and the insane requirements that would have to not only get all the people in one place, to have that number of rigs and then even facilities, food, sleeping areas etc. It works for FPS games as they're small teams and short events where maybe they bring their own keyboard and mouse at best.

@Solidefex

Жыл бұрын

However if 70% were to cheat in the online qualifier then it brings the overall level of competition down

@jacobfuller-lewis5528

Жыл бұрын

​@jimmydesouza4375 they could just basically make it a spec series

@kami_narisama

Жыл бұрын

​@@Miragexe while that is indeed the case, i feel like we're strictly talking about F1 esport for now. I'm pretty sure that other sim titles like Iracing, Rfactor, and such, have built in anticheat with them. Problem is that Codemasters seemingly didn't have that anticheat within the F1 games

Getting caught with your cheats and saying the game company is working with you on them, is the equivalent of "I don't smoke! I'm holding them for a friend, I swear!"

@kmonk101

Жыл бұрын

It was a shady enough excuse when he said it. It got worse when EA and codies responded with radio silence. Now that Codemasters has affirmatively stated that they aren't working with him or anyone else on cheats, it seems pretty conclusive that the guy is a cheater, and action needs to be taken.

@bestfinlandball7942

Жыл бұрын

Yeah I don't buy the excuse. If the cheat really is as basic as the dev says EA and Codemasters would have nothing to gain from "testing" it. Plus having the folder open during a league race & reacting the way he did. It's incredibly sus.

@jo3ld0wn

Жыл бұрын

Clara!

@landonmurray3814

Жыл бұрын

​@Kevin Crotty in the last video jarno said he literally was working with codies and that all the teams knew about it?

@landonmurray3814

Жыл бұрын

​@Kevin Crotty in the last video jarno said he literally was working with codies and that all the teams knew about it?

This reminds me of what happened in the Trackmania community, when a massive anticheat system got introduced and A LOT of "pros" got busted cheating most of their WRs. Also, the fact that after decades spent developing this title Codemaster still doesn't have an anti-cheat to speak of is absolutely insane.

@Ramonatho

Жыл бұрын

Riolu moment in F1

@TheUKNutter

Жыл бұрын

But then hefest got this run

@dj7oya

10 ай бұрын

People pay for the same game every year and they still don't know or care about developing a trusted anticheat system. Pathetic, and it is kind of payers fault to reward them every year anyways.

Man Raycevik's video about racing games are true, we really are 10 years behind everyone else when the biggest competition for the biggest brand in motorsport still has a trivial cheating issue

@ab8jeh

Жыл бұрын

The F1 game is terrible. It's no surprise.

@mobyhuge4346

Жыл бұрын

@@ab8jeh and the likes of the big sims like rfactor2 and iRacing also have their share of big issues, and only iRacing's issue is avoidable if you're well of economically

@chrissennfelder7249

Жыл бұрын

There's only one game that successfully bridges the gap between arcade and sim right now: Wreckfest. All the other games are either mtx slot machines or nerd level sims. (Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge nerd and I love AC to bits.)

@madpew

Жыл бұрын

It's because the racinggenre has only 2 branches. Arcade and simulators but neither focus on competitive racing other than "tacked on" multiplayer. there's only a few games that fill that gap, yet struggle at the e-sport side of things.

@cbj4sc1

Жыл бұрын

It's because people do t give a fuck about racing games, just franchises. They then stick to their corner and shit on everything that isn't "it"

I'd take that 70% figure with a massive pinch of salt, personally. Having been in a game where cheating, and more importantly accusations of cheating, were commonplace at times due to poor cheat detection, what became very obvious is that people who cheat and make cheats have a tendancy, be it conscious or not, to overestimate the number of cheaters to justify what they do. On the plus side, now that Codemasters & EA have been told how the cheat works they don't have many excuses for not closing the exploit off.

@deathZor42

Жыл бұрын

While this cheat is relatively easy to well solve for, because it's basically invalid inputs ( if you re-run the inputs of the race it should get you different results not sure how deterministic the F1 game engine is ). The sad reality is your never gonna close of 100% and you likely get to a point of electronic drive aids implemented in software where the defense seems almost impossible, the sad reality of anti-cheat any anti-cheat is that really it's a losing proposition, you can make it harder but never impossible.

@zwenkwiel816

Жыл бұрын

​@@deathZor42so make it harder... I mean just letting it happen doesn't make any sense.

@Khosumi

Жыл бұрын

"Having been in a game where cheating, and more importantly accusations of cheating, were commonplace at times due to poor cheat detection, what became very obvious is that people who cheat and make cheats have a tendancy, be it conscious or not, to overestimate the number of cheaters to justify what they do." You dont know how true that is. Currently, tarkov is infested with cheaters. Every single lobby is infested with them, and don't get me started with GTA online.

@MasterofSpiders

Жыл бұрын

@@Khosumi Trust me I do. Game was APB: Reloaded, and literally every time someone did an 'interview' with a famous hacker or hack coder / seller they'd be "EVERYONE CHEATS EVEN BAD PLAYERS!". If that was true, then I was a gaming God on there to keep pace. And believe me, I'm not.

@Warriorcat49

Жыл бұрын

@@MasterofSpiders Logically all that means is that cheaters have about as much information on the actual number of cheaters as the rest of us when there's no good way to tell. They don't know either. The 70% number could be higher or lower than reality, or even spot on by accident.

A phonecall from his "people" after 10 or 20 attempts to contact would definitely be justified. After 1 attempt? That's panic.

@noahgray5229

Жыл бұрын

yeah, the whole stick with "he's just a kid" doesn't gel well with me if he is, you know, competing for 3/4 million pounds. it's obvious imo that he and many are cheating, especially with the reactions, carreton too. but as we already knew, young, "immature" people don't really consider anything past their own gain, so no surprise, really?

@danielo7985

Жыл бұрын

Well, if you took the time to search his name on twitter, you'll find they're more than justified wanting people to leave him alone. Constant harassment under every post, must be insane for a 17 year old to have to deal with all of that.

@joshhill5848

Жыл бұрын

​@@danielo7985don't cheat then

@michelvanbriemen3459

Жыл бұрын

Yeah that act from that team alone makes me think the use of cheating isn't just very well known by all the teams in F1 eSports, but might well be encouraged by the teams.

@n4rf645

Жыл бұрын

To be fair, if I was good enough to be somewhere near a million dollar prize pool, I wouldn't even think twice about cheating to make sure I'd get there. Especially seeing how easy it is to cheat in F1. And this is not me defending cheaters, this is me condemning the fact that the people who offer the prize pool don't seem to care that it's that easy.

I’ve worked in TV sports/news for 25 years and you’re doing good work here. You’ve had this channel for years and id bet most/all viewers would say you’re honest and trustworthy, even if it’s just sim racing/Motorsports it matters! So you’re starting from a good foundation and thats what’s needed for investigative journalism. But in general you know the basics: multiple reliable sources, objectivity, accuracy. It’s also imperative that other people check your work before released. Someone could feel angry enough to get lawyers involved so always good to take the time and double check things!

The best part of this is that the F1 cheat basically works via a Race Condition.

@MeriaDuck

Жыл бұрын

It takes a certain combination of interests to get that joke 🤣

@Milanutje

Жыл бұрын

I love niche jokes like this

@josh1234567892

Жыл бұрын

God damn that's good lmao

@peterhuston7888

Жыл бұрын

That's hilarious, I guess I have to watch the whole video now.

The most simple solution in my opinion is to do the same “screenshot” thing that they currently do, except compare to data on an official F1 server. Don’t just compare local data to earlier local data

@2xb91

Жыл бұрын

Exactly this, max grip, top speed and whatever changes you could make with this hack are all predefined by the game. If everyone should have the same values, why not measure it against a yardstick which you know can't be tampered with.

@netgamersk

Жыл бұрын

​@@2xb91 the problem with F1 is that is not deterministic. So even though there are hard values which cannot be modified there are some which changes. I think it's completely possible but it would require the engine to be changed first. Also if something like that is applied it should be doing multiple times per lap, ideally on every corner. Because again you could make an bypass or change the data throughout the game after connecting to server so it would be too late.

@robertt9342

Жыл бұрын

They can also simulate inputs on a standard game and compare results, server side.

@skullplays6928

Жыл бұрын

@@robertt9342 takes up way to much resource

@Lodethebig

Жыл бұрын

An easier way to do this would to just be to close the game if it detects the "screenshot" process being suspended. If the game does not receive data after a certain time in a session you just get thrown out.

Man im genuinely sad that post got deleted, honestly i really respect the creator of the mod for making the post. His replies/convos in the comments were super interesting and cleared up a lot of stuff for me. Also thanks Jimmy for recording at least part of the thread so it is not lost forever!

Jimmy please be careful reporting on this, you need to know the sources as anyone can lie and pretend to be anyone online. Really pleased you're making this known and keeping us all informed!

@eoic4721

Жыл бұрын

I think this is a concern seeing as the video is more or less going over a Reddit post. That being said, a simple, "this is all speculative, don't take any of this as the truth" would work well to remedy the conundrum.

@vikhr

Жыл бұрын

It's legit because on unknowncheats he said the same thing

@Jimmy_Broadbent

Жыл бұрын

​@EOIC I mention numerous times that there was no proof to back up this claim

If Codemasters is as committed to combating cheaters as they were at adding interesting stuff to F1 22, I can see why it sounds like we're just scratching the surface.

@broncobalboa

Жыл бұрын

its mindboggling how you had a nice base for the game in 2016-18 and this is what you have done with it in the last few years? have been loyal since 2010, but after the buggy release last year i wont be preordering anymore.

@demonicsquid7217

Жыл бұрын

That's a use of the phrase 'interesting stuff' I've not heard before.

@halofreak1990

Жыл бұрын

@@broncobalboa I've only ever pre-ordered the 2020 Michael Schumacher edition of the game. I've also restricted myself to the even-numbered releases, which seems to have shielded me from a lot of the game's various issues, as those were somehow most common in the odd-numbered games.

I think you hitting on the point regarding them "not wanting to pay for anti-cheating software" hits the nail on the head with EA. It's been an issue with their FIFA games forever. It always has and will come down to profits. They'll just churn out a new game year after year without genuine care of fixing major issues because people will pay for the new game.

@jameswhiting3543

Жыл бұрын

The main problem with all games now days…

@dorkovic

Жыл бұрын

Anti-cheat is expensive. And it's never a 1-time expense.

I used to work in the gaming industry and every number we got indicated 10% of the userbase of most online games were cheating/willing to pay for cheats. The numbers came from criminal investigations, registered users to forums where you had to pay to get an invite, manual tests on servers (discord wasn't a thing back then). Most of those games were shooters and RTS games, but I don't see when it was 10% across the board, it would be any different in simracing. It's the reason I quit most multiplayer games except for iracing, as the risk of losing your account there and the matchmaking made it so I didn't have to deal with cheaters if they exist.

It feels like E-Sports is like cycling was in the 90's while the big events may be 'clean-ish' qualifying and a number of other events are 'charged' or less enforced allowing cheats to be run. As always thanks for the great content Jimmy

Although I agree with the approach that anyone should be considered innocent until proven guilty, it is funny that like 3 or 4 days ago there was a screenshot of some timetrial leaderboard and Ronhaar was ahead of the cheats promo account by a couple hundredths. I would not consider it a direct proof of anything but on the other hand it would be a really impressive demonstration of skill or a weird coincidence.

@varyagace

Жыл бұрын

I can see him being so pissed at it (and having a massive ego) to actually get down to do laps and laps and laps until he beat their time. But also, weird coincidence.

@halofreak1990

Жыл бұрын

Eh... quite often cheaters aren't that good even when they're cheating. I've been in multiplayer matches where people with wall hacks and other cheats got shat on by the regular players, simply because they were _that_ bad at the game, and could only barely get along with the help of those cheats. What use is being able to shoot through walls if you can't aim or track moving players?

I appreciate the hell out of you digging into this. It's not your usual content, but it's important for the future of sim racing and you're doing a great job of getting down to the facts

Taking that at face value, 70% is shockingly high. Add the fact that cheating is ridiculously easy, you would think that EA/CM would put some effort in this. Given the money involved with e-sports they would have a vested interest in keeping it clean. I actually stopped playing a lot of online games years ago because people were constantly cheating and got sick of having to deal with them.

Exactly the same is currently happening in Escape from Tarkov, and I suspect almost all other multiplayer games.

I think the biggest issue is like the one in TrackMania: theonly way to "prove" no cheating is input records and replaying them on a "vanilla" game. Turns out over half of the WR in TrackMania were cheated. That cheat was even easier; the game was ran at lower speeds to make it easier to react and optimize, then the recording was sped up.

How does anyone get away with cheating in professional and official F1 esports?

@michaelharder3055

Жыл бұрын

1. Install cheats 2. play game.

@loganh9937

Жыл бұрын

It's more easy to get away with on online events. In-person Lan events like the early f1 eSports qualifiers, are impossible to cheat on. Also, people who use their own set up (Thomas ronhaar e.g) instead of teams like Ferrari who have their own section in the factory.

@rhyswilliams4893

Жыл бұрын

Because they have no anti cheat system in place.

@swilleh_

Жыл бұрын

@@loganh9937 impossible to cheat on lan? want me to remind you of cheaters in the csgo pro league?

@Holoflux

Жыл бұрын

@@swilleh_ Not impossible but much less likely and common

During the event, you could load stuff over the wheel for instance. If you use your own.

I've been thinking this for a long time but I'm glad more people are starting to come round to the idea that this is happening! And to think people are winning money through this exploit is crazy great video Jimmy 💯

Fascinating stuff. Keep it up! Just an idea: could be super cool to for you to get involved with documenting the development of a Sim racing game over the span of its development. Go talk to Danny at noclip. He's a Sim-enjoyer himself

Client side authentication is always going to have backdoors. I cant believe that CM and EA don't have a server side version of this authentication.

I find the lackluster anti-cheat measures from a company called Codemasters to be quite ironic at least.

9:16 the logic is actually reasonable. If you yourself do not think that the time is possible, than how did you get it?

@Lord_Lambert

Жыл бұрын

When it comes to F1 esports, it's not people saying "Ronhaar matched my time therefore cheating" its "Ronhaar is achieving times that aren't possible. Remember he was 0.2 faster than P2 when P2 was 0.2 faster than P20!

@generalguilmon6719

Жыл бұрын

I think the hypothetical situation here is that an unknown person sets a new record, and gets called out by a long time player. The experienced player has spent many hours practicing, racing, and making setups, and as a result they managed to set a good time trial lap. How would an unknown person (with no experience in esports races, not part of a team, never had a record before) beat that time? It's possible that an unknown young talent appears, but you'd expect someone to slowly make their way up, instead of immediately beating esports-level lap times.

very well handled video. this is a very sensitive subject for some reason. how can the community do more? thanks jimmy!

Early in one of the first videos about this you mentioned this being an issue in ACC as well. It would be interesting for you to look into that side of it as well at some point if you have a way to do so.

As someone that used to deal with a lot of cheating on iR, before iR got 'big', this is exceptionally scary for the sim racing community....

Hey Jimmer. Do you have similar concerns about your Team87 competition at all? It's such a great initiative, it would be a shame if the competition was distorted in the same way as seems to be happening in esports.

Thank you @Jimmy_Broadbent, to resolve a problem you first need to face it and your videos on the subject is helping in that direction. Hopeffully, developers & publishers will put money on the table to minimize the problem in the future.

In COD when I used to play comps a while back (quite a while back like 10-15 years) there was a thing called Punk Buster that would pick up on hacks/cheats and it worked really well, and the cheats in COD at the time were super easy to code, it absolutely can be done.

Like I said in the previous video, probably everyone uses it to a certain degree. It reminds me so much of the doping drama in the previous decades where most don't want to use it but you have to if you want to have chance to win.

@Sharpened_Spoon

Жыл бұрын

Right. It’s sad that we iterate the same follies as seen in the past, naively expecting them not to be exploited in a competitive arena.

keep doing this please the only way is to embarass EA into doing something about it

Thanyou jimmer for bringing impartial view to a wide audience! I actually think your videos on this are so important for the community.

Cheating in sim racing as a whole seems to be getting worse by the day. 3 days ago I was in an open Assetto Corsa lobby racing MX5 cup cars Vallelunga, and we had someone join the lobby and go 6 seconds faster than me and the other top 2 guys in qulifying. He insisted he was not cheating, turned the cheats off, then 3 laps into the race, passed almost everyone on the straights with what seemed like a 200hp difference. I know its not the same as Esports, but it shows that some people cant handle loosing, regardless of what level they are at. Things like this are completely ruining sim racing for those of us that value fair racing, and I feel like its only a matter of time until sim racing is viewed as unattractive to the masses because of it. Thank you for this series of videos Jimmer. Someone has to talk about it.

@bigredracingteam9642

Жыл бұрын

Or maybe he just got a good exit out of the last corner? I have often overtaken people on a straight with quite a large difference in speeds and it's invariably because they seem to think that racing is all about braking as late as possible.

Imagine you're watching a F1 esport race and suddenly the P2 car fires a red shell at the P1 car and it just explodes. That's the kind of cheating I want to see.

It's a part of a broader problem with online gaming in general. If you're so inclined just do a simple search for cheats or hacks for online games and if even half of them are legitimate it paints a grim picture. And those are just public operating in broad daylight sites, i'm sure there are privately made ones as well.

@sameerdodger

Жыл бұрын

While it is, this is an esport in which prize money is concerned. Gaming is for fun, even if competitive. However sport is professional. To be professional it must at the very least be fair game. If sports involved inherent cheating nobody would even bother.

When it comes to cheating while at a LAN or anything in that direction i can say there has been several cases throughout gaming, one of them being a person hiding cheats with the Word.exe name and icon, he was cheating while doing a CS tournament, could try dig up other cases easily, but this is one i remember from the top of my head at the moment

Man. If 70% were cheaters, that puts even myself into Esports contention if that 70% suddenly got banned.

@memeguyTM

Жыл бұрын

No Dylan, no 😂

I can't believe that I'm actually happy that GT7 is console only and always online. Really cuts out the cheating by a lot

@zilentzap

Жыл бұрын

there are still sadly cheaters in console with many inputs, incredible how pathetic people can be

@CooroSnowFox

Жыл бұрын

​@zilentzap if there is a reward for something, you're going to get people going above and beyond to reach it for themselves

@logoncal3001

Жыл бұрын

My biggest gripe is why is it always online for SINGLEPLAYER modes? Why cant it be separate

@xnotasweatx

Жыл бұрын

@@logoncal3001 yeah that’s why I can’t play it anymore makes me mad lol

@MrJohansen

Жыл бұрын

GT7 isn't always online in an effort to prevent cheating, it's always online in an effort to make more money from microtransactions.

The focus at the moment is (rightfully) on F1 2022 at this moment, but I was wondering how other sims fare in the anti cheat department. I remember hearing about cheats in AC and ACC, but nothing in RF2, raceroom or I-racing. That doesnot mean there is no cheats, just that I didnot hear about it.

reminds me of the situation with escape from tarkov right now.... one of their developers unanimously came out and basically gave a five point list of how cheating could be almost completely stopped but of course they're never going to do that

Surly creating an Anti Cheat should not be that hard if the physics are deterministic. Run the physic calculation on the server and compare them with the client. If they dont Match, someone has changen values.

@foch3

Жыл бұрын

It seems like this would be low hanging fruit for AI

Imagine Jimmer become the GOAT because he doesn't hack bur everybody else does.

@SteffenHansen1973

Жыл бұрын

Jimmer already is my GOAT - just like, you know, saying ( :

trackmania had a similar incident were a guy who was very vocal on forums about cheating ended up cheating himself to get world record times on multiple tracks by slowing down the ingame speed and basically playing in slowmotion.

TtHX Jimmer! Great work, this has become like a little seriers.

Jimmer becoming the @coffeezilla of esports scandals!

@RdTrpBrgr

Жыл бұрын

he should start saving up for that $10M studio!

@danielo7985

Жыл бұрын

Relax haha, he's made an 11 min video based upon a subreddit thread of a guy who claimed to be the maker of a hack mod, there was no vetting process. He could be a 12 year old for all we know. Liked the Jarno interview though

The point, that he's stating about "If you accuse someone of cheating, just because he beats you, then you would have to be cheating yourself" is ABSOLUTELY massively accurate. Think about it. You'll HAVE to have an ego the size of jupiter to think you are automatically better than someone you don't otherwise know.

All that would need to be done is have a program that checks the values against the server every time someone joins, or hell, every half second while they are joined. And obviously have a redundancy from the server that checks if the person's anti-cheat is turned on. If the server detects that it isn't turned on, immediate boot.

I really hope we don’t find out that for some reason there are sanctioned cheaters! Money corrupts and who knows who could benefit from a cheater

@VitorShadowSouza

Жыл бұрын

I'm pretty sure about ESports teams aware of their drivers cheating. I will not say any name to avoid problems, but I'm sure.

Jimmer is now the Coffeezilla of sim racing. Great unbiased reporting

I'd be interested in a test run of this offline, against top ai at the hardest track to race them on the F1 game. Do like a 5lap race or something without the cheats enabled to gauge the difficulty & then run the cheats, exactly the same settings etc & see what the difference is in how the physics feel

"I'm not really a journalist..." You covered a story that you felt needed coverage, you qualified your opinions as such, and you pointed out the facts. You also attempted to reach out to get testimony from some of those directly involved, and barring that, you disclosed your journey into doing so. You used examples, cited sources, and explained the issue in detail. You are a journalist. Excellent vid, m9.5.

What I hate the most about this discussion is that Codemasters will probably just slap some well-known anti-cheat like Battleye or whatever would be relevant for the F1 game and call it a day. And so will the community thinking that if the game shows a "Battleye" icon to you during the loadscreen then it's surely impossible to cheat On the other side of the spectrum you have developers of games like The Cycle: Frontier who, when the cheating became rampant, put up walls on walls upon walls of different anti-cheats. Ones they tell you they use and ones they don't. Along with other counter-measures like a ranking system it worked, but that's because they genuinely cared to get on top of that situation and hired people specializing in this field Codemasters have already proven they don't give two shits. Words and declarations don't matter, actions do - and we see the whole extent of their actions laid out right in front of us. It is 2023 and their EXTREMELY COMPETITIVE game series supported by the official F1 has an anti-cheat measure so useless you can sum up how it works in a single short paragraph. That's how much they care. I really hope people will surprise me and not just take Battleye as THE answer to the problem, because to truly make codemasters invest into this enough to make cheating actually hard they will need A LOT of pushing from the community. After all they haven't even acknowledged the problem yet as their precious little image is too much of a priority for them to as much as mention that cheating in their games is possible and they are actually working on it, hiring specialists for example I want the reality to prove me wrong but I really worry that once cheating in the next F1 games becomes just a tiny bit harder than literally typing "f1 22 grip hack" into Google people will call it a day, because now you need to go to the 2nd page of google results or even join a discord server with thousands of cheaters there(often paying ones) - like Rust has for example. As as far as I know Rust devs put in some anti-cheater work in, yet it's still fairly common to see them there Battleye or an equivalent would be a step in the right direction, but it won't cut it.

@clockdva20

Жыл бұрын

Combating Cheats is very hard as history as proven. Several other EA games have well known cheating issues Battlefields and Modern Warfare . Along with games like GTA online or Counter Strike. There are just so many levels and ways to cheat.

@d34thnote79

Жыл бұрын

@@clockdva20 poor battlefields 4 and 1.. I love these games but.. It is a lot worse in Bf1, I'm not sure but doesn't that game NOT have fully community moderated servers? If that is the case then WHAT A SURPRISE that cheating there is easier

I'm here for Jimmy's slow transition into an investigative journalist

Loving this story Jimmy. I'm glad someone is looking into this and willing to share insight. Too much hush culture these days, not good for anyone.

This situation is very similar to PUBG cheating scandal. One of the team was first exposed of cheating but later they found out most of the players were also cheating. In a game with large number of players at the same time its incredibly hard to notice cheating because and if one of the players is cheating in such a competitive environment you best believe most of them are cheating.

Would be interesting to see if the modder could come up with something implemented into the cheats to catch out cheaters like dude did with cs:go 🤞🤣

From shed dweller to KZreadr to racecar driver, and now investigative journalist. He’s growing up so fast!

@Simlife101

Жыл бұрын

@DunkZ comment thief

Keep pushing Jimmy. These questions need to be asked, and nobody else seems willing to do it

Well done Jimmy for putting a spotlight on this. It's a big thing, given the amount of money swirling around and the determination of some individuals and organisations to protect their investments, and you face considerable risk by doing this. This is of course nothing new in the sports world and was bound to raise its head in the e-sports world. I astonished it hasn't;t happened sooner. As a big cycling fan, I witnessed the same issues with doping in the late 90s and again with a certain American rider a decade ago. The code of 'omertà' - silence - meant that it was never addressed. The only way forward, the only way to restore credibility in e-sports, is for all parties to admit their guilt, their lack of oversight, and to publicly disclose everything. Is cycling clean these days? Probably not. Is it harder to cheat? Definitely. Doping will always be an issue - there just has to be a clear and determined attempt to beat it. The ball is very much in EA's court as we stand. It will be interesting to see which route they take...

Not watched yet, but just to note: take absolutely everything the guy said on Reddit with a massive grain of salt. There's no doubt that he's what most developers would call "a script kiddie": someone with little knowledge, but enough bruteforce time and searched forum threads to have picked up how to do the basics. As such he actually has absolutely no idea how much people cheat in F1 esports, and very little idea what issues exist and are exploited by other cheats that are out there (and as such, also has no idea how the situation should be fixed). The people who are actually capable at producing cheats & know all about this stuff turn it into their full-time jobs: they don't give cheats or info out for free.

@bigredracingteam9642

Жыл бұрын

Yeah, it's seemingly just a CE script and a console app (the 178(!) lines of code mentioned in the video, which he admits he got ChatGPT to write for him, lol) that suspends the game process while the patches are injected. To your last point, I'm sure there are many hobbyists out there with such skills who don't at all fancy having a full-time job reverse engineering games. I mean, just because you're able to change the crank shaft on your own car doesn't mean you want to be a full-time mechanic. Edit: Having read a bit more about this, some nutters have apparently paid 90 Euro for such a cheat (which reportedly contained malware) before finding this free one, while others have bought a subscription for 50 Euro a month! This is SO insane!

This video made me feel awesome! I thought I was just a slow simracer, but it turns out everyone else is cheating!

@bigredracingteam9642

Жыл бұрын

As only 1000 people have downloaded this cheat I don't think so. (It's hard to tell if you were joking because I've seen many people making such accusations when in reality they're just slow.)

A quick reply to your comment on the bypass seeming so simple. I'm a software engineer in games, I don't work on anti-cheat, but that's a question that comes up quite a lot when issues arise in game programming. It's typically down to a mix of things, but there are two points to remember. Firstly, vulnerabilities tend to sound simple once they have been found, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are easy to find. A single point of confirmation like the one the cheat maker described (I'll never call anyone in the cheats market a modder) is a definite weakness, but it is all but certainly a small component in a much more complex and tangled web of other protections. Now it's quite probable that such an issue should have been found by graphing out the dependency of the whole cheat protection system to show that it fundamentally relies on one check, but that brings me to my second point. The power of numbers. Codemasters has 700 people working for them, that's certainly not all engineers, it's not even all developers. Not only does that number include artists, producers, sound designers, level designers, and writers, but it also includes HR and recruiting, management, PR, community management, and so much more. But even if that still manages to land you with a couple hundred engineers (and it almost certainly does not, my pretty uninformed guess is low 100-something at the most), those are still wildly broken up too. You have gameplay engineers, graphics engineers, tools engineers, UI engineers, there are engineers for storefront content, and network specialists, and more. And then some of those are working on the long term service work for the previous title, and a bunch will be working ahead on the next title in advance for a yearly game like F1. By the time it's all broken down, you have a mere handful of eyes on each distinct part of the game's code. Yet the moment it launches, it is thrown to a pack of wolves. If there is opportunity there, you can expect thousands of specialized cheat developers to be tearing into the defences built by a couple dozen. The defenders lose that fight every time. It's all about the numbers. For a game with a million players a bug that occurs once in a thousand hours of gameplay will hit 1000 players in their first hour, it's entirely possible QA never saw it once. I'm not disagreeing with what you're saying, but it's worth noting that it's usually not quite as simple as it sounds.

i feel like theres an easy way to filter out the people cheating from the qualifier. if your fast enough for a qualifier, you go to a second round in person, like a LAN event would be. if you're outside a certain delta between round 1 and 2 get DQed, and the top 20 to make it through both/all rounds qualify

@FightingTorque411

Жыл бұрын

This makes sense to me - perhaps qualifiers should require more than one round of knockouts, or you qualify by average time over several laps. If you can *regularly* average a 1m30s lap at home (like over 10 or 12 laps) , but then *regularly* can't get within 2 seconds or even a second on a LAN machine, something is amiss.

lets go when ur feeling down blonde jimmer posts

Having worked at multiple video game companies, the possibility of Alvaro being tasked by a security/game dev team and the esports team not being aware does not surprise me at all

@mclarensaleenf7

Жыл бұрын

I was 99% sure it was a bs excuse when he made that tweet. Surely EA already knows every possible weakness and how these mods are able to be implemented. It doesn’t take a top level player to know the game can be modified, and definitely is at this point. The crazy thing to me is the dev companies don’t seem to care AT ALL! Surely they could release a patch that closes up this specific hole. And the most absurd part is the insane prize money of F1 esports in addition to big F1 teams backing the players. You’d think those teams would have enough power to fight for a fair esports environment. But they may even be well aware of the cheating and possibly encouraging using it.

@chrisc3825

Жыл бұрын

Yeah, let’s be honest - a coder wants to know how it works technically. They have no interest in what lap times you can achieve with it. They can load it up themselves and play with it if they want. Having a fast person use it does nothing to confirm if something works. It’s also not their job to figure out who is cheating. It’s their job to figure out how this works and stop it from working. It’s on the tournament organizers to deal with the drivers.

i remember being in the top 100 for TT at alot of tracks back 15-17 but then 2018-19 i suddenly couldnt break the top 1000, i assumed it was cheaters because the times began to become, well not believable... when you would go from a grouping that was close to times you would expect and then a half second gap and a large 500-700 player group way out in front it raised my suspicions. i tried one of the grip mods that was only supposed to ad like 5% grip and it was like i was driving another formula lol. i refuse to even attempt online anymore. i believe now you cant actually access online for the reason you stated in the video they added a very very bare bones anti cheat that keeps you offline and you can only play in singleplayer, if been using skin mods for my 2020 career to keep it fresh but i worrie if even they do something to change how the cars work

Jimmy I’m new here, love the self awareness and humility it’s pretty refreshing on this website

This should automatically make anyone not cheating feel faster than they were

randomcallsign here: maybe

Similar situation in Trackmania a few years ago when some players admitted to cheating because they couldn't keep up otherwise

I saw the thread before it was deleted, pretty interesting to read but I didnt read much past the first question/top comment

Ah shit here we go again

The sheer happiness I feel whenever my hatred of Formula 1 and F1 Esports is validated. It's so good knowing I was always right lol.

It would be really interesting as if it is so easy to create anti-cheats would it be possible to commission someone to make an anti cheat software too be used. Maybe design it so it modifies something in game to signify its being used perhaps like a code that changes every race next. Then these can be used perhaps first in casual but perhaps in even more competitive scenes. Sure its not going to solve everything people will find a way but the more hurdles you add for cheaters the better and the more likely it will be that they get caught out.

@slof69

Жыл бұрын

theres this exact thing for trackmania nations forever and you cannot submit times unless you use the anticheat version of the game

A good way is to check whether the difference in players' performance on LAN events vs online events is statistically significant. There might be some players that will likely stand out right away.

I would hesitate to take this cheat creator's word. Cheaters tend to jump through a lot of hoops to justify their cheat usage, so something like the "70% of the pros might have cheated" line is a red flag to me. Even if I also think there's a cheating problem in racing games.

I watch a fair amount of F1 esports and league races and I always found it suspicious that almost anybody that drove a Mclaren was faster than Jarno

@maxb4085

Жыл бұрын

Well I guess you haven't watched esports because if you did you would know all the cars are set to equal so being in a McLaren is not different to a Merc, Williams or Red Bull

@built2jzlexus496

Жыл бұрын

@@maxb4085 I kno all the cars are equal which proves my point

I've taken a step back from online sim racing the last few years doing it since the 90's because the fun has been taken out of it to what it used to be which is not a bad thing either as I've been playing some older titles offline like Gran Turismo 5 - 6 for the first time on PS3 with a Fanatec wheel using DriveHub as back when they were new I was 100% into PC sim racing. Sadly the bigger and more corporate sim racing gets the more some people will try to find ways to cheat.

Thanks so much for having the courage to expose all this. A noble gesture considering your position as a top racer. Lord knows who you could be upsetting, but it's really fair of you to clue us in and in laymens language too! I don't believe you have ever cheated as we have all seen your raw skill and concentration that you can produce during a race. Well said Jimmer, and thanks again for the heads up. We love what you do.

while the cheats sounded straightfoward with the simple bypass, im 100% positive that they still took a massive amount of time to develop due to the fact that you would have to somehow figure out that whole "screenshot" thing in the first place. The modder likely says this is easy because the cheats work on older titles, as the bypass was already known. also the modder saying that an anticheat is easy to implement is a *disturbingly* naive take.

@michaelharder3055

Жыл бұрын

Which they discovered several years ago, This is not rocket science.

@0xGRIDRUNR

Жыл бұрын

@@michaelharder3055 point being that its not like finding that was easy in the first place. its just easy to implement in a newer game with the same system because of the initial work done

@tomh6010

Жыл бұрын

Even discovering the snapshot would be fairly trivial because it's relatively common in various games an an anti-cheat mechanism, and any function that starts checking a bunch of config data on start-up is fairly obvious. For a decent modder this is genuinely childs play, and you can either inject modded configs by suspending the process, or create a script to load the modded configs into memory first and change the pointers for the function so it doesn't have to be suspended at all - which is sometimes needed as anti-cheat methods can monitor certain processes and detect whether they get suspended for injection.

@0xGRIDRUNR

Жыл бұрын

@@tomh6010 you still have to do a substantial amount of work to view and translate the memory of a game to recognize it's doing that in the first place, then debug your injection such that it happens at the right time and persists as intended.

@michaelharder3055

Жыл бұрын

@@0xGRIDRUNR It sounds like you massively underestimates the abilities of hackers because it sounds like a herculean effort which it most certainly was not. Some hacks comparable to this literally took a weekend to hack.

3:50 This only applies to public cheats. Anything a person is using in a serrious comp environment is going to be a paid for, private or semi-private cheat, which absolutely do store user info about everyone who uses them. You'd be surprised how often pro's from all games get blackmailed.

Thanks for this info Jimmy. Time for EA/Codemasters to speak up. It is their and this whole esports image on the line. The suspicion is there. They just can’t ignore it. To be continued me thinks.

Jimmy Broadbent: Praga Cup Champion, iRacing Le Mans and Daytona winner, Racing Organization Founder, Award-winning Streamer, and now, Sim Racing Investigative Journalist

If everyone is cheating then noone is cheating

@ZachNovak

Жыл бұрын

PUBG Asia server mentality 😂

The guy from reddit was a troll. In case you did not figure it out yourself. He knows nothing about cheating, programming, etc

@vikhr

Жыл бұрын

The same guy literally said the same thing on unknowncheats. You can't even check the sources before posting lol

@chrisc3825

Жыл бұрын

Agreed. Seems suspect. Jimmer is still learning the ropes of investigative journalism.

Fascinating, I wonder if that's the average across many skill games these days?? And not just in motor sports, Apex, COD or any game with pvp?? If its not blatant we don't see it? Maybe games now should be able to continually search tasks running and have a traffic light warning displayed on screen on what's running?

I really don’t think that many who got through to LAN events are cheating however at league / qualifying level I would imagine the % is quite high. Cheating has been going on for years in leagues and unfortunately it one of the reasons I know longer race in leagues. So I appreciate you shinning a spot light on this issue in our community.

I feel like more people need to be slapped in public by their mothers....

@turbo_marc

Жыл бұрын

I feel like you need some serious mental help....

@Atlas.Brooklyn

Жыл бұрын

We need to bring back bullying. In this case, bully the fuck out of those cheating fucks.

Are legacy times viewable for events? I know TT times will be slightly faster than those in races but wouldn't it be interesting to just see the % difference in lap times from qualifying for the event to what's been able to achieve in competition

Jimmy doing the best for competitive sim racing And just casual sim racing aswell I’m really happy to see this coming up and getting more updates How is it possible a brand (EA Sports and Condemasters) not doing anything towards this? With the ammount of money they have it’s shocking for a game that has a competitive league that has a prize pool. They literally don’t care Either way let’s just hope so ething is done to make it better

It makes you wonder what else they are doing behind the scene's as well. I'm sure performance enhancing substances would be a factor as well... you can almost count on it.

9:43 This ABSOLUTELY should be a meme. So many things would be insane if true 😂 I still love your coverage Jimmy, keep it up. And I def would take the opinion of the person creating the cheat as a good jumping off point... Hopefully we can get some real evidence.

I have my suspicion that similar cheats have been used in another game from Codies: DiRT Rally 2.0. I was at the very top of the esports scene in that game where at one point I reached the semi finals of the DiRT Rally World Series Championship. There were times that people whom I never saw before suddenly set blistering times during qualification rounds and in some cases pushing through to the next round. I did check replays/ghosts of some of those people's runs and I came to roughly the same conclusion as Jarno did in F1 with a grip cheat that allows you to accelerate out of corners quicker etc.