How long should someone be banned?
This depends from game to game and at what level they play. On amateur level this is normally several months. Why you might ask. Cause no one is really too interested in amateur teams and it takes so much time to check every amateur team that it is almost impossible to track down known cheaters. Often you will need the support of the community to do this. While their are programs to make this easier aka PunkBuster and Yawn and others, these are mostly for FPS games. So often a hacker will be found later again, with a different nickname, a different team and so on. In the mean time the chance he has been hacking again is quite big. They hide in the masses of other players and adept to their surroundings.
On a higher level this question is even more difficult. Often the length of the banned is decided by the reactions of the community and/or sponsors/organisers. There have been bans for a lifetime for hacking in professional gaming, however there have also been bans for only a year, for only certain leagues and so on. The general pattern you see is that the player who is caught will disappear from the scene and make a comeback later. However due to lack of decent games in that "downtime" the comebacks don't last very long normally.
Do people get treated the same?
As I already mentioned people do not get treated the same. Everything depends on how much support you have and how many people will stick their hand in the fire to help you out. It's not fair, but it is how it works. the same happens in real life situations. The only way to avoid something like this is when everyone organiser of any tournament or league would sit together and decide on a ruleset on what to do when someone is caught hacking. However this will never happen cause of several reasons. Organisers often see each other as competition and are not very interested in sitting together with each other. The second reason is that it is just impossible. People can not gather from all over the world from every tiny league and so on to make something like this. And to make this work everyone and I repeat everyone would need to follow this. The only way to create something like this is by having the big organisers sit together and decide how to do this. In FPS there is a company formed by several professional teams that already work on making contracts and such more general. However they have not released anything about how to punish players. I do not know if they have any intention to, but the general organisation has a very good goal. Make everything standard. Some people might know this organisation, they are called G7.
Remorse?
This is a very touchy subject. There are two sides to it. Some people do think players should show remorse and some don't. The biggest argument for people is that you can serve your time in jail, once you server your time you can go out. If you showed remorse doesn't matter. However if you do show remorse your punishment can be made less severe. Personally I don't think people need to show remorse, but they should not demand for a second chance either. You did what you did. If you got a life time ban from a league, you will need to work it out with them. The biggest problem might be the fact that there is no way to actually know if someone shows actual remorse or is faking it. Again, it's a touchy subject. Overall leagues tend to unban players after several years, just because of the fact that they hope by then the player has shown remorse and didn't cheat again. However to get any remorse a player should give a full list of matches where he cheated and forfeiting the result, however how do you deal with this if only one person cheated on the team? And what if all people cheated except one and he didn't know? He worked hard and does deserve the win maybe? The biggest problem that often occurs is that cheaters do not admit they cheated earlier. Than someone starts digging in their past and they find proof that the players has been cheating for a long time. Not admitting this is an instant no-remorse sign to me. Admit it that you cheated and give a timeframe. I don't care if it was in a small tournament. Give the exact point where you started cheating if you want any reduction in punishment.
How can you realise bans?
This is very hard to do. The only way you can make sure that a person is not playing again in your tournament or that no one is cheating is to play on LAN with people watching the screens all the time. In several LAN tournaments they now put officials behind every player just to make sure no cheating occurs. Online this is a totally different story. First and for all you can ban on IP. However an IP doesn't mean that much. It's a personal number given to you by your ISP. However if you have a dynamic IP you get a new IP very often. Even if you have a static IP you can release and renew it. If this doesn't work you can reset the modem for some time and hope your old IP got overwritten. Use a proxy. Or the easiest and fastest solution. Just call your ISP for a new IP...
Another way to ban a person is to ban him on an account. However this is impossible to do in any game as this means you just need to register/buy a new account.
Yet another way to ban a person is on MAC-number. This is a number decided by your network card. However again this is quite easy to fake. You can put a router inbetween and force the router to use a different MAC-address. Or you can just get a new network card which costs about 7euro's?
There is one last solution and this is currently the easiest, have the community keep an eye out for new players.
Conclusion
There are no easy answers to any of these questions. For DotA the problem with cheating will remain for a long time. The fact DotA is mostly played online is key problem number one. However because DotA has a small community of top teams, cheaters that want to play again on the highest level will get caught. It might take some time, but somewhere down the line those people will be found. You can change your ip, fake your country, get a new name, have people hide you. But one person will find a flaw in your disguise and the avalanche starts.
All we can hope for is that people play fair.
Domi
www.gosugamers.net
This depends from game to game and at what level they play. On amateur level this is normally several months. Why you might ask. Cause no one is really too interested in amateur teams and it takes so much time to check every amateur team that it is almost impossible to track down known cheaters. Often you will need the support of the community to do this. While their are programs to make this easier aka PunkBuster and Yawn and others, these are mostly for FPS games. So often a hacker will be found later again, with a different nickname, a different team and so on. In the mean time the chance he has been hacking again is quite big. They hide in the masses of other players and adept to their surroundings.
On a higher level this question is even more difficult. Often the length of the banned is decided by the reactions of the community and/or sponsors/organisers. There have been bans for a lifetime for hacking in professional gaming, however there have also been bans for only a year, for only certain leagues and so on. The general pattern you see is that the player who is caught will disappear from the scene and make a comeback later. However due to lack of decent games in that "downtime" the comebacks don't last very long normally.
Do people get treated the same?
As I already mentioned people do not get treated the same. Everything depends on how much support you have and how many people will stick their hand in the fire to help you out. It's not fair, but it is how it works. the same happens in real life situations. The only way to avoid something like this is when everyone organiser of any tournament or league would sit together and decide on a ruleset on what to do when someone is caught hacking. However this will never happen cause of several reasons. Organisers often see each other as competition and are not very interested in sitting together with each other. The second reason is that it is just impossible. People can not gather from all over the world from every tiny league and so on to make something like this. And to make this work everyone and I repeat everyone would need to follow this. The only way to create something like this is by having the big organisers sit together and decide how to do this. In FPS there is a company formed by several professional teams that already work on making contracts and such more general. However they have not released anything about how to punish players. I do not know if they have any intention to, but the general organisation has a very good goal. Make everything standard. Some people might know this organisation, they are called G7.
Remorse?
This is a very touchy subject. There are two sides to it. Some people do think players should show remorse and some don't. The biggest argument for people is that you can serve your time in jail, once you server your time you can go out. If you showed remorse doesn't matter. However if you do show remorse your punishment can be made less severe. Personally I don't think people need to show remorse, but they should not demand for a second chance either. You did what you did. If you got a life time ban from a league, you will need to work it out with them. The biggest problem might be the fact that there is no way to actually know if someone shows actual remorse or is faking it. Again, it's a touchy subject. Overall leagues tend to unban players after several years, just because of the fact that they hope by then the player has shown remorse and didn't cheat again. However to get any remorse a player should give a full list of matches where he cheated and forfeiting the result, however how do you deal with this if only one person cheated on the team? And what if all people cheated except one and he didn't know? He worked hard and does deserve the win maybe? The biggest problem that often occurs is that cheaters do not admit they cheated earlier. Than someone starts digging in their past and they find proof that the players has been cheating for a long time. Not admitting this is an instant no-remorse sign to me. Admit it that you cheated and give a timeframe. I don't care if it was in a small tournament. Give the exact point where you started cheating if you want any reduction in punishment.
How can you realise bans?
This is very hard to do. The only way you can make sure that a person is not playing again in your tournament or that no one is cheating is to play on LAN with people watching the screens all the time. In several LAN tournaments they now put officials behind every player just to make sure no cheating occurs. Online this is a totally different story. First and for all you can ban on IP. However an IP doesn't mean that much. It's a personal number given to you by your ISP. However if you have a dynamic IP you get a new IP very often. Even if you have a static IP you can release and renew it. If this doesn't work you can reset the modem for some time and hope your old IP got overwritten. Use a proxy. Or the easiest and fastest solution. Just call your ISP for a new IP...
Another way to ban a person is to ban him on an account. However this is impossible to do in any game as this means you just need to register/buy a new account.
Yet another way to ban a person is on MAC-number. This is a number decided by your network card. However again this is quite easy to fake. You can put a router inbetween and force the router to use a different MAC-address. Or you can just get a new network card which costs about 7euro's?
There is one last solution and this is currently the easiest, have the community keep an eye out for new players.
Conclusion
There are no easy answers to any of these questions. For DotA the problem with cheating will remain for a long time. The fact DotA is mostly played online is key problem number one. However because DotA has a small community of top teams, cheaters that want to play again on the highest level will get caught. It might take some time, but somewhere down the line those people will be found. You can change your ip, fake your country, get a new name, have people hide you. But one person will find a flaw in your disguise and the avalanche starts.
All we can hope for is that people play fair.
Domi
www.gosugamers.net
