Make the launcher warn against running Cheat Engine again

[Porquenolosdos]

Hi!

I, like many others, sometimes use Cheat Engine to mod some of the single player games I play. Most recently I used it to remove the inventory weight limit from The Outer Worlds. It's an easy mistake to forget to turn Cheat Engine off when you're done with said game and want to play some Warframe instead.

This, of course, happened to me this weekend. While the support was kind enough to reverse the automatic ban, they made it clear they won't reverse it a second time .

Please, only YOU can prevent forest fires unnecessary autobans. Make the launcher warn against running Cheat Engine again.

 

 

I'm not alone in this - see other, related topics below

 

[(NSW)Katsuro]

why do you even use cheat engine in the first place? just turn it off when you go to play warframe

Edited November 11, 2019 by (NSW)Katsuro

[Blade_Wolf_16]

il y a 15 minutes, (NSW)Katsuro a dit :

why do you even use cheat engine in the first place? just turn it off when you go to play warframe

 

il y a 26 minutes, Porquenolosdos a dit :

I, like many others, sometimes use Cheat Engine to mod some of the single player games I play. Most recently I used it to remove the inventory weight limit from The Outer Worlds. It's an easy mistake to forget to turn Cheat Engine off when you're done with said game and want to play some Warframe instead.

 

[Porquenolosdos]

16 minutes ago, (NSW)Katsuro said:

why do you even use cheat engine in the first place? just turn it off when you go to play warframe

I admit I should've turned it off, but I didn't even think about it. I played The Outer Worlds over multiple days and just left Cheat Engine running between the times I played it. When I finished The Outer Worlds I forgot I had left Cheat Engine on, then went to play some Warframe and got banned.

Which is sad, since it's preventable (and even was prevented in the launcher before) 😞

[dogbus]

Wait, so you want the free-to-play game to handhold you and make sure you aren't doing anything that would violate the terms of use that you agreed to?

[Porquenolosdos]

1 minute ago, Vaeldious said:

Wait, so you want the free-to-play game to handhold you and make sure you aren't doing anything that would violate the terms of use that you agreed to?

Well, I want the game to provide a kind reminder that maybe you've forgotten to turn off that program that's not allowed 🙂

As mentioned, the launcher used to do this before, and it was great!

[sam686]

I like to see warning in Launcher.

Also, have better cheat detection while in game, not be lazy and permanent ban for simply having CheatEngine in a background but not cheating. No one cares or complain about if other players have CheatEngine or some other softwares in the background, as long as they are not cheating.

This drop of player counts on PC platform from unnecessary permanent bans, from cheat engine but not cheating, is slowing down matchmaking.

[Avifir]

1 hour ago, Vaeldious said:

Wait, so you want the free-to-play game to handhold you and make sure you aren't doing anything that would violate the terms of use that you agreed to?

It shouldn't ban you for having a program running that doesn't interact with Warframe in any way in the first place.

[dogbus]

Sure, and I'll be glad to give this $100 bill to this nice homeless man that promises not to spend it on booze.

[Porquenolosdos]

2 minutes ago, Avifir said:

It shouldn't ban you for having a program running that doesn't interact with Warframe in any way in the first place.

I agree in principle, but I'm guessing it's hard to tell the difference (if it's attached to the Warframe process or not)

[Porquenolosdos]

14 minutes ago, Vaeldious said:

Sure, and I'll be glad to give this $100 bill to this nice homeless man that promises not to spend it on booze.

Well I mean, it's more like telling someone they've forgotten to take off their hat after going inside the restaurant, rather than throwing them out and banning them.

[dogbus]

Except a hat is pretty harmless. Pretty sure if you wore a gun in most restaurants they'd throw you out in a heartbeat if they have a "no open carry" sign on the doors. Does that make it their fault for not frisking you down when you entered?

How about just using good sense instead? "Hey, I like to cheat in games, but this game doesn't like it at all, I better make sure none of my hack tools are running."

Or even simpler, don't be a cheater.

[FCRTUNA]

Adding to my last topic: i lost my account fully, because game autobans me for a second time. And i didn't use any cheating engine, so i couldn't detect what cause the ban in the first place. And support banned me from support site. This game have VERY BAD anticheat system. It bans pernamently, automatic and it doesn't tell you why. 

[Porquenolosdos]

3 minutes ago, Vaeldious said:

Except a hat is pretty harmless. Pretty sure if you wore a gun in most restaurants they'd throw you out in a heartbeat if they have a "no open carry" sign on the doors. Does that make it their fault for not frisking you down when you entered?

How about just using good sense instead? "Hey, I like to cheat in games, but this game doesn't like it at all, I better make sure none of my hack tools are running."

Or even simpler, don't be a cheater.

I mean, it's just a reminder? It seems nice to remind your customers that they might've forgotten to turn something off that could mean they potentially won't be allowed as customers anymore.

[Porquenolosdos]

If anyone finding this thread is interested, someone posted on reddit a script they use to close Cheat Engine when opening warframe (linked here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Warframe/comments/duv3cx/de_please_save_innocent_people_from_unnecessary/f78sd8d/ )

Quote

I set my Warfame shortcut to point to a batch file that makes sure Cheat Engine is off before running the game. If anyone else wants to do this create an empty text document. Paste the lines below into it and save it somewhere:

@Echo off
taskkill /IM cheatengine-x86_64.exe 
taskkill /IM Cheat Engine.exe
taskkill /IM CE.exe
start steam://rungameid/230410
exit

Change file extension from .txt to .bat and create a shortcut for the bat file on your desktop, then use that for running Warframe. Only works with the Steam version.

 

[Tsukinoki]

54 minutes ago, sam686 said:

Also, have better cheat detection while in game, not be lazy and permanent ban for simply having CheatEngine in a background but not cheating. No one cares or complain about if other players have CheatEngine or some other softwares in the background, as long as they are not cheating.

First is that its nearly impossible to determine if something is looking at your memory or not.  And if you want to stop something from peeking its best practice to just see if a program that could look at thememory is running and flag it.
After all good luck to DE for trying to detect if I'm reading the RAM to determine spawns/other features.
I mean if I knew what I was looking for I could monitor RAM and easily determine if a sculpture or rare container had spawned into the mission, and DE wouldn't be able to tell in any reliable fashion that I had peeked.  It would make it trivial to farm those as I can just load in, check, and restart until the right conditions.

Further detecting an edit is easier...but adds a lot of overhead.
Basically for any value that is somewhat important and might need protection?  Watchdog variable, which would very quickly consume a lot more memory and worsen performance as now every update to a variable also needs to update the watchdog variables.
And then you need to add some form of protection to the watchdog variables to prevent tampering with those...after all if someone updates both the watchdog variable and the normal variable at the same time? It looks legit.  And sure there are ways to protect those...but it just adds more overhead.

Basically:
It is practically impossible to determine if a cheat tool is actually connected to your game or not...the only thing you can reliably determine is that its running.  And even with stopping edits and having watchdog variables they aren't impossible to cheat without easily being detectable.
And all of that protection for a large increase in overhead...and for very little benefit to anyone involved.

[Avifir]

10 minutes ago, Vaeldious said:

Except a hat is pretty harmless. Pretty sure if you wore a gun in most restaurants they'd throw you out in a heartbeat if they have a "no open carry" sign on the doors. Does that make it their fault for not frisking you down when you entered?

It's more like:

The restaurant has a "No gun" policy.

The restaurant used to look and see if you're open carrying before letting you in. If you removed your gun you could then go in. People who conceal carried were thrown out and banned for life if it was discovered they had a gun.

Now, the restaurant lets you in without checking, and if you're carrying a gun - regardless if it's open or concealed - throws you out and bans you for life. There's still a guy at the door who could check, they just... told him not to.

10 minutes ago, Vaeldious said:

How about just using good sense instead? "Hey, I like to cheat in games, but this game doesn't like it at all, I better make sure none of my hack tools are running."

You can quite easily detect if (unmodified) CE is attached to a program, it's very well documented. The people who would modify things so that it's not easy to detect could just rename the program anyway, so warning if CE is running does zero harm to DE.

10 minutes ago, Vaeldious said:

Or even simpler, don't be a cheater.

Using Cheat Engine doesn't mean that someone is a cheater. Just like using Adobe Elements doesn't mean that someone is a photographer. They're tools. They have legitimate uses. I personally use Cheat Engine for my work. Do you close Word or Excel before you start Warframe? If you use AutoHotKey, that can do exactly the same things as Cheat Engine - should it automatically ban people too?

[Rogunz]

3 minutes ago, Vaeldious said:

Except a hat is pretty harmless. Pretty sure if you wore a gun in most restaurants they'd throw you out in a heartbeat if they have a "no open carry" sign on the doors.

So you agree that there should be a warning in the launcher instead of just a single line in the EULA that is broad enough to ban you for tons of common utility programs.

18 minutes ago, Vaeldious said:

How about just using good sense instead? "Hey, I like to cheat in games, but this game doesn't like it at all, I better make sure none of my hack tools are running."

Or even simpler, don't be a cheater.

Cheat Engine is just an easy to use memory editor. Like any memory editor it could be used for cheating but that isn't it's only purpose.

[dogbus]

4 minutes ago, Avifir said:

24 minutes ago, Vaeldious said:

Or even simpler, don't be a cheater.

 

 

[Avifir]

6 minutes ago, Tsukinoki said:

First is that its nearly impossible to determine if something is looking at your memory or not.  And if you want to stop something from peeking its best practice to just see if a program that could look at thememory is running and flag it.
After all good luck to DE for trying to detect if I'm reading the RAM to determine spawns/other features.
I mean if I knew what I was looking for I could monitor RAM and easily determine if a sculpture or rare container had spawned into the mission, and DE wouldn't be able to tell in any reliable fashion that I had peeked.  It would make it trivial to farm those as I can just load in, check, and restart until the right conditions.

Further detecting an edit is easier...but adds a lot of overhead.
Basically for any value that is somewhat important and might need protection?  Watchdog variable, which would very quickly consume a lot more memory and worsen performance as now every update to a variable also needs to update the watchdog variables.
And then you need to add some form of protection to the watchdog variables to prevent tampering with those...after all if someone updates both the watchdog variable and the normal variable at the same time? It looks legit.  And sure there are ways to protect those...but it just adds more overhead.

Basically:
It is practically impossible to determine if a cheat tool is actually connected to your game or not...the only thing you can reliably determine is that its running.  And even with stopping edits and having watchdog variables they aren't impossible to cheat without easily being detectable.
And all of that protection for a large increase in overhead...and for very little benefit to anyone involved.

You definitely can detect whether (unmodified) Cheat Engine is attached to something. It's also not what OP is arguing for. 

Regardless, telling someone if they have a program with a specific name running before starting adds basically no overhead. It's easy to get around, but it's not meant to protect hacking - the people who wouldn't think about renaming Cheat Engine also wouldn't think about modifying it to make it harder to detect - it's meant to protect people who use it for legitimate reasons. There are zero downsides to adding the warning, and only upsides via people not accidentally getting banned.

Edit:

1 minute ago, Vaeldious said:

-absolutely nothing-

Ah yes, even using something for work is cheating. Every tool only has one purpose - and it's always the purpose that you claim it is. 

A knife is only for stabbing - it can't be used to butter bread, or open letters, or anything else. Only stabbing.

Excel is only for using macros and/or VBS to view and edit memory into running programs. Yes, it can do that. Thus, if you have Excel open you should be autobanned.

AutoHotKey? Officially allowed by DE for disability reasons? Nope, it can view and edit memory, banned.

Edited November 11, 2019 by Avifir

[Leyvonne]

If DE adds a warning for CheatEngine they to add a warning for everything that could lead to a ban and I don't see them doing that since their policy about 3rd party software is "use at your own risk".

[sam686]

8 minutes ago, Tsukinoki said:

.the only thing you can reliably determine is that its running.

No, that isn't reliable either. VirtualBox and Qemu with Linux host, Windows 10 guest, and GPU pass through. The guest OS cannot detect what programs the host is running. The host can run memory reading tools to see anything.

Maybe the only few thing that is reliable is, run game on a locked down video game consoles like PS4 and Xbox one, or stream stuff like PlayStation Now, remote play, or similar.

[Avifir]

28 minutes ago, Leyvonne said:

If DE adds a warning for CheatEngine they to add a warning for everything that could lead to a ban and I don't see them doing that since their policy about 3rd party software is "use at your own risk".

DE should add warnings for widespread tools that have other uses than cheating. If someone has Cheat Engine open, it could be for a lot of different things. If someone has "WarframeHackV5Final" (not a real thing, as far as I know) or whatever open, there's less reason to believe that it could be for something else.

To be honest, Cheat Engine's name works against itself - it's just a memory editor. It's a powerful tool that can be used for a lot of different things. People just immediately see "Cheat" in the name and assume anyone using it is a cheater. If Visual Studio -  which could be used to debug and cheat in games - had "Cheat" or "Hack" in the name perhaps it too would receive the same treatment.

 

Edit: Wanna know something fun? Some anti-cheats detect if the phrase "Cheat Engine" is anywhere in the title of a program.
You know how browsers like Chrome will... change their title depending on the web page you're on?
Yeah, some games would ban you for reading this thread. Fortnite is (or at least was, no idea now) one example.
After all, why would you read anything about Cheat Engine if you're not a cheater /s

Edited November 11, 2019 by Avifir

[Hobie-wan]

On the one hand, it's on you to remember what you're doing on your PC from minute to minute. Just like you should remember to take your keys/wallet/purse/phone when you're moving from place to place and so on.

On the other, a quick check to see if a handful of popular cheat executables are running for all to see in the list of tasks in Windows when the launcher comes up and giving a "Hey it looks like you're running X, you might want to close it" doesn't seem like too big a deal. Especially if it did this in the past.

On the other other hand, maybe Cheat Engine should have a setup where you launch games from it and it closes when you close the game. But I've never used CE, so dunno how much of a pain that would be. The shortcut tweak shown above would be handy I suppose.

[Leyvonne]

26 minutes ago, Avifir said:

DE should add warnings for widespread tools that have other uses than cheating. If someone has Cheat Engine open, it could be for a lot of different things. If someone has "WarframeHackV5Final" (not a real thing, as far as I know) or whatever open, there's less reason to believe that it could be for something else.

To be honest, Cheat Engine's name works against itself - it's just a memory editor. It's a powerful tool that can be used for a lot of different things. People just immediately see "Cheat" in the name and assume anyone using it is a cheater. If Visual Studio -  which could be used to debug and cheat in games - had "Cheat" or "Hack" in the name perhaps it too would receive the same treatment.

I wasn't actually talking about adding warning about real hacks. I have mouse software that I'm terrified of keeping installed because DE said "use at your own risk". So I install and then uninstall it every time I want to make changes to my mouse profile or want to update drivers. I also use emulator to play android games on PC and restart my PC every time I stop playing them to make sure I don't accidentally have the emu running in the backgroup because idk if it is ok or not due to "use at your own risk".This is why I'm saying if DE adds a warning for CheatEngine they need to add a warning for everything else (everything meaning software, not hacks).