Call of Duty developers are (rightfully) messing with cheating gamers

Cheating at online multiplayer games is just petty. If you do it, you’re a jackass. I could probably end the story right there on a universal truism, but Activision’s anti-cheat squad Team Ricochet has to be a little more proactive when it deals with the cheaters in online Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 matches. And how: The developers have implemented a new system called “hallucinations,” which will show cheaters (and only cheaters) “ghost” enemies that will waste their time and make them sitting ducks for less horrible players.

The system is outlined in a patch update (spotted by PC Gamer). Hallucinations are indistinguishable from real online players, because they’re essentially a copy of a real player’s avatar, moving around elsewhere on the map. They even show up as “real” to the tools that hackers are using to spy on other players like wallhacks. The hallucination will appear before the cheater forcing them to engage with it, wasting precious time and ammo. Game managers can even use the hallucination system to detect suspected cheaters, dropping one in front of them in an active game. Since the hallucination is only visible to players using hacking tools, if the player engages with the fake, they’re cheating.

Developers have a long and storied history of screwing with players who’ve decided to ruin the multiplayer experience for everyone else, or pirate the game and cheat them out of a meal or two. Detected cheaters will often be “quarantined” to servers that are full of other cheaters, offering them some just desserts. In Runescape, detected bots were sent to a “Botany Bay” penal colony for trial and punishment by other players. GTA Online players who cheat to import cars from the single-player game online will get blown to smithereens the minute they hop in the driver’s seat, and those who download a pirated version of Crysis Warhead will find their guns shoot chickens instead of bullets.

But my favorite example of developers messing with malefactors comes from Game Dev Tycoon. If the game detects that it’s a pirated copy, then trying to sell games as a virtual game developer suddenly gets a lot harder, as virtual pirates start stealing copies of the virtual games you’re developing. Eventually your pretend company inevitably goes bankrupt in an object lesson on the real-world effects of stealing video games. Pure poetry.