Joolz Retires

[peagle]

I think, that, CS should be a pay service, and the monthly fee (even if it were $1 a month considering the user base) should be directly to a crack VAC coding team who 24/7 track and eliminate all cheats, and ideally leave some flaming dog poo outside under the coders pillows.

[Simplex]

Late to the conversation... surry!

thrasymachus wrote..

I'd like to point out to bret540 that this software is not 'illegal.' Luckily, we live under a government that has yet to outlaw cheating at online games. It's called freedom.

sardiax wrote..

if you agreed to the eula when you installed half-life/cs you are violating that when you cheat online. that would be callled illegal i believe.

thrasymachus wrote..

Luckily we live under a government that has yet to make EULAs legal and binding contracts. We are coming close, however. Some states have ruled yes, others no. That is itself very dangerous to freedom. (Besides I don't sign any EULA myself, my general practice is to have a minor install software on the computer I use, seeing as how minors are not bound by contract. Or at least that's what I'll say when they drag me in.)

In response to all 3 of the quotes above, the EULA (End User License Agreement) is a binding legal contract. It is used to sue pirates (ARRRR!) that pirate Microsoft Windows (among other software titles *cough* Adobe *cough*). Breaking the EULA is breach of contract, and is illegal (In the USA). However, to my knowledge, there has never been a video game company that ever sued a user because they broke the EULA. They are a business, and businesses try to make money. Of course, banning cheaters from using their services has been seen as a respectable and understandable loss, so that's what they do.



Sending a < 13 year old to click through your legal agreements might be a loophole, but just imagine if you tried to have your little sister sign your house lease so you wouldn't be liable for damages afterwards. I'd bet the housing contractor would come after you with some sort of big stick or something.



Also technically, cheats are illegal under the DMCA (In the USA ONLY). Circumventing security measures makes them illegal to have, use, or create. The EULA makes them illegal to use. So in a way, it's doubly-illegal.



thrasymachus: name me a state (and prove it) that says that EULA's aren't legally binding. You are wrong.



I Am Not A Lawyer.

Spoonman wrote..

Can we really trust what Joolz says? He hacks computer programs for a living. I would be very cautious about the technical data he goes into at the very least.

That's a good thought. It reminds me of the xbox exploit. I'm sure VALVe will look into it and block it if there is anything to block. That is, if they didn't know how it worked before.

[thrombose]

rizzuh wrote..

How anyone can say that they respect this kid is beyond me. His work has done nothing but hurt the community at every turn. If that wasn't his intention, then the cheats shouldn't have been released to the public in binary form.

RIZZUH, what about all the arms dealers? People can buy weapons and guns, and use them at their own free will. It is up to them wheter they want to commit a crime or not.

Just look at it this way: Joolz has provided "effective" tools. If you' re using this tool to get an edge over someone, its your choice, not his.

Maybe you should start blaming companies like Colt, Beretta, SIG, and anyone that sells guns.

[kSaini]

I acknowledge a lot of what you say, Simplex. I don't however, understand this:

It is used to sue pirates that pirate Microsoft Windows. ... However, to my knowledge, there has never been a video game company that ever sued a user because they broke the EULA. They are a business, and businesses try to make money.

Is Microsoft not a business? Do they not try to make money? Microsoft sues and pursues pirates because they have a lot more money to lose. The cost of WINXP Professional is around $300-400 for a full version where a video game is around $40. The reason why video games companies don't sue I think is because quite frankly, it probably isn't worth it. The legal costs (lawyers) etc. would probably not be a wise investment to be "sending <13 year olds" through court. Besides, banning people for using expolits is punishment enough and it's economical.

[Simplex]

thrombose wrote..

RIZZUH, what about all the arms dealers? People can buy weapons and guns, and use them at their own free will. It is up to them wheter they want to commit a crime or not.

Just look at it this way: Joolz has provided "effective" tools. If you' re using this tool to get an edge over someone, its your choice, not his.

Maybe you should start blaming companies like Colt, Beretta, SIG, and anyone that sells guns.

I am very anti-gun, so this surprises even me to say it, but your analogy is incorrect. If the world government said that guns were illegal (not certain uses of them), then your analogy might be closer. See, guns can be used for a multitude of legal uses. Clay shooting, (legal) hunting, rifle ranges, even the boy-scouts use guns legally.



Cheats have no real use other than cheating, which is wrong.

kSaini wrote..

Is Microsoft not a business? Do they not try to make money? Microsoft sues and pursues pirates because they have a lot more money to lose. The cost of WINXP Professional is around $300-400 for a full version where a video game is around $40. The reason why video games companies don't sue I think is because quite frankly, it probably isn't worth it. The legal costs (lawyers) etc. would probably not be a wise investment to be "sending <13 year olds" through court. Besides, banning people for using expolits is punishment enough and it's economical.

Editing my post convolutes the meaning. Here's your post, edited:

kSaini wrote..

Is Microsoft a business? Do they make money? Microsoft sues and pursues pirates to around $300-400. I think it is worth it. The costs would be a wise investment. Besides, banning people for using expolits is economical.

I really only need to clarify that sueing individual customers is only something a multi-billion dollar company that sells overprised software to nearly all the world would be able to do. Microsoft already has a huge legal team. They probably get a group discount if they sue 500 people a year.



But you said that already, and I said most of it before you did. What was the question again?

[Eagle25]

Edited by [user="26788"] @ [time="1060096906"]

hey hey hey, go-od-bye, na na na na....

[T|2i|34L]

winner

[MrFelix]

Simplex wrote..

Also technically, cheats are illegal under the DMCA (In the USA ONLY). Circumventing security measures makes them illegal to have, use, or create. The EULA makes them illegal to use. So in a way, it's doubly-illegal.

but the DMCA is just another excuse for larger companies to prey on individuals because they have more capital to invest. DMCA pretty much comes out as "if you do/plan to do/vaguely think about/think about in the 300ms before you realise you've thought about something i didnt think of, you go to jail" well.. in my interpretation.

OmegaSaintSeiya wrote..

there is no cheating at the game of life. =(

nah, its just hidden better :P

LMAO, are you serious?! Do you know WHY we think certain things are good and bad? Because we are TAUGHT that way..... the entire world has been brainwashed by those who manage our society.

yeah i was going to phrase it that way but I might have scared some little kids :P or made some people look up really far and fall over backwards.

[Eagle25]

Edited by [user="26788"] @ [time="1060097729"]

i have a question for our wannabe masterpiece composer



define: victory?



-edit, im reading the letter again, and well, at the end, your quite a contradictory person,

Good luck to the Cheating Death team. ... The source codes available from all of the above domains for 1.61...

so sure, good luck to you guys at cheating death, in the meanwhile, ill just release more cheats to people so they can start their spin off versions of it...



bravo, Einstein

[xbiox]

i eat food.

[xie]

C-D has been hacked. It is no longer the answer.



This game will never been cheat free.



PS: What the hell happened to Octinium? Everyone was touting it as the be-all-end-all (LEAGUE) cheat stopper, and now I don't see CAL, UGS, OGL, etc talking about it at all.

[Steakeater]

From your local Cheating-Death advocate...

Ricebowl wrote..

Communities/pubs take a big risk in alienating a lot of casual CS players when they put on C-D in required mode. Optional mode is not the answer, I tried that, and it was just a mess. It made people paranoid and started to break down my community.

I've been fortunate enough to keep most of my server's player base after implementing Cheating-Death. On the day we switched from optional to required mode, we actually had more players on it than when it was in optional mode. Those who left were either:



a) lazy

b) cheaters

c) xenophobes who were just too attached to VAC because it's all they knew



According to a recent scan from The All-Seeing Eye, of all the Counter-Strike servers in the United States, there are fewer than 100 of them with Cheating-Death required. Of all the Counter-Strike servers in Europe, there are over 3000 C-D required servers! Americans just don't seem to like C-D, for whatever reason (see a, b, and c, above). :)

C-D needs to be built-into CS, or at least a C-D-like app should be built into CS.

I agree, but Joolz touched on a very important point in his letter. VAC doesn't work because Valve doesn't use enough of its resources to make it as good as it can be. A volunteer team (United Admins) interested in making games cheat-free for the sake of making games cheat-free is going to be far more successful than a corporation, who's only purpose is to make money. If making extremely effective anti-cheat were profitable, I'm sure Valve would be putting out a product as effective as Cheating-Death.

[xie]

I have actually spoken with Joolz on two occasions, and he was a very nice guy, who definetly was more worried that his code was faulty than the fact that some people couldn't be l33t pub h4x0rz.



In public he appeared to be very harsh, a "Hey, fuck you." kinda guy, but he did not care if his hacks were VAC proof just so kids could use it, but because it meant that he was still ahead.



I'm not sad that he stopped, but I'm not happy, per se. I rarely pub anymore, so it doesn't matter to me all that much either way.

[exwhyze]

Ricebowl wrote..

I like how he tries to spin it that he was for anti-cheat. I think it just goes to show that even he realizes the immorality of it all.



And in regards to lockhart "C-D should to be adopted by the pubs", it first needs to be adopted by the cs players. Communities/pubs take a big risk in alienating a lot of casual CS players when they put on C-D in required mode. Optional mode is not the answer, I tried that, and it was just a mess. It made people paranoid and started to break down my community.



C-D needs to be built-into CS, or at least a C-D-like app should be built into CS.

Or they could make c-d be able to go in your command line and you could forget about forgetting to run it like me =)

[Lento]

It's really hard to make software cheat free/nonhackable these days, most program are written to support plugins or they use some kind of API that can be hooked in different ways. It's unstoppable but making it harder and punishable to cheat/hack like valve and some other gaming companies does might scare some people off.



Scaring tactics seems to be the way of the 21st century. The media and government classifying stuff as terrorism and dangerous, RIIA suing file swappers, gaming companies accidently banning users from their games for false positives? The question is just how far we will take it until everything is outlawed.



Another example, take this xbox emulator for example:

http://www.caustik.com/cxbx/



Is it legal? I guess it can be classified as a 'gray area' for now. It can only run some demos, but when it finally runs commercial games, I'm sure Microsoft will go after it with all their lawyers. It can already produce windows executables out of xbox .xbe exe files...



Soon the satellite companies will have you classified as a terrorist because you own equipment that can descramble their signals, even though they are beaming it right through your head at this very point of time. 'Hey I'm getting sick of your airwaves, I seem to get headaches from them. I can't live with them. At least let me watch some TV for free, I'm suffering here you know?'

No! No! No! No stealing! You pay and play by our rules or you go to jail.

'But I'm not stealing anything, I'm just listening to the signal you are beaming right through me.'

Lies! You have no rights, no coice, we are in charge here!*roaaaar!*



I don't like cheating and cheaters. But as Joolz said, Valve could have done a better job with the cheat detection that VAC incorporates so that they don't ban innocent people that are just trying to enjoy their HLAmp etc. Hopefully they have learned and will do a better job with HL2.