Why I Swithched to PROOFCORE

[StevenJohnson]

Main reason, is One of the Phanton Overlay Admins and main Dev for P.O.  was Detected while playing, and instead of shuting down there loader, he let us continue to inject knowing we, would be banned and loose accounts on both MW2 and Beta Mw3. Total lack of respect for a lot of us who where loyal. Not only did he damage his reputation, but he also lost my trust along with many many other users. Straight Dirtbag move in my eyes. Why would you do the people that pay your salary and keep your biz going like that. I just don't get it.!  He probably lost half his player base because of that,and many of them have said, they will never trust them again. Hopefuly ProofCore has a little more integrity than that and I won't have to go thru that BS again. Thank you for listening to my Rant.

[stefke111]

I understand your frustration... but once the cheat has been detected. it's already too late... of course he should have taken the cheat offline immediately... but that won't stop the bans... they can see exactly who and when (even weeks ago) when the cheat was loaded (after it is detected)... and you know. Even with proofcore there is always a chance that the cheat will be detected and that it will cost you accounts. risk of cheating

[Kantor]

Don't get me wrong, it absolutely sucks as a consumer but this is an understood "Risk" you take anytime you inject a cheat at any point. This used to be commonly understood but as the internet matured and we have full on corporate setups for game cheats this shared understanding went away.

I feel like he fairly explained the thought process and thus the decision born of that. Had he revealed the error but not resolved the methods of detection not only would these initial users be banned but potentially the entire user-base as it would have given Ricochet the upper hand. By sacrificing the pawns he was able to save the Queen (The long term, multi-month subscriber userbase,.)

The only metric in which I feel he failed, and this is just bad change management really is not having a review process in some form post-update. This could have been potentially avoided with patching down-time and test accounts. He did acknowledge this error though.

Sadly, no provider or cheat will ever be 100% non-detected for all of time. It's a constant power struggle between the Anti-Cheat companies and Cheat Providers. Akin to Virus and Anti-Virus software. All said and done, was it handled great? No. Could it have been handled much worse? Oh fuck yeah.

Do I think that breaches a line of integrity with his userbase? I don't think so. Other providers have just cut and run or knowingly rolled false detection's while continuing to sell as UD.

 

Edited October 18, 2023 by Kantor

[StevenJohnson]

1 hour ago, Kantor said:

Don't get me wrong, it absolutely sucks as a consumer but this is an understood "Risk" you take anytime you inject a cheat at any point. This used to be commonly understood but as the internet matured and we have full on corporate setups for game cheats this shared understanding went away.

I feel like he fairly explained the thought process and thus the decision born of that. Had he revealed the error but not resolved the methods of detection not only would these initial users be banned but potentially the entire user-base as it would have given Ricochet the upper hand. By sacrificing the pawns he was able to save the Queen (The long term, multi-month subscriber userbase,.)

The only metric in which I feel he failed, and this is just bad change management really is not having a review process in some form post-update. This could have been potentially avoided with patching down-time and test accounts. He did acknowledge this error though.

Sadly, no provider or cheat will ever be 100% non-detected for all of time. It's a constant power struggle between the Anti-Cheat companies and Cheat Providers. Akin to Virus and Anti-Virus software. All said and done, was it handled great? No. Could it have been handled much worse? Oh fuck yeah.

Do I think that breaches a line of integrity with his userbase? I don't think so. Other providers have just cut and run or knowingly rolled false detection's while continuing to sell as UD.

 

Kantor, he new about detection when he was testing Beta version of MW3, but chose not tell anyone. So he sacrificed his customers instead of being straight forward. If he would have shut down loader asap when he got detected, nobody would have got banned. He let them inject, and play knowing they would get banned because of detection. That not right!  His job as The Dev and Admin is to protect the customer not sacrifice them. If you know your detected, but fail to inform or shut down program. Then those bans fall on him. If Proofcore new they where detected to you think they would keep loader operational? Hell know, thats how you ruin a very good thing fast!

Edited October 18, 2023 by StevenJohnson

[Kantor]

25 minutes ago, StevenJohnson said:

Kantor, he new about detection when he was testing Beta version of MW3, but chose not tell anyone. So he sacrificed his customers instead of being straight forward. If he would have shut down loader asap when he got detected, nobody would have got banned. He let them inject, and play knowing they would get banned because of detection. That not right!  His job as The Dev and Admin is to protect the customer not sacrifice them. If you know your detected, but fail to inform or shut down program. Then those bans fall on him. If Proofcore new they where detected to you think they would keep loader operational? Hell know, thats how you ruin a very good thing fast!

 

You are only looking at it from the consumer point of view though, not the business point of view.

Let's assume he had done that, shut it down at the moment of detection without discovering HOW it was detected. Do people get banned? Well maybe a few from the initial detection but now after he freezes everything, the anti-cheat company would know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they have confirmed they nailed his users. This would allow Ricochet to rapidly pivot their detection method after confirmation and identify other markers off of that initial detection to ban users the second they inject outright. So he would patch what he thought was the issue, give the "All good" message and then bang ALL of his users would be banned and he then would lose his subscriber base in totality.

Now, again is it totally morally correct the way he went about this? No. The correct response should have been a shutdown with a reason unrelated to detection and he should have rolled multiple test accounts to verify the detection vector. However, that would have only been feasible IF he had already been doing this but because he got a bit cocky with his detection rate. Ricochet hedged a bet that he would not do that and they were right. He has since stated he will no longer use that old approach and recognized it as an error.

Sadly, this isn't some groundbreaking revelation. This is damn near an industry standard across the board these days, if you tell a company (Any company) "Hey, sacrifice 25% of your userbase now to retain 75% later or keep 100% of your userbase now to lose 90% later?" Every company on the planet will chose Option 1. Hell, there are providers out there that knowingly sell detected cheats at time of sale. In terms of this being some backstab or exit scam it doesn't quite fit the bill.

Everyone takes a risk cheating, the ban was already issued the best course of action was to learn as much of it as he could to punch back in round 2.