The biggest story in Major League Baseball (for everybody not in New York) is Barry Bonds breaking Hank Aaron’s homerun record. It’s a national story by itself, but throw in the steroids accusations and you’ve got enough talk show fodder to put Jerry Springer to shame. And if you want to get an idea of how important cheating is, listen to what they’re talking about. People are more concerned about Hank Aaron and Bud Selig’s travel schedule because of Barry Bonds’ alleged cheating than they are with the actual record.
(For New Yorkers, Roger Clemens making $4,500,000 every month is probably the biggest story. That's more than $1.50 every second. I’d ask to sign up for that deal, but I know it’s going to include fire, brimstone, a pitchfork and my soul, and I’m not ready to make that kind of commitment.)
Of course, their current problem is steroids. When something compromises the integrity of the sport, whether it’s cheating, gambling, or collusion, there isn’t going to be a bigger storyline. People still talk about David Stern and the frozen envelope that gave the New York Knicks the first pick in the 1985 NBA draft, which they turned into Patrick Ewing and a decade of dominance. Pete Rose is banned from the baseball Hall of Fame for betting games while he was managing the Cincinnati Reds. He never even did it as a player, and they’re keeping the all-time leader in hits out of Cooperstown because he compromised the integrity of the game. Going back even further, who can forget Shoeless Joe Jackson? Harsh punishment, but also necessary when you threaten a whole sport.
So it’s not hyperbole to call the release of the CAL Anti-Cheat Client the biggest news in the history of their Counter-Strike: Source division. The modified CGS format was a drop in the bucket compared with this -- not only in terms of the importance, but the number of players affected. Thousands of people will be playing on the client. (Or, as I like to think of it, the same number of people that are going to get less action while Paris Hilton is in jail for 45 days.) The original draw of CEVO was that you could play on the client and finally have some assurances that you weren't wasting your time against a guy with clear walls and no recoil. I'm not sure you can ever simulate the feel and security of a LAN environment, but CAL can finally guarantee some protection against cheating just like ESEA and CEVO do.
The way I see it, the client’s going to work in three ways, just like the steroid policy in baseball: it’s going to stop current hackers, it’s going to deter people in the future, and it’s going to catch those really dedicated douchebags that just can’t give it up.
In the immediate future, people will probably give up the habit for a little while. The most effective time for an Anti-Cheat program is right after the release. Nobody knows much about it (read: how to get around it), and that’s going to scare cheaters. So whatever happens next season, at least we’re sure that the teams got to Invite on their own merit and not how good their cheating program was.
(On a side note, everybody knows people are going to stop hacking, and I look forward to a thousand threads talking about how Player X dropped bombz in the playoffs last season and then went -18 and 18 in the Placement Tournament. You know it’s coming, so just prepare for the storm. And if you’re one of the legit players that happen to play poorly for a couple days, you have my deepest sympathies.)
But the brilliance of the client is really in deterrence. It’s pretty easy to hack when you’re confident you won’t be caught and you feel like you have to even the playing field. If you listen to people in Major League Baseball speak on steroids and greenies, a lot of them will mention using because they felt like they were at a competitive disadvantage if they didn’t. The drug policy evened out that playing field just like the client will for CAL. People who hack because they can get away with it won’t get away with it, and people who hack to even the playing field won’t need to do it anymore. Basically, the risk/reward ratio of hacking got a huge boost to the “risk” section.
I’d go in depth about the client catching cheaters, but I think that pretty much speaks for itself, right? Right. The only thing I’ll say is that the happiest group of people might be the AC admins. There will finally be more to say than just “I don’t think he’s hacking.” A little hard evidence will go a long way towards easing their workload and their credibility.
Don’t get me wrong, all of that’s great for the league, but the biggest impact of the client is what it allows CAL to become: relevant to professional organizations. The client won’t do that by itself. But it will allow CAL to offer prizes without suffocating under a swarm of hackers, and we all know they’d come out en masse if there was money with no Anti-Cheat technology. I’m sure any company that donates resources would be thrilled if the team that won was accused of cheating. That's not as big of a problem anymore, and it looks like CAL already has plans for sponsorships if this quote from CAL|Shawn in the CAL-Main forums is any indication:
Actually, as an admin I would know about things that are going to happen in the upcoming season. So if you say there needs to be an incentive for ppl to play, and I say something like "just wait and see," maybe to you it's predicting the future but I already know what's going to happen.
Think about it: what have all these changes been geared towards? If you’ve been watching the forums, the biggest support for the CGS rules came in the Invite and Main divisions, while the people in lower leagues tended to disagree with the move. I’m not going to call them stupid or wrong, but it’s clear that the top teams have appreciated the switch, and I’m sure that was CAL’s original goal. CAL’s trying to draw the top teams back into their league, and the only step left to tread is offering rewards for the top finishers. It’s been a problem going all the way back to 1.6 when 3D and coL originally dropped CAL for CEVO, and they’ve finally taken the first steps to rectify it. And if you take that train of thought to its natural conclusion, it doesn’t take a genius to see that in the near future I’m going to be writing about CAL’s new sponsors and how they’ve managed to revitalize their league.
That might not happen, but it's a lot more possible than it was two months ago when professional teams had almost no reason to choose CAL over CEVO. Now they just need to keep the client updated, because we know the hackers will be back. They always come back. The biggest success of ESEA and CEVO clients isn't that they're unhackable. They just keep the programs up to date with the attempts to get around it. Or, on the other end, you have VAC. More hackers have probably lost their accounts through scams than VAC bans because the last update was during the Clinton administration. On top of that, CAL will need to at least make an offer competitive to CEVO, because I don’t think teams will leave $10,000 in CEVO prizes for some mousepads and headphones. But at least they're back in the game, and if they keep listening to the community and adapting their league to suit the needs and desires of players, they should at least remain competitive with CEVO.
But that’s all in the future, so for now let’s just bask in the warm, welcoming glow of the client while it lasts. I leave you with this haiku to commemorate the event:
AC client born
Internet: serious biz
Hackers in hiding
