Prominent simracing hacker Masterlooser15 has dismantled Sector 3 Studios claims of an up to scratch anti-cheat system in RaceRoom.
Masterlooser begins talking about a post shared on a Race Department thread, addressing cheating on RaceRoom and the existence of anti-cheat systems.
The account J-F Chardon belongs to a developer at Sector 3 Studios. They claim that “There is [an] anti-cheat [system] in RaceRoom”. The user goes on to raise a case in which “some dude with a YouTube channel had bought RaceRoom content, cheated to make fun videos, got caught in the net and got his account suspended”. The case sounds awfully familiar to that of our cheater in question, Masterlooser15.
Masterlooser claims to have spoken with J-F prior to the release of any of his videos, in fact making him aware of some of RaceRoom’s vulnerabilities.
“The game doesn’t have an anti-cheat. He [J-F ] is purely saying that to calm down the people on Race Department. He is basically trying to do some damage control for his game and for his company,” explains Masterlooser.
He continues:”I developed my cheat for about three and a half weeks. If there was an anti-cheat, I would have been banned during this development time. During that time I was playing almost daily, if there was an anti-cheat I would have been banned during this testing period.”
“I didn’t get my account suspended because I got caught in the net. What happened was people got enraged because I was really quick on the ranked servers and was cutting like crazy so people made forum posts about it that got deleted.”
“Basically I got banned manually. A developer confirmed he just banned me for 3600 years… Then i bypassed that ban by patching, jumping over the window that appears and then you are just capable of playing the game again.”
In other words, saying that Masterlooser became “enraged” because he couldn’t get into his account doesn’t appear to be strictly true…
“If I was enraged, I would have released it [the cheats] immediately. In the weeks between developing the cheat and testing it, I didn’t get banned. But when I publish a video about it, I do get banned.”
A week later, Masterlooser releases a second video detailing RaceRoom’s response. Another two weeks later, the cheats themselves were released meaning the whole timeframe covers just under two months.
The first version of the cheat was downloaded by 103 unique users. The latest version has only been downloaded only 46 times. He then explains that none of these people that had downloaded the cheat and used it had complained they had been banned, the only complaints were that the cheat became outdated with a patch for the sim.
“Why would I release something to get people banned? That’s stupid. If that’s the case I would upload something years ago to get all of you guys infected with a virus. I think most of you would trust me, I think I’m a trustworthy person but that’s just my image.”
Masterlooser says he expected to get manually banned when he first started using the cheats. With a game with such a small player base like Raceroom, there’s a very high probability that the player base will get upset when an individual receives third-party assistance.
“If you look at the servers that are running on the game now, all the servers are for free content. I don’t need to wait for a free-weekend [to take the cheat public].”
“The TL;DR here is that J-F here is lying to his player base for no reason. I think it’s damage control or something but it’s not a smart idea. If you look at the Assetto Corsa devs, they didn’t ban me but they acknowledged the problem.” Meanwhile, it seems the guys at RaceRoom are trying to play it off cool and aren’t willing to face the facts.
And that seems to be the case. We have reached out to RaceRoom on multiple occasions, looking for a comment on the situation regarding anti-cheats and the studios’ policy when it comes to dealing with cheaters and hackers. On each occasion, no meaningful comment is made.
In RaceRoom’s latest developer blog, they made a statement regarding cheating in the simulator:
“RaceRoom has anti-cheat measures, despite what you may hear from trolls out there. It is an always-online service and therefore if you do cheat, chances are high that you’ll get caught and we will lock your account. Forever. We don’t really joke around with that. If you get caught, then that’s it.
“Yes, we do have advanced anti-cheat measures and yes, accounts are getting banned regularly.
“Since RaceRoom is free to play, It’s usually on free content lobbies and free competitions that you’ll find cheaters before they get detected and banned. People with purchases don’t really tend to cheat at all due to the fear of losing their account for good.
“So yes, it is possible to cheat in any game and no, games having a fancy 3rd party anti-cheat system is not a guarantee of a cheat-free experience. It all depends on the tools available to detect but most importantly to ban and keep the cheaters away, and for that, you can count on RaceRoom.”
So, what is it? Does RaceRoom actually have an anti-cheats system in place or are these more empty words? If you are taking action on accounts, give us some figures. How many accounts have been banned in the last 12 months and how about the 12 months prior to that? How often are these accounts being banned, how are they being discovered and what punishment is there for cheaters? Is every cheater treated the same? Or does it just depend on publicity?
Once again, we invite RaceRoom to comment publicly on this situation. It is in the best interest of the sim and it’s users that this feud between Masterlooser and Sector 3 is settled, and done so with maturity.
