Ermin Hamidovic: Sim Racing Has NEVER Been Safe From Cheaters

Editor

Ermin Hamidovic is emerging as one of the more sensible sim racing commentators of the boom era, his journey in this niche esport reflecting the path of many, disillusioned with online he enjoys the comfort of AI racing and hot-lapping.

He weighs in on the Callum Cross2 cheating debate with the hard reality of where sim racing stands right now, in the wake of the revelations that the ‘hobby-hacker’ ran the cheat on iRacing for a year without detection until ace Brazilian iRacer Bruno do Carmo bust the cheat in a GT3 race at Suzuka, before coming clean in the exclusive interview with Sam Tomlinson.

Ermin’s video on this matter is essential viewing for every sim racer.

3 Responses

  1. Yes, but of course then you have additional problems caused by latency – it’s hard enough now when the server/client is only having to exchange minimal data with each other, car positions etc.

    You have to account for car models, track models and the game software itself with its physics engine – so to make it work smoothly, it’s hard to see how a fully remote system could operate and still maintain a level playing field for competitors.

  2. In the end it boils down to: if the game software is client side, cheating will rampant be hard to detect let alone police. Server side gaming, not only for simming, has to be the future for this to be checked.
    Also finals of big esports events should be at neutral venues with standardised PCs and equipment.

  3. There seems to be a common misconception that the cheat is hard to discover and combat if it’s only stealing a few tenths advantage here and there.

    This is wrong.

    The methods employed to catch cheating by anti-cheat software and within the gaming software are not basing detection on performance factors (although the latter may log these) – they are checking the integrity of the code being run, or the ‘instructions’ that are being generated, and looking for modifications first and foremost.

    Anti cheat software can run these checks at a very low level – not in the user space of applications but in the space where the low level architecture of the operating system interacts with the computer’s hardware systems – cpu, gpu, wired memory etc etc. Cheaters also have to match this. In this sense, combatting cheaters is not a simple matter for game developers as it’s not their software that’s being exploited at this level, its the operating system’s management and processes.

    And, to the Editors, if you think game developers are reluctant to talk about these ‘hacks’, try it on with Apple, Microsoft et al and see where you get.

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