What is used to try to reduce and eliminate cheating?
4 years ago

Is there any technology out there that can make sure that a machine or software isn't tampered with? I am curious. I want to do competitions for games like Speedruns and am curious what is done. Because I am looking to run leagues and tournaments that would work like a seasons, I want to reduce the need to eyeball every single thing to verify results.

United States

There isn't a one size fits all easy and automated solution for authenticating speedruns. Software and the machine are only two, very very tiny pieces of the puzzle when it comes to validating runs.

In example, some games and categories require proof of button presses in the form of an input display or hand cam. Some require full displayed game resets, settings displayed at the start or end of a run, or other things to ensure RNG manipulation is not done. There are some emulators that show input displays, frame rate, and other options that can further authenticate a run. Some emulators can even record a run and give detailed information about button presses, ram/rom state, and the emulator itself which can then be used to authenticate runs.

Fact remains though, that it's unlikely that automation alone would be able to catch someone who really puts tons of effort into cheating. Once they know what the automation is looking for, it would be simple to defeat. There's so much variation and so many things to look for. Heck, sometimes the best humans in the world miss things.

In most cases, in a tournament environment it would be highly obvious to experienced runners if a competitor was cheating or not following the rules, simply because tournaments take precautions, have experienced runners commentating, and most cheating is fairly difficult to do live without anyone noticing. If you want specific info on what is normally used, I'd ask the organizers of one of the many tournaments already running.

Erik1 and Tenka like this

If you a commercially licensed emulator box like the Nintendo classic consoles and it hooked up to the internet, could that work? Is it also possible with consoles? I was thinking of doing competition with switch online or Microsoft game pass.

Antarctica

Requiring people to play on emulator is a good way to get people to not want to participate. A lot of emulators, even ones officially licensed, have input delay compared to regular consoles that can make it harder to play the game effectively. This would cause a lot of grief for runners who have never played on a version like that. Additionally, they can often run slower than official hardware (the NES classic loses like a second every 10 minutes or something like that) so it would be counterproductive to a speedrunning competition to require everyone to go slower.

Also, cheating, especially in the form of hardware modifications, is rather sparse in speedrunning. Most people who cheat do so through splicing videos together to form a fake run (and even this doesn't happen as often as clickbait YouTube videos/series would like you to believe), they don't do anything to their consoles. I'm racking my brain to think of a case where someone cheated by modifying their console in some way and I can't come up with anything off the top of my head. You don't really need to worry about people modifying their consoles, it would most likely become obvious through gameplay if something special was impacting the game.

Erik1, Quivico and 3 others like this
New South Wales, Australia

Actually there was a runner recently who uploaded a video showing how he actually managed to attach a TasBot to his N64 and switch to it seemlessly live to run a TAS "amidst" a session. However I'd say this is a distinct outlier to the norm as the method used was rather complicated and he did it specifically for the "challenge of doing something different". But he did cheat and he did have his runs verified on the board before revealing they were cheated.

Nevertheless, it is possible. He proved that much. (I don't think anyone was really arguing that it wasn't possible though lol).

Krayzar likes this
United States

Just gonna reiterate that the best defense against cheating in a tournament setting is not any specific sort of device, hardware, or even general precautions. It's knowledgeable humans who know what to look for. I personally would be wary of any competition that relied on technological crutches almost exclusively. I'm sure many other speedrunners would feel the same.

ShikenNuggets and Erik1 like this