There has been polemic about cheating on this league, from its start, however, the situation became unacceptable some weeks ago.
We feel in the current instances we have plenty of evidence, as Phear said, it was not as easy to verify in the past as it is now. Thats why actions are taken now, and will be in the future.
These have been a long and hard decisions as we didn't have any reference from previous actions taken in the past.
This is what has been decided by the admin team:
Deadly
* Proven that he cheated on non-league games.
* Dems, servers logs as well as several ICQ and IRC logs
* General opinion of the community
* His own admission of the matters.
Just to make clear here the main reason for the ban is not other ppl accusations but enough proofs that we feel it is convincing.
Actions taken:
* 1 month ban on league games and every league server.
* Player account suspended.
* No punishment on forums/IRC.
* No punishment against Mod/tf/Mr as there is no proof he cheated on league matches for those clans, we have specced a few of his games recently and are happy that he did not cheat during them.
After this month ban expires his account will be reactivated and he will be able to play league matches again.
During the next 2 months he MUST send the admin team dems from every league game he plays on, on request.
Failure to send a single map dem on request will result in extending the ban 1 extra month. 2 months if it happens again, permanent ban for the 3rd time.
However, if he is caught cheating again, either league games or public servers, the ban will be permanent and irrevocable.
Doctaluv
* Proven that he cheated on a league match.
* Proven multiclanning and mercing
* Dems, servers logs as well as several ICQ and IRC logs
* General opinion of the community.
* Several user accounts
Just to make clear here the main reason for the ban is not other ppl accusations, nor mercing, but conclusive proofs of cheating during a clan war.
Actions taken:
* Permanent ban on league games and every league server.
* All player accounts suspended and removed from every clan he is member in.
* Forum account banned.
* Match he got caught cheating on rescheduled (as agreed by both clans).
* Normally the clan would have 5% of their score removed, in this case, we cannot apply this as its a HZ clan without score.
This ban is effective immediately and is permanent and irrevocable.
Differences between bans
Cheating on public games will be punished on this league.
UTA League admin team works together with many assault public servers admins and providers (and not only assault servers)
In some cases it's possible to get server logs &/or IPs from public games, and compare with forums/league databases.
As the numbers of players in the community reduces we need to ensure that we do not drive people away with cheating. The people you play with on public servers and the people you play with in clan wars are often one and the same.
As it wouldn't directly affect a league game, clans don't get any punishment in this case.
However, cheating on a League Match will never be acceptable, the resultant ban is permanent and irrevocable, providing we are satisfied with the proof.
Match will be rescheduled or lost by forfeit, depending on the kind of cheat and situation. Clan involved will also be penalized, usually by 5% deducted from their points.
Further actions to be decided in case of clans allowing banned players to play for them again / cheat again.
@humphro: If you are caught cheating on public servers you will be banned on this league too (see Deadly's case), permanently if it happens twice.
@dj: Deadly has been specced on several League Matches and public games recently. Certainly he didn't cheat on those League matches, therefore we will not apply a permanent ban. We tend to believe that he tried the bot but he plays clean now.
Your dems are in fact inconclusive since you can't track another player aiming/mouse movements unless you are speccing him on behindview 0 when you record the dem.
IRC / ICQ logs are not convincing either, as they are easily manipulable and basically proves nothing.
Same thing for the massive mails/pms we got these days.
Proves nothing, just makes the suspicion stronger, but suspicion is not enough to ban someone over.
@jinxed: your 'proof' was inconclusive as well. There are a trillion of reasons why a server could lag at certain points. Serverkfdsd is already protected on the servers, and it was at the time you sent those dems.
As for all kind of comments I've read about the admin team passiveness, most times we shouldn't need to explain the reason why something is done or not.
Furthermore the admin team are also human people with a lives, jobs and things to do. We cannot be here 24/7 to spec every match we are requested to do. That's why Deadly is required to send dems for his matches the next 2 months after the ban expires. If we request a dem and he couldn't record, we are not accepting 'demomanager didn't work' or any other excuse. It's up to him to take the risk and play League Matches during those months.
Security
The community seems to have the impression that the admin team is doing nothing about the security of servers. This is totally wrong. We just can't keep you all updated of changes or security methods used on this league cause they would be easier to bypass if we did.
League servers are reasonably secure. Actually more secure than most public servers using utpure or any other kind of protection.
We cant use ASH on league, we did test it and it has several bad side effects on assault you prolly are not aware of. Hacked versions are easily available. This is not a real improvement on security. Exactly the same for UTPure.
For the future, UTA is developing its own anti-cheat-protection to work together with leagueAS. It's being tested and will be ready to use soon.
Also a new leagueAS release will come out soon, now that Polle took over LeagueAS development. It will fix some maps bugs as well as improve security on every aspect, native ut code bugs (can't enter into details here), and new features.
We are hoping a new release would make this league as secure as we can expect.
We are also looking forward for UTPG project and MD5!
Notes
We are aware this announcement took rather longer than the community would have hoped, but there were a LOT of issues needing discussed in great detail from many angles, we did not want to commit to anything until we had everything covered.
We feel in the current instances we have plenty of evidence, as Phear said, it was not as easy to verify in the past as it is now. Thats why actions are taken now, and will be in the future.
These have been a long and hard decisions as we didn't have any reference from previous actions taken in the past.
This is what has been decided by the admin team:
Deadly
* Proven that he cheated on non-league games.
* Dems, servers logs as well as several ICQ and IRC logs
* General opinion of the community
* His own admission of the matters.
Just to make clear here the main reason for the ban is not other ppl accusations but enough proofs that we feel it is convincing.
Actions taken:
* 1 month ban on league games and every league server.
* Player account suspended.
* No punishment on forums/IRC.
* No punishment against Mod/tf/Mr as there is no proof he cheated on league matches for those clans, we have specced a few of his games recently and are happy that he did not cheat during them.
After this month ban expires his account will be reactivated and he will be able to play league matches again.
During the next 2 months he MUST send the admin team dems from every league game he plays on, on request.
Failure to send a single map dem on request will result in extending the ban 1 extra month. 2 months if it happens again, permanent ban for the 3rd time.
However, if he is caught cheating again, either league games or public servers, the ban will be permanent and irrevocable.
Doctaluv
* Proven that he cheated on a league match.
* Proven multiclanning and mercing
* Dems, servers logs as well as several ICQ and IRC logs
* General opinion of the community.
* Several user accounts
Just to make clear here the main reason for the ban is not other ppl accusations, nor mercing, but conclusive proofs of cheating during a clan war.
Actions taken:
* Permanent ban on league games and every league server.
* All player accounts suspended and removed from every clan he is member in.
* Forum account banned.
* Match he got caught cheating on rescheduled (as agreed by both clans).
* Normally the clan would have 5% of their score removed, in this case, we cannot apply this as its a HZ clan without score.
This ban is effective immediately and is permanent and irrevocable.
Differences between bans
Cheating on public games will be punished on this league.
UTA League admin team works together with many assault public servers admins and providers (and not only assault servers)
In some cases it's possible to get server logs &/or IPs from public games, and compare with forums/league databases.
As the numbers of players in the community reduces we need to ensure that we do not drive people away with cheating. The people you play with on public servers and the people you play with in clan wars are often one and the same.
As it wouldn't directly affect a league game, clans don't get any punishment in this case.
However, cheating on a League Match will never be acceptable, the resultant ban is permanent and irrevocable, providing we are satisfied with the proof.
Match will be rescheduled or lost by forfeit, depending on the kind of cheat and situation. Clan involved will also be penalized, usually by 5% deducted from their points.
Further actions to be decided in case of clans allowing banned players to play for them again / cheat again.
@humphro: If you are caught cheating on public servers you will be banned on this league too (see Deadly's case), permanently if it happens twice.
@dj: Deadly has been specced on several League Matches and public games recently. Certainly he didn't cheat on those League matches, therefore we will not apply a permanent ban. We tend to believe that he tried the bot but he plays clean now.
Your dems are in fact inconclusive since you can't track another player aiming/mouse movements unless you are speccing him on behindview 0 when you record the dem.
IRC / ICQ logs are not convincing either, as they are easily manipulable and basically proves nothing.
Same thing for the massive mails/pms we got these days.
Proves nothing, just makes the suspicion stronger, but suspicion is not enough to ban someone over.
@jinxed: your 'proof' was inconclusive as well. There are a trillion of reasons why a server could lag at certain points. Serverkfdsd is already protected on the servers, and it was at the time you sent those dems.
As for all kind of comments I've read about the admin team passiveness, most times we shouldn't need to explain the reason why something is done or not.
Furthermore the admin team are also human people with a lives, jobs and things to do. We cannot be here 24/7 to spec every match we are requested to do. That's why Deadly is required to send dems for his matches the next 2 months after the ban expires. If we request a dem and he couldn't record, we are not accepting 'demomanager didn't work' or any other excuse. It's up to him to take the risk and play League Matches during those months.
Security
The community seems to have the impression that the admin team is doing nothing about the security of servers. This is totally wrong. We just can't keep you all updated of changes or security methods used on this league cause they would be easier to bypass if we did.
League servers are reasonably secure. Actually more secure than most public servers using utpure or any other kind of protection.
We cant use ASH on league, we did test it and it has several bad side effects on assault you prolly are not aware of. Hacked versions are easily available. This is not a real improvement on security. Exactly the same for UTPure.
For the future, UTA is developing its own anti-cheat-protection to work together with leagueAS. It's being tested and will be ready to use soon.
Also a new leagueAS release will come out soon, now that Polle took over LeagueAS development. It will fix some maps bugs as well as improve security on every aspect, native ut code bugs (can't enter into details here), and new features.
We are hoping a new release would make this league as secure as we can expect.
We are also looking forward for UTPG project and MD5!
Notes
We are aware this announcement took rather longer than the community would have hoped, but there were a LOT of issues needing discussed in great detail from many angles, we did not want to commit to anything until we had everything covered.
Every bugger from XMen turning up and flaming the admins.
