Official statement on custom clients / mods

[InnocentFarmer]

you have some proof of this?

It's pretty known thing, Hell I think everyone has played H&H for some time knows that there are people who use those clients.

[sabinati]

That isn't proof, it's conjecture.

[Speljohan]

There are a couple of tricks that can be used to prevent any kind of modification really, but they require significiant time/resource investments for implementation. I won't go into huge detail, but it entails having a "unique" obfuscated client for each session, and the obfuscation would have 10-11 different variants randomly chosen for each session. Add to that a nice little encryption on the client protocol for each revision push. It's still breakable, but the time investment required to do such a thing would be too much for most to handle.

(This is what Jagex do, and the sole reason they've managed to minimize automation in their games like no other company has before)

Like i said though, the amount of time and resources you'd have to spend is pretty severe, and it's definitely not a good option unless you have a team completely dedicated to doing this.

[painhertz]

(This is what Jagex do, and the sole reason they've managed to minimize automation in their games like no other company has before)

Botting is rampant in Runescape...not sure what dimension you're from.

[Dallane]

(This is what Jagex do, and the sole reason they've managed to minimize automation in their games like no other company has before)

Botting is rampant in Runescape...not sure what dimension you're from.

i was loling after reading that

[Potjeh]

I don't see any of these measures working against client extensions that plug into display buffer and keyboard buffer.

[Speljohan]

(This is what Jagex do, and the sole reason they've managed to minimize automation in their games like no other company has before)

Botting is rampant in Runescape...not sure what dimension you're from.

I'm guessing you haven't seen the development in the past 6 months or so. There's extremely few functional bots thesedays due to the sheer amount of effort required in writing one. When i started doing this kind of crap back in 2005 it would take a week tops to write fully functional automation software that could handle updates with no issues whatsoever. Now you basically have to work on it full time to keep up with them.

The exception is (of course), colour-driven bots. They are usually a hassle for people to set up though (not to mention inaccurate), therefore they aren't particularily popular.

I don't see any of these measures working against client extensions that plug into display buffer and keyboard buffer.

You are correct about that. It does limit the options on what you are able to do though.

[painhertz]

I'm guessing you haven't seen the development in the past 6 months or so.

You're guess is incorrect.

[MagicManICT]

You're quite correct that these things take Time, Money, and Resources, none of which this development team has currently. Where you see these anti-hacks implemented are in large budget projects or through conglomerates (like Nexon) where a parent company develops the tools and methods and the game dev just needs to implement them at a fraction of the cost and time it would take others to get it done.

[Procne]

If people prefer to automate their gameplay with some bot instead of playing themselves then I find it more of a design flaw, than lack of security. Games are supposed to be fun and interactive, not boring and repetitive. Although I guess in most cases MMO creators disagree with this