Why Does NO ONE In-Game EVER Believe Cheating Is a Thing?

General Discussion
1

No matter what mode it is, comp, qp, arcade, custom games… nobody EVER believes a cheater callout, even when it’s extremely obvious.

I while ago I was in a custom game, a “chill or kill” one. One guy was running around as Widow just killing everyone, even the people that didn’t want to fight and were just chatting and emoting. I killed him and then he swapped to Ana (for some reason), and I swapped to Sombra. I went invis and then ran to a corner and just sat there typing.
Dude turned on aimbot, slept me, naded me and then quickly left clicked me to death. I watched the killcam and he legit hard snapped straight to my head while I was invisible. He proceeded to do this another 4 times.

I pointed this out and was immediately met with “bro who would cheat in a custom game?? LOL” by the others. I pressed the issue and was then told that “i’m reporting you for being so toxic and lying about people cheating.” Everyone in the server turned against me and I was told if I’m ever seen in other game modes, they’ll report me there too just because they think I’m that horrible and toxic, no joke.

Another match, I was in QP. Picked Sombra at the start and was doing well on her until a Soldier turned on his aimbot and his aim would snap to my head while I was invisible. I tested it several times, running up to him but stopping before I got detected, and every single time he’d snap to my head while I was in stealth and almost immediately kill me.
I called him out on cheating, and was immediately met with “who would cheat in QP?? lmaooo” by the others, and “ur just mad because he clapped you three times LOL”. Nobody would believe me and I was labelled toxic and was told I would be reported.

Another match, a different player but the same situation. I’m Sombra and the enemy Soldier gets mad at me and turns on aimbot, snapping to my head while I’m invislbe and then tbagging after a kill. I call him out and once again I get “cheating in qp? lol bruh why would anyone cheat in qp” and am called a liar. Soldier goes even harder on hunting me down and using his aimbot to slaughter me and I’m once again told that I’m just trash and using cheating as an excuse for my bad skill.

Another match, Arcade, Low Gravity. Widow is very obviously aimbotting and is repeatedly getting headshots on anyone that gets in her vision, even for an instant. I get very suspicious and swap to Sombra and hide out near her while invis. At one point she turns around, obviously sees me while I’m there in invis, scopes in and kills me and then does a tbag.
I call her out and of course I get “bruh who would cheat in arcade lmfao it’s arcade” from the other people in the match and am called a liar and that I’m just mad that Widow is so good.

Another match, comp. Enemy Genji is cheating. He’s 100% snapping to people’s heads using an aimbot. In the killcam I’ll watch him snap 180 to behind himself and directly to my head in an instant and then jump around above me while holding right click while locked onto my head and the cursor not moving. He gets an insane amount of kills and nobody can do anything about him at all, even our Moira.
I call him out on it and… “lol this is gold who would cheat in gold?? ur just trash”. No one believes me, I’m just garbage and toxic.

Not once I’ve called out a cheater has anyone ever, even a single time, believed me. I am 100% of the time met with “who would cheat in -” in any number of variations, and get called trash by both the cheater and people on my own team.
I do not understand why people find it so hard to believe that anyone would cheat in this game. Do they legitimately think cheating doesn’t exist in Overwatch?

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in my book smurfing is cheating caught smurfing should be grounds for immediate ban of the account used for smurfing and all other accounts seen logged in by the same ip address or system

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My theory is, it’s like fight club. You don’t say that you are in it, or mention it or you’re out of the club.

There are so many cheaters in overwatch, who are aggressive especially when called out, that others have chosen to grey rock the abuse and pretend it didn’t happen or doesn’t happen. They know. You know.

What I have been doing is I don’t map chat tell the cheater, I team chat tell the cheater. Almost always met with silence but then those that have eyes that can see might start catching on. Inspire others with real feedback and that awareness spreads to others. Still you may and probably will encounter the cheater defender on your side, sure to make a mockery out of you. Honestly it’s sad to watch for them….i don’t know how that would feel to put so much of your self worth into a game. Life’s gonna be hard for them.

Deception is one of the finest blades the darkness has in its arsenal, and many of these budding narcissists abuse it heavily.

I think there literally are that many, enough to warp everything by being the ones who attack verbally and do anything to take the pressure off the responsibility they have to uphold a fair game.

Broken souls bro. They might get that hit from dominating, but it is poisoning them more than they can know.

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I’ve done this a few times and the response is typically something like them looking at the scoreboard and going “4 - 8, ur just mad cuz ur trash”.

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Yeah, if those people don’t believe cheating exists, then why da krunk did the Defense Matrix article released before S12 launch talk about banning over 500,000 cheaters?

And let’s not forget, OW2 was FAR from the only game with a cheating problem - TF2, Apex, even Call of Duty had their fair share of cheaters popping up over the summer.

So if anyone seriously denies cheating exists, then sorry, but I know cheaters exists. You know cheaters exist. And I know that you know that I know cheaters exist.

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A lot of people expect cheats to instantly snap to your head and have perfect 100% accuracy. Just save yourself the trouble and report them and move on. It doesn’t matter how many people report a user in a lobby anymore.

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One of the things I find makes people not instantly deny someone’s cheating is “Hey… player is landing a lot of headshots, anyone else looking at the killcams?” or “Their cassidy was suspicious, I’m gonna be looking at the replay”.

A lot of people react badly to aggressive cheater accusations for one of two reasons.

  1. People asking everyone to report someone for cheating always feels like someone trying to brigade someone else.
  2. They’re partied with the cheater and know it.

Quite honestly I rarely acknowledge the cheaters in game chat at all. I just report.

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It doesn’t help that people go on the forum and accuse ex owl players of cheating because they’re good at the game they’ve played for years. If someone seems weird I’ll mention it and check replay then report if needed. People also conflate smurfing with cheating which makes it even more confusing.

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Often without seeing a crazy killcam yourself, or outrageous numbers of headshot kills in a row, you think the person saying hax is just salty or bad.

Had a game a week ago where our dps was saying the Zen was cheating. I had yet to get killed by the Zen and had instead been farming him as Lucio so I just said Id focus him down for them and watch the replay after the game. Sure enough watching the replay after they died the first time two minutes in they stopped in spawn then proceeded to start locking onto heads through walls. They were sending full volleys of right click orbs onto our reapers head, but there were two walls between them. It was like they turned on a shaky cam with how fast they were target swapping between heads, sadly in just made them play worse and get constantly killed, so in game I just assumed they were a bad player over a cheater.

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simple answer because people accuse me of cheating :face_with_hand_over_mouth:
and I should know the truth

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“The why”.

1 ) Those that do cheat, do not want it brought to the attention of the community so they have to do information control in order to make it seam like it is “lesser of a crime” than what it really is.

2 ) There are those out there that just don’t know what cheating actually is. Until they have used it for themselves and go “thats a cheat!”

3 ) The word “aimbot and cheater” get thrown a TON as a “scape goat” to why a person lost. SO people believe that it is not a thing and that people just think everyone is “skilled”.

Im of the opinion that since the popular game store “game go” (That we will call it). Sells a cheat “device” , that it is being widely used. Now I know. The device itself, by default. Is not a “cheat device” until one loads the firmware onto it and then it does it. but that that is still a MFG intended operation.

I think what ultimately is going to have to happen is that a new system will have to be put into place that just flatout handles it and thats Skill prediction based match making.

It will require a re-design of the system, based upon your mechanical skills as a gamer and use a set perimeter to decide how “good” or “bad” one plays. and that it predicts you will be "this good’ with your mouse and that is whom it pairs you against.

Now, lets say if that FAILS (which it is going to) and thats either going to be suddenly someone is enabling cheats … or someone else is now playing that account.

So it should be able to recognize the skill jump and decide to take one of two routes.

1 ) MINIMIZE the IMPACT of this problem. - This means that if the person’s impact is growing substantially too great for the lobby they are playing in, the system should drop their CRIT and overall damage output of the player to make up for it. So the match cant be over-run by the cheater.

2 ) It could just go the route of ejecting the player from the match, penalty free. (Which most people here seam to NOT want. )

So it should go with “option 1” and that is minimizing a player’s impact. So when they do rage hack, or exceed that. they aren’t making any additional impact, and therfore devalues the cheat. Without having to spend boatloads of money on Anticheat resources which will never stop it anyway.

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Are you addicted to getting thumbs up or something? I just cant comprehend why you need to create so many topics…

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No, but when even I get called a cheater from time to time you just stop taking cheat accusations seriously.

Too many people throw around cheat accusations randomly for me to care about them. It’s really not that deep.

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I just do not care. What are we supposed to do about it? I play who they put in front of me. If they are cheating, they are cheating. It’s not any of my business.

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Usually it is just cheaters defending cheaters. Of course there are plenty of idiots who can’t even tell the blatant ones or play with their killcams off.

Next time someone defends a cheater check their gameplay in the replay.

Overall the feeling is similar to TF2 where it is a public secret that everyone cheats, therefore no one talks about cheats or gets ridiculed in chat by both teams since like 60% of the server are cheaters.

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yeah thats what people say that refuse to improve.
can’t beat them anymore, could be at your skill ceiling or everyone else is cheating.

the 2nd makes me feel better about myself :sweat_smile:

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cause they are stupid. thats all.

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I’ve been accused of cheating a few times.
Once by a reaper because i was listening to footsteps and knew someone was behind a wall.

And another time a zen accused me for who knows what reason. I guess i was checking for flankers too actively and my aim was pretty wild because i had a bad day with my hand tremors.

That said, i have been a victim of being headshot in stealth as a sombra. During the mirrorwatch event a widow on one map and an ana on another. Both times clear cheating as their aim snapped 180 to me while i was more than 20m away.
I just said “that ana/widow has a pretty sus aim” in my team chat.
No one chatted anything back, but i checked over the replays and it was pretty obvious. Especially their pov glitching when they turned the aimbot on.

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Well I think its two maybe three things at play here

  1. Most people NEVER see any aimbotters like that, so doubt would be the first thing they think.

  2. You are running around as Sombra to test it, which works for you, but your team likely cant see it and the enemy team wouldn’t dare admit they have a cheater.

  3. There is a chance the cheaters are using cheats only on you…

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They’d rather believe not, idk.

I’d rather believe people aren’t cheating but I see it so often I despair.