I got a tip about a new and growing member in the fight against online cheating. Having received this tip from a good mate, I decided I would look into it a bit, and I daresay it was worth while. The group of which I speak is one called “Anti Cheat Incorporated”, or simply “ACI”. Put simply, the group is working hard to curb the cheating situation in the popular online game America’s Army. I had the opportunity to speak with one of the founding members of ACI, named Reaper, in an interview today. Going into it I knew little of ACI, outside of them being an anti-cheat community, but at the close of our time I had learned quite a bit about the work they do.
I am always interested to know how such groups form, so naturally this is where I started. I found that ACI is fairly new on the scene, but seems to be coming up quite strong. They truly are a grassroots organization, finding their start on the ever inc.cpopular “Tracker” site for America’s Army (AA). Reaper tells me that he joined in with another individual with the goal of creating what is today ACI. Together they build a site and worked on developing Cvar checks, whereby they could determine if someone was using cheat related Cvars, and on 6 January 2004 group would become known as ACI emerged. At this time the community, calling themselves “Anti Cheat Community”, were knew to the scene, and a misunderstanding between the leadership lead to the resignation of one of their founders. This prompted a re-establishment of the community and the renaming of it to “Anti Cheat Incorporated”. Continuing with their grassroots efforts, the team of approximately ten members set out to various forums and sites offer what help they could in the fight on AA cheating. IN addition to spreading the word, they spread the finished product, banned cheaters. ACI took it upon themselves to patrol servers and watch for cheaters. Using Punkbuster Screenshots they then would send the server admins the cheater’s information so their ban lists could be updated; something they continue to do today. By doing this, they found support amongst the AA community and started to grow. Today ACI protects 25+ AA servers and continues to offer its services to any who wish to participate. ACI protected servers run updated ACI ban lists and Cvar checks that are updated daily. This provides servers with a barrier between the communities they serve, and would-be cheaters.
Reaper rates the cheating problem in AA as terrible, but doesn’t fault Punkbuster like many others on the AA scene. He sees Punkbuster as a valuable tool and points out where the real problems might lie. On this issue he had this to say:
“Right now a lot of the problems that are blocking Punkbuster from working in America’s Army are to do with the actual cheats and the way the game is coded”