Public Opinion: Rizzuh from CS-Nation

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The staff of Counter Hack is proud to announce the one of our newest projects: Public Opinion. This project is designed so that players from all different genres of games can see what other famous players or people involved in the gaming community. We decided to start off Public Opinion with founder of the official Counter-Strike News website, Rizzuh. We are very grateful for his time at answering these questions we asked him, and find his answers not only very positive, but very encouraging towards VAC, which of late has been a target of critisim. We hope you enjoy his responses, and if you wish to ever find out more information on Public Opinion, you can continue on here.

1) What is your basic gaming background For yourself?

I've played console games all my life, but really my friends were more interested in them than I were. With Goldeneye 007, I finally became a gamer myself. I moved to the PC with Rainbow Six and then Half-Life a few months after it came out.

2) Do you thinking cheating is out of hand in Counter-Strike? Why?

Relative to the days of CS 1.3, no not by any measure. Cheating is popular, but it's hardly a casual past-time and now requires the "hacker" to be on his toes.

3) Do you think VALVe Anti-Cheat is working well, or could be better? Why?

VAC has been more dormant recently. I feel that this is for a major reason, possibly involving Steam and CS 1.6.

4) What's your opinion on Cheating groups whose sole purpose is to cheat, or use cheats to accomplish other goals?

Cheating groups do something they find fun. It's sad that they don't balance their fun with the fun of others, or with common respect, but what they do is basically their business. Groups like myg0t, etc. are made up of a wide range of people, but all-in-all their impact is far smaller than most would have you believe. Most cheaters have no affiliations, and those cheaters are the real problem.

5) What do you think is the future of on-line gaming and cheating on on-line games?

Cheaters often say that "everything can be hacked." This is logically true, but used in for a false purpose. Every game can be hacked, but so can every cheat. And in the end, the cheaters don't make money and aren't the most dedicated people in the world. VALVe has proved with VAC that cheats can be curbed, as has Tony Ray's PunkBuster. Look where OGC is today. To credit VALVe, it's on an entirely different game right now. Along with stable network code, clearly anti-cheats will have to become a standard feature in multiplayer games. VALVe made a nice in-house solution and I'm please with that. Only the most popular games will be hacked in major ways, anyway. A few games a generation will have major exploits and gamers will have to deal with that while the respective companies deal with such issues.

6) Any remarks would you like to add?

Yes, please. While it's very easy to take the pessimistic view of "people can still cheat!!!" it is very myopic to do so. Cheating is no longer as popular as it once was in CS, and it never will reach that level again. To say that VALVe's efforts are a waste because a few cheats have leaked through is .. well, I don't have to explain this. Play Counter-Strike. I know now that people who are good players are absolutely that and not cheaters. I play with that confidence, and this community's anti-cheat has reached the stage where other gamers should feel the same way.

- rizzuh

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CategoryPublicOpinion