How I was banned / The State of the Staff Team

Usp45 · May 23, 2020

lnformative said: ↑

I'm sure staff really appreciates having leaked screenshots!
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What is this person's alternative?

SoCool21 said: ↑

To begin, I want to stress this as much as possible. Detecting ghost clients is NOT easy or simple. Anyone who tells you otherwise has never been involved in banning someone for a ghost client ever. There have been hundreds of thousands of dollars invested into ghost client hacks to make the job of detecting them as difficult as possible. By definition, if a client is easy or simple to detect, it is not a ghost client.

As well as this, there is no "standard" for detecting ghost clients. There have been decades of research and studies into stuff like advertisement, game design, staff management and other things Brawl does. There has been no research or studies into detecting ghost client hacks. There is no known "right" way to detect ghost client hacks. Yes, that includes the way you detect ghost client hacks, and it includes the way I detect ghost client hacks.

Unfortunately, we are winging it. I wish we weren't, but our only other option is to ignore ghost client hacks completely, which causes just as much backlash, as seen by the now-deleted "That's Crazy" thread from Dragoarg.

I'm going to go into this in more detail later in the thread.

Context

This screenshot has been completely taken out of context. Here is everything:

I made a decision when promised, and got back to him when promised.

I sent him a list of some clips the day after, on the 4th of May.

I continued to answer some questions after this about his appeal, as you can see in the main screenshot in the spoiler above.

Why I Stopped Responding

I stopped responding to him when he asked for updates on his appeal, despite there being no updates.

Unfortunately, staff are supposed to limit communication with permbanned players as much as possible. This is due to very serious threats that some permbanned players have made in the past. This is not written in protocol, but I have been directly told the following from a higher-up: "You have to stop talking to banned players" (context clearly implies permbanned players, not banned players in general).

As such, I try to limit speaking with permbanned players entirely except when doing so is necessary to resolve their appeal. I know that it is very unlikely that Cow would make any threats against me or the staff team, but I would have said the exact same thing about one of the people made the very serious threat that has caused this in the first place. Because of this, I will not be speaking with Cow directly on this thread.

I will answer questions from permbanned players once. If I have nothing to add, I won't be responding.

Why It Took So Long

Whenever a staff member posts a video of someone potentially cheating, I spend about 30 minutes going over the clip to make an initial response. Over the next few days, I then analyse it in depth, to try and prove that the player is hacking. If I think I have done so, I then analyse the video in depth again, to try and prove that the player is legit.

This process takes roughly 3 hours per minute of video. If players are using a badly configured ghost client, it may take 30 minutes per minute of video. If players are using a very well-configured ghost client, it may take 10 hours per minute of video.

I do this before the ban is made. However, since I wasn't planning on being heavily involved in Cow's ban, I didn't. When Miskey resigned, I had to go through this process after the ban.

This is combined with the other work I do for Brawl, and the work I do in real life. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, I have had to put a large amount of overtime in. My team is made up of mostly high-risk people, and it is on a project that cannot be worked on from home yet. In order to get this project to the state where it can be worked from home, I have had to put several hours of overtime in a day to do this.

Not to mention, I was on a training course with an exam. Anyone who's taken a BCS exam before will know how tough they can be. That week, I had to focus on the training course and revision. When I was done with that revision, the last thing I wanted to do was analyse Minecraft videos.

In short: 2 weeks to handle an appeal is not the norm. Due to an unfortunate combination of circumstances, it did take this long for this appeal.

Ghost Client Detection

This is absolutely one of the most controversial things on Brawl, and it is one of my biggest priorities to fix. Overall, a lack of trust from the community is Brawl's biggest issue, and the controversy surrounding it is worsening this issue. Trust me - I would not have spent 2 hours writing this response if I didn't care about fixing this issue.

There are several reasons why ghost client detection is so difficult to do. Here they are:

Every Ghost Client is Different

People seem to think that "it is impossible to do x with aim assist", as if aim assist is a tangible thing that exists. Aim assist is the name given to hacks that assist aim in ways that is difficult to detect. It is possible to do everything with aim assist. Everything we have as evidence against Cow is possible to do with aim assist.

Ghost clients are not based on some sort of blueprint. People seem to think that every ghost client works the same, as if the only difference between different ghost clients is the name. This is not, at all, the case. Every single ghost client works differently.

Not to mention, ghost clients can be configured. It's not as simple as fly, where you enable it and double tap space to start flying. There are all sorts of settings that the user can configure to make it more blatant or less blatant. Aim speed, activation range, aim acceleration and deceleration and target prioritisation can usually be changed by the user.

There will never be a "one-size-fits-all" approach to ghost client detection.

They're Designed to be Very Difficult

Those behind making ghost clients aren't a group of friends messing about with some code in their free time. Popular ghost client makers are functional businesses, making far more money than Brawl is.

Brawl has a voluntary staff team. The only people who get paid are the devs. Our staff team have lives - often, very busy lives. Our staff team also have roles on Brawl outside ghost client detection. We cannot improve our processes for ghost client detection as if it were our job.

On the other hand, the devs making ghost client hacks can absolutely make ghost client detection more difficult as if it were their job. It is their job. They're getting paid to spend dozens of hours a week working on better ways to make it harder to detect their ghost clients.

The only way any Minecraft server can counter this is if we start paying people to spend just as much time going after them. For reference, Hypixel pays $70-100k a year for their anticheat team. We do not have the resources to fight against ghost client hackers - and even Hypixel, with their millions in profit a year, are struggling.

There's No Known Right Way

With all sorts of things Brawl does, you can look at studies, research and international standards on how to do it right. Staff management? Every company does this. There's a huge industry based around giving advice to companies about how to manage their staff properly. Advertisement? Game design? Public relations? Leadership? Web design? Same story.

This is not the case with ghost client detection. Minecraft servers are left in the dark on how to detect ghost client hacks. There's very little collaboration between Minecraft servers because most just don't bother with ghost client detection at all.

I'm currently redesigning Brawl News. There are companies dedicated to giving advice on how to make a good newsletter for your company, and I've utilized several of these companies to make sure the News is as best as it possibly can be. I know with fairly good confidence that when this redesign is finally done, it will be done right.

Again, this is not the case with ghost client detection. I can't hop on Google and find "47 ways to detect ghost client hacks efficiently in YOUR Minecraft server". I can't take a look at how Hypixel or other servers do it because they keep their methods secret (and are in the same boat as us, albeit with more resources to dedicate to it).

People with marketing degrees have made blog articles and studies and websites that directly give me advice on how to make a good newsletter. There isn't anyone with hack detection degrees giving me advice on how to detect ghost client hacks properly.

We Have No Idea How Good or Bad We're Doing

When the Party update is released, I will know exactly how good or bad it does. We track playercounts, and we can measure player engagement before and after the update. If it does badly, we can conduct a survey to find out why players don't like the update. We can get qualitative and quantitative data on how well it's doing.

We can't do that with ghost client detection. At all.

We have no idea for sure if someone's ghost client ban is correct. We can't get a percentage of ghost client hackers that get away with hacking. We can't get a percentage of banned players who weren't actually cheating. There is absolutely no way to know for sure.

We could be doing incredibly well at ghost client detection with a 100% success rate. We could be doing absolutely terribly at ghost client detection with a 0% success rate. We have no idea, and neither does anyone in the community.

Even If We Did it Right, Nobody Would Believe Us

Let's say we come up with a new method for detecting aim assist. This hypothetical method is 100% accurate - it will never cause anyone to be false banned, and nobody can get away with using aim assist.

How would you, personally, know if our method works? Even if we told you what this method was, how would you verify that it works? Would you even be able to make an informed decision about whether or not this method is more accurate than what we're doing now?

Cow would be denying that he hacks right now regardless of if he was hacking or not. We do get people who admit to hacking, and not just to get unbanned - we have some people who admit to hacking to their friends only, and their friends pass this information on to us. Nobody ever admits to hacking early on after their ban. Some people who admit to their friends will continue denying to us that they hack years after the ban.

I also don't at all blame Cow's friends for believing him. It's my word against his - and who are you going to believe: Cow, someone who you've been friends with for years, or me, someone who you may have never even spoken to before? Many people make up their minds before they even see the evidence.

We could be absolutely perfect at ghost client detection, and in this hypothetical world, we would still get just as much backlash for our ghost client bans. The only way to avoid that would be by building up a much better level of trust between the staff team and the community - and if we did that, there would be no backlash for our ghost client bans even if they were false.

What I'm Doing to Address All This

First of all, I have asked xxMineSheepxx, Ritzy and yairster to look into how I handled Cow's appeal. xxMineSheepxx is the staff manager, Ritzy is the permban manager (who works frequently with appeals) and yairster is the substitute ban manager (who works closely with me to manage bans as a whole). In other words - I have reported myself to everyone so that my handling of Cow's appeal can be properly investigated.

I have also asked all Mods to do the same. I haven't asked anyone directly - I have sent a message in Mod chat, tagging all Mods, to give feedback. I have encouraged them to give this feedback to xxMineSheepxx if they would prefer to not send me the feedback directly.

When I'm done with the News, my next priority will be to write up a proposal based on all this feedback to change how ghost client detection and appeal handling is done. I will write up a protocol on how ban managers should handle these situations, so that we have robust instructions that will hopefully be more effective than what we're doing now. A proper framework like this will also be easier to criticise.

If I do not get a suitable amount of feedback, or if the feedback I do get is implemented and nothing improves, then I will make ghost client detection a far more public process to make it easier for community members to give specific feedback on how we can improve.

EDIT: I plan on responding directly to individual replies over the coming weeks. Unfortunately, I don't have the time to do it today.
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I'm going to be honest here, all the information in this post about ghost clients and their detection on Brawl should be reason enough to unban this guy and anyone else in a similar situation. Here you are literally admitting that you do not know if people who presumably use ghost clients are actually using them or not, yet this dude is still banned. You cannot prove this without an intrusive anti-cheat software, and Brawl most definitely does not have that. If a ghost client is made to very effectively imitate an actual good player, then why is anyone at all claiming to be able to "prove" that another person is using a ghost client? Literally nobody should be banned for "ghost clients" by merely reviewing a clip... ghost clients are inherently designed to look like a legit player with an unusual playstyle. You are literally banning people for being legit LOL

"Ghost clients" should never be bannable unless there is an overwhelming amount of common sense evidence that effectively (but not actually!) proves the person is cheating, and in this dude's case it's pretty obvious that this criteria hasn't been met.

BlueGuyARed said: ↑

I am deeply concerned with several revelations made on this thread. Yes, ghost clients are difficult to detect. However, there are proven methods of dealing with them. First and foremost, screen sharing. If memory recalls, Putty is dead-set against implementing any such policies. However, just because Putty refuses to allow it, doesn't mean that screen sharing isn't an option available to Brawl. There's a difference between having choosing not to do something and genuinely having no other options.

Second, BAC is a legitimate option for Ghost Client detection. It appears like Brawl is in a hybrid state where BAC hardware is active but not required to join. I'm not really sure what the story is here. I imagine the upper-staff team is trying to balance healthy player counts with the benefits of requiring BAC. However, it may be possible to circumvent both of these issues by developing a command that forces specified users to join with BAC. While hardware bans would be difficult to enforce, this would drastically decrease the number of cheaters.

I'm sorry but not sorry to say; there are methods to detect ghost clients far more technical than reviewing video evidence. Frankly, the fact that these videos were accepted is alarming.
also, sure, even these methods won't completely stop ghost clients. But they're much more effective than video evidence - which is basically nothing.

SoCool, I have tremendous respect for you. However, this method of reviewing evidence is deeply problematic. If you are spending this much time reviewing video, you can convince yourself of just about anything. Do you ever wonder why teachers recommend skipping problems when you're stuck? It's too easy to get in your head and overthink problems. While it might sound like a good idea to carefully review evidence, it does more harm than good when taken to this extent.

I'll admit; I'm biased. Speaking in IRL terms, I believe that it's better to let 100 go unpunished when they have committed a crime, then punish 1 innocent person. I don't believe in banning people without 100% proof that they cheated. That's what I always understood to be the policy at MCPVP, Brawl, and any other server I've worked on. Based on this statement, this is no longer the case at Brawl:

I recommend Brawl reevaluates the standards of their evidence, or reevaluates their detection methods.
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100% this; how this Cow guy has been treated by Brawl's ban system as a whole is actually sad

From an outsider's perspective, it is ungodly obvious that whoever were the staff in charge of this ban made up their minds first and began to basically justify the ban to themselves rather than being presented with evidence and then making up their minds later; serious witch hunt vibes in this thread and I know barely anything about CTF and its community.

In a word, this is unacceptable; in a few, this situation is reason enough to thoroughly reconsider the foundation on which the Brawl ban system stands.

Bootyism · May 23, 2020

The WarZ community supports you. #FreeCow

I agree with you 100% the staff are ****ing terrible when it comes to this stuff and I’m disappointed the way they handled your ban.. This wouldn’t have even happened if Brawl added a SS protocol but according to them it “invades” privacy... like what? Are you hiding porn or credit card numbers or passwords in your .minecraft file? Staff are very biased and I dislike the way a lot of them do things.. not just in your CTF community but as well in our WarZ community.

LeUniCow · May 23, 2020

@Sayan mixed messages.

SoCool:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/677123116417286161/713708336578691113/unknown.png
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/677123116417286161/713709637890867211/unknown.png
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/677123116417286161/713709950920032256/unknown.png
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/677123116417286161/713712361235808267/unknown.png
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/677123116417286161/713712521990766692/unknown.png

Miskey:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/677123116417286161/713716942825062450/image0.png

Raging_ · May 25, 2020

EmperorTrump45 · May 25, 2020

Raging_ said: ↑

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ggwp

LeUniCow · May 25, 2020

But in this case @Raging_ , the evidence is completely insufficient, can't possibly think of any grudges that could influence your thinking on this though?

Just gonna put this here as a reminder of who banned me.

xGhale · May 25, 2020

Raging_ said: ↑

Click to expand...

:xghaleconfused:

LeUniCow · May 25, 2020

They're talking about Avetis, who at the time I thought was cheating. The similarity between our 2 bans is that there was no where near enough evidence to ban for aim assist

Raging_ · May 26, 2020

LeUniCow said: ↑

can't possibly think of any grudges that could influence your thinking on this though?
Click to expand...

surely you arent talking about the ban that you and your goons failed to give me oh so miserably by putting in place a dumb rule made specifically for me, which may i mention, did not have any evidence to support?

honestly i'm not going to argue with you and say that the staff team is perfect and your ban was completely wrong. what i will say is that the staff is doing their best at what they are told to do, which is gather evidence for a ban and in your wise words "act on it." while the method may be flawed in someways, there arent many other good ways to ban people without an amazing anti cheat or adding screensharing. adding screensharing isnt going to 100% guarantee that you arent cheating. hiding hacks is quite simple and some staff cannot find it. ive always been advocating for the higher ups to implement screensharing, but staff might not necessarily find the hacks in question. hiding cheats is quite simple, and if they dont find anything on your computer you can just start cheating or continue to cheat (meant you as general term). to the people saying gEt A bEtTeR aNtI-ChEaT!! it is quite hard to make a brand new anti cheat from scratch and can cost a LOT of money. as mentioned before in this thread, hypixel is literally offering a salary of up to 100k a YEAR for developing an anti cheat. sure aim assist bans are dumb and instead they should have banned for something like reach, the situation doesnt change that there are many instances of you doing sketchy things that people may not have recorded. regardless of what many others are saying, i think the staff did a good job of handling the situation given the tools that they had. if you werent banned, people would have complained about the staff and since you've gotten banned people have compained about the staff, there really doesnt seem like theres a win-win situation. you should probably take this time from being banned on ctf to do literally ANYTHING else.

side note: to those who may say that they should get BAC or have players use lunar client, both of these clients can still have hacks injected into them. badlion client can fully have vape in it, and you can use an autoclicker on lunar client

that is all thank u for reading

LeUniCow · May 26, 2020

I agree adding SS won't 100% solve anything, but the staff would have a greater chance of finding a cheater than what they have now.

If the staff had banned me for literally any blatant hack that the videos supposedly show, it'd have been better for me, cus then they wouldn't have had to ban all my accounts. But then again, if the staff team banned me for like Kill Aura, they'd look like a laughing stock, which is why i get they didn't do it. However SoCool saying that 'aim assist' can get the hits of ForceField is just daft - does he just not want to say there's a blatant hack? I don't get it.

There's never a win-win situation for the staff team, it's what they sign up for (regardless of whether they can acknowledge that at the time). But I have to disagree with you on how the staff handled this, even other staff members are saying to me that what he did was weird.
I think I probably had more people in support of me before I was banned, then after being banned a bunch of people just assumed the staff were correct (i'm talking even before i made this post).

(yes i am taking the time to do/play other things, but CTF was my way of procrastinating from doing work, and now I actually have to do the work. This is not good.)

_SnowyStorm_ · Jun 8, 2020

What's a ghost client?

Also @LeUniCow the clips that you showed were weird. I don't think u were using aim assist but maybe click aura.

uuretch · Jun 9, 2020

as an outsider looking in, this seems more like an opportunity to hone your flick skills in an environment with a less fallible moderation system. they're not really giving you much reason to come back, let alone fight for over a month to get yourself unbanned when you could be playing anything else (or even just on another server, if mcpvp really is the only thing that scratches the itch)

LeUniCow · Jun 9, 2020

@_SnowyStorm_ Not sure if you mean ClickAura (Click Kill Aura) or Click ForceField. Either way, neither hack fully describes what happens in each video. ClickAura doesn't explain why i'm not looking at people when i hit them (in the same way that aim assist doesn't), Click ForceField doesn't explain why I am able to aim at people. Only lag, be it MC position lag or delayed hits, and my ability to aim on high sensitivity can explain both.

@uuretch I'm making a big thing about this for multiple reasons. First and foremost because the ban is false. However, mostly, I want the staff team to be changed so that other innocent players don't get banned -> It is most likely my friends who are next on the list. You're right, if I do get unbanned, i wouldn't play as much because of this occurance, but as I stated before, I am taking time to work and play other things. Contrary to popular belief, I don't actually spend 24/7 thinking about this (nice that you all care though <3), but seeing as my case hasn't been fully resolved - Still waiting on SoCool's explanations - I do still have opportunity to bring my ban back up and attempt justice.

Ok can someone please lock this thread now, i don't want any more notifs. If you still want to talk to me about this my discord is TheCow#7067

Lord_Roke · Jun 10, 2020

Lock requested.

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How I was banned / The State of the Staff Team

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How I was banned / The State of the Staff Team

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