Splatoon 2 has, unfortunately, been subject to a number of hacking attempts over the past few months, with many players reporting stories of cheating taking place online. Fans of the game have been using social media to share stories of others using unlimited ink cheats, rapid ink fire cheats, players who were using the Octoling characters before they were officially released, and much more, but one fan in particular has finally had enough.
In an attempt to get Nintendo to notice the issues and take action, one player used Splatoon 2's very own in-game leaderboards to display a very clear message. Using their profile to sit at the top of each competitive mode's board, and changing their in-game name around each time, the message "Please Add Anti Cheat" was eventually displayed in the game's official app.
Ironically, the user had to use questionable methods to achieve this, editing their X Power in an unlawful way. The user eventually took to Reddit (under the name PleaseAddAntiCheat) to explain their actions:
"I hereby claim responsibility for the recent incident on the Rank X leader board.
Splatoon 2 is a game that I love so very deeply. Despite having its connectivity issues, I think it provides a healthy and competitive environment for all players; it advocates strategy and a strong sense ofteam work. It is because of this, everyone enjoys Splatoon, and enjoys the fun of fighting for a rank or a league position. However, this will not be true as long as there are cheaters lurking around...
Nintendo, you're welcome to ban my console any time. My purpose was to call attention to the current issue that plagues the game, and I've done that. But my message is, please make protecting your players the top priority. Please add anti-cheat."
Soon after all of this took place, Nintendo removed all four of the player's score entries from the leaderboard - presumably for cheating to get there. There's a somewhat comical amount of irony going on from all parties here, but at least this confirms that Nintendo has indeed seen the well-intentioned message.
Feel free to talk this one over in the comments section.
[source twitter.com, via reddit.com]
Comments 67
I completely agree, I've had several matches ruined by hackers in both Splatoon games. I don't care if you want to risk it just for fun in private matches but don't ruin it for everyone else!
....it was an interesting way to bring attention to the issue though, even if it slightly goes against their argument
Not all heroes wear capes?
I don't think this goes against their own argument in any way. It's a "Look how easily I did this, and that's a problem" argument. No different than when a "white hat" hacker finds a critical security flaw and informs a company about it.
In this case, the company "Nintendo" has been told about it but has been inept to do anything about it. Now, it's time to go public.
Wheter you agree or not with this guy's actions, at the very least we know that Nintendo has seen the message.
Nintendo needs some of that Stability first before adding anti-cheats measures.
My hero!
@Aozz101x The Switch is stable enough as it is
Heck, if the Switch were a skyscraper, it could survive an earthquake, hurricane, and tsunami all at once, and still be so stable that it saves the surrounding buildings as well.
I... love him. Thank you Pleaseaddanticheat-san.
I think this guy had the best intentions at heart. Doing the wrong thing for the right reason.
Won't happen unless Nintendo rebuild entire network code from scratch. Not gonna happen. But gonna charge for that.
Hack in a Mario hat for my Inkling.
Seriously, why hasn’t Nintendo done gear like that? It could be locked behind an amiibo, I don’t care.
He is a hacker plain and simple.
If you hate hackers you hate this guy too.
If he has done this he has done other things.
You can’t do this by accident. He will of learnt by doing the very things he is complaining about.
I hate hypocrites!
I was fed up with this about a month ago and traded it in. Games is been in definately had people cheating, which makes for a bad online experience. Hopefully Nintendo are able to get a grip on this
Hahaha! That guy is a true pirate and I love it! Thatll send a grim message to the cheaters. If there is one thing more valuable than gold these days, its info. Get the dirt on those absolute ne'er do wells and exploit them!
This is a true good gesture from this kid,Maybe if Ninetendo stepped up to the plate and Did something about people cheating in Any Nintendo game this gamer wouldn't have done what he did which is a good thing us in the gaming community dispise cheaters profoundly it's just makes gaming frustrating and not even fun at all I play Fortnite often and thankfully I haven't encountered any Cheaters yet because Epic games takes Cheating very seriously and will give the Bann hammer to Anyone I mean Anyone who is caught cheating I Love that! Maybe u could learn something from them Nintendo.
@Stocksy 'Morality For 5 Year Olds' was one of my favourite books too.
I played against a hacker who teleported behind me and splatted me. Happened twice with that player. Since then I’ve been much less motivated to play.
That was stupid. "Please add anti-cheat" they say after deliberately cheating, to draw attention to cheating??? Just... why? We already knew it was an issue. This did nothing in the grand scheme of things.
@Maxz bravo. I’m sure “Morality into teenage years” is more your level.
Good hackers are cool dudes.
Bad hackers evil.
And I guess you pick which is which right?
You know best.
I don’t care either way. A hacker is a hacker.
@C-Threep I'm sure a lot of people think I'm hacking when they play me because of how good I am.
Though not really.
I do wonder if lag can sometimes give someone an unfair advantage. I just assume if someone seems to teleport it's lag. I have played matches where I seem unstoppable and people seem to have a hard time hitting me and then I wonder if the are seeing me in a slightly different spot than I actually am. Just a theory.
@GamePerson19
They wear fresh gear
Yo, dawg, I heard you hate cheaters so imma cheat to show how much cheating is a problem.
I get the point, but to go and cheat to the top to demonstrate that cheating to top is a problem is kind of in line with the mindset (on a more serious scale) of "eco-terrorists" and such. "If you don't stop the pollution you're going to kill the marine life. The marine life doesn't deserve to lose their habitat, so to prove how bad it is we're going to dump as much toxin in the river as we can so they all die and it'll contaminate the local water supply, killing the surrounding humans too, to showcase the destruction you're going to cause! That will bring immediate attention to the need for rapid change!!" Being so bent on the solution they want they're willing to do the same, or even much worse than the thing they hate just to achieve the goal they want.
Intent is what matters here. If the intention is to give yourself an advantage others do not have, you're in the wrong. If you're breaking the rules to add weight to the community's demand for fairness, you cannot and should not be put in the same category. They're just not the same thing.
Get the October expansion. I think Nintendo's response to the cheating was to inclede a challenge that trains people to splat hackers.
We play for Fun and Being FAIR.
Cheating & Hacking to Win = SELFISHNESS, ARROGANCE
Better NEVER Playing Any games rather than Cheating / Hacking.
@NEStalgia If it makes it any better, he didn't cheat in any matches. All he did was edit his X-Power directly to just place there, without playing a single match.
The hero that Inkoplis deserves.
@Jacob1092
Should I even ask what’s going on in your icon??
🤨🤣
@link3710 While I dislike the idea of him hacking Nintendo server data (potentially illegal to begin with), it is at least better that his doing so didn't interfere in actual matches.
I dunno if I've encountered any cheaters in-game, honestly. That being said, this should not be doable. I think at this point banning his console would really be missing the point.
But what can Nintendo do though? I thought all the hacks were originated from the existing NVIDIA chip vulnerability that no 'stability' update could patch it? (I have little knowledge in this area, and don't really want to know anyway.) Other than outright banning the offending console I can't think of any effective anti-cheat measures.
@Stocksy ...Is this satire?
@NEStalgia But what real damage was done? Nintendo has already taken the hacked scores down.
Japanese players totally ruin Splatoon 2 and suck all the fun out of it. I wish I could just play with North Americans and Europeans. Especially the French because they don’t fight back against anyone in anything. Especially world wars. Sigh...time for coffee.
@Stocksy I dunno, I thought @Maxz was being pretty comical.
But you can't really put things into a simple Good/Bad column.
For example. Say a hospital was hit with a ransomware attack (which has happened), and monetary demands were made in order to regain their systems, which comprised of thousands of patient records. Law enforcement then works with a private entity to hack into the criminal's system in order to nullify the ransomware.
In that example, you can't truly say that both hackers are bad.
Intent plays a very large part in every decision, and not everything can be quantified by a binary moral system.
Players hopping around in one spot the whole match are the bigger problem!
@Kimyonaakuma Though I mostly agree, is there a better way to bring attention to this? Just randomly reporting won't bring widespread attention.
@NEStalgia He didn't have the server.
@HADAA There's plenty they can do, as anticheat was in Splatoon 1
All they need to do is compare the data the player sends them versus serverside data to make sure it's legitimate. Right now, for example, setting your information locally just uploads it without any checks to the server. So you can suddenly set your x power to 10000, and it'll accept it.
Regarding in game measures, its a simple matt(relatively speaking) to make sure the weapon data player side matches the actual values they should be. That alone would be a major improvement. All this was in the original too.
Seems like he had good intentions.
Did Nintendo resolve the tick rate issue? I stopped playing because of it. Competitive online gaming sucks when what is happening on my TV is different than what the servers are registering. And no it's not my internet. It's a pretty big issue with the game that is well known on the internet. At least that's what Google has lead me to believe.
@Stocksy dude he may be a hacker but he has good intentions, you on the other hand are exactly why there is rasicm.
Im black myself so ill use another ethnicity to get my point across.
If one muslim does something radical like blow up some poo, you are the one type of person that will call all muslims bad instead of embracing the ones that try to live normal a life.
I wouldnt call myself a hacker but i will mess around with homebrew (had it on my wii and wiiu) cuz i feel nintendo robbed us from our virtual console on the switch and modding/hacking is the only way to get it back sort of.
But i never went online with cheats and hacks to ruin other people fun,
and i truly believe there are enough hackers with enough respect for the community.
@ThatNyteDaez no one likes you, go cry somewhere else, if this is what you complain about every day, your life must be pretty damn easy
@Stocksy I could easily do this too and I have never cheated in a game or hacked one. Not saying I am clever and thats the scary and annoulying part. Nintendos lack of forsight when it comes to online is quite astonishing, especially when you consider they will start charging soon.
Please add anti hero
The force is strong with this one.
Nintendo should ban his console and we, the readers, should ban Ryan Craddock, the writer of this article about hackers and actually the writer of almost all of the articles about hackers.
If all Ryan Craddock wants to do is talk about hackers then move to a hackers.com website.
i think with the online service coming out in 2 months its going to limit the hackers from cheating in games since it be more monitored.
Can't fault anyone for doing this, tbh.
@Cosats "hackers.com website" what?
@Cosats just like every other site that reports hacking?
@SmaMan Technically he would be a a "grey hat" because he wasn't hired by nintendo nor was he given permission to mess with their systems, but I get your point
@Cosats Grow up for once, will you?
@Stocksy morality in your teenage years still beats morality for 5 year olds. Bravo on mocking only yourself, dude!
@C-Threep i have felt the same way start to play paladins alot in place of splatoon 2 and i bought the octo expansion which was fun but not as good as i was hoping.
People think cheating to get the message that is easy to cheat is wrong? I mean, you can look at it both ways, he could’ve just done what everyone else is hopefully doing and sent a conplaint or a report or something and have some patience for Nintendo. But then again, he probably made them focus more on cheating instead of other things and will get what he every Splatoon fan has been wanting sooner. Or Nintendo could’ve just taken it as some kind of dumb joke but I don’t really think so? It sucks that a lot of fans are disappointed in Nintendo but I’m sure they are doing SOMETHING.
I'm surprised that Nintendo still hasn't learnt. I remember how MKWii died when hackers became plentiful...
I mean, if they can detect homebrew stuff on the 3ds and ban people, why not do it here?
Nintendo needs to run dedicated servers to fix this... No more p2p
It's one of the reasons why I haven't played much Splatoon 2, and it makes me worry for Smash.
This is why I stopped playing Splatoon 2. I loved it at first, but it eventually became unplayable do to hackers.
Back in the day, when online games were a new thing, cheating was kind of cool up to a point. It felt like wizardry. These days it feels like the most pathetic human filth has for some reason decided to let you know how pathetic they are. What is the point of cheating in a game? By cheating in a game, you immediately become more of a looser than you already were.
I really admire this. This reminds me of old school civil disobedience. It's a way to demand change that is disruptive enough to get attention, but doesn't actually hurt anyone. God bless, we need more people like this in the world. Not only in gaming, but in all areas of life. Speak up for what's right, demand attention, but do so in a civil way that demands change without ruining things for people.
Go! Save Splatoon 2! Go! I'm rooting for ya!
Good guy this one.
Let them fix the connection issues before anti cheat. I'd rather hanga round a cheater than to lose connection for no reason. The only worse experience would be UbiSoft games regarding connection issues, but Nintendo is closing in on them. And no, it's not my Provider, Router or general Connection. Only having this issue with UbiSoft game or Nintendo.
@SmaMan was right. People commenting here don't really understand the ethics of hacking. When a company refuses to secure a flaw in their system, you are within your rights to use the exploits found to bring more serious attention to the issue with the evidence of what you did, usually in non-harmful and humorous ways like this. In fact, this is a classic example of it.
What was done here was pretty routine. If a good person trying to help is your idea of a bad person, then you are the type that would have kept us so ass-backwards to the point that identity fraud would be rampant. The only people who can tell you what they are exploiting, are the ones who have done it. Nintendo didn't offer a reward to hackers to bring forth security issues for no reason after all.
But I thought we love hackers here at Nintendolife, I mean you glorify them all the time in the articles you post here.
I can see both sides of this argument but I will only look at the facts.
People are cheating in game and this makes other people unhappy due to losing for unfair reasons.
The real question: Is Nintendo here to make people happy, or make money before making its customers satisfied?
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