I’ve been out of the loop the last few days having only just logged in and out for my daily rewards to not know that a non-En Masse Entertainment source revealed that the next update for TERA (NA) will include XIGNCODE3 (that post on Reddit is not the original; the original (now deleted) was posted on June 4th on the official forums.
This is an anti-cheat software (similar to Gameguard) developed by a Korean based company (Wellbia). TERA’s product manager eventually posted a “response” on June 5th in what has been a growing thread over on their forums. The “response” was a post made in their announcements confirming the inclusion of the anti-cheat software.
To be frank, these anti-cheat/hack software (created by 3rd parties and licensed by many game developers) are usually circumvented and bypassed. On some systems, their scanning and hashing of files and monitoring of memory can be felt by players (client input lag and FPS drops due to the increased disk I/O on the former is not much different with how many anti-virus software work. I’ve played games with both of these software and some publishers set them up with some ridiculous parameters to the point where it is obnoxious. And there are other publisher settings where their presence is barely noticeable. In other words, YMMV as far as the performance impact.
Blizzard Entertainment created their own security system known as “Warden” which does something similar, but is obviously far more effective because well, it was written by them to work with ALL of their games. It is also backed by an actual security team. The actual operations is a tightly guarded secret so the following paragraph is what I’ve been able to come up with based on other information (plus my own personal experience overseeing IT operations on the networking and security side).
Warden utilizes metrics (known only to Blizzard) to determine when to automatically issue a temporary ban or in other cases when it thinks there is cheating happening, logging data that their security team can look out where an account can be flagged for more detailed (human) inspection. The reason for that is to have a long document trail of evidence (plus also to reduce false positives) because this information is then passed on to a review team which has several people who look at this documentation independently to determine whether or not it should warrant a permanent ban (game or total account closure). No system is perfect and some false positives do still get through (this document trail is what is consulted when dealing with players who petition a ban). Blizzard can afford to do this but many other publishers can’t afford that level of support. Just search this blog for “warden” as again, I used to have this blog dedicated solely to D3.
The larger concern though is how some of these anti-cheat software is installed, the elevated permissions they run at, their inability for all traces of it to be easily removed, their ability to be potentially misused for malicious intent (including privacy concerns). Privacy is a hot potato topic when it comes to anyone who used the Internet though given the amount of data tracking that goes on. I recently installed a new HP printer and the setup software attempted to contact no fewer than 3 data tracking/analytics services (I use a network tracking software on my Mac where you can explicitly tell it to inform you of each network request at which point, you can perform an allow/deny action for that address (it acts like a more granular firewall).
Ad blockers have become much more ubiquitous now that many sites have had to add detection code in order to ask the user to whitelist the site (some sites like Forbes completely prevent the user from viewing an article unless whitelisted). My greater point in bringing this up is that there is no true anonymity on the net and that all of us, are tracked in some form or another (primarily for monetization purposes for targeted advertising). But as the whole Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal showed, all it takes is a bad actor to misuse that personal information data.
These anti-cheat software utilize what can be defined as “rootkit technology” since they do tend to hide and protect themselves (to the extent where remnants of them remain when the game that installed it has been removed through the usual software removal process). So there is real concern for the potential misuse which is what folks are in a frenzy about. On top of that, it seemed like EME was not going to announce ahead of time the implementation of XIGNCODE and seemed to do so after enough noise was made. Not announcing anything is well within the boundaries of the terms of use we all agreed to. However, transparency is a much better option and EME did the bare minimum by making the announcement on their forum only. Also to be fair, Wellbia also provides a separate uninstaller.
As noted up top, these anti-cheats are mostly ineffective with what they are tasked with since there have always been means to circumvent them. Those who use the Javascript based proxy for TERA, will be able to bypass XIGNCODE for example with a proxy module that is being developed (showing the entire irony of the situation). K-TERA (as well as J-TERA) have always been using XIGNCODE and it has not stopped exploits from being used.
Cheaters and exploiters will always continue unabated because it has always been “whack-a-mole” dating back to when software actually used copy protection on floppy disks. It remains to be seen what type of settings EME uses for XIGNCODE with TERA (like if it just a file check at launch versus continuous monitor looking for stuff like memory injection as one example). Myself, I’m on the fence about this since there have only been a few anti-cheat setups that were going a bit too far (like Webzen with MU Legend where it flagged some setups for those using VM’s for their development). I mean I just played the LOST ARK final closed beta and it uses Gameguard (and had no performance issues).
UPDATE: There’s a huge amount of overreaction in the forum thread linked above which is only going to fall on deaf ears. The whole “I am going to quit” threat tactic has never worked with any game publisher/developer EXCEPT when those folks do make a big mistake and/or they actually do see CCU’s and logins drop drastically (and remain that way). The reality is that it is always a smaller vocal minority making these threats to quit.
Again, I’m no fan of these anti-cheat software primarily because they fail at their intended function and depending on publisher settings, can cause issues with other software. I would prefer that the game remained clear of it but this is what has unfortunately been decided. The best thing for players who are really against this decision to do is to truly “vote with their wallet” by not logging in and playing (since if it happens in larger numbers, that will have a potential impact on revenues they could have derived from those players). Myself, I’m going to continue to play but I also won’t be spending any new money (I still have nearly 16K EMP left and have enough discounted Elite vouchers from the prior months sales promotions). I know the newer product manager (seandynamite) came from NCSoft and I see the monetization of TERA looking more and more like it is with some of their titles there.
UPDATE2: An EME representative finally made an official statement regarding why XIGNCODE was implemented.
UPDATE3: Original topic locked and another thread created…. there are several folks in that thread who are beating a dead horse and need to just quit playing because EME aren’t going to remove it.
