YouTube Gaming's Most-Watched Videos Are Dominated By Scams and Cheats 51
An anonymous reader shares a report from Wired: In January, all seven of the most-watched YouTube Gaming channels weren't run by happy gamers livestreaming the game du jour. They were instead recorded, autoplaying videos advertising videogame cheats and hacks, sometimes attached to sketchy, credential-vacuuming websites, according to one analytics firm. The trend has continued into this month, with five of the top seven most-watched YouTube Gaming channels last weekend advertising cheats. Take one example: As of this article's writing, a video featuring a cracking teenage boy's voice promoting an unconvincing "money glitch" in Grand Theft Auto 5 boasts 11,000 concurrent viewers. "So basically it's about glitching Rockstar's online servers and makes them send out whatever amount of money," says the voice. The video encourages Grand Theft Auto 5 players to visit a website called "Perfect Glitches," type in their gamer tag and the amount of in-game money they want -- up to $9,999,999,999 a day -- and hit "generate." But, ho -- the user must first prove that they are human by filling in their personal information on two other websites. [...] After you fill in your personal information -- anything from your address to your credit card number -- these types of sites will often turn around and sell it. Other times, sites that promise cheats or in-game money will download malware onto your computer.
While several YouTube Gaming cheat channels have disappeared since January, a couple of long-time users remain and many more keep cropping up. One particularly psychedelic channel features a 3-D cat in a Russian hat advertising free in-game money, against a background of gaudy Russian text and a scrolling chat box. Stitch from Lilo and Stitch dances on the top left corner. With 10,000 live concurrent viewers as of this article's writing, the video buoys the whole category for a somewhat niche shooter game called Standoff 2. It's unlikely that the bulk of those eyebrow-raising view numbers are real humans watching this stuff. Instead, scammers drive bot traffic to them to push the videos to the top of YouTube Gaming directories, where they can get the most exposure for the longest period of time -- a better position from which to dupe unlucky viewers. "The prevalence of these game-cheating YouTube Gaming channels with what appears to be huge numbers of bots complicates the narrative of the so-called 'platform wars' between Twitch, YouTube Gaming, Mixer, and Facebook Gaming," reports Wired in closing. "While Twitch's livestream directory might have a couple pirated sports streams or sketchy gambling streams, its top ranks aren't nearly as dominated by ads for cheats."
"If a chunk of YouTube Gaming's hours watched is due to this sort of behavior, then it may be a little longer until Twitch is knocked off its throne."
While several YouTube Gaming cheat channels have disappeared since January, a couple of long-time users remain and many more keep cropping up. One particularly psychedelic channel features a 3-D cat in a Russian hat advertising free in-game money, against a background of gaudy Russian text and a scrolling chat box. Stitch from Lilo and Stitch dances on the top left corner. With 10,000 live concurrent viewers as of this article's writing, the video buoys the whole category for a somewhat niche shooter game called Standoff 2. It's unlikely that the bulk of those eyebrow-raising view numbers are real humans watching this stuff. Instead, scammers drive bot traffic to them to push the videos to the top of YouTube Gaming directories, where they can get the most exposure for the longest period of time -- a better position from which to dupe unlucky viewers. "The prevalence of these game-cheating YouTube Gaming channels with what appears to be huge numbers of bots complicates the narrative of the so-called 'platform wars' between Twitch, YouTube Gaming, Mixer, and Facebook Gaming," reports Wired in closing. "While Twitch's livestream directory might have a couple pirated sports streams or sketchy gambling streams, its top ranks aren't nearly as dominated by ads for cheats."
"If a chunk of YouTube Gaming's hours watched is due to this sort of behavior, then it may be a little longer until Twitch is knocked off its throne."
Get What They Deserve (Score:1)
People looking to cheat and exploit get what the deserve. Especially in a multiplayer game where your actions directly or indirectly impact others. Your "enjoyment" of a game shouldn't be at the expense of others or feeding off their misery like some sort of emotional vampire.
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I'm not sure if there are cheats for Cities Skylines, but there are mods that can fix a number of shortcomings of the game. However you only compete against yourself so it's not really a big deal.
Paying for DLC for extra content - that's fine by me.
News Flash! (Score:2)
Re:News Flash! (Score:5, Insightful)
This sort of cynical attitude does nothing but normalize parasitic behavior.
Re: News Flash! (Score:1)
As long as its parasites that the parasites are infesting.
Re: News Flash! (Score:5, Insightful)
No. This is still not okay. Two wrongs don't make a right, but more importantly, hosts die and parasites move on. We should stop the parasites before they infect regular, non parasitic humans.
Basically, I and most other people do not want to live in a cut-throat, dog-eat-dog system. It's stressful and unpleasant. We would rather band together and collectively stop the parasites altogether.
The law still applies, even when the victim is also guilty of a crime.
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I couldn't agree more. As far as I can tell, the best way to avoid this on the Internet is to avoid anything that's popular. The Internet really has brought out the worst in the worst people, and spread it far and wide.
So YouTube's search results (Score:2)
are about as accurate as google's anymore. Makes sense. I'm done with them anyhow as they put videos as the top results of my search. I'm not watching a 10 minute video to complete a 10 second task.
My Game, Not My Video (Score:4, Interesting)
It seemed like it was of Japanese origin, but it gone now.
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Re:My Game, Not My Video (Score:4, Interesting)
Yep, it's YouTube Farming. Create a bot that goes through lists of things you feed it, like video games. Does a google image search and compiles the results into a video with some music and a few filters. Monetize said video and see if any views roll in.
Spam enough of these videos and a few will make money.
Wait let me guess... (Score:2)
Re:Wait let me guess... (Score:4, Insightful)
In a singleplayer game I'm completely fine with people cheating, as it can be fun to mess around in a game, or at the very least the only person you are "cheating" is yourself if you are using that to actually beat the game the first time. The broader issue is more and more games involve an online component where those actions can impact legitimate players. Either via causing massive amounts of inflation, or a more troubling "recent" trend of using them to have fun at others' expense.
Multiplayer used to happen on dedicated servers, but with companies wanting complete control while shirking moderation responsibilities, there is little to no consequences for cheating or generally ruining others' gameplay experience. And to those people especially I say, it couldn't happen to more deserving people.
Full disclosure: I had a stint of duping back when Diablo2 was relevant and in hindsight it likely contributed to the problems the average player had with trading for anything. The cost of many higher end items back then was dozens of Stones of Jordan, which might take several hours just to acquire one via normal means.
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Cause and effect... or egg versus chicken, if you will.
Many (if not most) multiplayer games are (one of more apply):
- Very grindy, with the purpose of extracting money from players, selling them boosters” and so on;
- Pay2Win (usually combined with the above). Either spend 6 hours a day on repetitive, meaningless tasks, or open your wallet and instantly buy said item or level-up.
- Promoting loot boxes
- Featuring ultra-rare items which are mandatory for end-game scenarios, items which you can either buy
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Basically, if duping makes a game not fun, it wasn't a fun game to begin with. It was basically a skinner box.
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a more troubling "recent" trend of using them to have fun at others' expense.
As someone who remembers the existence and widespread use of aimbots and wallhacks in Team Fortress (the original Quake mod) and Counter-Strike (the Half Life mod) and map visibility hacks in multiplayer Warcraft 2 via Kali matchmaking, I'm a little curious about your definition of "recent."
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I also played the original TF and CS, along with WC2 ladders via Kali. The part you're forgetting about are the consequences: You had to pay for the game, and the servers were maintained by fellow players, so if you did those things you could get them temp or permabanned from the server. Some servers would even share ban lists, so eventually you would find yourself having to play with a terrible ping on some far away servers because of your actions. Admins didn't even have to be in the game, you could eithe
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A fool and his money are soon parted (Score:1)
Re: A fool and his money are soon parted (Score:1)
President Trump, took a dump, in my shoe!!
My solution is legit (Score:1)
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Send a sealed envelope with $20 to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, no sender, no other message and then see if Secret Service starts to get busy.
Alphabet annoys me to no end (Score:2)
They should rename the service (Score:2)
Say it isn't so (Score:2)
"But, ho -- the user must first prove that they are human by filling in their personal information on two other websites. [...] After you fill in your personal information -- anything from your address to your credit card number -- these types of sites will often turn around and sell it. Other times, sites that promise cheats or in-game money will download malware onto your computer. "
Lol, this is my shocked face.
Signposts on the road to something (Score:5, Interesting)
The main reason that a lot of people switched to buying online was because they could read online reviews--but those can be faked a number of different ways now.
If you are an online merchant, you can buy reviews either way: good reviews for your own stuff, or shitty reviews for the competition.
If you are using an online marketplace site, you can buy poor reviews to get your competitors kicked off the platform entirely.
To top it all off, major online sellers are racing to the bottom of commodity merchandise sales, leading to the issues like counterfeit goods, serf workers and demolition-derby delivery drivers.
For some reason I doubt that the solar panels on the HQ roof are going to make this business model sustainable...
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No link? (Score:2)
There's a very solid argument to be made that I shouldn't post this link, and there will be time for that later. Right now I'm watching a 3D cat lip syncing to some crazy Ivan. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
quick question (Score:1)
I'm looking for an easy way though life. I don't want to work hard or learn anything. thanks for quick replies!
How? Why? (Score:2)
1: They literally don't have a single person in charge of content management. There's no way to prevent _al_l abuse of the system, but there's also no way anyone reviewing the system, or probably even just the metrics, shouldn't have noticed that 7 of the top 10 streams were automated content propped up by thousands of bots.
2: The people at the Youtube Gaming department/division/whatever level realize that t
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The priority at Youtube for content managing seems to be for political content. The moderators also have the overhead of dealing with the mass false reporting by an army of cancel culture SJWs. This implies the real possibility that they lack the resources or simply can't be bothered to care about cheat-scammers, as the likelihood of those ever causing another Carlos Maza style Ad-pocolypse is slim to none.
Priorities.
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1. They demonetise based on a certain set of behaviours such as swearing that are easy to avoid as a bot but hard to avoid when human. This kills off "real" content and allows exploitive content to survive.
2. They incentivise viewing patterns - such as watching the whole video - that are easier to fake with bots than they are likely to occur naturally.
3. They rabbit hole videos - IE if you w
Yet another high minded use for the internet (Score:3)
The various creators and pioneers of the internet must be daily saddened to see what we do with their creation.
Interesting cheating going on on GTAV (Score:2)
I started firing up my copy of Grand Theft Auto V on my Windows gaming laptop a bit lately, since I got a little bit "sucked in" to the multiplayer game mode after some of their recent additions like the casino, and them kicking the year off by giving players $1 million in the game just for logging in during a certain week. (I refused to pay in to those "shark" cards or any of that nonsense to spend real money on in-game credit or merchandise. But it really does force you to do some boring "grinding" thro
I hate yuo myg0t (Score:1)
Sorting out the dull (Score:2)
If you feel the need to give out your freaking CC# because you are too lazy to do it the right way, then you get what you deserve.
Now excuse me, I must play the world's saddest tune on the world's tiniest violin.
There can be variants (Score:1)
There are many games which people watch on Youtube (Score:1)