https://nexus.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/2018/10/dev-removing-cheaters-from-lol/
Where is the data coming from?
Why is it a secret to hide how many cheaters there are?
Why is the one thing Riot always says "secret"?
If you KNOW there are X cheaters and boosters, why are they not ALL banned immediately?
If you ban cheaters/boosters immediately, they can use data on what their programs or behaviors were identified to determine precisely what Riot is looking for. They'll then be better able to design around it or account for it and cheat/boost in harder to detect fashions.
So the reason why they don't immediately ban every single time they detect a cheater is because that gives programmers ways to avoid detection better the next time.
So for example:
Cheating program uses A, B, C, D, E, and F methods of altering the game or altering inputs or have other applications that are running that use specific codes that are detectable because of input alteration or output altering and or filtering or packet sniffing or process monitoring or various other methods to cheat.
Riot has detected A, B, and C about the program
Week 1: Players use the third party software. Get banned Week 2: Programmer takes out A, still uses B, C, D, E, and F. Week 3: More players use third party software, get banned. Week 4: Programmer takes out B. Still uses C, D, E, and F. Week 5: Players gets banned. Week 6: Programmer takes out C. Week 7: Players don't get banned. Week 8: Programmer now advertises that the program is undetectable with Riot's current measures. Riot now has to invest more money into R&D into detection methods. This means there's going to be a spike in cheating and then a long down time until they discover a new way to detect the third party program. They're now on a huge time crunch to keep up with programmers and it just becomes a race and resources get allocated from things like the player behavior department, map/event content development, hero development, etc... and into anti-cheat detection.
vs
Week 1: Player uses third party software. No bans Week 2-7: Programmer thinks the program is undetectable. Advertises it like in the first scenario and Week 8: All the users get banned. Riot doesn't have to spend as much money into R&D for detection methods because the programmers don't know what aspects of their cheating program were detectable. This means they have time and can continue to observe and test the cheating programs that are out there and still have reasonable allocations to the other departments which can generate more income for the company to ultimately help expand the anti-cheat department in the long run.
Ultimately, the cheaters get banned in both scenarios but Riot is indirectly giving away information to the programmers each time they issue bans. Both methods discourage cheating, BUT one is significantly less costly to Riot. It's cost effective for Riot this way.
Cheaters will always make the game miserable for honest players. It happens in all games. It's just a crappy situation.
They keep their methods secret so the people designing and using the scripts dont know exactly what to tweak to fly under the radar
Because if you give exacts, its easier for them to tailor what they do to try to slip by detection.
Lets put it this way;
Assume riot detects for x in bots, and assume that if x is detected, it auto bans you instantly. Either after 1 game, on LoL startup, whatever.
Now, all the botter has to do is adjust their stuff one thing at a time until they can play that 1 game without getting banned/connect/whatever. Now they know exactly what riot bans for.
However, if you ban at random intervals, you dont know what got you caught or where or when, and its harder to test (plus its much more lost time)
I can imagine how accurate their statistic is, when they kick you out of the game when you have a FOLDER opened named "Cheat Engine 6.7", the actual program not running, ONLY THE FOLDER IS OPENED.
Their anti-cheat team is probably a bunch of fresh graduates from from a noname university without any experience :D
If you KNOW there are X cheaters and boosters, why are they not ALL banned immediately?
How do you know they do not do that? They know about X cheaters and boosters. Why do you assume less than that are banned? Reading that article... There are metrics that they even say they ban cheaters and scripters...
Am I missing somethign?
Also, what do yo umean by the secret statement?
It's the same reason why it can be smart to leave a spy in place if you know who they are: you gain the upperhand.
In this type of an environment t,he advantage that gives is pretty simple: you can make them think what they're doing is working, which means they don't fix it. Especially in the context of the 'bot olympics' thing. It's brilliant. You remove their impact on regular people, and also prevent them from coming up with a better bot because they likely don't realize they HAVE to. And then, before they're ready to sell the account... you ban it. (or even better, right as it changes hands, then you can also sabotage the seller by ruining their reputation)
