The Elder Scrolls Online being overrun by hackers

You don’t need to be an expert in Elder Scrolls Online to notice a blatant pattern of bot players in the video below running a trainer to grab gold. The two most obvious signs that these aren’t valid players are the player names are random character strings and the movements are blatantly scripted.

[mogwaii]

Surpirse surprise, thats pc elitist gamers for you.

[djplonker]

Final fantasy 14 has bots.... I play it on pc & ps4 so bots are not exactly exclusive to pc.

[Somebody]

It's the open nature of the PC that allows this and it's human nature to exploit that, whether for good or bad reasons.

PC's openness made it riddled with cheaters and hackers but it's also full of creative people who made mods and indie games. It's also a place where forgotten games/genres get another chance of existing.

Console's closed ecosystem prevented it from cheaters and hacker but it also prevent modding and indie games(it's done almost instantly on the PC but consoles needed to copy the PC architecture to be able to allow that while telling indie devs that they can port their PC games faster now to their new consoles). Sure, you get a safer environment to play in but you are also at the mercy of publishers and game devs for more content.

[authentic]

People are such losers, I honestly feel bad for anyone that hacks on a game to get an advantage.

[BX81]

Agreed!

[Jyndal]

"The developers, Zenimax Online, will need to squash this quickly and I would also recommend they hire a great many more moderators to ensure the game is fair to all the people it is expecting to pay for it. If this goes on for too long the players will start deserting in droves and once that begins there is no way back."

Sure, they need to get this under control, but WoW had bots, gold spammers, and exploiters for years and it still did well. The predictions of doom by this writer seem a bit premature.

[Daves]

Hacking is the main reason I gave up gaming on PC.

Got sick of having to use stuff like punkbuster. When playing 1st person shooters.

[k3x]

How exactly do you "use" PunkBuster? What is there to "use"? It's an application that is:
a) installed automatically by games that require it;
b) kept updated automatically;
c) started automatically by the system (or the application that requires it depending on whether you fiddle with the settings);
You couldn't make it any simpler. What is there to "use" and get sick of?

[Daves]

Years ago, it didn't used to be any of that.

[k3x]

No, aside from beta, it's always been that. PunkBuster's been around since 2000. The first game to include it (RTCW) came out less than a year after that. I know, because I played that game. Lie more?

[ocelot07]

Really? I just bought this game last night boooooooooooooo.

[KrisButtar]

I think this article is spot on. I have the game and can not gather anything as the bots always beat real players to the node(teleportation, super speed running, running underground, etc) which sucks because we all use the same nodes and are not instanced like in FF14

[kizzle32]

how the hell can you "not gather anything"? I have been playing this since launch and even through all beta...there are bots yes...but to the point where you "can not gather anything?" such BS...you act like there is 1000's of bots in each zone...I run across a mob of them randomly maybe every couple of hours at the most...and they are typically just questing and running a pattern farming gold and xp. And using the same nodes? you want them to nerf it down to dumb? I mean come on...there are plenty of nodes to gather from...I suppose you want the game to hold your hand the whole way as well? noob...that is all...

[KrisButtar]

I was in the beta too and the bots were not a problem for me as I could always find stuff, hell I hardly noticed any at all.

I haven't gathered anything because bots appear and get the stuff before I can click "E" The bots are out of control on bleakrock and not to sure about the mainland as I haven't made it that far as I only picked it ESO on PC since the console version was delayed.

I have yet to see "typically just questing and running a pattern farming gold and xp"

I think the game got easier since the beta as well which is a shame.

[k3x]

I'd urge the author to do a little more research before attempting to write another one of these "things". He sounds exactly like my 80 year old grandma warning me about the latest computer virus she heard about on the radio.

"a blatant pattern of bot players (...) running a trainer to grab gold" And it's a nefarious HACKER doing all that! Well, shit, now I know it's serious.

I can run AutoIt scripts. Hell, I can even write them. Should I inform the authorities, Gavin?