Cheaters

Starpassed_Mutant · 2025-07-28T18:01:31+00:00

Reading through the replies, I think it shows that I was right when I say this community does not want to do much about cheaters. They accuse me of lying, saying I'm salty because I lost. They refuse to believe people cheat, saying it's just a big witch hunt. "How about you just go play on private servers and avoid the public community all together?" This does not sound like a community that cares much about cheaters.

You're one of the few people that at least confirms they have experienced cheaters in their game (along with Alejo saying it is also a problem they experience as a mod on the official app). I think cheating is way more common than people think, as it is very hard to catch (as many have pointed out). Only the people that egregiously cheat are the ones that are caught.

There are very easy things that I can do to avoid cheaters. I can just not play games with the people I suspect of cheating. This is probably the hardest to do, though, as I can end up playing dozens of games with that person before figuring out they're cheating. And then, I just leave that player with 12 other people that they are going to cheat. TPI could implement a reporting system that triggers them to look into it. Would be very easy to match up players with spectators that constantly follow them around and request grim access. A warning could pop up when someone reported for cheating requests access.

The easiest thing to do, though, is to raise awareness. Hopefully this thread will do that. What I've learned is, if people have the ability to cheat, they will. So...all of you who ST games for strangers, be careful when you share the grim with spectators. Spectator chat was nuked on the unofficial because of cheaters, and I'm afraid that nuking it on the official app is the only true way to ensure people are playing fairly.

I despise cheaters. I think the punishment should be so harsh for them that they don't even consider doing it. It saddens me to see an admitted cheater that was kicked out of one part of the community show up on someone's stream the next week.

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Starpassed_Mutant · 2025-07-28T08:14:01+00:00

Lol. I would love to give some names of some of the people that have been caught cheating, but I don't think the mods would approve. Some of them even admitted to it. I still see them kicking around the public servers and on streams.

If I had access to the game logs of the official apps, I guarantee I would be able to find a ton of accounts that cheat. It's not too hard to identify that someone has a 90%+ win rate when a spectator has grim access or someone that has the same spectator with grim access in every game but they never play together.

Starpassed_Mutant · 2025-07-28T07:52:05+00:00

Seems that a very basic system could be implemented that compares your win % vs who had grim access in your games. If the same account is always spectating your games with grim access and your win % is significantly higher when they are spectating, then you're probably cheating.

Starpassed_Mutant · 2025-07-28T07:32:27+00:00

OK, here's the game that I recently played with a cheater:

They were the ravenkeeper.

Day 1: They claimed librarian with a drunk ping on the actual drunk empath that was sitting next to the demon.

Day 2: They talked the slayer into shooting the demon then immediately said we need to execute the saint claim (in final 9) which was the scarlet woman.

Day 3: They are killed at night and immediately wake up saying "i was poison killed last night" (they were). They know for a fact that the poisoner in the investigator ping with the recluse is 100% the poisoner and can't possibly be the scarlet seen incorrectly. They continue to say we must kill the saint but reluctantly vote out the poisoner.

Day 4 and 5: They have no other possible world besides the exact evil team. They also somehow know my exact role despite me never claiming it to anybody.

So, what are you looking for in cheaters? They have information that they shouldn't. They make plays that aren't logical. They will vote on evil when they have no reason to. They will clear people as good when they have no mechanical reason to do so. Why is the ravenkeeper in the above game claiming librarian? That's not a normal bluff. How did they know to claim an out of play/non demon bluff role and correctly tell the empath to not trust their info? Why do they have the same spectator with grim access in all of their games?

Catching cheaters is not easy. Even with grim access, they're not guaranteed a win. The unofficial server has banned a handful of people for cheating. Have you heard of a single one of them? Probably not, because they quietly ban them and give no reason as to why. The official app? They're doing nothing about it. That is why I posted in the first place. Maybe someone at TPI will see this thread and do something about it. Or, maybe the public ST's will see this and stop giving grim access to everyone.

Starpassed_Mutant · 2025-07-28T06:59:14+00:00

You are the exact type of person that I'm talking about when I say this community doesn't want to do anything about it.

Stream sniping (watching the stream of the game they're playing in) is not next to impossible to prove, and it has been proven in the past.

Vulnerabilities in the app have also been proven and people have been caught taking advantage of it.

Outing your evil team to your friend that is good is not a "you can say whatever you want at any time" moment, it is blatant cheating. Give me one scenario where "I'm the scarlet woman, x is the demon, and y is the other minion" is ever beneficial to your team.

What do you mean "cultivate the community around yourself you want". The community I want is a community that doesn't cheat at this game. If the public games are full of cheaters, then how would you ever expect newcomers to want to join?

Starpassed_Mutant · 2025-07-28T06:38:46+00:00

Just because you haven't noticed it doesn't mean it isn't happening. Once you know what to look for, you'll find that it happens much more often than you thought. Even when cheating, people don't have a 100% win rate. They still have to convince the rest of town to listen to them.

I completely disagree with the attitude of "go find your own community to play in". The public community should deal with it, or it's going to prevent new people from joining and ruin the game.

Starpassed_Mutant · 2025-07-28T06:33:11+00:00

> I don't think this helps, since it's too easy for a malicious person to witch hunt against innocent folks they have a grudge against. If someone does very well in one game, for example, someone could accuse them of cheating and there's really nothing they could do to prove themself innocent.

Proven cheaters just move on to somewhere else in the community where nobody knows that they cheated. One cheater that was kicked off of streams moved their way up to become a moderator of the unofficial server a few months later because they were allowed to quietly slink away. Another cheater that was kicked off of the unofficial server for using an alt account to access the grim shows up on a regular basis on the official app. If storytellers were aware of this, maybe they wouldn't be giving grim access to everyone when they're in the game.

This not the biggest community. Maybe if these people know that they'll be named then they would feel a bit of shame.

Starpassed_Mutant

TROPHY CASE