A few days ago, former Respawn and Sony Programmer, Glenn Fiedler posted up an interesting article on his blog, asking (and pretty much answering) whether The Division hacks can be fixed. He explained how FPS games network models work and how, if The Division is using a trusted client network model, it’s very unlikely that it will ever be entirely secure on PC.
Published on 25th April, Fiedler concluded his blog post with:
“I’m rooting for the dev team on this one and I sincerely hope really they can turn this one around. I hope they’re not using a trusted client networking model. I hope they have something up their sleeves. I hope they have a valid networking approach based around server-side checks that can address this issue in some way… But unfortunately, so far, all signs point to no”.
Fiedler sounds hopeful that The Division’s dev team will be able to put a stop to the game’s exploits that have been making regular headlines, in recent weeks. However, his disappointment creeps in at the end of this post when he clarifies that this outcome does not look very likely at this point in time. This may come as alarming news for fans of The Division, who have seen exploits that give players unlimited rewards and the power to manipulate NPCs to complete parts of the game for them.
Early on in his post, Fiedler describes how some of the problems in The Division have simply been caused by, “the usual overly smug glitchers out there, super proud to have discovered things the QA department should have probably picked up when testing the game”. On the surface, this doesn’t sound too bad. These glitches appear to be a mere oversight and thankfully, they can be fixed. Fiedler linked to this video to demonstrate these glitches.
However, a second video reveals that the problem appears to be within The Division’s network model – something that cannot just be patched out. Fiedler goes on to explain how the network model of top-tier FPS games such as Call of Duty and Overwatch is structured, consisting of two main features:
“Client side prediction so players don’t feel lag on their own actions (movement, shooting etc…) and lag compensation so when you shoot another player and bullets hit on your machine, you generally get credit for that hit as you saw it (so you don’t have to lead the target according to lag). But, critically, this decision of bullets hitting other players is decided on the server, not on the client.”
He goes on to add, “Behind all of this, the key idea behind this network model is that the server is THE REAL GAME. What happens on the server is all that counts and the server never trusts what the client says they’re doing”. As a result, this makes it a lot harder for people to cheat. However, from what we have seen so far, The Division is not displaying any signs that this is how their network model works and to Fiedler, this indicates that it is “most likely using a trusted client network model”.
If this is the case, what can we expect from Ubisoft? Can they actually do anything to deter hackers and curb exploits? Fiedler answers that, too:
“Not on PC. Not without a complete rewrite. Possibly on consoles provided they fix all lag switch timing exploits and disable players moving and shooting while lag switch usage is detected (trusted client on console exclusive games is actually more common than you would think…), but not on PC unless they completely rewrite most of their netcode and game code around a server-authoritative network model”.
You can check out Glenn Fiedler’s full blog post right here.
Are you concerned about the state The Division appears to be in right now? Let us know in the comment section below.
