Is it illegal to crash a video game's server using nothing but in-game mechanics?
I found an exploit in a Steam survival game that can crash the server for about 5-10 minutes, booting everyone off the server. It uses nothing but in-game mechanics to do.
Is it considered a DoS attack? Or, since I'm just "playing the game" would it hold up in court?
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I'm pretty sure you would win at the court, can't say whether they can sue you though.
Also what game?
Not illegal at all. It's a video game. You're just playing the game by flooding whatever in-game shit there is and the shit coding can't handle it.
I bet reddit-tards would say "18 U.S.C. ยง1030" but whatever.
Probably Conan Exiles
what game is it and how do yo do it? i want to have some fun
Yeh, Conan Exiles.
The exploit is worth $500 if you pony up to the devs how to do it but can't they just turn around and sue me for crashing servers?
Use it to dupe items. Usually you can do this by exploiting the games read/write calls.
I wouldn't do it. Even if you eventually win the case, which you probably won't, it'll cost you a lot of money to fight it.
Please dont ask my why I think you wont win the case of "Yea I DoSed the servers, but I only used in-game mechanics so it's okay."
Why the fuck isn't it? People could just code shitty games and then claim the players are crashing the servers.
No game company is going to court over some 12 year old kid crashing servers (with an ingame bug) for kicks.
In once case the crashes are happening because of your direct actions to crash servers, in the other they are happening without players' intent. If you are intentionally causing losses to the corporation they will sue you and they will win.
the game is shit, so are the devs.
dont tell them how its done just ruin them financially by taking down servers with alot of people
It's a literal DoS attack, disrupting their service and losing them money. They will go to court. That's what they are paying their lawyers for.
If I buy the game on a new Steam with a VPN running I should never get caught, right?
No, bug bounty hunting programs are a thing for a reason
reasonable doubt user
because you arent using ddos tools for the specific purpose of ddos they will never have proof your intent is to ddos
ignore everyone else
see
at worst theyll ban your account.
if theyre dumb enough to take you to court make sure you milk them for your time and effort, also ptsd or something
I'm not paying you $500 you fucking Jew
Yeah but I already crashed some community run servers for like 5 hours.
Yeah but I taunted some third worlder server admin over Discord about it and I'm 100% sure he recorded it.
"your honour through the exploiting of our bad code mr user was able to make the game unplayable for several of our users and in return cost us 0$. all twelve people on the server are deeply distraught"
how old are you OP?
>sueing a customer for using a feature literally built into the game
yeah, nah unless theyre absolutely united airlines tier retarded
that would help build a case against you, but lets be honest aint nobody got time fo dat
call me when youre taking down several servers simultaneously, then you may have a problem.
I blew up the most populated server for 5 hours or so. 50+ players. Community run. Some beta cucks are prob renting the server and trying to live off player donations. In their Discord they claimed to have their host "ready when the attack hits again" so I did my game exploit again, and now they've went silent about it in the chat.
>call me when youre taking down several servers simultaneously, then you may have a problem.
It takes 1-2 minutes of play time from a level 1 fresh start to bring down, and after it comes back up literal seconds to do so again.
I do use an auto-clicker to do it faster, but it can be done manually.
The reddit-cucks seem to think its super illegal. Or are they just that retarded?
reddit.com
you should tell them youre an experienced network admin and help them look into it.
these fucks spend all day on conan swinging their e dicks around, i promise you the extent of their technical literacy is using the admin console and opening support tickets with the title in ALL CAPS TO DENOTE URGENCY.
It will be illegal when there are actual documented losses numbering in tens of thousands american doras. Before that, no, it isn't possible to sue over that.
Youre giving them consistent crash logs which they'll eventually use to fix the bug.
Either snatch the bug bounty or continue using the bug until its patched. Legal action will not occur because literally who the fuck cares if 10 year old vladimir mcslav holds a server hostage for a few hours.
Youre doing them a favor by finding game breaking bugs and bringing them to attention (either through willing means or malicious)
intent matters and you are basically confessing intent here, right now
So if I want to take the villain route, and literally kill off a game with only 3k concurrent players remaining, how do I go about doing this?
Not exactly computer smart, just really fucking talented at video games. (Ex e-sport fag, etc.)
Can I just make a new Steam account under a foreign VPN and just never be found or do I have to do a bunch of proxy and Tor magicks?
I'm in my 40's, wish I was a kid. The server logs only show that 100,000 items are being created but with no info on who or what is created.
>several servers simultaneously
meaning more than 1 at a time.
you aren't costing them a cent user, they cant refund the game, they can just get mad and ban you if they find out. this is what lulz are made of.
jump from server to server and record your travels to youtube for max gains.
afaik the game already has a bad name so you wont be doing anything to their reputation.
That is going to cause actual financial damage, and game's publisher will do their best to find you. You already made it public that you know the exploit, you already made enemies who will help hunt you down; no VPN will save you in this particular case if you take the villain route.
You're deliberately exploiting bugs in order to cause financial damage to someone. So yeah, that's illegal.
Short of you admitting guilt, they'd have hell of a time proving you did anything wrong, though.
game is already ded dude, take the villain route.
crash server full of chinese players constantly
no survivors.
That should be an easy fix then. Literally just find the sections of code dealing with item instancing and limit flooding, while flagging players attempting to do so.
Ignore this retard. Crash the servers like a hooligan and demand pizza delivered to your friends houses or something.
>Steam survival game
ARK Survival Evolved?
>Ignore this retard. Crash the servers like a hooligan and demand pizza delivered to your friends houses or something.
Well, I will admit that I see the likelihood of him suffering for breaking servers very low. But it's not zero; I personally am a coward and I wouldn't do that if I lived in USA.
>court
>crashing a game sever
What authoritarian shithole do you hail from?
Murica.
You're fucked then.
I used to do this on Dota 2 all the time, crashing the game for all the players and making the game not count when losing on ranked
However there's a difference between fucking up 10 autists versus a whole server effectively disrupting the product and business of a company, sounds liable enough to me
These are community run servers. Autists that rent their own servers to do stupid events and shit.
You'd at most get banned.
You're safe then
How am I safe?
Some random fat fuck won't engage in an international lawsuit because some other guy crashed their shitty circlejerk
I'm pretty sure people post CP in Minecraft community servers and don't even get banned, crashing a server is small talk in terms of fucking with people, if you end up in court it'll be laughed out and the company knows it.
Just say you had to confirm the exploit on different machines
You are cyber criminal. Burgerland has insane minimum sentences for this type of stuff. Not worth it.
Doing this with a public account, stating, "hey guys, I think I found the reason for some server crashes recently, is it okay if I can test it on your server to see if I can confirm it?"
Boom, home free of any ill intent held by any admins.