As the title implies, Im seeking for an answer to this question.
As we all know, Chess.com is completely overrun with scripters, engines users and cheaters. Now cheating is an issue in all online chess, but whereas other websites make serious attempts at combating the issue Chess.com seems content to simply leave things as they are.
As an organization, Chess.com obviously has the funds, expertise and access to the technology required to construct solid anti-cheat mechanics. However, they choose to not do so.
This brings up the question: Why? And the simplest answer would be that they somehow benefit from being a safe haven for not such legitimate chess players. But what would that benefit be?
One possible explanation I came up with is that the amount of potential cheaters is so large, that it is a valid, profitable niche market to target. With increased competition for legit players from websites that take anti-cheat more seriously, it appears Chess.com has decided to target this niche market calculating the increase of cheat-based players versus a loss of legit based players and considered the trade off worth it over investing funds in actual anti-cheat to compete to keep their legit based players.
This seems a valid enough strategy, but do cheat-based players in fact generate income? And if they do, is it at the same level as legit players? If someone uses cheats to play, they appear to have no incentive to improve on their play meaning a large part of the websites paid functionality has no value to these players. In addition, cheaters would by all means be more likely to use forms of add-block than legit based players removing the last bit of paid functionality they could benefit from.
This makes me wonder if the trade-off is actually worth it? Am I missing some obvious variables here that would explain the trade-off better? Or am I overestimating the amount of money a average legit player spends vs a non-legit player? Or is there a completely different way they benefit? Or perhaps I am overestimating the trade-off of legit players?
You have been here for 8 years. How can it be that you don't know that they don't allow these discussions in the open forum and that they have a special place called the Cheating Forum for them?
Secondly, if you had bothered to do any research, you would know something about their anti-cheating efforts. They just did an open forum where Danny Rensch and the Guy Le-Marechal talked about how many dozens of accounts are closed every day, talked a little about the size of the staff devoted to testing automated and user generated reports of cheating and answered many questions (without revealing their methods). They mentioned the 250 titled players whose accounts had been closed.
/ When this discussion is closed, by all means bring it to the Cheating Forum. I do think Chess.com does themselves a disservice by not advertising their anti-cheating efforts more. I find it hard to believe you haven't seen 100 posts about this.
/ It is understandable that you are upset because you are on a bad streak, losing more than 150 points off your rating in the last two weeks, But look through your games and you will see that at least one of your recent opponents has had his account closed for abuse. How many reports have you made?
As the title implies, Im seeking for an answer to this question.
As we all know, Chess.com is completely overrun with scripters, engines users and cheaters. Now cheating is an issue in all online chess, but whereas other websites make serious attempts at combating the issue Chess.com seems content to simply leave things as they are.
As an organization, Chess.com obviously has the funds, expertise and access to the technology required to construct solid anti-cheat mechanics. However, they choose to not do so.
This brings up the question: Why? And the simplest answer would be that they somehow benefit from being a safe haven for not such legitimate chess players. But what would that benefit be?
One possible explanation I came up with is that the amount of potential cheaters is so large, that it is a valid, profitable niche market to target. With increased competition for legit players from websites that take anti-cheat more seriously, it appears Chess.com has decided to target this niche market calculating the increase of cheat-based players versus a loss of legit based players and considered the trade off worth it over investing funds in actual anti-cheat to compete to keep their legit based players.
This seems a valid enough strategy, but do cheat-based players in fact generate income? And if they do, is it at the same level as legit players? If someone uses cheats to play, they appear to have no incentive to improve on their play meaning a large part of the websites paid functionality has no value to these players. In addition, cheaters would by all means be more likely to use forms of add-block than legit based players removing the last bit of paid functionality they could benefit from.
This makes me wonder if the trade-off is actually worth it? Am I missing some obvious variables here that would explain the trade-off better? Or am I overestimating the amount of money a average legit player spends vs a non-legit player? Or is there a completely different way they benefit? Or perhaps I am overestimating the trade-off of legit players?