I have been playing for almost two decades (exclusively at the D3 level) and enjoy this game immensely. I’m saddened that this has potentially occurred. In all my seasons I have never thought about the possibility of someone being able to cheat on here — maybe a bit naive on my part. I have only won two championships— very proud of those because this is a game of skill in my opinion (with some luck sprinkled in). I do wonder if this loophole is known by others and for how long. Happy that Benis might have spotted a potential glitch being exploited — great credit to him for this — even if it took him 15 seasons :). If true, I think he should receive some free seasons. Also if true, I do think the mods owe us a full explanation of what and how this occurred. I rarely post anything on here — just my two cents.

Posted by tmacfan12 on 10/30/2022 7:39:00 AM (view original):
Also if this is a system where multiple users are using it, then for sure the guys in here that are weirdly defending it seem a bit out of place I'll say. If multiple users are doing this then I'm out of this site completely lol. To hear a ton of coaches have just been exploiting a rule right under Customer Service's nose while other paying coaches suffered from just pure cheating would be a lot, to hear that Customer Service was forgiving them would be enough for me to quit.

No kidding, this really isn't as complicated as it is being made out to be in this thread, but we do love to make things complicated.
I remember losing to this guy in the tourney in Allen - do we replay the tourney? Of course not. Did he have an edge and possibly beat me because he cheated and had better players? Probably. Has this scenario happened to dozens of other users (losing games, losing battles)? Of course.

He shouldn't be allowed on the site.

Here’s what I’d like to see happen in this order:

1) close the loophole
2) figure out how many players exploited it
3) return all of their accounts and alts to that of a brand new starter. So if they want to keep playing, it starts at D3. If they are “suspended/banned” for a few seasons, they will come back with a resume earned through cheating

i also think Benis deserves some site credit for finding this.

Posted by texashick on 10/30/2022 8:46:00 AM (view original):
Here’s what I’d like to see happen in this order:

1) close the loophole
2) figure out how many players exploited it
3) return all of their accounts and alts to that of a brand new starter. So if they want to keep playing, it starts at D3. If they are “suspended/banned” for a few seasons, they will come back with a resume earned through cheating

i also think Benis deserves some site credit for finding this.

But how do we know they just won't search to find another loophole and then exploit it more slyly? Benis had to self report this for it to be found out, that can't be forgotten here. Also yes Benis I think you deserve the statue

1. Burn him/them.
2. Rename a world for Benis.

Posted by hypnotoad on 10/30/2022 9:09:00 AM (view original):
1. Burn him/them.
2. Rename a world for Benis.

I like it!

And shoe (and everyone else), there aren’t lots and lots of people doing this. Are multiple people unlocking 24 scholarships in 5 cycles? No. I’m CERTAIN Benis is not the only person to notice it. I’ve actually talked to a couple friends since this has been exposed that ‘he’ always does some weird things. Having said that, just because one clown is doing it doesn’t mean we have a site wide problem on our hands. Maybe there’s one more or two more. Who knows. But it’s the blatantly obvious offenders that need to be dealt with.

Shoe, as far as your Sr redshirt thing you mentioned. A) I’ve talked to CS about addressing that. I also used it IN SPITE OF them not doing anything about it at one point. (I no longer use it in D1 but) I’d be more than happy if they did something about it. B) I forget the logic, but someone here explained why the Sr redshirt thing is not a big deal. I don’t think I agreed with the explanation but the person at least had an argument. Something to do with it being just like having a walk on or something like that. I forget. I’m not really concerned with it because I haven’t used it in like 2 real life years.

i can’t believe we’re even comparing this or talking about this. It’s taking away from an issue far more important which has much more of a ripple effect. It’s apples to oranges

Posted by jholthus on 10/29/2022 3:21:00 PM (view original):
Hello everyone,

We are looking into the situation, please allow us time to review. The devs are aware of what is going on.

Thanks, very much appreciated.

This dude just signed someone at St. John’s today.

Reading through the thread, I’d say I pretty strongly lean towards Gil’s perspective of “gather facts, people don’t always know FPG, etc”.. but he’s still benefitting from exploiting a loophole. And I can’t help but think 1. He’s too experienced to not know 2. Even if he’s not aware it’s a loophole, his CC is blowing up against him and he’s still actively recruiting/gameplanning without responding. He’s chatted in his CC recently according to a screenshot someone sent me so it’s not like he doesn’t know how it works.

He’s still actively benefitting in recruiting players that he started with an advantage on. Talk about players not up to date on the forums/CCs, what about Cornell who dumped in some resources into that recruit? Would they have pushed more if they weren’t against that exploitation? I know hindsight is 20/20, but something needed to be done in the moment to prevent him from still benefiting. Freeze his recruiting and remove any resources so he doesn’t continue to ruin that worlds recruiting imo. And that’s what should be done WHILE looking into it further.

Damn. Glad I'm not in the same world as him, but also now terrified that this is happening in Iba.

I'm also appalled that he hasn't been more dominant if he has in fact been leveraging this potentially as far back as the start of 3.0 lol.

I support immediate nuke of current recruiting session as well. You can't really return those recruits to other teams IMO but you can remove them from the world (idk maybe they can pursue a path in some other sport!). From there, all I care about is closing the loophole and if it's not immediately possible through code, there needs to be a better and more expedient process for addressing it manually, especially when coaches like Benis are literally illustrating the magnitude of the cheating in explicit detail.

Posted by topdogggbm on 10/29/2022 8:04:00 PM (view original):

Posted by smackawits on 10/29/2022 4:55:00 PM (view original):
Can someone explain what the loophole is? How was he able to cheat?

No offense, and you probably have good intentions, but this is the last thing that we need to discuss here!

And to others regarding the “this may be his first time”, does we really need to even touch on this? Cheaters always will cheat again. Felons are felons whether they were good on every other day of their life except for one. So on and so on. Obviously this isn’t criminal, so it’s not that serious. But I just can’t grasp why some of you guys are so relaxed about anything along these lines. That’s all I got

Especially if this is some sort of Tech Cheat. Some of us write in Cursive, and remember "Duck and Cover drills", and find Computers difficult.

How about making the punishment similar to real life. 2 Scholarship Max per season with AP's to match for three seasons, and a Three year Postseason Ban for all who used this loophole knowingly.

glad CS stopped in, they definitely need to treat this seriously and not brush it aside as they seemed willing to do from benis's message. but i do think we should be a bit patient as it takes time to properly assess these situations.

perspective wise, to anyone who is like 'wow i can't even believe something like this was possible' - HD has had cheating scandals before, people have been reported and gotten in trouble, and HD survives. it does require CS to respond reasonably, but ultimately they probably will, and HD will carry on much as it was before.

also, many serious recruiting bugs have been found and reported not on the basis of someone finding a cheater, but on someone finding the bug and reporting it honestly. just a year or so ago, it was public knowledge that chapelhillne has just reported a pretty serious recruiting bug that came out in a change WIS had made i believe just days earlier, which they fixed almost immediately. did anyone exploit it before it was caught? its possible, but solace should be taken from these sorts of things.

i know its an uncomfortable reality for some folks, but basically every game has cheaters. our ratio of coaches with integrity to cheaters, here in HD, i think we are in a pretty good situation. its not 100% to 0%, as we'd all like it to be, but many other games are far, far worse, and we have a lot of good folks here. if it is a new concept to you, that HD could have a serious recruiting bug - then i get how that can be pretty uncomfortable. but HD is just like any other software, all software has serious vulnerabilities, and it is always a game of trying to manage the consequences of that reality.

so i guess, try not to freak out about it? take it seriously, yes, but its not a sky is falling moment. part of why i may come off unperturbed is that this has been a fixture in my life, i've played games and used software online for 30 years, and all games have this issue. partly because programming and security are a big part of my profession, and i understand the reality which is that probably at least 99% of applications on the scale of HD, have significant vulnerabilities. partly because i've myself found a number of exploits for free recruiting effort over the years, in old HD and new HD, and especially during the beta, and its always been clear to me there must be more. probably unfound by other users, but possibly found by other users. software has bugs - that is life - that will never change. it doesn't mean software isn't worth using and that games aren't worth playing.

i'm so sick of all the cheating. no punishment?? i might finally be able to quit this game now.

Yeah Im legit confused like if you guys want to play with cheaters fine, I'm out though

My favorite cheat was the guy who would redshirt a guy, then remove the redshirt, which used to increase the WE maybe 3/4th of a rating point... he redshirted/recalled each of his guys like 150 times... so he would pop up his players' Work Ethics up to 99.

That was a fun Forum discussion.