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Monday Tip-Off: Anti-Cheat & The Modding Scene

Monday Tip-Off: Anti-Cheat & The Modding Scene

We’re at midcourt, and the ball is about to go up…it’s Monday Tip-Off! Join me as I begin the week here at the NLSC with my opinions and commentary on basketball gaming topics, as well as tales of the fun I’ve been having on the virtual hardwood. This week, I’m tipping things off with my thoughts on anti-cheat measures in NBA 2K23 PC, and their effect on the modding scene.

The Season 6 patch for NBA 2K23 introduced some unexpected complications for the PC version. Specifically, it includes anti-cheat measures that interfere with looyh’s Hook tool, which as modders and mod users are all too aware, is an essential utility for modding. Naturally, this led to some understandable frustration. To state the obvious, modding is a big part of what we do in this community, and these anti-cheat measures resulted in a new barrier to creating and enjoying mods. Considering that the PC version is already a lower priority release, it’s a disappointing development.

Of course, ever since the PC began receiving ports of the PlayStation 4/Xbox One version of NBA 2K, official patches have presented a challenge to modding. The changes to the executable require utilities and Cheat Engine tables to be updated accordingly; something that wasn’t necessary when we were editing the roster files directly. It’s something that other modding communities have had to deal with for a long time, and we have ultimately been able to adapt. The addition of anti-cheat measures makes things tricky, which is obviously unfortunate. It also spotlights the needs of the online scene being at odds with the needs of the modding community.

Now, I need to make a few pre-emptive statements here, so that my overall position is clear. When we’re righteously outraged and emotions are running high, we’re often disinterested in nuance and other perspectives, even if they’re well-reasoned. I’ve seen so many reasonable takes dismissed out of hand – “I stopped reading as soon as (thing I disagree with)” or “my eyes glazed over” – so let me be clear. I support the modding scene, past and present. I do not blindly support all of 2K’s business practices; that should be apparent from my articles. I’m critical of “always online”, and dislike that a focus on that scene has been detrimental to modding and offline/traditional play.

Random User in The Neighborhood (NBA 2K23)

However, I also acknowledge the importance of providing a robust online experience, its popularity, and the challenges that developers face. This is where I may lose some people who are frustrated with the changes brought on by the Season 6 patch: the PC version of NBA 2K does need anti-cheat measures. For all the problems with toxicity, gatekeeping, and catering to elitism that plagues the online scene on console – to say nothing of the pushy approach to microtransactions – there isn’t a rampant problem with cheating, outside of modded controllers. On PC, MyCAREER’s connected modes are vulnerable to artificially super-powered players with ten foot arms.

If you’re not into the online scene, you may say “who cares”, and I get it. Not only does it not affect you, but it’s reciprocating the attitude that too many online gamers have towards the offline experience. It’s a selfish, myopic, and childish attitude for any of us to have, though. The games should be fun offline and online alike. Online play shouldn’t be hampered by cheating that goes well beyond hitting back at 2K’s greed, instead ruining the competitive balance. It’s entering “two wrongs make a right” territory, and few people enjoy playing with or against cheaters. The complete lack of anti-cheat measures on PC has been a constant and fair criticism for years.

Unfortunately, those measures have a downside when the process of modding a game for offline play bears similarities to cheating online. We’ve come to the part where I address any online cheaters reading, in which I’ll point out that modding a game to create a comprehensive retro roster or foreign league mod is completely different to hacking MyCAREER to jump online with a maxed out player that breaks the build system, and has completely unrealistic body proportions, for an unfair advantage. I say this because I have seen people try to equate the two, and it’s a false analogy. One is creating new content for offline use, while the other is cheating to win online.

A Lack Of Anti-Cheat Measures on PC Have Discouraged Online Play

With that being said, we still have a problem here. NBA 2K on PC needs to have anti-cheat measures to preserve a sense of fair play and competitive integrity in the online modes, but PC basketball gamers generally prefer that version because of its modding capabilities, and that’s something to preserve as well. Modding offline content and online anti-cheat measures needn’t be incompatible, but they are in this instance since the tools to modify rosters and load modded files run in the background, not unlike cheating utilities. It’s a false positive, similar to anti-virus software flagging REDitor II and RED MC as potentially dangerous due to the design of their licensing system.

It’s why I’m not reading too much into the implementation of anti-cheat measures at this point. Could it mean that NBA 2K24 will be a PlayStation 5/Xbox Series X|S port? Possibly, especially given what happened with WWE 2K23, but not necessarily. Is it an attempt to shut down modding? There’s always a chance – if nothing else, 2K could theoretically see it as an added bonus – but it’s quite late in the game to be doing that, not to mention that cease and desists or DMCA takedowns would likely be much easier and more effective. Once again, anti-cheat measures do have a necessary and desirable purpose in curbing the hacking that’s ruining the competitive online scene.

Mind you, even if the effect that anti-cheat measures have had on the modding scene is unintentional collateral damage – as I’m more inclined to believe – it does ultimately amount to the same thing. The tools we require to create and activate mods are being flagged as suspicious processes, interfering with their use. Therefore, we’re in need of solutions. looyh has indicated that a workaround may be possible, but there is risk if it appears that the Hook tool is intending to circumvent anti-cheat measures. It seems to be the most viable solution in the short term, but this is likely something that we’ll have to deal with regardless of which version is ported to PC moving forward.

Anti-Cheat Measures Interfere With Roster Editing

Hopefully, a Hook tool that can work alongside the anti-cheat measures without causing any drama or attracting unwanted attention will be possible. That’s about all that we can do as a community, as well as making it clear that we’re not supporting online hacking; we’d undermine our claims that we’re not doing anything wrong if we condoned it. The rest is up to 2K/Visual Concepts, and that’s where it gets tricky. Devising anti-cheat measures that don’t flag offline modding tools as suspicious is easier said than done given the similarities in operation, but there are ways that NBA 2K on PC could be more modder-friendly, thus avoiding those false positives entirely.

Basically, future PC releases would need to include the functionality that tools like the Hook currently provide. That means a folder where we can drop modded files, and have the game load them instead of the originals. There is a precedent here, as NBA Live included this functionality for several years in the form of CustomArt. We still had to figure some things out and develop our own tools – the developers weren’t in a position to give us everything we needed – but it made distributing and installing mods so much easier. NBA 2K having this functionality would account for one of the main uses of the Hook tool, and official patches wouldn’t interfere with the use of mods.

A more modder-friendly NBA 2K on PC would also need to account for the roster editing that the Hook tool facilitates. There are a couple of ways that this could be achieved. The first would be to adopt a format for roster saves that makes them easier to modify externally, similar to the DBF files that NBA Live PC utilised. Even if it came down to a tool like REDitor II or RED MC, it would avoid the need to have a running process that gets flagged by the anti-cheat measures. Alternatively, the suite of in-game roster customisation functions could be expanded to the point where external editing is unnecessary. I’d still want that even if we weren’t facing this issue!

A Playground Game in NBA 2K23 PC

To that point, I believe these are changes and enhancements that we should advocate for. If we’re going to ask the developers to make NBA 2K PC more modder-friendly, we need to be specific with our suggestions. Of course, this brings us to feasibility and likelihood. While they’d be ideal solutions to ensure that modding could continue (and indeed, be better than ever) without running into any issues with the anti-cheat measures, it’s relying on 2K to cater to the modding community. That’s rather wishful thinking for several reasons, from technical challenges to possible legal barriers. After all, the NBA has firm control over the use of its various licenses and likenesses.

It leaves us hoping for the best as far as a version of the Hook tool that can work alongside the anti-cheat measures without causing any trouble. It’s not an ideal situation and it’s an added challenge for talented people like looyh, but it’s not unprecedented either. Throughout the history of our modding scene, we’ve actually had it better than other communities as far as file compatibility and interference from official updates. As much as anything else, it’s what makes challenges like this so frustrating: we’re not as accustomed to dealing with them. It also explains why we still have an active modding scene for games such as NBA 2K14 PC all these years later.

I don’t believe the addition of anti-cheat measures in Patch 6.0 for NBA 2K23 PC was intended to spite the modding community. Online play on PC was long overdue for protection against the cheating that has made it even worse than the toxicity of its console counterpart. That doesn’t make it any less annoying for modders and mod users of course, thanks to the way modding tools currently function. Perhaps future releases can be more modder-friendly, as there are certainly ways that 2K can help us out in that regard. For now, it’s something we’ll have to handle with care. It’s a fine line to walk, but if we stick to offline content, we should avoid an ugly dust-up.

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