Malicious Impersonation Bots/Accounts

[Q42]

Hey I just wanted to bring this thread back to light because it's still an issue:

There's a running issue with players renaming themselves to others' usernames for "revenge", usually due to said player calling them out for griefing shenanigans. It's gotten pretty prevalent, and the people doing this have a lot of time to waste. This comment on the above thread sums it up pretty well: 

The main counter to this issue is raising awareness of these impersonation accounts, because they can get pretty committed to pretending to be someone else. Check steam accounts, block known griefers and frequently check your blocklist, etc.

Everyone have a good night.

[CrimsonStrider]

Ban them. Make them spend more money. That makes perfect sense.

They are trash. They deserve nothing other than frustration. If they want to disrupt other people's time, make sure they pay a premium for it. 

[Cheggf]

12 hours ago, SSneaky said:

Not really something klei can completely do much about.

Yeah sure they could ban then but they'd just make another steam account and rebuy DST.

It's more of steams fault here.

Steam hates doing anything other than automatically applying bans based on report volume so trolls with alts can keep people permanently community banned and unable to ever post anything or do anything, relying on them is futile. Klei should update the game to not allow these false names in the first place. Other games do things like put (1), (2), etc before the names of people who join when that name is already there.

@cloudf you are my brother

[cloudf]

9 hours ago, Cheggf said:

@cloudf you are my brother

I'm sorry but am I missing something? Have we played together at some point, and if so what's you in-game name?

[Cheggf]

2 hours ago, cloudf said:

I'm sorry but am I missing something? Have we played together at some point, and if so what's you in-game name?

Your name is similar to my name :steamhappy:

[cloudf]

7 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

Your name is similar to my name :steamhappy:

 I get it.

[Gi-Go]

Is this an issue? Because this looks like a fun among us minigame to me. 

[comonavi]

klei servers have never been moderated and i doubt they ever will be. you're better off joining a discord group to play with

[DegenerateFurry]

I don't think these are bots. In fact, I'm fairly certain I know exactly who's doing this because I've seen the same thing.

There's a guy I've encountered (I should say I've been cyber-stalked by him, actually) who plays mostly on US East servers and does exactly this. He has several alternate accounts, joins Klei servers, changes his username frequently so he can stay long enough to grief without getting kicked, and gets extremely mad at anyone who kicks him. He will impersonate you if you annoy him enough, sometimes using multiple accounts. He spams hate in the chat and tells you to off yourself "before he does it for you" and threatens to hunt you down and kill you in real life. If you block him and he realizes, he'll change his username to continue the hate towards you (usually by having your username followed by "KYS" or something, although that does make him easy to get people to kick since it's a blatant tell that he's a troll).

He will, from what I can tell, look through every Klei server for your username and join it just to try to ruin your fun, and he will do this even if you've not played for a week or more. It's not random chance because it happens consistently. I think he's doing it manually because I have him and all his alts I know of blocked on Steam, so he shouldn't be able to join my game through my profile, which means he must be finding out which game I'm in another way (he's found me even on US West servers). The guy's usual username is Invictus, and it seems like he does actually play normally on occasion, but most people I've talked to in Klei servers about him know him to be a griefer.

I've tried reporting him on Steam, but Valve doesn't care to do anything without a legal obligation, and I don't know how I'd report him to Klei (there's no clear way to do it). Frankly, I don't understand why Klei is willing to allow death threats and targeted harassment that bypasses Steam's block feature, and there should be some recourse since it's not even just me this guy goes this far with.

[Jakepeng99]

They can add more settings to servers, like removing democracy from world voting.

[Gameplayer143]

Speaking of griefing, one of the most common methods of griefing in my experiences has been using the terrarium, which is a shame because the eye twins is actually one of my most favourite boss fight in the game up there with Celestial Champion. And theres things I feel like Klei can do to reduce their griefing potential. Make it so that you can remove nightmarefuel from the terrarium if fuel has been placed in it. Have a world gen option for the Terrarium require enough player to vote yes for summoning it. Have it ONLY be summoned at the place of the terrarium.

[Jakepeng99]

37 minutes ago, DegenerateFurry said:

but Valve doesn't care to do anything without a legal obligation

Yeah. If they wont fix bots in TF2 which is their own game, they wont fix keyboard villians in dst.

[DegenerateFurry]

39 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Yeah. If they wont fix bots in TF2 which is their own game, they wont fix keyboard villians in dst.

Exactly, although "keyboard villains" is downplaying it a bit when it's months of stalking, impersonation, griefing, and death threats.

[AliceShiki]

For the record, in another thread where someone reported issues of harassment on Switch servers IIRC, Klei replied by saying they're aware of the problems and are trying to work on fixes, but as they don't actually monitor in-game activity, it is really hard for them to act on it.

So uhn... Dunno how long it will take, but Klei does seem to be planning on doing something to give players better ways of adressing this.

[SilentConstruct]

As I stated in the last thread, I firmly believe that someone going as far as to stalk, harass, and impersonate other steam users definitely warrants some form of punishment, especially once it leads to death threats. I do not understand why this type of behaviour is seen as acceptable by Klei.

No one should have to be fearing for their actual real lives while playing a video game.

[AliceShiki]

3 minutes ago, SilentConstruct said:

As I stated in the last thread, I firmly believe that someone going as far as to stalk, harass, and impersonate other steam users definitely warrants some form of punishment, especially once it leads to death threats. I do not understand why this type of behaviour is seen as acceptable by Klei.

No one should have to be fearing for their actual real lives while playing a video game.

As a Klei dev stated in the other thread, Klei does not see this kind of behavior as acceptable.

They just have a really hard time verifying the claims due to them not tracking the data. So it's hard for them to do anything.

[Cheggf]

13 hours ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Yeah. If they wont fix bots in TF2 which is their own game, they wont fix keyboard villians in dst.

They did fix the bots, the community hated it and begged for the bots back.

[Bumber64]

The impersonation issue could probably be solved by showing Steam IDs.

Death threats are a violation of US law if he's doing it on US-hosted servers. Not much can be done if he's outside US, though.

[DegenerateFurry]

On 6/12/2024 at 10:54 PM, Bumber64 said:

The impersonation issue could probably be solved by showing Steam IDs.

Death threats are a violation of US law if he's doing it on US-hosted servers. Not much can be done if he's outside US, though.

Steam IDs do fix it, yeah, I've started logging the usernames, crimes, and Steam IDs of people who grief on Klei servers. If they do it consistently enough, they become kick-on-sight. 

[Ridley]

On 6/12/2024 at 3:24 AM, Cheggf said:

They did fix the bots, the community hated it and begged for the bots back.

Huh?

[DegenerateFurry]

On 6/12/2024 at 1:24 AM, Cheggf said:

They did fix the bots, the community hated it and begged for the bots back.

I have over six thousand hours on TF2 and I can tell you with certainty that there's never been a moment where the community "begged for the bots back". The closest they've ever come to fixing the bots was the x64 patch that made them not work for about two days (maximum), and everyone loved it. 

[BarHot 857]

I've been against Invi for a long time since April, he griefered me at least 10 times.  I always remind ppl he's griefer in chat bar that's why he so "likes" me. 

he use a new account join game for couple of days (especially winter and summer) then tons of bots joined, one of bot pick woodie then smash base, when everything was destoried, he will let stuff burn. if there are 6 bots, suvivors can't RB cuz pathetic democracy.

Besides, Iniv is a good name copier. He use my name to burn ppls bases and ppl know me as a well-know greifer. i was been kick out like 3time when i joined pubilic server.

He also likes post a death treaten to ppl and thier family members.

what i hope klei to fix is remove new players' vote right, then ppl have enough time to kick every single bots out server .

[DegenerateFurry]

I can confirm that there are actually bots in the game now, or at least people who set up their Steam profiles to look like them and behave exactly as a bot would. I encountered one last night. He picked Woodie, had a "#fixDST" hashtag at the end of his username, had a generic username aside from that, and had a green binary code Steam avatar. Then he found his way to the base and used the beaver tail slam to grief everything, took the valuables, and left. 

[NPCMaxwell]

14 minutes ago, DegenerateFurry said:

I can confirm that there are actually bots in the game now, or at least people who set up their Steam profiles to look like them and behave exactly as a bot would. I encountered one last night. He picked Woodie, had a "#fixDST" hashtag at the end of his username, had a generic username aside from that, and had a green binary code Steam avatar. Then he found his way to the base and used the beaver tail slam to grief everything, took the valuables, and left. 

I definitely know why I dislike multiplayer games especially in the days of evil bots........and I thought REAL people were scary to play with........

[BlackDragonRoll]

I think a good way to prevent yourself from being falsely kicked is to have friends in the server vouch for you. Otherwise, the impersonators will just outright try to ruin your reputation in the servers.