Topic

Alternate accounts, families on Glitch, TS tyranny, Currants

My girlfriend is playing Glitch, so we log in with the same IP address when she comes over to make me a sandwich (:P), but since the rule is you can't log in at the same time, we respect that. But if TS was to make a rule that no contact can be made with Glitchen that log in from same IP (like in most other games) the gameplay quality would be greatly reduced. I sometimes steal stuff from her house or make a mess, she does the same to me and we laugh and enjoy this fun game. On the other hand, as I already stated in another post, it is theoretically possible to buy 50 houses from 50 different accounts and become Glitchschild or Glitchefeller or Glitchoros, and that just ain't fair.

So, I propose a vote - and I hope TS will consider it, unless they figure out some awesome other method to solve this, because it will hugely influence how the community will feel about Glitch in the future.

If you don't care about the advantage some Glitchen get for their account manipulation and think it's a small price to pay for having TS off your back when your parents/partner/kid/burglar log in their account from your computer and send you a Rube cubimal you've wanted for so long - VOTE *A*

If you'd rather bother with reporting IP sharing and explaining reasons for an accidental contact, BUT play fair and be in a cheat free environment - VOTE *B*

* There's a chance TS will ignore this because I'm a troublemaker.
** Tl;dr: Vote A and make me rich, baby!

Posted 12 months ago by Electric Wizard Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

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  • How can TS know?

    Because they have far more information about your account than your IP address.  They know which computer you're using and which browser.  They can tell if someone is logged on with two browsers on the same computer and switching between them.

    They can tell if one character stops moving at the same time another character starts.  

    There's absolutely no reason for your friend to stop coming to your house to play.  There's nothing about that situation that would lead TS to believe it's you controlling two characters.  You won't lose your accounts because using the same IP address is NOT evidence that someone is breaking the rules. 
    Posted 12 months ago by WindBorn Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Casombra Amberrose: It's kinda easy to tell if two players logged in at the same time are being controlled by the same person when you look at keystroke logs. If neither is typing / chatting / moving at the exact same time as the other, clearly a person is switching computers.

    However, if someone is logging out of account A and into account B you can't be sure if that's a BF getting up from his computer to let his GF play, or whether that's the same person.
    Posted 12 months ago by ✦ SHI∇IΔΠ ✦ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @Casombra first of all, Black Francis was being sarcastic. And second of all, as to " How could TS KNOW if it is one player, two players, 50 million players on the same IP or just ONE player multi-boxing from the same IP?" this was clarified above:
    "we shouldn't worry about shared IP addresses, every system has a unique mac address making it pretty easy to determine that accounts are being played on different systems as apposed to multiple browsers on a single system."

    The staff at TS is smarter than to assume that multiple people on one IP = cheating, so you don't need to worry about your husband playing, or your friends. My best friend walks over to my house on weekends to sit and Glitch with me, too.
    Posted 12 months ago by Rev. Desdemona Subscriber! | Permalink
  • If you have four computers in your house, all logged in to Glitch at the same time, then you, your husband, your sister and your friend could all be online at once and it would be OK with TS.  

    Your accounts are not at risk, and everyone could play together because it is easy for TS to see that you're all on different devices doing different things simultaneously.
    Posted 12 months ago by WindBorn Subscriber! | Permalink
  • And what if you only have two computers? My friend used to come over and play on my husbands comp. Now say he has an account and she comes over.. he logs off his account and she logs on. How can they possibly TELL? There is no way of telling if it is my husband or in fact my friend. There also have been times she has logged onto my comp to play while I am off making dinner... again how can they tell if it is me or my friend? See where I am getting here?

    No, until I get clear cut rules on this from TS.... I will just leave it be for now on the decisions that my friend, sister, hubby and myself have made. Thanks for trying to explain it but I am not feeling comfortable about this at all.
    Posted 12 months ago by Casombra Amberrose Subscriber! | Permalink
  • "fear fear fear fear PANIC!"
    Posted 12 months ago by Heatseeker Subscriber! | Permalink
  • It sounds like you would be more comfortable if no one in that group but yourself ever plays from your house.   That's the only way you can be sure that your account is never ever associated with anyone elses.  

    Your husband, sister and friend will be required to play, not only from other places, but from entirely separate computers.  No one will ever be able to play from a computer that someone else has already played from.  

    Otherwise, TS might think it's just you switching between computers to try to fool them.  

    See where I am getting here?  

    Really, the rules that TS can make will not ever be able to tell the difference between your sister using your computer and then you using it.  Rules cannot and do not eliminate uncertainty.  

    You're going to have to rely on TS staff being able to see the differences in game play and draw conclusions from the available data.  And they can already do that with the current rules.  
    Posted 12 months ago by WindBorn Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Cool. It sounds like we hammered out the whole "two at the same-exact time" issue.

    However, the more pressing one I see is TS being unable to determine the difference between two individuals using the same computer, logging in at different times, to different accounts, to play Glitch, and sharing keys VERSES one person with 2 accounts for themselves.

    In the above scenario one real-life person could easily play less frequently than the other, or barely at all. So clearly activity isn't a measuring stick. One real-life person could even also play merely to get a key to help someone else out (but still be a 100% legit real-live person, not an alt)... or even just play for a while, get a house, get a key, swap it, then shortly thereafter get bored with the game and never (ever) come back. To determine which pair of accounts are both real-life people, and which accounts belong to the same person is neigh-impossible (unless that person engages in clearly obvious behavior to 'out' themselves).

    Further, perhaps one real-life player doesn't ever want to use their crops. They are happy mining, making money from that, buying food, then mining more. They got a house to store icons (etc) but have no interest learning AK / Gardening / Cooking. If he allowed me to use his plots / animals, rarely played, and only mined, neither of us should be penalized. A tired argument, I know. Sorry.

    If 'activity' is required from an account (to continue allowing their key to be shared) a person with an alt could easily log in, pet a few pigs, and log out. They could easily randomize that activity to appear 'natural' and 'real' - some days playing for an hour, some for minutes. Further, as we know with previous forum posts, people might also get really angry if TS starts telling people how / how much they need to play to remain 'active'. Is a disinterested / rarely playing player an alt, or just a barely-invested human?

    One solution might be that keys can only be given when both parties are online at the same time (you can use them anytime, but you both need to be online at the same time to set them up). TS could monitor the accounts who got / gave the keys, and simply check to see if both accounts are from the same IP & MAC address. This is the best solution I've heard so far (not foolproof, and likely will cheese certain people off, but still a solution). Yet, MAC addresses can be easily spoofed, as can browser data, as can IP addresses (via the TOR network, amongst others)... and of course, it doesn't address the issue of 2 people in the same house with only 1 computer who want to swap keys.

    Sadly, while I've scratched my head at this for quite a while (and I'm a web professional) I can't think of a truly good rule-based and enforceable solution to this 'problem' (in quotes because I truly don't see it as a problem, but I know that's merely my opinion).

    Fun, aye?

    So, like others here, I'll be very curious to see what TS says about this whole issue and how it will / won't effect me and my friends (both IRL and Glitchen alike!)
    Posted 12 months ago by ✦ SHI∇IΔΠ ✦ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • All due respect,  ✦ SHI∇IΔΠ ✦, but "web professional" is a catch all term for a lot of very different things. You are a web designer, last I checked, not a user admin. Edit: I didn't mean this to be condescending or dismissive, as it initially probably came across. I meant to point out that specializing in an industry does not an expert make you on the intricacies of how TS polices cheating.

    Being a user admin and monitoring suspicious behavior (and defining what that suspicious behavior is) is an entirely different skill and experience set. 

    While I understand your curiosity and need to figure out how TS is defining alts and what criteria is required to define someone who is breaking the rules vs. someone who is playing legitimately, I don't think it will serve much purpose here for the following reasons: 

    1) It's pure speculation. I defer to TS to identify what is and isn't acceptable for players - those rules vs. what they look for within their organization to red flag players they suspect of using alts are two different things.

    2) Outlining specifically HOW TS identifies what is an alt vs what are two players on the same IP is just asking for people to take advantage of the information and use it to cheat under the radar.

    Rest assured though, having had some user admin experience in my time, it's not so arbitrary as banning everyone who logs in on different accounts on the same IP. 
    Posted 12 months ago by Xev Subscriber! | Permalink
  • What are you all even talking about???

    Casombra Amberrose: "I question this as well. My husband and sister want to play but I said no because if they did we could get all our accounts banned. My husband would love to come play the game with me and so would my sister, but sadly we don't because of course we share the same IP and don't want to be accused of having more than one account or playing at the same time due to being accused we have mules."

    Of course your husband and sister can play. We've never said anywhere that they can't and it would be absurd for us to do so. Not sure where this is coming from.
    Posted 12 months ago by stoot barfield Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @ stoot:

    It's paranoia due to hearing of players being banned for double accounts (who could very well have been banned for other reasons). Everyone is just unclear of how TS is deducing which accounts are doubles/mules/etc.. The general idea is that it's through IP addresses, which brings up the concern of multiple players using the same IP. 
    Posted 12 months ago by Myuki Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @Stoot ... No matter how simply and clearly you state things, someone will interpret the exact opposite and make fifteen threads about it.

    I'm pretty sure this all spirals out of a few bad assumptions that set the baseline for faulty logic: "If alts are bad, they must be detected based on shared IPs! If that's the case, no one else in my house can play!"
    Posted 12 months ago by Xev Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Xev: I am not merely a web designer, I do a lot of backend work (just not at / for my current full-time job); so merely labeling myself as a web designer would have been inaccurate. I could have posted "web designer, html / css developer, back end tinkerer, PHP / MYSQL novice, blah blah blah" but that felt far to longwinded :-)

    I, too, respect the skills involved for a user admin, having many of them myself :-)
    Posted 12 months ago by ✦ SHI∇IΔΠ ✦ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I love that, as in the guidelines, "This is all one big improvisation" - which includes many rules and how they end up being created / implemented. The game is / will evolve to fit the players, which rocks! That also potentially means periods of weird limbo when no-one knows what will happen because something is going to change (rule, game mechanic, color of Voluptua Sneezelips' shoes, etc).

    I respect this is a potentially gigantic (get it?) problem, with huge repercussions that might effect a lot more than any of us are seeing right now. So I can partly understand why a finalized solution hasn't yet presented itself.

    However, I think that one reason people are speculating / worrying / getting afraid (or allowing themselves to succumb to other people's fear-mongering) is due to the fact that it's been several days since we've heard anything (Stoot's post just-now was the only official thing we've heard since Blanky posted).

    So, we're all between a magic rock and a hard place.

    Perhaps in the future stop-gap solutions can come out within 24 hours. Perhaps Tiny Speck will implement a crack-team that can answer this sort of thing at all-hours to craft fast & simple stop-gap solutions until everyone can meet on Monday and hammer out a longer-term solution. Maybe even responses like "keep doing what you were doing, but things are going to change soon" would work during times like this (when I asked if people should just keep-on-keepin'-on I was sadly given a "no comment" response, which I found confusing as well).

    Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

    Like I said, magic rock and a hard place.
    Posted 12 months ago by ✦ SHI∇IΔΠ ✦ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • People won't let it go, apparently.

    The feeling I get is that peoples' accounts aren't gonna be deleted in a widespread bloody purge.  If people are challenged for having multiple accounts, Tiny Speck will probably negotiate the issue as reasonably as possible.  Don't lie up at night waiting for that silent knock on the door.  The experience of being 'busted' is more likely to be like when you got your papers in the game.
    Posted 12 months ago by Parrow Gnolle Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Given that neither A nor B are possibilities and this is just made up to get people freaked out, I'm locking this thread and directing people to an official thread on this topic.
    Posted 12 months ago by stoot barfield Subscriber! | Permalink
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