Well, this F1 esports cheating story just seems to continue. It keeps growing and growing, and it seems that we've actually discovered something pretty severely wrong with the esports scene in F1. It started off with cheating allegations against Thomas Ronhaar and several other high-level competitors to Alvaro Caroton, mistakenly showing off F1 cheats on a live stream. And then, of course, last week we had that interview with Zerano Otmir, where he shed a lot of light on what he believes is going on in the F1 esports scene at the moment and what can be done to try and combat it. That interview, by the way, is going to be on F1 Esports.
is in the description below. But now we have even more information to go off because a couple of days ago, a user called F1 Modder Bypass posted an AMA thread on the F1 game subreddit simply titled F1 Esport Cheating. I am the creator of the free bypass.
Ask. me anything. Now this subreddit has a ton of very juicy information which I'm going to be going through very shortly but before I do that I want to very quickly just sort of address a couple of things that came from the previous video.
First of all I made an effort to reach out to Thomas Ronhard to get his side of the story. I feel like it would only be fair that we hear what he has to say after hearing what Yarno had to say. I reached out to him on Twitter Basically offering him the same platform as Yano. And he politely declined to come on to interview.
Just simply stating that he'd rather not have this continue any longer. Which of course he has every right to do. But it does mean that we don't really have his side of the story. A day later or so I got a text from his team. Basically telling me to leave him alone.
And to be fair I kind of agree with what they said in the text. The kid's only 17 years old. I feel like he's getting hot.
judged very harshly for a lot of the stuff going on here with still no evidence provided now i understand of course that people are still going to have allegations against him but until there's evidence there what can we do apart from just speculate so i do think it's important to sort of keep the innocent until proven guilty mindset in your head otherwise this just turns into a weird witch hunt secondly regarding alvaro caraton who of course unfortunately leaked uh himself using cheats on a uh on an f1 stream very horribly closing the folder and then deleting the stream in response to that happening alvaro posted a statement on twitter which i've i've shown you before basically saying that he was being asked to do this by codemasters slash ea so interestingly after that statement i actually got a twitter dm from somebody who works on f1 esports at codemasters saying that they hadn't asked anyone to do this um They had not been in contact with any of the drivers asking to try these cheats or anything like that at all. Basically then saying that what Alvaro was saying in his statement was not correct. So do with that information what you will.
There is no more information than that. Just simply one word against the other there. But given the person who spoke to me hasn't really wanted to come onto a call, it seems, despite offering to do so initially.
I only have that to go off. So I'm presenting that to you guys now. Anyway.
into the meat of this video which is this subreddit so the subreddit starts with him saying hi i am the original author of all the files seen in the oopsie in havera caraton's live stream he also says please keep the hate to yourself because you have no clue how deep the rabbit hole goes which is enticing and scary at the same time for f1 esports so there's a ton of useful information here so i'm going to go through the big points here and try and sum all that up for you guys Because it's looking pretty dire it seems for F1 Esports. So first of all, user CSBents asks Do you have access to a list of users? And how does the cheat actually work?
It's only increasing grip at all times or only at acceleration? I guess that's a little bit of a nod to the allegations against Thomas Ronhar there. F1 Modder quickly says no, he hasn't got a list of people.
But the cheat works as follows. So slightly after the game starts, the game sort of takes a, as he puts down, a screenshot. of all the mapping, current data, grip, etc. just to make sure they are there. And at certain points in the memory, there is another screenshot of all that data taken later on.
And if they don't match, the game then knows you're cheating and basically kicks you out. The bypass basically just stops the game from taking this little screenshot at the start of the game's launch, meaning that you can just put a ton of cheats in and the game... never knows when you have your cheats and loaded in you can then unpause that little script it takes a screenshot of all the settings including the cheats that you have loaded and then when you go online and it takes that screenshot again it then says yeah okay these match you're fine good to go it sounds so simple i'm surprised that it exists i'm not a coder at all you can probably tell by the way i'm talking but this sounds like it is super easy to achieve i think one of the big questions that i was wondering was actually asked in the subreddit, which was, why did you create this bypass? Why did you create these cheats?
It's free. You can download this wherever you want, basically. And it seems a reason The reason why these cheats exist at all, or the ones made by F1 modder anyway, is to just kill paid cheats for F1.
Destroy the business model so no one can actually make money from this. It's kind of like a Robin Hood style thing, release the cheats for free and then you can't make any money anymore because you see these cheats websites go into time trials and advertise their website in time trial leaderboards. by basically just going in there, turning a cheat on, setting a sh** hot time and putting them at the top of the leaderboard. That's how they advertise. It's insane.
He also goes on to say that these cheats that he's created are of a novice level. They're really easy to make, which I find, again, shocking. for a game with just that level of prize money and renown around it one of the big questions that's come out of the interview with yano is why haven't codemasters slash ea done anything about having an anti-cheat and the model response to that question here reverse caterpillar basically asked how easy would it be for codemasters or ea to make an anti-cheat for f1 2023 and the model replies by saying it's just super easy It's very, very easy to make an anti-cheat for the game, but EA and Codemasters don't seem to want to pay up to have that put into place.
And that leads on to the big question that I was thinking about and worrying about as someone who loves sim racing and even all the esports attached to it, which is a question asked by DARPA. Is it as rampant cheating as it appears to be? And the modder just says, Yeah, basically.
Interestingly, it seems he had a chat with Yano himself on Yano's livestream. And Yano Otmir says that his titles are safe and deserved because he got them at a LAN event under sort of strict conditions. So, you know, there's no way he could have cheated at this LAN event.
But the modder actually says there's still a chance that all of them could have cheated because... the online qualifying for the top 20 was not protected by any sort of anti-cheat so actually getting into that top 20 was significantly easier than you might have expected of course when you're at the event it's near impossible to cheat although maybe a sneaky little usb stick into one of the pcs Could do it. If you were that sneaky about things, I don't think it's going to happen though.
But online, yeah, you could just load something up, do the little trick that the modder says, and no one would know. So that then begs the question, how many of the esports drivers have cheated just to get to the final competition? And that has potential... dire consequences because the modder says that this cheat would work for pretty much all the old f1 games as well because they all work in the same way so i don't know i i like to think that everyone's got there on merit because you know you see the LAN events the people who tend to be fast online are fast at the LAN events as well but as the op points out there's no way to tell who cheated to get to the LAN events and who's there on merit there is nothing in place to check that And for a competition watched by hundreds of thousands of people representing the biggest motorsport brand in the world, I have no idea how there's not something in place for that.
It's unacceptable. Now, in this thread, SilentZap also asked about Codemasters and whether they're actually working with pros to understand these cheats. Interestingly, in contrast to what we heard earlier, he thinks they are. The modder thinks that they are actually working with some pros, but that it won't work.
It won't do anything. The OP says that he can see that they're doing something. behind the scenes because the system they're going down is assuming that the current crop of esports drivers are the fastest esports drivers there are ever going to be and if anyone ever goes slightly faster then they're cheating which does sound like certified sim racer arrogance i know that one well moabite asks a question that we're all sort of wondering here as well saying tell us how deep the rabbit hole goes and f1 modder basically just responds with red pill or blue pill remember All I'm offering is the truth, nothing more.
It says there's really just too much to explain, but in a quick summary, the people who do esports are a little bit too quick to call someone a cheater if they don't know them and they've got beaten by them. So for example, let's say, I don't know, I'm an esports driver and someone randomly comes in and beats my time and I go, Cheater! How can they beat my time? And the logic that the modder is working off here is saying that if you don't think people can get to your times legitimately, then you're a cheat yourself.
Now, I don't think I agree with this logic. because there's not really any proof behind that at all. But it is an interesting thing to think about. Or it could just mean that egos and F1 esports are massive and no one thinks they're beatable. But the most shocking thing that I've seen in this subreddit is actually fairly low down.
You have to scroll down a little way to get to it. The question asked to the modder is simply, can you guess how many of the pros are cheating? And the response is insane.
I believe 70% cheats or have cheated, at least in esports qualifying. 70%. Now, he hasn't provided any proof of this.
But if that's true, that is insane. That is ridiculous. Again, I have to work on the assumption that people are innocent until proven guilty.
But when a guy who makes cheats for F1 suspects that he's a cheater, His cheats are being used in esports. You have to take that seriously. You really do.
That's an insane number. What's 70%? 14 people?
13 people? Out of the 20 in the field? He does also say though that he doesn't have any proof of these esport drivers cheating, but he's had multiple encounters with some of them, making him think... they have something to hide but that's kind of just i don't know you can't really take that into consideration but then when you consider the information that the bypass that he's created he says has close to 1 000 downloads which gives us a possibility that a thousand people or more are cheating in f1 22 you can just share them all around i guess with your friends and how easily that's happened and how undetectable it's been apart from seeing them actually cheat i i don't know i i was in two minds about making this video because it is just me reading a red out but i kind of feel like this needs to be out there this needs to be seen by people so just a small update since recording this video i've been in conversation with a member of an f1 esports team who was asked not to be named he pointed me in the direction of people to maybe speak to and try and get some info from from which i replied it's mad how deep this all seems to go and his response was really interesting so i did want to add it into this video to give something back from the other side because this was very one-sided against ea slash codemasters at the moment which is not what i wanted he says to me it's crazy that it's so easy to cheat But I wouldn't be surprised if actually none of the F1 esports guys have been cheating. He says that the most suspicious driver so far is Caroton, because why do you have this window open during a league race?
And I'm inclined to agree with him there. And he goes on to say that although he wasn't directly involved with Codemasters or EA, he could see that there was controls in place to try and combat slash dissuade people from cheating. So, for example, the drivers were being asked to stream their screen.
throughout the entirety of the day leading up to the f1 esports event but as a streamer myself i can tell you how easy it is to hide stuff if you don't want people to see it but it does seem that they were at least trying to make sure no one was cheating it does also say that the version of the game used by the f1 esports guys is changing all the time and i can sort of semi attest to that and back that up given my time during the virtual gps that version of the game changed every time you played it But he does say that, twinned with the random checks that take place as well, basically means that the person who would use these cheats would either have balls of steel, they wouldn't get caught, or just really trust the modder, that they could make sure that this could go undetected during any big events. But anyway, guys, that's another update into the F1 cheating scandal that seems to continue. I would love to hear if you guys have any experience with any cheaters online or any inside information you can share on this. Of course. with proof if you have it and i'm 100 open to hearing the other side of the story so again if anyone from eal code masters are watching i want to come on and set the record straight i would love to do it i would love to hear what's going on behind the scenes thank you to everyone who got in touch with me people who shared this uh subreddit with me as well for me to go and look through i appreciate you uh helping me out like that And a massive thank you to my Patreons and channel members as well for supporting the channel.
And letting me go down this sort of weird investigative journalism route that I'm enjoying at the moment. I'm not really a journalist at all, so I'm probably doing something terribly. But I think this is still a story that needs to be told.
And no one else seems to be telling it. So here we are. Take care.
Have an awesome day. See you next time.