Cheating and corruption on 1.6 KZ

Do you have any tips or valuable information about cheating and/or corruption? If so, please contact me privately via email at honodille@tuta.io, or in Steam, or in Discord.

Counter-Strike 1.6 is an aging video game, now over 20 years old, making it particularly vulnerable to cheating. Since the early days of the game, cheats have been widely developed and distributed, leading to a long history of cheating knowledge within the community. Unlike modern versions like CS:GO or CS2, where competitive players benefit from sophisticated anti-cheats like those from Faceit or ESEA, CS 1.6's KZ community lacks an external anti-cheat. Server-side anti-cheat plugins are only capable of detecting the most basic cheats and are ineffective against more advanced ones. As a result, the 1.6 KZ community relies heavily on a demo-checking team composed of experienced KZ players who analyze submitted demos for signs of cheating.

Due to the prevalence of cheats in CS 1.6, accusations and incidents of cheating have been common throughout the game's history, and KZ is no exception.

One of the tools demo-checkers use; a tool called 'uq-checker', made by the UNIQUE-KZ community.

The history of demo-checking began in 2005 on Xtreme-Jumps, when eDark started reviewing demos with his anti-cheat tool called fps-Death. The very first cheating bans on XJ were issued in late 2005, when klz and Target- were banned.

The earliest accessible banlist from XJ is available in the archives and is dated April 30, 2008. The latest accessible banlist is dated March 25, 2023. Unfortunately, XJ currently does not have a public banlist. The other KZ community, Cosy-Climbers, made their banlist public in late 2011, and it has remained public since.

Cheating bans during the years in Cosy-Climbers. Chart by hönö dille.

Corruption is another problem closely linked to cheating. Some admins within KZ communities have turned a blind eye to certain cheaters, allowing them to continue playing, while others have even been caught using cheats themselves.

A former high-ranking admin of Xtreme-Jumps, recounts how XJ's demo admins protected cheaters back in the day, particularly during the period before 2015 when XJ had only one demo checker.

In XJ's history, there have been abuses by demo admins. For example, the anti-cheating tools used by the demo checkers have been leaked and cheaters have also been brazenly protected.

This former admin notes, however, that he believes this kind of behavior stopped when FAME joined the XJ team.

However, this stopped completely when FAME jumped on the bandwagon, since then there has been no protection or corruption on the XJ side when it comes to demos.

ShoCk, the current CEO and the head admin of XJ, gave a rather shocking statement during the Kreedz.com Summer Tournament 2024 stream, where he talked about how even well-known cheaters in his view should be allowed to contribute in the community despite of cheating.

I believe if a cheater wants to help the community in terms of growing, he should be allowed to do this, even though he might be a cheater.

There is a weird amount of acceptance for cheaters in the community, as ShoCk's comment illustrates. Players well-known for cheating, banned from submitting demos in every community, are fine to stream events, their runs are published on YouTube, they can participate in tournaments and so on.

Old-school player Johnny explains how the community tends to turn a blind eye to cheaters because new records drive the interest of the community.

Regarding corruption allegations, I could say that this is how things stay interesting in the community. There's a steady flow of new world records, even if the record holder is a cheater. That means more interest, which translates to more views, and so on.

Looking back at the last decade in the history of 1.6 KZ, much has happened. Perhaps the most blatant example of cheating and corruption was exposed in late 2017, when Phantometry, who was then the CEO of Cosy-Climbing, had to step down from the position due to extremely blatant corruption and cheating when FAME exposed both Phantometry and Garey.

In this article, I want to delve into a few specific cases that I find particularly intriguing. I think these cases highlight key moments in cheating and corruption in the modern times of 1.6 KZ.
The lack of serious writings or content on this matter motivated me to write at least one article that investigates these issues seriously.

outside's case

In late 2021, skArp, former demo admin, current CEO of Cosy, and current head demo admin of XJ, announced a permanent ban for outside due to outside submitting dozens of cheated demos to Cosy. Less than a month later, brokoly was also permanently banned by skArp for cheating.

Rumors indicate that a total of three players had been suspected of using a similar cheat. Initial findings were allegedly found by Caffemocker. Two of these players were outside and brokoly, who were banned based on Caffemocker's and Fiveshot's investigations. The third player was topoviygus, who was never banned.

It is important to mention for the readers that skArp is a very close friend of outside, brokoly, and topoviygus.

In late 2022, just over a year after outside was banned, he was unbanned by skArp. In his appeal for the unban, outside claimed he had found a random cheat, used it for one hour, then deleted it. However, according to his story, the cheat somehow remained on his computer and was automatically activated every time he launched CS. (Anyone with experience in CS cheats knows how extremely odd it is for a cheat to activate without user input and to launch automatically after rebooting the system, especially for 'a random cheat you find.') He then proceeded to record and submit dozens of demos, allegedly unaware that the cheat was active in the game and in his demos.

So, one day I was so tired of it that I've found some random cheat. [...] I played like an hour with cheat, then deleted it and forgot about that till my ban news. [...] As it turned out that cheat bugged somehow and remained in my game.

But it turns out that outside did not find a random cheat as he claimed, but instead got the cheat from a friend, meaning he lied in his appeal message.

The dishonesty is hardly surprising, given that the appeal message was supposedly written by outside, but was actually written by brokoly pretending to be him. Also Phantometry was involved in writing the appeal message, allegedly just by helping outside with his poor English skills.

This information about outside's cheat and appeal message was revealed to me by two established persons in the community, who wished to stay anonymous and didn't want to make any comments.

Former XJ demo admin said that some XJ team members didn't like the idea of skArp unbanning outside, and that these members expressed their frustration to skArp, but skArp unbanned outside anyway.

It's no secret that skArp is a friend with these topoviygus, brokoly, outside guys. We [some people in the XJ team] also told skArp that it was a very stupid decision to let outside play again because the guy was clearly caught cheating. Although, in the history of KZ all sorts of bastards have been allowed to play again [after banning].

Why wasn't it made public that the unban appeal was not written by outside himself? Isn't that something people should know? Especially, when it was written by banned players, brokoly and Phantometry? Or that outside received the cheat from his friend?
Did skArp unban outside because outside is his friend, and was the unban justified? Why does the community allow people who are close friends with known cheaters to be admins in their organizations?

Old-school player, who wished to stay anonymous, made a comment about the outside's case.

Regarding the friend group of skArp, outside, topo, and brokoly... it's really suspicious when one of them works as the head demo checker while the others submit completely insane WRs, especially since half or more of them are known cheaters. I don't want to think badly of people or assume someone is cheating, but my trust in these guys isn't very high.

sekai recalls that outside started as a player who showed little skill, but suddenly improved drastically, leading to suspicions of cheating, despite the lack of proof.

I remember when outside was just a noob, emerging from HNS like topo and brokoly. He was rather suspicious from the start—I recall him being terrible at KZ: with poor longjumps, bad bhopping, and generally seeming like a complete newbie. Nobody even paid attention to him. You can see his performance in the 2020 KZ-Rush Cup; he was garbage in that tournament. But then, just a few months later, he started smashing Cosy WRs, and people began calling him a cheater, though no proof was found at the time. I think it all started from some ddrun maps, which is especially suspicious because those don't really require any special skills; you just "pull the switch" and you're ready to beat anything.

fykseN, legendary competitive KZ player, former head admin of Xtreme-Jumps, and top #1 ranked player in XJ in 2019, reflects on his journey in the KZ community, where he was active over a decade, while observing widespread cheating. He notes that cheating has been a significant issue since the game's inception, with many players resorting to dishonest methods to reach the top ranks.

The complexity and time required to master KZ often drive players to seek shortcuts, rather than investing the necessary time and effort. He cited notorious cheaters like LyNn, VNS, and Nikita as examples, highlighting that these individuals and many others acquired their cheats from the HNS community, which is known for its widespread cheating culture.
fykseN also highlights the roles of cheat developers Garey and juice, whom he sees as key figures behind the proliferation of cheats in the community.

I'll try to explain things from my perspective as a legitimate, competitive player. This November it will be exactly 9 years since my first WR on Xtreme-Jumps.

Cheating has been a huge topic since the inception of KZ in general. We got many cheaters reaching the highest heights multiple times. It's the nature of the game that makes you want to cheat, it just takes too long to learn bhop. People look for shortcuts to not have to invest over 1K hours just to cover the basics. Great examples are LyNn, VNS (+eclipzh) and Nikita.

All three (and many many more) got their cheats from HNS community, which is unfortunately infested to the core. People want to look cool playing HNS, doing insane LJ stats and whatnot. LyNn got his slowmotion hack there, VNS got his bhop hack there. The most involved and famous cheat programmers are Garey and juice. Just these two guys are responsible for a complete destruction of the game. I can tell you a bit more about LyNn or VNS if you want, but it's not really that relevant to what's happening now. Busting them with current tools would take me less time than writing the newspost about their ban. VNS and Nikita got their cheats from juice.

In 2015 I got introduced with FAME. I'm pretty sure that we started talking because I thought that colcol was a hacker. He disproven that on the spot and we kinda stayed in touch. In 2017 I got invited to a teamspeak call with Toffifee, where he introduced me to Nikita. That's where I really started learning about cheats. Nikita was banned twice or three times + around 5 cheating multiaccounts on Cosy-Climbing. He introduced me to FPS patterns and other cheat detection. FAME then solidified my knowledge as the years went by. FAME was also cheating in the past, but at the time they were on the opposite side of the coin. juice then returned to the community around 2019 (after being banned for using cheats twice) and we are talking still to this day. He dropped his cheat programming and is now working for Fastcup. After FAME's death, he turned white hat, or rather became neutral.

Old-school player round believes cheating has long plagued Kreedz, with a turning point in 2013 when LyNn was banned, causing a lasting loss of trust in the community. Despite ongoing efforts, he believes some cheaters remain uncaught and have even gained recognition as top players. While he's not hopeful for immediate change, he still hopes that those deserving bans will eventually be exposed.

I believe that cheating has always been a part of Kreedz, and it has significantly affected its development. To me, the turning point occurred in 2013 with the appearance of LyNn in the scene. Although he was eventually banned, in my opinion, things were never the same again. For me, that case symbolized a loss of trust in XJ, which was never fully restored.

Although the "Banned for Life" series is still ongoing (by the way, expect a new name to appear on that list very soon), there are still cheaters who have never been caught. Some of them have become very famous players and are considered among the best by others.

Currently, there aren't many indicators that things will change for the better, but I still hope that eventually, we will see the banlist include the names of those who have long deserved their place there.

2017, the modern cheating era begins, topoviygus emerges

topoviygus, at the age of 14, first appeared in the KZ community during the 2017 Cosy Olympics, organized by Phantometry, then CEO of Cosy. Phantometry was a well-known cheater who was already banned on XJ, and a close friend of the prominent cheat developer Garey.
Phantometry announced a four-man team to the Surf Olympics called "TpaXePbI", consisting of:

• vladdEftw (aka. translucent)

• BuTaMuH

• Phantometry

• topoviygus

Phantometry and his teammates were hyping topoviygus as "a god tier HNS player". This should sound extremely suspicious since everyone knew that the HNS community is full of cheaters, as it was for example pointed in outside's appeal; "[...] and a well-known fact about hns scene is that 98% of players are cheating."

The money collected for the 2017 Cosy Olympics event was supposed to be donated to the community, but instead Phantometry stole the money for himself. Finally, after this, Phantometry was removed from Cosy's administration, and "the most important thread ever", as fykseN describes it, was posted on Cosy.

In this post, FAME made a major exposé, revealing that Phantometry was using Garey's cheats and how Phantometry was submitting and releasing these cheated demos on Cosy.

Garey confirms FAME's conclusions and states that he was the person who gave the cheats to Phantometry. Garey says that some of his friends told to him that "it would be fun to beat some "unbeatable" maps" which led Garey to share his cheat creations with some of his friends. Garey ends his message by apologizing to Phantometry for the cheating becoming public and stating that he cannot lie about it anymore.

All what said FAME is true, my passion to coding going too far... I was planned to only record videos to youtube and when show my hax to "friends", one of them said its will be fun to beat some "unbeatable" maps... but i dont have such skill even for recorded segments run so my "friend" (Phantometry) was recorded all that demos, sorry Phant but truth will be appeared, and i dont wanna lie about this...

Phantometry himself also commented on the post. His comments were extremely inappropriate and somewhat deranged, considering that he was the CEO of Cosy during that time.

It was so obvious that demo is cheated but guess what? I didn't care at that point.

I don't really care anymore. And yeah, I don't.

Phantometry states in his comments that he wanted to make his friend vladdEftw angry by taking his records with demos submitted from a noob account called Nyantillus.

I can only imagine how hard of a butthurth he would get after seeing that some random Nyantillus kiddo took all his maps.

Anyways, I feel so sorry for people who have spent countless hours geeking this fucking worthless game.

I CAN DO WHATEVER I WANT DUDE, AIN'T NOBODY PAYS ME MONEY FOR WHAT I DO. I CAN QUIT AT ANY FUCKING TIME I WANT AND COME BACK WHENEVER I WANT. MY SCHEDULE IS 100% FLEXIBLE AND DEPENDS ON ME AND ME ONLY. So you, FAME, and any other person who will talk about 'repsonsibilities', 'mature acting', 'behaviour' and all that bullshit, can go fuck himself and eat his own shit.

After all this, FAME took over as head demo admin for Cosy and XJ, and he cleaned most of the cheaters.
Also topoviygus took a break and wasn't seen submitting any demos during 2018-2019. However, people were quietly wondering how the nonamer emerged in KZ.

Many prominent KZ players have privately shared similar stories with me about how topoviygus's rise to prominence was surrounded by extreme suspicion.

fykseN describes the challenges in XJ during 2018-2019 and how he became the head admin of XJ alongside hoLy.

In late 2018, big issues with XJ emerged. We wanted to get rid of head administration as they were ruining the community. It was CyclopP (COO) and faker (CEO). They used donated money for personal gains and CyclopP was overall a horrible admin.

With help of p0ker, Commandeer and shooting-star, we managed to enter a talking phase. Only two people running for CEO was hoLy and me (captains of insilio and kz-random). I already had a fulltime job and hoLy didn't, so I used all I had to put him in that CEO spot. We all voted for him and I became a COO. He let me be the face of XJ as he didn't want to be involved with people too much, so I took it very seriously and started establishing connections with CS:GO KZ and other streamers from different movement games.

fykseN continues by recounting the challenges he faced in the competitive gaming scene during the COVID-19 pandemic. He returned to PC gaming in mid-2020 thanks to friends who sent him a computer. As an XJ admin, he initially avoided discussing topoviygus. However, the situation escalated when his close friend and fellow competitor, shooting-star, retired due to harassments. This controversy polarized the community, framing it as a clash between Czech and Russian players, and dragged fykseN into the fray due to his association with shooting-star. In response, fykseN connected with a former rival, shNz, to form MK-Ultra, a group aimed at reclaiming the leaderboard.

I got my hands on a PC again halfway through 2020, my friends sent it to me during covid. As an admin, I didn't want to talk about topoviygus publicly at all. Unfortunately, shooting-star couldn't stand the idea of battling a cheater on his home turf. It was a mess...........

shooting-star retired from competition and just watched his demo count plummet because of topoviygus, who targeted him for the allegations. I was associated with shooting-star, therefore I got caught in crossfire. People just took it as CZ vs Russia. They didn't want to understand that there is a merit to recording that only top players understand. topoviygus pumped demos too effortlessly and I naturally started studying his game.

I re-linked with shNz (who I had a horrible fight with when I became top1). We created a group called MK-Ultra. It was supposed to be a project of greatness, essentially the best players combining their powers. We ended up releasing the biggest amount of records possible.

Then I became a top1 player again. The hate towards me and other established players was rising, more cheaters emerged to "show us". Cosy was completely overwhelmed by cheaters without anyone to remove them. They started leaking into XJ and we had a lot of mess to deal with.

fykseN delves into topoviygus, highlighting how his playing style evolved over time. With each new release, topoviygus employed fewer strafes and scrolls, significantly improving the quality and number of his records. A notable milestone was when topoviygus took the fu_extreme map from shooting-star, a feat that fykseN still finds astonishing. Despite fykseN's efforts to compete, the relentless pace set by topoviygus left him disheartened and contemplating quitting.

His style started changing with every release, he started doing less strafes, many less scrolls than in the past (9+). The amount of maps and the quality of previous records was rising. He took fu_extreme from shooting-star which is still an insane landmark when I think about it. We couldn't catch up at all and I didn't want to play anymore.

The idiot that I am, I still invested countless hours to do more records, tried co-existing with topoviygus. It didn't work out, he was holding a grudge because I wouldn't stop poking into his friends. Huge thread from Phantometry emerged maybe in 2021. It was about him creating a perfect neural cheat that topoviygus is using (neurogus). It was a retarded bait, but still he admitted to using him as a cheating puppet.

I was stalked on XJ, on servers, in tournaments and discord. It was unbearable.

fykseN then stepped down from XJ.

I believe that people on the high level are using private cheats. On a cheating forum, some guy was advertising his private KZ hack, saying that his users are already established top players on XJ and Cosy.

He has now moved into surfing and is enjoying it a lot.

Early 2022 I got into surf and I'm currently doing bonus records and completion on surfheaven. There is no toxicity or cheaters.

In mid-2022 fykseN published a video on his YouTube channel, where he shows a demo from 2021 that he obtained from Cosy, marking the first confirmed use of Garey's segment hack since it was first used by Phantometry in 2017. skArp removed the demo from Cosy without any official mention.

sekai recalls topoviygus's sudden and suspicious rise to prominence in the KZ community. Despite lacking top-tier skills before disappearing in 2017, he returned in 2019 with remarkable confidence and quickly began dominating challenging maps, leading many experienced players to suspect him of cheating.

Some topo supporters might say: "Haha! People who claim that topo is a cheater are just crybabies who can't come to terms with someone being better than them." But when topo emerged, I remember it very well – I knew him from HNS. When he came back at the very end of 2019, believe it or not, I was the first to speak to him in kz-rush server. I remember asking him, "Hey dude, what have you been up to?" When we'd discuss KZ, he'd say things like "I'm gonna beat map X, map Y", including fu_sane, which, if I'm not mistaken, belonged to shooting-star at the time. I told him, "Yo bro, you can't be so sure of that", because, objectively speaking, saying you'd own shooting-star easily like it's nothing is way too presumptuous. You'd either have to be delusional, trolling like pepi, a tier-one player, or a cheater.

Well, considering he shortly did beat fu_sane, it turns out topo wasn't delusional. But it's still hard for me to believe that he was a tier-one player and was so confident from the start. He had some WRs from 2017, sure, and they were promising. But then he vanished, so I have no idea why he would have such an unshaken confidence about his godlike skills as soon as he returned. His 2017 times didn't seem like those of a tier-one player on hard maps. I remember his run on wnkz_firsty_v2 — he did PRO in 57 minutes in 2017 in KZ-Rush. That's very impressive, of course, but it's nowhere near what he'd become in 2019, seemingly out of nowhere.

Then he started smashing those hard climb maps, and I thought to myself: "Alright, we've got this talented god or whatever – probably a cheater – but at least he can't bhop." However then he pulled off some crazy dyd_bhop times. I thought to myself, is this guy bad at anything?

He went on to take a lot of Cosy-Climbing WRs, speedmaps mainly, and eventually came to XJ. Then shooting-star, fykseN, and others started speaking out. The chronology might not be perfect, but that's roughly how it all happened.

I was among the ones that accused topo of cheating as well. What I noticed was that most of the players with little skill were idolizing topo, with their childish mindset. However, the truly skilled players who spent a significant part of their lives in this game can truly feel the skill level, saw that it was just unrealistic.

Understanding the level of skill in KZ is like understanding the height of mountains – if you've never climbed one, 2,000 meters and 4,000 meters seem the same to you. You know second is twice as tall, but you can't fully grasp the difference. The same goes for skill in KZ. The newbies and the general majority of the players, who idolized topo, couldn't feel the skill gap between him and everyone else. Meanwhile, most of the pros, being at the peak of their game, recognized how suspicious and unrealistic it all was.

Interesting point to note is the correlation between Phantometry's idea of "beating unbeatable maps"–a concept he found amusing and even managed to accomplish in the past without detection (at least, not until FAME's exposé)–and topoviygus's grand ambitions to beat records on certain hard maps shortly after his unexpected return in 2019. Also the Phantometry's thread about using topoviygus as a "cheating puppet," is rather interesting coincidence in the overall picture.

Phantometry's and Garey's comments

I managed to get hold of both Phantometry and Garey.

When asked about the neurogus thread, Phantrometry says it was obviously a troll, but creating an AI-based anti-cheat is a feasible possibility.

Well, the neurogus was obviously a troll, but the conception is still there. While it's impossible to create something like that (completion of KZ map with AI tools, live AI gameplay on servers) due to the certain limitations, the possibility of, let's say creating an AI anticheat is more than real.

I asked Phantometry who Garey gave cheats to.

hönö dille: Did Garey give his cheats to other players as well apart from you?

Phantometry: Yes.

hönö dille: Can you name the players?

Phantometry: Sorry, can't do that.

I then asked Phantometry to provide a more general comment about cheating and corruption, as well as his experiences with KZ.

I got my hands on 0test.amxx back in 2010 or 2011, I don’t remember the exact time. It was passed around by some people and I got it from Juhx, the old Cosy admin from Russia. I tested it, did some jumps, and recorded a few hard demos with it too. Some of them got into a few edits and that’s when IceVip approached me. He was making a movie called The Compilation. He wanted me to be in it, but the demo requirements were quite hardcore for me back in the day. I was just a kid trying to be on the front page of XJ, and it was like a dream come true. I could land the jump by myself if I had enough time, but there wasn’t. IceVip needed the demo ASAP and I simply haven’t had enough time to perform it. Thus, I recorded it with the 0test.amxx in a few attempts and got caught by eDark since the cheat itself is extremely easy to detect. From that point on it went downhill, and I did lots of different things that I am not proud of. As I look back and ask myself why I did it? I was just a kid trying to make a name for myself in the KZ scene and become ‘famous’. It’s so funny to me now because the reason is so childish and useless even. I guess your perspective indeed changes when you become older.

While being a CEO of Cosy I did a few good things I think, or at least I tried. But in the end, it all felt pointless. Spending so much time on a game instead of doing actual things that matter IRL is my biggest regret now that I’m older. Speaking about using and testing cheats with Garey or whoever else, it never happened the way you might think happened. Yes, I already knew lots of people from both the cheating and demo admin scene at the time, and Garey was one of the guys. He introduced me to the new tool he made at the time, and I felt like recording some demos with it. The plan was to beat Translucent's records and then restore them and ban the account I cheated from. He was a buddy of mine and I knew that seeing all his records beaten by some random dude would trigger him so much, make him talk shit to me and rage like hell. Besides, he hated cheaters then, really hated them. It was a funny time in the HNS scene and people used to troll a lot, that’s what I wanted to do as well. Was it foolish and childish? Of course. But that’s who I was at the time, just a kid doing stupid things. Do I regret doing it? You can say so, but in the end, I didn’t care much since I was about to step off and separate myself from KZ.

Phantometry thinks there are some suspicious players in the KZ scene, but he's no longer involved with the scene.

I don’t follow the KZ scene as much as I did back in the day, so I can’t say for sure. But there are a couple of suspicious guys around, at least for me. But once again, I am done with KZ and won’t spend any time speculating about who’s cheating or who’s not. You have plenty of demo admins for that.

Phantometry tells how cheats used to be widely shared and misused, with 50-70% of players using the same hacks, creating chaos in HNS. In KZ, some cheats were specifically developed and kept updated for certain players, with various types of hacks being recorded and tested. He tells how he was involved in developing and keeping hacks undetected and says he never shared them.

Now, here’s some other information. Cheats used to be passed like cookies back in the day. People used to share them like it was nothing. At one point it got so bad that pretty much 50-70% of the server was using the same Bhop or GS cheat, and the game was a complete mess. But that’s HNS. Speaking about KZ, some folks developed hacks for specific players and kept them updated. People recorded numerous records with different types of hacks. Other developers only tested and pushed the boundaries of what was known and only shared them with a very limited number of individuals. I was one of them, and it was quite a fascinating thing to be a part of. Realizing that there’s much more to cheating than Bhop hack or Groundstrafe hack. Then try to develop it, make and keep it undetected for as long as you can, etc. Speaking about hacks. Bhop hacks, gain plugins, ground strafe hacks, map modification tools to change High Jump into Long Jump, various HUDs, prestrafe helpers, perfect block conditions during specific jumps, mouse position correctors, etc. I did them all. Some things I just mentioned are well-known to the public, and some of them were never heard before. However, whatever you might think of me, even though I developed tons of different things and had an entire collection of various hacks, I never shared them with anybody. The only time I did was a Knife Bot for Translucent. He ended up playing with it for 2 hours and never used it in the end. On the other hand, some people pass hacks to even the most random dudes out there. And god only knows what they might do with it.

Garey gave only brief comments.

My first hack was private for only one person, but he didn't have any success in KZ records. Some people still PM me about KZ hacks, but I ignore them.

Asked about cheating and corruption in general, Garey says he stopped following the KZ scene after 2019.

I haven't followed the KZ scene since 2019, and I don't really know anything about admins. The only person I trusted was FAME...

The actual cheats

There are few accessible cheats that are used in KZ. One of them is made by Garey. One of the cheats mentions patchuoli[sic] and topoviygus in the cheat's credits – it could be that their stats just have been used as a reference, or the cheat developer put the names there to troll, or that they are just straight up the users of the cheat.

Screenshots of KZ cheats. Snippet from one the cheat's config documentation.

kilabeez, the creator of one of the most widely used cheats in KZ, allegedly used a fake name to boast on cheating forums about how his cheat is undetectable and how top players in the KZ community are using it.

Shall you need a perfect hack, undetectable with demo checkers, hack detectors and so on - it will be provided to you. [...] P.S there are guys in the leaderboard of kreedz communities with WR and so on that are there with our help

Johnny says that people have limited way of seeing cheating.

My own thought on speculative cheating accusations is that many people have a really limited imagination about cheats, they think that slowmode, xHack, Kzh can be easily busted, so no one can cheat anymore. The possibilities for cheats are basically limitless.

fykseN thinks cheats are just way too advanced to be detected.

Cheats are too advanced nowadays... Some people really tweaked their cheats too much, but there is a perfect balance and randomness that won't get you banned.

To put things into perspective on how difficult it would be to create an undetectable cheat, a developer in the XJ team says that it would probably take about a few months for a decent programmer with a good understanding of the Half-Life engine and KZ to make an undetectable cheat, given the current anti-cheat measures.

A mapper and a developer arte de la puerta, shares some interesting insights on cheats that could forge demo and map files.

I don't know much about real-time cheats because, personally, I'm not a good enough player to judge other people. What I know a lot more about are cheats inside demos. Since a demo is just data - and data is just data - people can easily forge it. Lots of things could be forged in a demo.

Recently, it occurred to me that if a cheater has the source file of a map, they can nerf the map, play on that nerfed version, then record the gameplay. The demo can then be made to work on the original version of the map. That's one method. I think I've demonstrated this before, but you can also forge text in a demo so that your demo appears faster. Then, by subtracting some frames, you can keep it consistent. The potential for this is pretty crazy. That sounds like the kind of tool I would make because it's wild, but I don't think anyone else is dedicated enough to cheat like that.

Creating a tool to modify demos involves a lot of work, but it isn't that hard because I've already made one. It's pretty much up to one's imagination - and determination - to create an effective cheat. I've brought up these issues with other people before, but so far, I seem to be the only one with enough malice to think about such applications. Maybe others are already doing this, and no one is aware of it. From what I've heard, there were tools to modify demos long ago.

Phantometry in the other hand thinks creating undetectable cheats is very challenging because it's hard to outsmart demo-checkers.

Well, in general, it’s a never-ending process. Cheating I mean. People make new things, test stuff, develop hacks, play with it, etc. On the other hand, demo admins also don’t jerk around and try to catch up. But that’s the thing, demo admins are always catching up, not even being 1 or 2 steps behind of cheaters. They always catch up. But who knows, maybe one day someone will develop a new cheat and, well, your tools are useless now.

Old-school player, who wished to stay anonymous, sums it up briefly but to the point.

There have been cheaters from the very beginning since I started playing KZ in 2006, and those cheaters are definitely not going away.

Let's end the article with comments from old-school HNS and KZ player eMurkt. of the insomnia clan, who shares his views on the topic.

As requested by a kind individual, I’d like to share some thoughts and experiences accumulated over the years.

Specifically, I want to mention the ex-HNS clan XENO-ORDER and some individuals within it, starting with Phantometry himself. Most people are aware of his extensive cheating history, including his involvement with the CC website and submitting cheated demos under different accounts. However, this isn’t about him specifically. Now, let’s talk about a few others from the same friend group: skArp, brokoly, outside, topoviygus, and translucent.

To name and shame: skArp, brokoly, and outside. While topoviygus and Translucent might be a different story, they were still part of the same circle as well-known cheaters like Phantometry, Nohomo/Garey, and Softwarj (or whatever his name was).

In terms of HNS history, skArp, brokoly, and outside have all been banned for cheating on various servers, Rayish.com in particular. I doubt that Reavap (an older HNS player and main admin of the Rayish project) would bother verifying any of this since it's ancient history now. Long story short: all these named players were banned for cheating and continued to use multiple accounts over the years to cheat at their leisure. They shone particularly during HNS PCW/MIX games, showing off their "skills" while cheating. What kind of cheating? You’d better ask them—probably a bit of everything.

It’s a pity how the HNS RU community in general praised cheaters over the years, even when it was blatant. You could call it a skill issue, but from what I’ve seen, nobody played like them. For instance, brokoly once got so frustrated with another Russian cheater that he cranked up his cheats, flying across the map and beyond. But hey, that’s what they do. Most of the time, these players wouldn’t go full throttle with their cheats, likely because they knew better, but they still got caught multiple times.

There’s a long history behind all this, and plenty of players could share similar stories, but no one cares anymore—myself included. Some of us gave up this battle against cheaters a long time ago. We stopped caring and just wanted to enjoy the game without being competitive.

Given the history of these players, it’s suspicious how they suddenly became “pros” in Kreedz. Myself and others have questioned this many times, but we didn’t care enough to make a fuss. Anyone who has played this game long enough knows there’s something fishy about outside’s sudden rise to "pro" status. Now, for a laugh, here’s the conspiracy theory: within this circle of cheaters, it’s amusing to see how their friends also became “good” players. It’s even funnier when one of these guys became a head demo admin, approving demos from people with a known history of cheating. Corruption, anyone? Haha, never mind.

We could probably write a short book if we went back to the beginning, dug into each individual’s history, and connected the dots.

I mean no harm in sharing this. If any of you are reading, don’t take it personally. I don’t hate you, and I don’t care if you did any of that. I’ve been beyond caring about this game for a long time. I just wanted to help out someone who was interested in getting different perspectives.

Corrections

24 August 2024 - Corrected misspellings. Added a paragraph about outside's cheat and the appeal message, how this information was provided to me by two established players who wished to remain anonymous.