Home › Forums › Angry Birds Transformers Forum › Rovio, please clarify: Are there NPCs in the Challenge Competitions? › Reply To: Rovio, please clarify: Are there NPCs in the Challenge Competitions?
Thank you for all the thought you have put into this. I started a thread to specifically address this issue.
@everyoneelse
Regarding NPC’s I have been sort of researching the AB franchise by reading the forums and using search engines. I now realize that Rovio has a big problem with fraud. So much so, in some of the games there’s probably more people cheating than playing by the rules. Just do a simple search on “cheating in angry birds” — I was stunned. This is just on the internet, I can only imagine what’s on darknet. I’m not a big gamer, so clearly I’m naive about what’s going. However, I am an application developer — not games, but boring enterprise P/Saas apps — and I can’t imagine a scenario where the majority of the users are successfully subverting the code, which being in the volume business like Rovio, directly impacts the ability to generate income and therefore stay in business. That said, it does happen albeit a smaller scale. But the level of sophistication with the cheating that’s going on in the AB franchise is probably more sophisticated than the actual game code (jmho).
I know in client/server apps there’s a tendency not to trust what comes from the client because of fraud and I always thought that was the reason for the “Updating Your Progress” code — people rooting/jail braking the device and manipulating the save files. I also know it’s very difficult to stay ahead of cheaters because at the very least you have to keep implementing new technology after the fact and most of the time you’re forced to innovate when you don’t have the resources to do so. It’s very easy for fraud prevention to overtake progress. It doesn’t matter how fast, sleek and sophisticated your new plane is, if it’s leaking all the gas, it won’t stay in the air.
That being said, @gradientturtle7 I believe you that there are no NPCs in the challenge contests and we are probably just complaining about cheating. Thank you, for taking the time to monitor this forum and respond to requests that are harshly worded and do not give Rovio the benefit of the doubt. I’m guilty of this and I apologize. Your attention and consideration is greatly appreciated. Please continue to try and help us (you and all of the other Rovio peeps on this forum), the honest users of this game, you are doing a wonderful job. I promise, the number of pigs/coins/gems, etc. that I have accumulated are from playing the game the way it’s designed to be played.