Modern players think that cheating in Red Alert online play is a conspiracy theory, an urban myth. Sadly the rumours are true. In the pre-CnCNet era, cheating was rampant on places like Kali and Gamespy. It was so common that keyboard express for shifting your tanks was considered almost standard.
Some of the best players from Kali moved over to CnCNet once it became apparent that Red Alert online had a new permanent home. They brought with them an abundance of cheats. The most high profile cheater was a player called Mazell. To put it in context how this stunned the community, Mazell was described by Ehy as his only worthy opponent. Mazell was seen as an undisputed top 3 player at the time even better than At0m1 and NastyNate. He was put on a pedestal by late 00s and early 2010s players.
It was a dark day when Funkyfr3sh exposed the array of cheats that Mazell had been using for years. I remember vividly a 2v2 P4 game where it was myself and Col0 against Mazell and a complete nubenator like King Hood (no offence Hood). We lost basically 1v2. I had 25 medium German tanks and I could not stop Mazell's flame towers. They appeared on the map as fast as lightning. They produced faster than a tank coming out of my war factory. Baffled by this I knew something wasn't right. I then argued with Mazell who dismissed me as a noob so I challenged him to a 1v1. I was a cocky arrogant noob back then and wanted a chance to get a cheap croboy win and then talk smack to him. He duly obliged me. I got obliterated by him producing 38 tanks to my 26. It was a no contest.
I then whined and complained to Funky and mentioned how this guy seemed too good. I said how his flame towers were producing faster than my medium tanks. I knew it wasn't solely down to me being a bad player. I knew he was at it.
Funky uncovered that Mazell was using an autoclicker to produce his units and buildings. He literally did not even need to click the tank on sidebar, his game script would make it automatically for him. He also had a keyboard express type macro for moving his tanks automatically once produced. As for his flame towers? He could basically just hold in his F key on his keyboard and click the map to build! LOL! No wonder he seemed so fast.
Upon being 'outed', Mazell knew he had been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He didn't apologise or feel bad about it. He just laughed it off and said he had dozens of other games to play. His explanation was something along the lines of it being too much effort to click normally. Ehy, who was his biggest opponent had a pro attitude to the revelation and took pride in knowing he could beat Mazell anyway even though Mazell was beefed up on steroids. Other stalwart players such as NastyNate were naturally disgusted by Mazell vowing to never play with him again due to the amount of years he had cheated. Unsurprisingly, Mazell slipped off into the shadows and has never been seen since that fateful day 7 years ago. Rumour has it that he has played under a new identity but I highly doubt this. I suspect he did stick to his promise and just plays other games instead.
Mazell being busted set a precedent. Funky then established a swat team to clamp down on cheating on CnCNet. He discovered at least a dozen players who were juiced up, with cheats ranging from Mazell's Macro to the universal GPS.
GPS gave players the allied tech centre hack at the start of every game. You can imagine how much of an advantage this was. You could see exactly what your opponent was doing without having to scout and react accordingly. It baffles me that people were able to lose with this advantage.
My paranoid badgering of Funky to investigate Mazell was the start of a domino chain of events that resulted in Funky purging all the old cheats from CnCNet. The CnCNet rules were updated to make it clear that anyone cheating would be banned. Players who had been found guilty were punished with 30 day bans and warned that a 2nd offence would result in some hard time. Funky also implemented some anti cheat detection capabilities that monitors production times as a preventative measure to deter future criminals. Funky also added the scoresheet feature so players could analyse anything suspicious in production from the game they just played - a fantastic feature which has also had the unintended impact of encouraging players to get faster.
Everyone with Pro attitude wants clean and competitive games. If you are reading this and considered cheating do not do it. You will end up like Mazell. A once thought of legend now with a tarnished reputation as the biggest cheater in red alert history.
It is also sad but true that cheating is still possible even today. Funky doesn't have all day everyday to monitor any new changes or programmes so some upstarts could be pulling the wool over our eyes. If you suspect that a new player has suddenly made an impossible dramatic improvement do not be afraid to share your concerns with some established players or admins. Preferably you would have some potential evidence rather than it just being a case of you sucking and the guy being much better than you.
Hope you enjoyed this historical anecdote.
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