For the past 3 or 4 days, there have been some new Italian players who have taken over some top 20 positions on the Clash of Code leaderboard. (3rd place has been working with 1st, 4th, and 11th place even though 3rd is country-less) These accounts have all been created within the same week.
And I even have some screenshots of them queuing up in the same lobby at different times (one when I played 184 clashes and another when I played 196).
And I’m pretty sure they’re all working together to skyrocket the score of one account. As a whole though, ranks 1-7 are all taken over by clashers who have less than 100 clashes played, and it looks like they figured out how to cheat the TrueSkill ranking system.
Is there a way to install an auto-ban, anti-cheat detection system, or something like that since CodinGame’s rules say that influencing the rankings in any way is prohibited (I think).
So sorry about the lack of screenshot evidence and that my post isn’t very polished since this is my first one, but I really want to get my concerns out as seeing someone get 1st place only after 8 clashes is really concerning and annoying.
EDIT: For some reason, the 3rd place and 4th place users in my screenshots deleted their accounts just now (or got banned)
I investigated into this a bit further, and it looks like the user @DonaldDuck00 (currently 14th place on CoC leaderboard) is responsible for all these users, which would make sense because:
this user has the most progress on CodinGame in general
linked the current 1st place user on his description
1st place account linked him back
So, I’m assuming he had 3 accounts hit top 20 positions, then had one account play perfect games against those high ranked accounts. With those wins, he could’ve cheated the TrueSkill system, and he got that account to first place. That’s the only explanation for 1st place only after 11 clashes.
Should @DonaldDuck00 be flagged for influencing the rankings through unfair play, or is it not a big deal?
If you go to Luca’s profile, you will find the link of a GitHub page. The link is luca12341234.github.io. “12341234” matches the naming pattern used for the other accounts (see the screenshots).
Also, this user is present in all matches where the suspicious accounts are.
I play CoC for fun. I don’t care too much about the rankings. But seeing that the leaderboard has the first and second best players with less than 20 clashes feels like a disrespect with the players who are playing competitively. They are level 3. Something is obviously wrong here. This @TheGo0 user is the second account of @DonaldDuck00 which renamed their profile, removed the GitHub pages link I talked about before and changed their location from Italy to Haiti.
I saw someone a few days ago got 100% within 20 seconds on a very difficult puzzle, I checked their code, obvious AI, full variable names, proper functions even though they weren’t necessary, all formatted and spaced perfectly. I reported the account obviously, but makes me wonder if it was one of these accounts now. I don’t even know how you could get an AI to read the task and copy and paste the code within 20 seconds, let alone a human do it.
I do hope you’re not talking about players like me because there are some clashes where I can code a quick generator statement in under 25 seconds legit
If it’s about long statements, then your concern is valid
No, it’s just long statements. Even I can do some of them in around 30 seconds, albeit rarely. The one I was talking about was about 40 lines including line breaks and comments.
No. It’s extremely obvious to spot a cheater. They always finish in about 20 seconds (even if the statement is super long or super short), some has no profile picture, always hitting perfect score, and when they share their code, it has multiple comments, long variable names… and the list goes on.
And this user isn’t even top 1,000 on the leaderboard, but they keep eating up my leaderboard score when I’m trying to climb. It’s so annoying and I’ve been trying to avoid games with this user, but sometimes, they just sneak in before I can leave, and then do this. Please ban @AIkhiIJohn CodinGame; I beg you
Hello, I thought this one was a bot created by codingame (level 7 as many other codingame bots) to have more players in a clash
Same idea for KaneyklovAleck and BSoD.
The reason according to me : there is no clash player during some hours but these bots are here to enable a game
And as soon as there are several real players in a future game, they leave the game before the start.
See, that’s the trick! This user is disguising itself as one of the bots AlkhilJohn. The actual username is aikhiijohn, with the 1st and 3rd i capitalized. Then, it’s a really well hidden disguise due to CodinGame’s font. (Displayed as AIkhiIJohn)
Additionally, I have studied the patterns of all the normal bots (KaneyklovAleck, Natchood, BSoD, etc), and if they get 100% on a clash, they always share their code. That’s obviously not the case here.
Another thing is that bots only join when there are less than 4 players. This user joins even if there are already 4 players.
If you search up the name aikhiijohn on the leaderboard, you can see that it only has about 3K clashes played, while the real bot alkhiljohn has over 100K.
Unfortunately the impersonator is real, but going back to my original point, is there a way to ban this user for the reasons I stated above? I’ve already reported aikhiijohn, but nothing has happened.
I may be wrong, but it seems unlikely that CG would ban a user just for posing as one of their bots or using AI-generated or copied solutions in a clash.
