Combating Spoofed/Fake Servers

[gamemann]

This issue serves to discuss methods on combating spoofed/fake game servers (e.g. if a server's query info shows them as 100 users when in reality they're at 3 users).

[gamemann]

The most effective method I've implemented so far for spoofed A2S_INFO queries is also sending an A2S_PLAYER query and ensuring the user list count matches what is stored in the A2S_INFO query. However, this isn't hard to get around.

Another method I plan on implementing is checking the max user count supported for games and ensuring the server doesn't show higher than that (e.g. in Counter-Strike: Source, the maximum player count is 64 users and I've seen spoofed servers at 255/255).

I've already implemented support for filtering IP ranges and in the future I also plan to implement filtering ASNs as well.

Unfortunately, no matter what, moderation will be required which is why I've been working on mod functionality within the Best Servers website. There is no way to ultimately filter out all spoofed servers automatically.

[gamemann]

I've implemented platform-specific filters a few days ago with the following settings.

• Max current user count.
• Max user count.
• Allow user count overflow (more current users than max users).