Originally Posted by
Livux
As I told here; I only have clues.
Maybe they check how the file was modified, when it was modified and if you played that time, or anything else.
If I could answer that question, I guess I would work for EAC (probably not, but you know what I mean). And yes, it was a fully automated ban, by EAC, for save 'hack'.
Maybe the real question people should be asking is what was modified about the save files. Because with the save editor, you can change anything. You can go from giving yourself a few bloodpoints to giving yourself legacy skins that can no longer be obtained. Some people have been banned for "save hacking", while others have save hacked and not been banned, so the question becomes what did these people do differently?
Some things I can think of:
1. Don't give yourself legacy skins. You can't get them anymore. If you bought the game after the game update and you are using them, you save edited, it's obvious.
2. Don't give yourself an obscene amount of items. If you have 500 items it's obvious you didn't get it through normal gameplay. Nobody stocks up that much. And even if someone did one time in history, it's certainly not the person with under 100 hours in the game.
3. Messing with the games files is risky business, they are updating EAC to check for any sort of tampering, remember, it's a game of cat and mouse, people find new workarounds, they patch them and update their systems to catch people doing it. If you do the thing that's already been patched, ban.
4. Be careful with prestige. I'm sure there's a minimum amount of time before it's even possible for anyone to prestige. They have this information on hand. There's no way you played the game for 30 hours and you have all characters on Prestige 3.
5. To add on to that last point, steam achievements are unlocked from certain progress milestones. AKA, if you give a character prestige 3 and all perks, you'll get the corresponding "Adept" achievement and the prestige perks. It will look really obvious if you unlocked everything at once one day when you booted the game. "But I have my profile on private". That prevents random people from looking at your steam page, but are we sure it prevents the game itself from connecting, since it's the one who unlocks the achievements in the first place? As a matter of fact, does the game have any sort of access to how many hours you played when profile is private? It might.
6. EAC. They keep on close contact with EAC devs and tweak it. I saw someone talking about how they renamed the DbD savefile editor and now they are good. No, EAC, and in fact most anti-cheats like EAC or antiviruses even, use program signatures to detect it. It's pretty much certain the save editor on these forums is considered a cheat by EAC, as such, if you run it while the game is running, expect EAC to detect it. If you run it shortly after the game is closed, or maybe before running it or anything, there's a chance. Just remember, if you run the blacklisted savegame while EAC is running on your computer (I'm not sure when it is), you will get caught, technically you don't even have to edit the savefile, just leave it running and open the game, done.
7. They roll these out in banwaves, so keep in mind, even if you are the guy saying "But I'm not banned, you are all just idiots you leave your profile public, I have 999 items and all legacy skins", you may already have the target on your back.
8. Finally: Keep in mind nothing is foolproof. Their system as it stands isn't the final thing ever, they are constantly updating and improving their anti cheat techniques. Your 500 items on a newly bought account may not have triggered their system today, but tomorrow they may roll out their new save system which checks how many hours you played vs how many items you have, if it's something that would be physically impossible to get during that timeframe, you are banned.
So where am I getting with this long ass post? If you are gonna cheat, then do it carefully. Take every precaution possible and don't abuse. It just takes one slip up to get caught. And you will make that slip up if your mentality is "Ah, they probably can't detect this anyways, fuck it, I'm safe".
Edit: Another quick tip: If you absolutely must edit your save file, the best way to do it with the current editor is likely to run it on another computer entirely. A laptop or a second computer you have around. The best way to avoid EAC which is already installed on your computer is to not deal with EAC at all! Edit it somewhere else that doesn't EAC/DbD installed. And always keep in mind: "Does this look like a legit profile?" If everyone online could peer into the items/perks I own and see how many hours I have played, would it look legit to them? If the answer is no, then you are at risk of them implementing something that checks your save file for that automatically. Be smart, guys.
