Is it a waste of time to report cheating?

[AnyTwoCanLose]

Do sites ever actually look into it and stop it?

[Piz0wn0reD!!!!!!]

I have had a few player's all in protection taken away.

[SoftcoreRevolt]

You really shouldn't phrase a question one way in the title then another in the poll, I almost voted no, then looked how you phrased it.

Report it, Party will take action if there is a trend of abuse, but not if it is somewhat isolated.

[Orpheus]

Even if you believe a given site isn't doing much about reported cheaters, you should still report them. If a site doesn't get many complaints, it only allows them to keep their heads in the sand and assume "it isn't a problem" (where "problem" may mean "it bothers our customers", not "we know it happens here")

More reports will bump it up their priority list, especially if competition between networks gets tighter. Cracking down on real cheaters is a cheap and easy way to make customers happy. If I were them, I'd publish their "booted" list (since account names are supposed to be anonymous, and most players should keep their screen names anonymous (for both tracking and personal security reasons) publishing the boot list wouldn't be defamatory. [I can speculate that Jack the Ripper did X, and not be defaming a real person. It's not my fault if you decide to reveal that you are Jack the Ripper -- especially not when my security policies advise you not to reveal personally identifiable information!]

In fact, some of the perceived unresponsiveness might be due to the whole network paradigm. The player you complained about may be playing a different skin, beyond the direct banning ability of the skin you complained to.

I don't know the actual procedure, but I believe that the skins on most networks don't have have the member lists of other skins [based on some sloppy crackdown attempts], though it's possible that some skins have simply shot their own enforcement efforts in the foot by making the initial screen name the same as the the account name (IIRC, Empire doesn't do this, but Party does) Since all skins disallow previously used account AND screen names, across the network, for logistical and security reasons, such policies *force* even careless BWs to choose unique names when registering at multiple sites on the same network.

It seems probable that the complainer's skin simply relays the complaint to Party Network, which might (with variable reliability), relay it to the "cheater's" skin, which in turn *might* (with variable reliability) boot one of their own rake-generating clients to appease a complainer who is genrating rake for one of their competitors. Even if Party Network would like diligent enforcement, it's simply too easy for a cross-skin complaint to fall through the cracks. I can see it taking several weeks or complaints before action is taken, in some cases.

The more people make reports, the more the skins/networks will feel that managing [the perception of] cheating is important to their customer satisfaction, their image with extra-jurisdictional regulatory agencies (e.g. the US) and overall future profitability. Be the squeaky wheel that gets the grease, not the one quietly burning out its bearings.