From tens of millions of dollars to prison deadlines: the story of Cheat Ninja is the largest “Chitov Empire” from China

As the developers, enthusiasts wanted to fight Chiters, but in the end they headed the movement and found a gold mine.

On January 20, 2021, the story of Cheat Ninja ended-the world's largest group to create cheat codes for computer games. After three years of work and hundreds of thousands of dollars of monthly revenue, the Chinese police arrested the main participants in the organization, except for its founder, known as Catfish.

The Motherboard publication has interviewed Catfish, who is still looking for China’s police in the case of the manufacture and sale of cheats for the popular Pubg Mobile game. TJ publishes a brief retelling of the story about the take-off and fall of the world's largest “Chit-Imperia” through the eyes of a direct participant in events.

How cheat ninja appeared from attempts to confront cheaters

Catfish never thought about making money by creating cheats. At the end of 2017, he just wanted to play PUBG on a computer normally with friends. But the game was flooded with Chiters, and Catfish, being a programmer engineer, decided to create his own cheat codes in order to somehow confront lovers to be quiet.

The cheats of the developer allowed to see through the walls and fall into enemies without aiming. When PUBG was ported to iOS and Android, Catfish adapted the development for mobile platforms and thought that they could be sold. The programmer found the first business partner on the Internet - together they began to distribute cheats on forums and in WeChat groups.

My cheat code has become a real hit-in a few days I sold several thousand copies. People did not even suspect that such cheats could work on mobile platforms. In the week I earned tens of thousands of yuan.

Catfish

Success stunned partners, but concern came with him - Catfish and his partner began to be afraid that the police would arrest them. Another problem arose: Tencent constantly released PUBG updates with all new chit protection protection. The tiring “battle of minds” began, which took away all the forces. But she brought too good money to stop.

Catfish with a partner took 10-15 dollars for a monthly subscription for cheat and on average received at least a thousand new subscriptions every day-350 thousand dollars of revenue (more than 25 million rubles) were released a month. According to Catfish, it was "completely abnormal" for the cheat codes market. He believes that they achieved such indicators because they were "the best crackers of the most popular game."

Expansion of the "business" of the group and the beginning of the end

Catfish with associates spent the main forces on hacking Pubg Mobile, the protection of which was constantly improved: at first they used a virtual machine in which they launched both the cheat and the game itself. This approach did not require “ruting” Android - that is, the user of the administrator’s rights, which are usually blocked in Android. But by the end of 2019, it became clear that without “ruting” it would not work out without “ruting”, so Chit began to lose popularity.

Then Catfish decided to hack other games like Call of Duty and Fortnite and at the same time began to attract new customers in India, Kuwait, UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The money flowed again to the river - monthly revenue reached 400 thousand dollars (about 29 million rubles). Groups were still distributed through scattered sites, chats and forums. But then Catfish launched a single official website of the Cheatninja.com group with a store of all its cheatics.

Soon, the group’s affairs began to go “not very smoothly”. PUBG’s popularity was declining, many competitors appeared, and the Chinese authorities, together with Tencent, strengthened the fight against cheats manufacturers. Soon, the group lost 10 participants - according to Catfish, the police began to arrest their merchants to the right and left.

Universal hatred of Chiters, fixed in the Criminal Code of China

Chits - headache for both gamers and games developers. The first they interfere with playing, and the second sometimes spoil the business - the influx of chiters is able to cause mass outflow of players and reduce the profit of the publisher. Because of this, the developers are trying with all their might to fight cheat codes and Chiters that use them.

Despite all efforts, cheats flourish. Back in 2014, one of the developers of the cheat codes said that he earns more than a million dollars a year. Another developer boasted that he lived comfortably for 20 years only thanks to the operation of vulnerabilities in games. Sometimes game manufacturers file for such people in court and receive multimillion -dollar compensation.

In China, the production and sale of cheat codes are considered a criminal offense. In 2020, the Chinese court sentenced five cheats to 6-9 months of prison and another to three years in prison and a fine of 100 thousand yuan (about 15 thousand dollars).

According to the STATISTA service, China is the most profitable game market in the world with 650 million players. PUBG Mobile publisher, Tencent, helps the police fight Chiters in Games. When the authorities have charged the Cheat Ninja, Tencent gave the police a memorable goblet with the inscription: “Hit like thunder, clean the network, defeat illegal activities, ampiped together.”

According to the sources of Motherboard in the gaming industry, the most famous producers of cheat codes can earn up to $ 24 million a year. For example, the Leaguesharp group created cheats only for League of Legends and, by decision of the court, paid the Riot Games to the $ 10 million - the amount was determined on the basis of gross revenue of the group.

How the Cheat Ninja group stopped working

On January 12, 2021, the police detained the next seller, and on January 20 reached the oldest partner of Catfish under the nickname IIIII. Then Catfish did not yet know about it and continued to communicate with IIIIII as before, but very quickly suspected something was amiss. It was like that on behalf of IIIIII was talking to him by someone else.

The remaining participants in the group confirmed the suspicions of Catfish. They reported that on behalf of the IIIIII they received a strange message with a request to click on the link and buy something on Taobao, the Chinese Analogue Ebay. Catfish checked the latest metadata IIIIII on the Cheat Ninja forum and saw that he had connected from the IP address somewhere near Shanghai.

The developer knew: the real IIIIIII has always used foreign proxy servers for connections. In combination with the latest detentions, this could mean only one thing - the police actually defeated the group. Now Catfish had to take care of himself.

For months I looked through the magazines of chats in a line by line to make sure that I had not gleaned anywhere.

Catfish

In the morning, after a sleepless night, Catfish took a hammer, pulled out SSD drives from his servers and broke them, trying to ensure that not a single chip remains intact. Then he went to a remote place a few kilometers from the house and threw the remains of the drives there.

The last arrests became the “final chord” of the almost annual investigation of the Kunshan police in collaboration with Tencent, a Chinese technological concern and publisher of PUBG Mobile. The law enforcement agencies got to the core of the group. Catfish decided to stop all activities and lie down to the bottom.

He had to close Cheat Ninja with an audience of 600 thousand active subscribers. Such indicators were achieved only thanks to working in the world's largest computer games market.

Who they are “the best cheaters” for the most popular game

In early April, the police made official accusations to the arrested participants of Cheat Ninja named HE and Van. They were guilty of participating in the “largest in the world” group to create and sell cheat codes, which the authorities called Chicken Drumstick (“Chicken Boss”).

According to the police, the group earned $ 77 million (5.6 billion rubles) on this. Van found luxurious Ferrari and Lamborghini cars with a total value of more than three million dollars and another four million dollars in bitcoins. At the same time, his official income amounted to $ 462 per month (33.8 thousand rubles).

Police called He and Van responsible for the financial side and daily activities of the group. But her intellectual center was Catfish, which still remains on the wanted list.

It was this person who was the main developer and the leader of the group, whom he himself called Cheat Ninja. He conducted the official website of Cheatninja.com, where on January 23 there was a link to a telegram channel with a message about the suspension of activities due to "ongoing legal problems with the Tencent company." Catfish also steamed with the IIIIII administered Slack groups.

Catfish refused to call the specific figures of Cheat Ninja, but said that $ 77 million voiced by the police, “approximately true information”, taking into account the Bitcoin exchange rate. According to him, he will have enough money to rest right now and live in a comfortable way until old age.

Life after Cheat Ninja in the Ninja style

After leaving the “scene”, Catfish lifted to the bottom and does not manifest itself in any way. But the Cheat Ninja brand continues to live - imitators are trying to squeeze everything that is possible from it. For example, an Android application called Cheat Ninja Sharpshooter appeared, which was installed by more than 100 thousand people. It was created by a certain developer from Kazakhstan and has nothing to do with the Cheat Ninja group.

One of the previous sellers of the group tried to “saddle the wave” - he created a site under the same brand through which he sells copies of Cheat Ninja cheats. As it became clear from the correspondence with this seller, he does not even know who was the developer of the original cheat codes. Just because Cheat Ninja had a multi -level decentralized structure typical of such organizations.

We initially understood the whole danger of creating and selling cheat codes in the Chinese market, so we took reasonable precautions. The less we knew each other, the safer our activity was.

Catfish

At first, in an interview with Catfish, he said that he would like to return to the previous case in order to “ruin” Tencent and deprive the company of profits in revenge for all the people whom she put in jail. But a few days later he said that he had changed his mind.

According to him, it is better to leave this scene forever with the money that he already has. And no longer needs to fight anti -readers, competitors, scammers, not to mention the police. Catfish is still ready to make cheat codes, but "only for yourself and your loved ones."

Most of all, the developer just wants to play good games like Counter Strike: Global Offensive, Valorant, Cyberpunk 2077, Hitman and Final Fantasy. By his own admission, Catfish has been engaged in commercial hacking of games for so long that he had no time to truly enjoy them.

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