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Beat Saber Quest Leaderboard Cheating

Crazy_Sane
Superstar
After months of exhausting practice, I've come to realise that some people are cheating the Beat Saber leaderboards on the Quest. Now before you make the assumption that I'm just salty because I'm not that good at Beat Saber, I have some of the top scores on the Quest. But I must admit, none of them are on Expert+. I'm not a god!
The reason I know people are cheating is because their scores are far above the maximum possible score achievable for a given song/ difficulty. The formula to calculate the approximate max score is as follows:

Number of blocks x max swing score x max combo x max modifier bonus = max score

Written another way: number of blocks x 115 x 8 x 1.19 = max score.

This is approximate because it doesn't take into account the time it takes to build up to the max combo, so the actual figure would be a little less.

But there are leaderboard scores that far exceed this maximum, which ruins it for all of the honest players that have put in so much time and effort to get where they are on the leaderboards. I've contacted Oculus Support and tried to contact the Beat Saber devs, but my words have fallen on deaf ears.

OK, it may be difficult to weed out the cheats, but when it's that obvious, why are they allowed to remain #1. I don't think the cheats should be banned from playing BS, but they should at least be banned from the leaderboards.

If you'd like to see examples of what I'm talking about, check out "$100 Bills", "Crab Rave" or "Epic" on normal difficulty and do the maths yourself.

I'd love to hear from the Quest community about this topic. Am I the only one that cares?
40 REPLIES 40

cusman78
Explorer
I have played Beat Saber on PSVR since November 2018 and only recently came to playing it on Oculus after getting the Quest 2 in October 2020. It was apparent to me immediately that Oculus leaderboards for this game have jacked top leaderboard scores. Not the same person, but for every song, every mode, every difficulty.
It is easy to see after I get 95% SS Rank and top 10 on leaderboard have near or even exceeding 2x my total points (even accounting for modifier multipliers like faster song and ghost notes).
The explanation is either cheaters or software glitches, but I don't recall seeing such obvious invalid scores on the PSVR leaderboards. I'll have to pay attention to it next time I play on PSVR.

cusman78
Explorer
Whether it is from cheating or software glitches, it is easy to see that invalid scores are prevalent in the top ten for each track across all modes and difficulties available in the Oculus leaderboards.
If the game says I scored 95-96% of possible points (even accounting for modifier multipliers like faster song and ghost notes), how can top of leaderboard have 2x or higher scores than mine still? Nope, the math is clear that there are invalid scores in the leaderboard.

Crazy_Sane
Superstar
When I started this thread over a year ago there were only a couple of dodgey scores per song, but now it looks like all of the top scores are fudged.
Why won't the devs (now Oculus) fix or even acknowledge the problem? Do they assume that I'm just some butthurt kid that doesn't know what he's talking about? I've posted sufficient evidence, you can check my math. Why even have a leaderboard if it's meaningless?

LeaveMeAlone-No
Honored Guest
I'm glad this thread is here. I was wondering what I was doing THAT wrong. But today I saw a level where the majority of top players have 77k, the 2nd has 200k and the 1st over 400k. If the devs aren't cleaning these scores up, then likely the cause is either a known bug/exploitation, or a present to their own family members, hahahahaha. 

Nunyabinez
Rising Star
If anyone is interested (please don't take to cheating yourselves) there are log files on the Quest that keep your high scores.

When I update my Beat Saber, I install BMBF (to play custom songs) and that wipes out your scores. So I back up my files and restore them afterwards.

All it takes is a text editor to change the values. I don't know if the Quest uploads directly from those, but I suspect that it does. So, it is probably just a kid in their mom's basement that figured out how to edit a text file. 

i7 8700, 16GB, RTX 2080 TI, Rift CV1 | i5 4690K, 16GB, GTX 1660 TI, Rift CV1 | Quest | Quest 2

Stra3enkater
Honored Guest


If anyone is interested (please don't take to cheating yourselves) there are log files on the Quest that keep your high scores.

When I update my Beat Saber, I install BMBF (to play custom songs) and that wipes out your scores. So I back up my files and restore them afterwards.

All it takes is a text editor to change the values. I don't know if the Quest uploads directly from those, but I suspect that it does. So, it is probably just a kid in their mom's basement that figured out how to edit a text file. 


Excellent observation! The developers should probably encrypt the file. Can't be much effort

Stra3enkater
Honored Guest
It would be nice to have the option to challenge Board leaders for a fight.

They don't take it up, they loose the title. 

Crazy_Sane
Superstar


If anyone is interested (please don't take to cheating yourselves) there are log files on the Quest that keep your high scores.

When I update my Beat Saber, I install BMBF (to play custom songs) and that wipes out your scores. So I back up my files and restore them afterwards.

All it takes is a text editor to change the values. I don't know if the Quest uploads directly from those, but I suspect that it does. So, it is probably just a kid in their mom's basement that figured out how to edit a text file. 



I've noticed that if you get a high score while offline, it doesn't update the leaderboards when you're back online. So it might not be that simple. One person has claimed that it happened randomly. If it is a random bug, that's even more annoying.

RavensCanada
Honored Guest

I think the glitch problem is much more likely to be the issue.  If somebody figured out how to cheat they would have the top score for every single song, because they could.

 

As of today I'm number 599 for Balearic Pumping with a score of 298,474.  With the 8% bonus for playing on fast that puts the max at 392,847.  My score is good, but it's nowhere close to perfect.  I guess I'm averaging a raw hit score of about 87.

 

But, if there was a way to cheat I can't believe that fewer than 600 people worldwide would be taking advantage of it.  The #2 worldwide is 353,714 - achievable, but not by me!  #1, though, is 599,427.  Unachievable even with all the modifiers (super fast +10% stacked on ghost notes + 11%) the top score would be 363,747 x 1.10 x 1.11 = 444,135 or 363,747 x 1.21 = 440,133.87, depending on how they stack two modifiers.

 

I believe the user that reported the glitching and blame that for the few impossible scores you see, and some combination of meth, ritalin, being under 40, and practice for the users that score close to max.  If there was a reliable way of people cheating they would be using it constantly and would stack the leaderboard, rather than the few examples we see.

Also, if they could fake their own scores there'd be tons of "6942069" scores from Elon Musk types of children, which there aren't.