• Rumor: ESEA has class-action lawsuit filed against it in California for BTC mining scandal
    11 replies, posted
[url]http://www.pcgamesn.com/counterstrike/esea-served-class-action-lawsuit-over-bitcoin-malware-scandal[/url] [quote=PCGN]Long-serving eSports organisation ESEA tarnished its name earlier this year by allowed unsuspecting players using their client to host bitcoin mining malware. The incident, which admins originally dismissed as an April Fools gone wrong, went on for more than two weeks before players began to notice their graphics cards were melting. Co-founder Eric Thunberg initially pleaded ignorance, before owning up and pledging any cash made via the malware to the American Cancer Society. But users were understandably none too happy, and have pushed ahead with legal proceedings against the service.[/quote] Not quite sure if just images will do justice, hence this should still be treated as a rumor, though [url=http://i.imgur.com/MhW7suS.jpg]Torbull has mentioned the matter[/url].
I'd imagine quite a few people's computers ended up getting damaged from the stress of mining bitcoins while trying to play games.
[QUOTE=SPESSMEHREN;41319508]I'd imagine quite a few people's computers ended up getting damaged from the stress of mining bitcoins while trying to play games.[/QUOTE] Not to mention their electric bills going through the roof.
[QUOTE=SPESSMEHREN;41319508]I'd imagine quite a few people's computers ended up getting damaged from the stress of mining bitcoins while trying to play games.[/QUOTE] Depends entirely on the game. Trying to run crysis 3 and seeing your PC struggle at 30fps is exactly the same, if not far worse. Just making sure people realize that while yes, this is a massive dick move and should be punished it's not a "break your pc" deal unless you fucked something up massively.
[QUOTE=Ogris;41320369]Depends entirely on the game. Trying to run crysis 3 and seeing your PC struggle at 30fps is exactly the same, if not far worse. Just making sure people realize that while yes, this is a massive dick move and should be punished it's not a "break your pc" deal unless you fucked something up massively.[/QUOTE] It can very easily cause your graphics card to overheat, especially if dust has accumulated on the fans. Bitcoin miners put FAR more stress on the GPU than even the most graphics-intensive games.
[QUOTE=Ogris;41320369]Depends entirely on the game. Trying to run crysis 3 and seeing your PC struggle at 30fps is exactly the same, if not far worse. Just making sure people realize that while yes, this is a massive dick move and should be punished it's not a "break your pc" deal unless you fucked something up massively.[/QUOTE] My graphics card often overheats just playing games (GTX 500 Ti), and in summer I can't play games very often because it just overheats (we don't have good AC). If they did this to me now there's a high chance they would have fried my graphics card, and if they did it during a heat wave I'd say there's a 99% chance they'd fry it. I can understand why people are pissed off, and I hope ESEA has to pay for any and all damage they've caused to client computers in this poorly thought out scheme.
[QUOTE=SPESSMEHREN;41320416]It can very easily cause your graphics card to overheat, especially if dust has accumulated on the fans. Bitcoin miners put FAR more stress on the GPU than even the most graphics-intensive games.[/QUOTE] Yes, it runs you graphics card at a 100% all the time. The same as any game you cant run at a solid 60 FPS(or whatever you wish to really). Unless you did something VERY wrong it's not a big issue; I've been mining for a good amount of time on a rather weak PSU. I've seen games take a bigger toll on my GPU and CPU than mining has; Haven't had it crash. The problem here is that it's running two things at once; Running a game AND mining at the same time is not the best thing. I don't really see where people get the "yeah but a game isn't using all of your GPU" bullshit from. It's going to take quite some effort to overheat your GPU unless you're running something like a 9800GTX. And no, intensive games and GPU mining put the same stress onto your graphics card; Feel free to check your control pannel for it while running a game that you cant run at a stable 60 and while mining. Don't get me wrong; this is a massive dick move and could have cause a LOT of damage for people during a heatwave or if their PC is getting on in the years (as has been mentioned), but don't kid yourself saying bitcoin mining is magically going to break your GPU, it's not. But as i said once again; This lawsuit is well deserved, running something people didn't agree to on their PC's, something that their PC's haven't been set up for is a massive dick move and could have cause a lot of damage.
Allow me to quote myself from the other thread. [QUOTE=Sir Whoopsalot;41350755]Let's assume this is true. How fucking dumb do you have to be to think you can pull this off?[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Ogris;41321027]Yes, it runs you graphics card at a 100% all the time. The same as any game you cant run at a solid 60 FPS(or whatever you wish to really).[/QUOTE] No game is going to run your GPU at 100% constantly. Even a second of less than full load allows the card to cool significantly. Plus, as far as I know, not all "full loads" generate the same amount of heat. It depends on the types of calculations the card is being used for. I remember an old Intel thermal benchmarking tool for core 2 duo CPUs that was said to simulate 120% load because of how intensively it used the processor. I'm guessing GPU bitcoin miners are designed to tax GPUs to their fullest, much as this was.
[QUOTE=Ogris;41321027]Yes, it runs you graphics card at a 100% all the time. The same as any game you cant run at a solid 60 FPS(or whatever you wish to really). Unless you did something VERY wrong it's not a big issue; I've been mining for a good amount of time on a rather weak PSU. I've seen games take a bigger toll on my GPU and CPU than mining has; Haven't had it crash. The problem here is that it's running two things at once; Running a game AND mining at the same time is not the best thing. I don't really see where people get the "yeah but a game isn't using all of your GPU" bullshit from. It's going to take quite some effort to overheat your GPU unless you're running something like a 9800GTX. And no, intensive games and GPU mining put the same stress onto your graphics card; Feel free to check your control pannel for it while running a game that you cant run at a stable 60 and while mining. Don't get me wrong; this is a massive dick move and could have cause a LOT of damage for people during a heatwave or if their PC is getting on in the years (as has been mentioned), but don't kid yourself saying bitcoin mining is magically going to break your GPU, it's not. But as i said once again; This lawsuit is well deserved, running something people didn't agree to on their PC's, something that their PC's haven't been set up for is a massive dick move and could have cause a lot of damage.[/QUOTE] Being able to run a game at 60 FPS or not and whether the card is actually being utilized to 100 % are two completely separate things mind you.
I thought my computer was going to explode when I heard my fan sound. So glad nothing broke.
[QUOTE=SPESSMEHREN;41319508]I'd imagine quite a few people's computers ended up getting damaged from the stress of mining bitcoins while trying to play games.[/QUOTE] When two applications try and use the GPU at the same time, the drivers will generally load balance each application so they each get around half the power of the GPU. Though if you mine bitcoin with a legitimate miner, by default most miners will have a low aggression so when they detect the GPU being used by another application, they'll back off so you don't have a big performance penalty on the other application. Though I've seen a machine infected with bitcoin malware, the miner is overridden so it pushes the max clock on the GPU, max RAM and cranks the aggression up so that nothing else can use the GPU. If the idiots didn't want to get caught, they should have made the malware only use a small percentage of the GPU in the system so it would be less noticeable.
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