In short: Modded Controllers are custom made game controllers / game pads for popular consoles, such as the Xbox One, Playstation 4 ect. That have been equipped with hacked electronics that allow the user to rapid fire any weapon, burst fire semi-auto weapons, minimize recoil, dolphin dive and shoot, drop shot ect at the press of a single button. The use of modded controllers is considered cheating in most online shooters and can result in a Ban.
What CAN a modded controller do?
- Full auto shooting any weapon using electronically generated user input. Holding down the button triggers the full auto usually. Configurable millisecond delay between inputs.
- Burst shooting any weapon, configurable burst aka 3shot, 4 shot ect.
- Drop shots – aka crouching and shooting with aim correct for the crouch.
- Dolphin dive shots – aka going prone and shooting for best chance at winning 1v1 engagements
- Different profiles for different games / weapons instant switching.
- Different macros are possible, such as bunny hopping, 360 rotations ect.
- Auto recoil compensation (has to be configured for every gun separately), but very OP once set up correctly.
So essentially, a custom controller with hacked electronics can turn any semi-auto weapon into a full auto weapon, can eliminate recoil and give you the highest chances of surviving by allowing you to drop shot, dive and shoot at the same time to minimize the chances of getting hit in any fights in any online shooter on consoles.
What a modded/hacked controller CANNOT do:
- A modded controller is not an Aimbot, it cannot auto aim for you.
- It cannot give you god mode, wallhacks, generate lag ect.
- It cannot turn a bad player into a pro haxxor with a k/d of 10 in any way.
All a modified gamepad does for you is automatically input buttons, it cannot react to game memory and it cannot hack game servers either. It is essentially a macro. Aimbots and wallhacks would still require a hacked console and not just a custom controller.
Where are hacked gamepads being used the most?
Mostly on Xbox and PlayStation, almost never on PC, since the more accurate controls and ease of programming macros make it unnecessary. However, in any semi-competitive online shooter you will find a lot of players that are using custom controllers to give themselves an edge over the competition. Most popular games for the use of this cheating technique are the Call of Duty , Halo, Battlefield, Star Wars: Battlefront and Destiny Series.
Since it is a cheating method that is pretty simple, can increase performance by up to 10%-20% through minimizing reaction time ect, it has gotten astonishingly popular over the least years. It is also a more affordable way of cheating than buying a hacked lobby and more feasible for most than hacking the actual console and installing auto aim or other hacks.
How do I tell if someone is using a modded controller?
- They are using a semi-auto weapon that shoots in perfect auto. (Perfectly shot delay, perfectly constant shot delay / speed) or perfect burst without irregularities. Whereas human input would usually result in inconstant shot delays.
- Constantly drop shotting / dive shotting instantly in firefights.
- No noticeable recoil on weapons with greater shot delay than usual.
Keep in mind that certain games limit the maximum shots fired/second on semi-auto guns to limit this kind of cheating and make it less efficient, which can lead to false positives using these pointers to find hackers and cheaters. In general it is pretty easy to spot modded controllers if you know what they do and how they work.
What are the risks of using a modified gamepad for Xbox / PlayStation / other consoles?
So far the risks are pretty much 0. Reports are largely ignored and there are no auto-banning systems for this king of cheat in multiplayer shooters on console yet. However, if you are going to use such a controller to increase your performance in shooters, you may want to configure it to shot delays in the minimum 40-100 milisecond range, which is still kind of humanly possible. Chances are that at some point, anti-cheats will flag/ban accounts that constantly show physically impossible user input. (However, this is not the case yet and may not be for quite some time.)
A pretty recent button mashing world record was at 191 button presses per 10 seconds, resulting in an average delay of 52.3 miliseconds. That was using 2 buttons however, which would make the humanly possible more like 100 miliseconds using one button or trigger, but 50ms should still be fine. It’s always better to be safe than sorry.
