How to Protect Against Games Cheats
In games, cheats or hacks give players a way to gain an advantage over the competition. Whether that’s to beat a tough level or get an unfair advantage in multiplayer, the results can have a massive impact on gameplay and player satisfaction. The good news is that there are ways to protect against cheating, and it all starts with game design.
Cheating has been an indelible part of video games since the earliest days of gaming. The first cheats were relics of debugging and testing; developers would create inputs that allowed them to bypass aspects of the program. These were incorporated into the final product, and became known as cheat codes. These are sometimes a part of the original code (implemented by the developers), but they can also be inserted through third-party software or hardware. They can even be realized through exploiting underlying software bugs.
While the first generations of consoles had dedicated cheat cartridges, modern PC gamers can use third-party programs to modify a game’s memory before or during execution. The process is called “datamining,” and it can reveal hidden features, change game settings, and unlock secret weapons. In some cases, hackers have even discovered new cheat codes by using these datamining tools.
The biggest challenge with this type of cheating is that it can be done remotely, making it difficult to detect or prevent. To combat this, it’s critical to have anti-cheating measures in place before a game is released. For example, games should encrypt critical variables to resist in-memory attacks, and have integrity verification for game files. This will prevent man-in-the-middle attacks and other types of offline tampering.
In addition, the gaming industry must work on cheat prevention from the very beginning of development. By assuming that the client cannot be trusted, and by designing games to have authoritative servers, cheating is more difficult to pull off. This can reduce the amount of time a player spends in-game and can improve user experience.
Despite the efforts of the industry to improve cheat prevention, a number of gamers still engage in cheating. While some do this for fun, others have the skills and time to cheat in order to win esports tournaments and earn cash prizes. These are the type of gamers who must be dealt with, as they have a direct impact on the profitability and reputation of a game. If a game is seen as a cheater’s title, players will move on to other titles that have more effective cheat prevention. This is a significant loss for the publisher and will ultimately harm the industry as a whole.