How Game Cheats Work
Game cheats allow a player to bypass a portion of a game’s programming in order to gain an advantage over the game’s rules. These advantages can range from giving players a higher level of in-game currency to granting them unearned weapons, armor or equipment. Game cheats can also modify a game’s mechanics to make it easier to win, or even completely change how the game is played. It’s estimated that the video gaming industry loses around $29 billion annually to cheating exploiters. This loss stems from stolen revenue streams, in-game purchases, and ruined multiplayer gameplay.
Cheating in games can have a very negative impact on honest gamers, and it’s no secret that it can be frustrating to see other players using cheats and hacks when you are trying your best to play fair. In fact, an Irdeto Global Gaming Survey found that 33% of players state that cheating negatively impacts their multiplayer gaming experience and 18% claim it happens regularly.
The process of creating a game cheat is a long and difficult one. First a hacker or programmer must create a program that allows them to read memory and access the game’s code. They then must find a vulnerability within the file that the game runs in, and this can be quite complicated as many files are encrypted or packed to prevent decompilation (though it is still possible to use binary level obfuscators or packing to do this). Once the file has been located they then have to figure out how to access the data inside of it by using a tool such as hex dumping.
Once the hackers have figured out how to access the game’s data they can then begin coding their own cheat software in a language such as C. This is an extremely tedious process as every bit of information must be manipulated and coded into the program in a way that will not be detected by security defences. This is why it is so important for game security teams to be able to track, deter, and defeat cheaters at every stage of their operations.
Step 3: Once the hacker or programmer have written their own cheat they must add hooks to the code and then make them interact with the game engine. This can be an extremely complicated task as it requires a full understanding of how a game is developed and how certain aspects such as graphical engines work, how 3D rendering works, and a whole lot more. The final step is to run the cheat through its paces, test it and make sure that everything functions as intended.
This is a very complex process and there are many different ways that people can develop game cheats. Some of the most common include modifying packets which can cause outgoing game data to be modified. However this is not as common as it used to be since most modern games are built with robustness against network and packet modifications.
