Countering Cheating and Cheats in Multiplayer Games: Best Practices for Developers
In an era where multiplayer video games have become a literal second world for millions of players across the planet, honesty and fairness in gaming competitions is becoming key. No one wants to see the virtual world in which they train and compete so hard degraded by scammers, hackers and cheaters. And that’s where the developers come into play. They are at the forefront of the fight for fairness and balance in multiplayer games. Today BG Games will take a look at how developers are fighting cheating and cheats in multiplayer games, and what practices are considered to be the best and working.
Protecting Against Cheats and Cheating — Why is it Important?
The first step to combat cheaters in multiplayer games is to recognize the importance of the problem. So what are the dangers posed by cheaters and cheats?
Destroying Balance: Cheats can give players an unacceptable advantage by destroying the balance between game participants. This degrades the gaming experience for everyone, and creates negative criticism towards the developers.
Loss of players: Constant exposure to cheaters can discourage honest players and lead to a loss of audience, which has the effect of switching to another game created by competitors in the market.
Economic loss: Multiplayer games often implement microtransactions. Cheaters can cheat the system and obtain game content without paying for it, which can lead to losses for developers.
Types of Scams and Cheats
Developers should realize that there are many ways that cheaters can compromise the integrity of a game:
Cheats and hacks: These are programs and macros that give players an advantage by disabling the normal rules of the game.
Bots: Automated bots can play much better than real players, which creates unfairness.
Phishing and account hacking: Attackers may try to access players’ accounts to steal their accounts.
Selling virtual goods and currency: Uncontrolled selling of game accounts and resources can disrupt the game’s economy.
Toxic Behavior: This can include insults, spamming, and other forms of unfavorable communication.
Basic Practices in Countering Cheating
Video game developers employ various strategies to prevent and combat cheating:
Anti-Cheat: Creating their own anti-cheat programs or using third-party anti-cheat programs that can detect and block cheats.
Regular updates: Keeping the game up-to-date on a regular basis helps to combat known vulnerabilities and cheats.
Monitoring player behavior: Analyzing player behavior can help identify suspicious activity.
Player complaints and feedback: Creating mechanisms for complaints and feedback can help players report fraudulent activity.
Hardware restrictions: Some games may implement hardware restrictions to prevent fraud.
Examples of Successful Approaches
Let’s look at a few successful examples in combating cheating:
“Counter-Strike: Global Offensive”: Valve actively fights cheating, their VAC (Valve Anti-Cheat) effectively detects and bans cheaters.
“Fortnite”: Epic Games is working on constant updates to fix bugs and vulnerabilities that cheaters can exploit.
“League of Legends”: Riot Games regularly monitors player behavior and takes action against toxic players.
“Dota 2”: the complaint system developed by Valve is an effective method of finding Smurf accounts.
Fighting cheating and cheats in multiplayer games is a never-ending battle. However, with best practices, strategies, and examples, developers have the tools to make games fair and honest. Ultimately, this allows honest players to enjoy and strive for the highest heights of skill without the fear of cheating and unfair play.
The world of multiplayer gaming continues to evolve, and with it, cheating techniques evolve as well. However, thanks to the hard work of developers and the support of the gaming community, games remain adrenaline-pumping and honest arenas for competition!
