Things seem to be getting better in the war against anti-cheats
AFK Gaming contacted a cheat analyst from a popular tactical shooter, who shared his thoughts on the state of anti-cheats.
He added, “AI has become a vital tool in the fight against cheating in video games. It helps us identify suspicious behaviour patterns and anomalies that cannot be detected by traditional methods.”
While he cannot comment on new technologies being developed to combat cheaters, he blamed the developers for the current mess in video games. “Publishers often don’t want to put enough resources into combating cheating in games. It’s a sad state of affairs where everyone tries to make a profit at every corner. Manual review plays a major role in combating cheaters in games and even some AAA studios I’ve worked closely with refuse to invest enough manpower in security teams. They just leave it to third-party anti-cheats to solve all the problems and call it a day.”
Despite the government’s crackdown on cheaters, the ultimate responsibility for the safety of games and their players rests with the developers. Jason “Thor” Hall, a game developer and hacker who has worked on anti-cheat systems for Blizzard Entertainment and Respawn Entertainment, explains the importance of ban waves in the past.
He explained that waves of bans every three to six months prevent cheaters from quickly identifying and patching fixes. This strategy not only disrupts the cheaters’ business, but also leads to chargebacks and negative reviews from their customers, which further reduces fraudulent activity. These comprehensive measures underscore the important role game developers play in ensuring the safety of their games and a fair and enjoyable experience for all players.
Hurting the economics of the cheating industry is one of the most important steps developers and publishers can take. Bungie, the studio that created Halo, won a landmark lawsuit and was awarded damages. Activision-Blizzard has also taken steps against cheaters and if more publishers get together and take action and make cheating a business nightmare, we could see massive improvements in online gaming.
According to Mohammad, an anti-cheat analyst at Online Riot Vanguard, player trust is one of the barriers to effective anti-cheat measures. He said there is a lot of fear-mongering that causes gamers to not trust kernel-level anti-cheat programs.
Games like Microsoft have faced high-level attacks despite not using kernel-level anti-cheats. “Someone could break into Microsoft and force every machine to update with malware,” he said.
Anything you use can be an attack vector and he thinks the arguments against kernel level anti-cheats are “stupid”. However, players should be cautious and only trust a developer if they have earned it. GamerDoc agrees that “if the trust hasn’t been earned, that’s understandable, and I respect that.”
