CheatingDavid Hinton

ITCS-4230

Overview

• When does it matters?

• Types of cheating

• Solutions to cheating

When does it matter?

• Single player– Choose to cheat or not– Doesn’t effect others playing the game

•Multiplayer–Effect other players–Success of the game depends on it

Types of Cheating

• Control Augmentation– Proxy server– Automated playing / assistants

• Authoritative Clients– Whatever the client says is true– Single-player based games

• Information Exposure– Passive– RTS

Types of Cheating

• Compromised Server– Modified game servers– Not always cheating

• Bugs and Design Loopholes– If it is there they will use it– Age of Empires farms– MMOs

• Environmental Weakness– Operation condition

Solutions to cheating

• Control Augmentation– Encryption

• Authoritative Clients– Command request instead of issued– Synchronization

• Information Exposure– Encryption significant values– Never access significant values from outside the class

Solutions to cheating

• Compromised Server– Give warnings

• Bugs and Design Loopholes– Fix them with patches

• Environmental Weakness– Extra validation

Summary

• Why it is important for multiplayer games

• Different ways players cheat

• Ways to combat the cheaters

Questions or comments?

Sources

• http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20000724/pritchard_pfv.htm

• http://www.macroquest2.com/main.php

• http://www.rexpage.com/myseq/forum/