Frequently asked questions
What is cheating in video games?
Cheating in a video game means gaining an advantage beyond normal gameplay. It makes the single-player games easier to play or gives the cheater a competitive edge in multiplayer ones.
How is cheating affecting honest gamers’ experience?
Cheating causes a great imbalance in how other players experience the game. Honest gamers become frustrated and can quickly give up the game.
If the game is protected, gamers can experience a lot of benefits. Namely, a thriving gameplay experience, an improved feedback loop where their suggestions are heard, the opportunity of joining a Public Beta Environment, and much more. Learn more about how gamers can benefit from a protected game.
How is cheating affecting the gaming industry?
If a game is seen as a cheater’s game, players abandon it and take their money with them. There’s also the spread of reputational damage. A game that is known for struggling with cheaters attracts fewer players.
What is the financial impact of cheating in games?
We’ve made a rough estimate: if the annual global online gaming market is about US$37 billion and when 78% of gamers are put off a game because of cheating, then nearly US$29 billion of revenue is at stake!
How can you protect your game from cheaters?
Many tools and processes are available to game developers to address cheating.
Denuvo by Irdeto, the global leader in video games protection, provides various solutions for all gaming platforms, including:
- Anti-Cheat
- Anti-Tamper
- Mobile Games Protection
What is anti-cheat software?
Anti-cheat software detects cheating in PC multiplayer games and prevents players who use third-party tools from gaining an unfair advantage.
How do anti-cheat programs work?
Anti-cheat services monitor a player’s game and detect unauthorized use of third-party programs or modifications. Depending on the solution, anti-cheat will first prevent the user from playing the game, and then it will ban the user’s account for a certain time period.
What is Anti-cheat SDK and how does it work?
Anti-cheat SDK solution secures online gameplay mechanics that reward offline progress. It protects sensitive game logic and data, prevents cheaters from changing a sensitive variable, such as decrypting saved games or modifying network traffic, and also provides protection against the most common cheat tools.
Do anti-cheat systems impact game performance and gaming experience?
A good anti-cheat solution does not interfere with the regular operation of the game and does not cause errors or reduce stability to system performance.
Are kernel-mode anti-cheat solutions safe?
Running the driver component in kernel-mode can raise concerns, but kernel-level access is needed to detect cheaters effectively. It’s worth mentioning that the most popular multiplayer games have adopted kernel-mode anti-cheat for effective protection.
Are kernel-mode anti-cheat solutions compromising my privacy?
It depends on the provider. A responsible provider will not build its solution in a way that violates gamers’ privacy, so no personally identifiable information leaves your machine.
Can I uninstall anti-cheat?
Absolutely! A good anti-cheat solution will always ask for your permission to be installed and can be uninstalled with one click.
How much does anti-cheat cost?
It costs less than you think to protect a game from cheaters, especially when comparing it to the cost of lost revenue due to players leaving your game or not making the in-game purchases.
What cheats are commonly used in video games?
Video game cheats take various forms. Some of the most common ones are aim and trigger bots, camera, wall and drop hacks, radar or map reveals, currency manipulation, and DDoS attacks.
Why should DLC be protected with a DRM?
Digital Rights Management (DRM) protects Downloadable Content (DLC) to ensure that gamers receive malware-free content, improving their gaming experience. Protected content also helps player base retention.
Can indie developers afford anti-cheat solutions?
Yes, the cybersecurity industry caters to all game development sizes offering different pricing schemes. The pricing varies depending on the number of sales, or the number of titles to be protected. Indie game developers are encouraged just the same as more established publishers.
What does game protection do for video games?
It gives a range of benefits, including revenue generation and in-app purchase protection. It also protects your titles from being abandoned and improves your brand’s reputation; minimal cheaters mean active players are less likely to leave.
What are Meltdown and Spectre?
These are two kinds of side channel attacks that exploit critical vulnerabilities in processors. Meltdown exploits operating system memory and other programs, whereas Spectre, tricks untampered programs into exposing confidential information.
What is bandwidth, network delay, jitter and packet loss in online gaming?
Bandwidth is the measure of how much data is transferred over a given network or from one computer to another every second. Network delay specified the latency for data to be transferred from one point to another. Jitter is the variance in the speed of data transmission over a network. Packet loss refers to when one or more data packets, which are small units of data, are sent and fail to arrive at the destination.
Why does gamers’ ping not improve?
Ping relies on factors such as bandwidth, network delay, jitter, packet loss, game network topology, location and matchmaking. In order to improve it, developers must pay attention to improving their servers' geolocations with reference to the location of their players.
How does anti-cheat work?
It uses security features offered by mainstream hardware in combination with game-agnostic machine learning. Cheat detections are then reported on a web-based application for the publisher to see and act upon.
Is cheat detection feature available for platforms other than PC?
Yes! Denuvo Anti-Cheat supports mobile and console games as well.
