The other day, I was watching my sister play this game called Genshin Impact. In that game, there are gems that you can use to roll for a new character. You can get these gems by doing quests in the game, or by paying money. And then I thought, “What is stopping people from just using cheats instead of paying?”
It turns out that everything went through a server. If you did a quest and got some gems, it would update in the server. However, if you tried to edit the game files to give yourself more gems, the server would be able to detect that you didn’t actually earn it. But this is an expensive solution. What about the small developers that haven’t made over a billion dollars in mobile revenue? How could they fight against cheaters? That’s when it hit me. We could use the blockchain!
Basics of Blockchain
A blockchain is like a really long list of who owns what. Except, instead of only one person or a few people having access to that list, everyone gets access. Everyone has their own copy of the list on their computer. If someone with a copy of the list wanted to change it, they wouldn’t be able to. The blockchain network would check to see if everyone’s list has the same data. If one person has a different list, then the network would be able to take their copy of the list away from them. Now that we know the basics of how a blockchain works, let’s learn about how some games are vulnerable to cheating.
Types of games that can be vulnerable
Some online games, like GTA V, use peer-to-peer sessions. What this means, is that the clients of each player (their game that they are running on their device) communicate to each other, instead of going through a server. This is a way to have online multiplayer in your game without paying for servers. This, like everything cheap, has a catch. Players can directly edit their game, maybe giving them something that they shouldn’t have. Because it isn’t going through a server that can verify the game files, they can do whatever they want. This can result in just a bad playing experience for everyone. Some single-player games have currencies that you can obtain by paying money. If the game was made by a small developer, they might not have the money or resources to communicate everything to a server. This results in it being very easy for hackers to just give themselves more money. This is why we need the anti-cheat system.
Why it matters
If we go back to the first paragraph, you can remember that I was talking about Genshin Impact and its use of gems. If a small developer made that game, and they couldn’t afford to use a server, someone could just modify their game files to give themselves certain items for free, when everyone else had to pay. This directly hurts the developer, and results in less revenue for them. It also just makes games not enjoyable. A survey by Irideto shows that 88% of gamers had a negative experience because of other people cheating. Remember when everyone played games for fun? Cheaters have basically made that impossible in multiplayer games. Imagine if you were playing Minecraft with your friends, and suddenly some random person joins and starts flying around, blowing up everything that you made with TNT that they shouldn’t have. They could destroy the entire world in only a few seconds. Luckily, Minecraft isn’t like that. But other, smaller games could be more vulnerable to cheaters.
How it could work
The anti-cheat system would have a blockchain network, where each block is a player’s base values. For example, if someone was trying to run at twice the normal speed, they would have to change their speed value in their version of the blockchain. It wouldn’t work, and the blockchain would kick them off of the network. This can work for every single value that the developers don’t want to be changed. An example of this is the base amount of health, the speed of the characters, and much more.
Issues with the idea
This is just an idea right now, and it has its issues. The example that I used with GTA V only works because the developers use peer-to-peer sessions. The issue could be solved by making everything go through a server, which would probably be less work than making a blockchain. It would also add to file size, but with Modern Warfare reaching file sizes of over 200 GB, gamers probably won’t care about a few extra GB here or there. Anyways, the game developers that I am targeting aren’t big companies with millions of dollars to spend on games. I am targeting the small game developers, the ones who don’t want to have to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars to keep out cheaters, and are also just interested in blockchain and emerging technologies.
Conclusion
A solution to cheaters in games that are hosted on the client’s side can be to use a blockchain. This would allow cheaters to not be able to change certain values because of how blockchain works. This will make games much more enjoyable, and will make sure companies are getting the money they deserve. It’s possible for anyone to code a blockchain, if you put the time and effort into it. Maybe then, we can make multiplayer games fun again.
