Cheating in networked computer games: a review

The increasing popularity of Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOG) - games involving thousands of players participating simultaneously in a single virtual world - has highlighted the scalability bottlenecks present in centralised Client/Server (C/S) architectures. Researchers are proposing Peer-...

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Main Authors: Webb, Steven, Soh, Sieteng
Format: Conference Paper
Published: Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) 2007
Subjects:
Online Access:http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1306813.1306839
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/10134
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author Webb, Steven
Soh, Sieteng
author_facet Webb, Steven
Soh, Sieteng
author_sort Webb, Steven
building Curtin Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description The increasing popularity of Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOG) - games involving thousands of players participating simultaneously in a single virtual world - has highlighted the scalability bottlenecks present in centralised Client/Server (C/S) architectures. Researchers are proposing Peer-to-Peer (P2P) architectures as a scalable alternative to C/S; however, P2P is more vulnerable to cheating as it decentralises the game state and logic to un-trusted peer machines, rather than using trusted centralised servers. Cheating is a major concern for online games, as a minority of cheaters can potentially ruin the game for all players. In this paper we present a review and classification of known cheats, and provide real-world examples where possible. Further, we discuss counter measures used by C/S architectures to prevent cheating. Finally, we discuss several P2P architectures designed to prevent cheating, highlighting their strengths and weaknesses.
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publishDate 2007
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spelling curtin-20.500.11937-101342019-02-19T05:35:29Z Cheating in networked computer games: a review Webb, Steven Soh, Sieteng Cheating peer-to-peer networked computer games client/server The increasing popularity of Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOG) - games involving thousands of players participating simultaneously in a single virtual world - has highlighted the scalability bottlenecks present in centralised Client/Server (C/S) architectures. Researchers are proposing Peer-to-Peer (P2P) architectures as a scalable alternative to C/S; however, P2P is more vulnerable to cheating as it decentralises the game state and logic to un-trusted peer machines, rather than using trusted centralised servers. Cheating is a major concern for online games, as a minority of cheaters can potentially ruin the game for all players. In this paper we present a review and classification of known cheats, and provide real-world examples where possible. Further, we discuss counter measures used by C/S architectures to prevent cheating. Finally, we discuss several P2P architectures designed to prevent cheating, highlighting their strengths and weaknesses. 2007 Conference Paper http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/10134 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1306813.1306839 Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) fulltext
spellingShingle Cheating
peer-to-peer
networked computer games
client/server
Webb, Steven
Soh, Sieteng
Cheating in networked computer games: a review
title Cheating in networked computer games: a review
title_full Cheating in networked computer games: a review
title_fullStr Cheating in networked computer games: a review
title_full_unstemmed Cheating in networked computer games: a review
title_short Cheating in networked computer games: a review
title_sort cheating in networked computer games: a review
topic Cheating
peer-to-peer
networked computer games
client/server
url http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1306813.1306839
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/10134