Anti-Cheat System Using Device ID Linking for Account Penalties
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Solution Overview
Problem
Online gaming systems face challenges in preventing cheating, as players who are caught cheating can create new accounts to continue unfair gameplay, leading to a degraded experience for non-cheating players.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a system that links new player profiles to previously banned ones, imposing penalties such as disabling functions, adding latency, and reducing damage scaling, to deter cheating and ensure fairness by tracking network addresses and device identifiers.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If players are banned for cheating, then fair play is improved, but cheating players can create new accounts to continue cheating
Solution Approach 1:
The system merges multiple player accounts into a single unified profile by linking them through shared device identifiers and network addresses. This combination allows the system to recognize that multiple accounts belong to the same player, enabling consistent penalty enforcement across all associated accounts and preventing cheating players from evading bans through account creation.
Solution Approach 2:
The system implements feedback mechanisms by monitoring device identifiers and network addresses across account creations. When a new account is detected, the system checks for associations with previously banned accounts and automatically applies appropriate penalties. This closed-loop feedback ensures that cheating behavior is consistently detected and punished regardless of account changes.
2Reliability
If strict penalties are imposed on cheating players, then cheating is reduced, but the system complexity increases to track and enforce penalties
Solution Approach 1:
The system creates simplified copies of player identity information by using device identifiers and network addresses as unique keys. Instead of tracking complex player behaviors and account histories, the system copies and stores these fundamental identifiers, making it efficient to match new accounts with previously banned ones and enforce penalties without requiring complex tracking infrastructure.
3Measurement precision
If player profiles are linked across devices, then cheating detection is improved, but player privacy is reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The system applies different levels of data collection and processing to different situations. For players without penalty histories, minimal information is collected. For players with banned accounts, the system selectively links accounts through device identifiers and network addresses only when cheating patterns are detected. This localized approach to information gathering maintains privacy for honest players while enabling effective cheating detection when necessary.
Data Source
AI summary
A cheating enforcement system and method determines if a player profile that is to play an online game is linked to another player profile that had been identified as cheating. If such a link is found, then one or more penalties may be imposed on the player profile, so that penalties for cheating cannot be averted by a player by opening a new player profile to play the online game. If a certain period of time has transpired since cheating was detected for the other player profile, then the one or more penalties may be removed from the player profile. The penalties imposed on the player profile may include server-side hit detection, latency penalty, damage scaling, and/or dropped moves. In the case of a chain of linked player profiles, severity of penalties may increase based on the number of linked accounts where cheating use was detected.