Proxy Agent for Game Marketplace Fraud Control
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Solution Overview
Problem
Traditional online auction houses in multiplayer video games face challenges such as fraudulent activities and price manipulation, where users employ bots to buy and resell digital assets outside the marketplace, leading to a secondary market that circumvents the electronic marketplace, resulting in revenue loss for game publishers and increased security costs.
Innovation Solution
A proxy agent system that acts as an intermediary, listening for events on the electronic marketplace, purchasing items from users, and relisting them to maintain transactions within the marketplace, using a weighted distribution of pricing data to set base values for items, thereby restricting transactions that do not match market pricing points and preventing fraudulent activities.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If users are allowed to trade digital assets peer-to-peer outside the electronic marketplace, then transaction freedom and user autonomy are improved, but fraudulent activities and price manipulation increase
Solution Approach 1:
The proxy agent serves as an intermediary between buyers and sellers in the electronic marketplace. It monitors listings, automatically purchases items according to pricing algorithms, and resells them through the marketplace interface, thereby mediating all transactions to prevent fraud while maintaining market freedom. The proxy agent acts as a trusted third party that enforces pricing rules and prevents manipulation.
Solution Approach 2:
The system implements continuous feedback loops where the proxy agent monitors marketplace transactions, compares prices against stored valuation data, and automatically adjusts purchasing and listing strategies. This feedback mechanism ensures pricing consistency and detects anomalies that could indicate fraudulent activity, maintaining market integrity while allowing flexible trading.
2Reliability
If a proxy agent monitors and controls all marketplace transactions, then fraudulent activities are reduced, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The proxy agent system is segmented into distinct functional modules: a monitoring component that tracks marketplace listings, a valuation component that stores and retrieves pricing data, a decision component that determines purchase timing, and an execution component that performs transactions. This segmentation reduces complexity by allowing each module to specialize in specific tasks while working together through standardized interfaces.
Solution Approach 2:
The proxy agent operates autonomously without requiring constant human intervention. It self-monitors marketplace conditions, self-evaluates pricing opportunities using stored data, self-executes purchases and listings according to predefined algorithms, and self-adjusts to changing market conditions. This automation reduces operational complexity while maintaining high security standards.
3Reliability
If the proxy agent purchases and relists items through the electronic marketplace, then transactions remain within the marketplace, but transaction time increases
Solution Approach 1:
The proxy agent performs preliminary actions by pre-storing comprehensive valuation data for multiple items before transactions are needed. It pre-monitors marketplace listings and identifies potential purchase opportunities in advance. When a suitable item is found, the proxy agent can quickly execute the purchase and relisting process using pre-computed pricing strategies, thereby reducing actual transaction time while maintaining marketplace integration.
Data Source
AI summary
Various aspects of the subject technology relate to systems, methods, and machine-readable media for a proxy agent as an intermediary that hosts electronic exchange transactions between distributing computing devices to reduce the number of fraudulent transactions with respect to items of a multiplayer game. The proxy agent listens for events such as an item being listed for sale on an electronic marketplace associated with the multiplayer game, or a listed item being purchased from the electronic marketplace, before the proxy agent transitions to a state for initiating purchase transactions to obtain additional items from users and thereafter automatically listing the purchased items for sale on the electronic marketplace. The proxy agent serves as a conduit for sale and purchase transactions to restrict transactions from occurring outside of the electronic marketplace and to map pricing data for a given item to market data trends over the transactional life of the item.