Cheating in games ruins the fun for honest players and hurts your bottom line. Find out how cheaters operate and how to level the playing field.
Mobile gaming is booming, with a staggering 2 billion players worldwide diving into immersive experiences. Yet, as this vibrant community grows, so does the shadow of cheating, spoiling the fun for honest players and disrupting the delicate balance of in-game economies.
Recent surveys reveal that most gamers feel the sting of cheating, and are reluctant to spend on in-app purchases when they perceive others gaining unfair advantages without paying. This sentiment underscores a growing concern: cheating can deter players from investing in games they once loved.
The impact is particularly evident in popular titles like Escape from Tarkov, where rampant cheating through aimbots and wallhacks led developers to ban over 11,000 cheaters—and publicly name them. The frustration has driven many legitimate players away, resulting in significant revenue losses for the game.
Cheating doesn't just frustrate players. It tarnishes a game's reputation and diminishes the thrill of genuine accomplishments. To combat this escalating issue, you need to prioritize robust anti-cheating measures to protect your communities (and bottom lines). The stakes are high, and ensuring a fair gaming environment is essential for fostering loyalty and engagement among players.
Want to know what the most common vulnerabilities are—and how to fix them? Download our guide to the OWASP Top 10 (2024).
What is cheating in video/app gaming?
In the context of video games, cheating refers to methods that players use to gain an unfair advantage over others or over the game itself.
Some of the first cheat codes were implemented by game developers for play testing and debugging. But it wasn't long before savvy players discovered these hidden secrets.
Cheating in online games has wide-ranging consequences for entire gaming communities. For instance, by flooding an in-game economy with items obtained through cheating, cheaters can break your game’s marketplace, disrupting the intended balance and progression systems.
Compounding this issue are close-knit cheating groups that work together to develop new cheats and exploit them as teams against your genuine players. Cheating is just one of the many mobile gaming security threats that you need to address to ensure a fair and secure gaming experience for all players.
Is video game cheating illegal?
The legality of video game cheating is a bit of a gray area. Cheating often involves violating the terms of service or end user license agreement, which are civil matters and not criminal offenses.
While cheating itself may not be explicitly illegal, many of the tools and techniques used like hacking and reverse engineering can be. Some game developers have taken legal action against cheat makers and distributors for copyright infringement. The creation and distribution of cheating software often requires the unauthorized modification or copying of copyrighted game code, which is illegal under copyright law.
On desktop platforms, cheating tools often require users to modify game files or inject code into the game's process memory. This is not only a violation of the game's terms of service but also potentially illegal under anti-circumvention provisions of copyright law.
Many cheating tools require users to grant root access to their devices and install potentially hazardous malware or hacking tools, compromising the security of the game and user device.
What’s more, bad actors often exploit cheats to amass in-game items and currency, which they then sell for real money on gray markets. This not only diverts your revenue but also disrupts the in-game economy, devaluing the efforts of legitimate players and destroying the balance that makes your game enjoyable. Left unchecked, this underground economy can severely damage your game's integrity, player satisfaction, and the developer's bottom line.
How hackers use cheats to exploit desktop and mobile games
Here are some of the common methods that hackers employ to cheat in desktop and mobile games:
Memory editing
Many games, both on desktop and mobile, store important data like player stats, inventory, and currency values in memory. By using memory editing tools, hackers can locate and modify these values to give themselves infinite health, unlimited resources, or other unfair advantages.
Cheat engines like GameGuardian allow players to scan and edit game memory, enabling cheating and stealing sensitive game data. Preventing memory editing requires a combination of techniques like encryption, anti-tampering checks, and runtime memory protection.
Code injection
By injecting malicious code into the game, hackers can manipulate the game logic, bypass in-app purchases, and steal user data. This can range from changing how the game processes input (e.g. to enable aimbots) to bypassing authentication checks for in-app purchases.
Cheaters can make the game do things it was never intended to do using DLL injection, hooking, and memory patching, opening up a wide range of cheating possibilities:
- Time manipulation: Slow down time in challenging parts of the game.
- Warping: Instantly teleport to different locations in the game world.
- Speed hacks: Move characters at superhuman speeds.
- Wall hacks: Allows visibility through normally opaque objects like walls or terrain.
Preventing code injection requires implementing code obfuscation and anti-debugging measures to make the game harder to reverse engineer and modify.
Bots and emulators
Botting refers to using scripts or third-party programs to automate gameplay. This allows cheaters to gain resources, level up, or perform repetitive actions faster than legitimate players. The result? Bots which ruin the game experience for legitimate players by flooding the game with farmed resources, hogging limited in-game items, or crowding out real players in competitive modes.
Bots and emulators currently represent the most significant threat to the integrity of online games. Malicious actors can easily scale them using cloud computing resources and hiding behind VPNs, making it challenging and costly for you to identify and ban these accounts.
Hackers also use emulators to run and modify mobile games on PC to make it easier to bot and hack. Techniques like anti-debugging, emulator detection, and runtime integrity checks can help prevent this type of cheating.
How to prevent cheating in games
To prevent cheaters and hackers from undermining the gaming experience for legitimate players, it's essential to implement strong security measures. These techniques are essential components of a comprehensive app hardening strategy for both desktop and mobile platforms:
Integrity verification
Integrity verification monitors the game's code and memory for any unauthorized changes. If the system identifies tampering, it can respond by shutting down the game or banning the offending user, thereby maintaining a level playing field.
Asset protection
Asset protection safeguards game resources, including unreleased content. Without proper encryption, bad actors can access preloaded assets like new skins or features before official release, spoiling surprises and getting an unfair advantage. Robust asset encryption and access controls help maintain the integrity of your planned content releases and prevent unauthorized access.
Anti-debugging
Cheaters use debuggers to examine and alter a game's code and memory during runtime to gain an unfair advantage. Anti-debugging features block them from connecting debuggers to the game, making it harder for them to reverse-engineer and exploit your game's core functionality.
Hook detection
Some cheaters may try to hook into your game's code or APIs to manipulate memory or inject malicious code. Hook detection identifies and blocks these attempts, stopping cheaters from modifying your game's behavior and accessing confidential information.
Jailbreak/root detection
Jailbroken or rooted devices can circumvent built-in security measures, bypassing sandboxing and other security features of the device and OS. This makes them more vulnerable to hacking and cheating. Detecting these compromised environments enables the game to take necessary precautions like restricting access or curtailing functionality.
Virtual space detection
Virtual spaces are apps that allow users to install and run other apps within their "virtual space." When an app is launched in a virtual space, the virtual space app launches it instead of the device's operating system. This means the virtual space app is in control of the app running within it. Virtual spaces do not require rooting to run and can be more malicious to an app than just rooting. Detecting if the game is running in such a virtual space is crucial because the virtual space app has access to all memory and can hook any attempt from apps running within its process to get validated information from outside its sandbox.
Emulator detection
Cheaters frequently use emulators to automate gameplay or bot the game. Emulator detection stops the game from running on these virtual devices, guaranteeing that all players are accessing your game as intended on genuine hardware.
API protection
Many bots and cheating tools directly interact with game APIs to automate or manipulate gameplay. Implementing robust API protection measures like rate limiting, authentication, and encryption is crucial to prevent unauthorized access and abuse of your game servers.
Additional strategies to combat cheating
While these security features can reduce cheating, it's important to understand that there is no perfect solution. The gaming community, including cheaters, often includes highly skilled programmers and tech-savvy individuals who possess the technical expertise to create sophisticated cheating methods. Moreover, cheating in games has evolved into a big business, with attractive financial incentives. In-game economies for popular titles can generate billions in revenue annually, making them prime targets for exploitation.
To combat cheating and stay ahead of the curve, you can use these additional strategies:
Server-side validation
Processing critical game logic and data on the server rather than the client can prevent many types of cheating. But this may lead to increased server load and potential lag issues, so you need to strike a balance.
Anomaly detection
Analyzing patterns in player data like skill level, progression speed, and in-game actions can help identify unusual behavior that may indicate cheating. If a player suddenly starts performing far above their usual level, it could be a sign of foul play. But you need careful tuning to avoid false positives.
Replay systems and human-assisted detection
Implementing replay systems allows players to save and review matches to analyze suspicious behavior and report potential cheaters with evidence. Relying on the gaming community’s expertise in this way supplements automated systems.
Frequent patches and offsets
By releasing regular game patches that alter binary offsets or insert dummy code, you can disrupt existing cheats and hacks. Frequently updating the game binary makes cheating tools ineffective and maintaining hacks more costly.
Implementing these anti-cheat measures can be complex and time-consuming, especially if your development team is small. This is where app shielding solutions can be invaluable.
Effective app shielding techniques to tackle cheating
To combat cheating and protect your mobile game's integrity, implementing effective app shielding techniques is essential. They include:
Obfuscation
Obfuscation makes it harder for cheaters to reverse engineer and modify the game's code. Effective obfuscation techniques include renaming variables and functions, control flow obfuscation, and string encryption to hide sensitive data and logic. This makes it much more difficult for cheaters to understand and manipulate the game's inner workings.
Runtime application self-protection (RASP)
RASP detects and blocks cheating attempts in real-time. This includes detecting memory tampering, debugger attachment, hooking, and other suspicious behavior. By continuously monitoring the game's execution, RASP can help you identify and prevent cheating before it impacts other players.
Emulator and jailbreak/root detection
Emulator and jailbreak/root detection can identify if your game is running on an emulator or a compromised device. However, it's worth noting that many game studios choose to allow their games to run on rooted or jailbroken devices to maintain positive app store ratings. In these cases, other security features become even more critical in maintaining game integrity. Flexible configuration options can help balance security needs with engaging user experience.
App attestation
App attestation is a great feature for protecting your APIs and preventing unauthorized access. Continuous, transaction-based validation can ensure the integrity and authenticity of your app in real time. This can help prevent API injection attacks and ensure only legitimate, unmodified versions of the game can access the servers.
Implement robust mobile gaming app security
Cheating can quickly ruin a mobile game and frustrate your players and your revenue. Cheaters have no shortage of methods to exploit games and to combat these threats, you need robust security measures.
App shielding is one of the most effective ways to harden your mobile game against cheating and other attacks. By obfuscating your code, implementing runtime checks, detecting and blocking unauthorized environments, and securing communication, you can drastically reduce the attack surface for cheaters.
You’ve (probably) got vulnerabilities—and we know how to fix them. Find out how with our guide to the OWASP Top 10 (2024).
