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Cheating detection through game time modeling: A better way to avoid time cheats in P2P MOGs?

Published: 01 May 2008 Publication History

Abstract

Cheating is a key issue in online games. Whatever the rules that govern a game, some players will always be tempted to break or elude these rules so as to gain an unfair advantage over other players. Mitigation schemes are thus needed in online gaming platforms. However, it is widely recognized that typical cheating prevention schemes introduce complications and overheads in the distributed game system, which may seriously jeopardize the online gaming experience. It turns out that, often, detecting the cheaters, instead of preventing the cheats, could represent a viable solution, especially for time cheats. We present a general framework able to model game time advancements in P2P online games. Based on this framework, time cheat detection schemes can be easily devised, which monitor the communication patterns among peers and do not affect the performances of the game system. To provide evidence of our claim, we present in this paper two different time cheats, namely fast rate cheat and look-ahead cheat , and discuss on practicable methods to detect them. Simulation results confirm the viability of the proposed approach.

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Published In

cover image Multimedia Tools and Applications
Multimedia Tools and Applications  Volume 37, Issue 3
May 2008
121 pages

Publisher

Kluwer Academic Publishers

United States

Publication History

Published: 01 May 2008

Author Tags

  1. Cheating detection
  2. Multiplayer online games
  3. Peer-to-peer

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