Proposing Formal Game Spaces as Foundation for Gameplay-Based Anti-Cheating Measures

Paper: Rendenbach, C., and Dyrda, D. (2024). Proposing Formal Game Spaces as Foundation for Gameplay-Based Anti-Cheating Measures. IEEE Conference on Games 2024.

Abstract: As the popularity of video games has increased, so has the incidence of cheating. Although researchers and game companies have developed various anti-cheating strategies, a common solution involves kernel-level implementations. However, kernel-level anti-cheating engines enjoy high privileges on a user's computer and thus raise significant privacy concerns. This paper advocates for a privacy-preserving alternative: a server-side anti-cheating engine based on formal game spaces. Our proposed solution leverages the formalization of the game space, analyzing the spatial and logical models of the video game to verify player behavior without compromising user privacy.