Every year, game developers raise the issue of cheaters: despite all the efforts of publishers, scammers continue to poison the lives of ordinary gamers. And the culprits are the manufacturers of special software, who are practically swimming in money.
According to calculations by specialists from the University of Birmingham, fraudulent programs generate from 12.8 million to 73.2 million dollars annually - this is an entire industry. In the USA and Europe, from 30 thousand to 174 thousand users regularly buy such utilities at a price of $ 6.63 to $ 254.28.
In total, experts analyzed 80 thematic sites. As it turned out, these portals are designed no worse than regular online stores: they have a support service and the ability to subscribe to a service (for timely updates of cheats).
Unfortunately, despite all the efforts of studios and publishers of video games, developers of such software regularly improve their own technologies, in some cases with a frequency of once every one and a half days. Now they resort to AI every now and then — for example, modern aimbots (programs that aim instead of the user) use artificial intelligence to improve shooting accuracy and learn. Machine learning is also used to bypass DRM and anti-cheats.
The authors of the study emphasize that their research is just a drop in the ocean, since they did not take into account sales in Asia and on forums, as well as free utilities. In fact, the market for fraudulent software may be even wider.
Now, let us recall, the industry is switching to desperate measures to combat cheaters. Battlefield 6 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 will use Secure Boot, and the creators of PUBG: Battlegrounds are going to introduce an anti-cheat that will check the operating system kernel for suspicious actions.
