Both casual and professional gamers pour hundreds of hours into playing online with one basic premise – the game is fair. From reputation to financial gain, the motivation to be at the top of the leaderboard is massive and unfortunately, some are turning to cheating, to climb the ladder of success artificially.
Kaspersky Anti-Cheat technology builds on their long history in building security software, where the challenge is to detect malicious activity and protecting your data. Taking those decades of learnings and focusing it on the challenge of protecting fair play in eSports, Kaspersky has introduced a beta version of its new solution Kaspersky Anti-Cheat to help tournament organizers combat in-game cheating.
Such is the sophistication of cheating approaches in 2019, that tackling the issue, requires defense from a cloud-based solution that offers real-time cheat detection. The Kaspersky Anti-Cheat technology also shares automated reports with the customers who can then make a disciplinary decision on the rule-breaker.
According to the latest Irdeto Global Gaming Survey, just 12% of Online Gamers have never had their multiplayer gaming experience spoilt by unfair actions of other players, while one in three gamers have actually confessed to cheating.
Rule-breakers have the potential to put off fair or professional players from participating in competitions, impacting relationships within the gaming community. If left unchecked, cheating can affect the popularity and reputation of a tournament.
In our ultra-connected world, talk of suspected cheats spreads rapidly and with so much live streaming occurring, it often gets captured and shared in seconds. Without an appropriate response to condemn and eliminate cheating, the revenue, partnerships and future of tournaments could be threatened.
Kaspersky’s Anti-Cheat system can be easily integrated through the API of the eSports platform, rolled out to players and used to ensure fair play during the online stages of a tournament when it’s especially difficult to monitor cheating.
Once enabled, having the Anti-Cheat client installation (see below) would become mandatory, to ensure all players are operating on a level playing field. After installation on the player’s computer, the game process info is collected, sent to the Kaspersky Anti-Cheat cloud and analyzed for suspicious events.
Tournament referees also receive direct real-time cheat reports via a web interface. Obviously levelling accusations of cheating against someone is a big deal, so you need the right data to back up that allegation. Kaspersky’s Anti-Cheat solution provides technical evidence of cheating without taking any actions upon the player, leaving the final decision to the referee and tournament organizers.
Running any additional software on your machine is always a concern when milliseconds count in online gaming. Thankfully this solution cheat detection software puts the user experience first and not affect the game performance or network traffic.
Fair play is highly important to gamers who strive to show their class and skill. When games like CS:GO, PUBG or DOTA 2 become overloaded with cheaters, honest gamers will either stop playing or even give up the game for good. Therefore our solution will provide tournament organizers with an opportunity to maintain a stable balance in the gaming community and monitor the progress of their competitions.
With the introduction of Kaspersky Anti-Cheat, our company brings over 20 years of relevant experience in fighting malware and cybercrime, to a new territory. But we do not intend to rest on our laurels: this year will also see the launch of Kaspersky Anti-Cheat for Multiplayer online games.
Anton Selikhov, Product Owner Kaspersky Anti-Cheat
Kaspersky Anti-Cheat solution is available across the globe and is designed for both game developers and eSport tournament organizers.
For more information head to https://go.kaspersky.com/anticheat.html.
