Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat

If any game dis this to me, I would be having a refund, through credit-card charge-back if necessary.

Unless of course it is made obvious up-front that the game will not work with certain common legitimate software, in which case I'd have not paid for it in the first place and would play something else instead.

> which uses BattlEye. It actually injects a kernel mode driver

Sounds like something I need to avoid. A game is a user-land program and has no business touching kernel-space (with the possible exception of direct communication with the graphics hardware for performance reasons, but in this decade that to me would be a huge code smell...)

Having said that: I've not bought much by way of games aside from a few small ones in Steam of HumbleBundle sales, other parts of life are just too busy for me to have the time ATM, and I've never really bothered with PvP/online gaming (when I play games I do so to escape the unwashed masses, not invite them into my living room!), so I might be so far from the target audience that my thoughts on the subject count for nothing.

My experience is a little different: if I buy enough in game shizzle (be it free to play or games like WoW with a buildin store), I get away with murder.

> For a rough example of how the math works[...]

IMHO You are right about the math, but use the wrong parameters. Many game companies that accept additional currency actually allow their moneymakers to "bend the rules". No hard data, just my individual observations while using "tools" in different settings.

Yeah I know a few more of those people and I don't understand how they're convincing innocent people that they need blockchain and that they should pay you money to implement 'the future'.

> If the original build of the game has already generated an encryption key

I'll take that to mean "if the server already generated a key, unique for each purchase, that is put in the game and also stored on the server."

> then tampering with the origonal build in memory will result in generating and invalod key

No, why? You never explained how you got from "distribute license key with game" to "invalid key when you modify the memory".

> thus changing the ledger or the stored key on the server

?!?!?! There are so many steps missing in your "explanation". Who says the game has internet? Who says the cheater didn't block the license servers? Who says the cheater didn't emulate what should have happened alongside his modified version and is submitting that to the server? Who says the cheater didn't cut out the licensing part altogether?

This is making zero sense so far.

> If this happens then it invalidates your build and the distributed ledger would need to updated, but since that is not allowed in this instance all ledgers would reject your change and flag the block and the account.

So... other game clients would see that your key is invalid, is that it? Not the licensing server hosted by the developers, but the other clients would be doing the blocking?

Alright, let's say it were so: there is a blockchain with all the license keys and your license key is computed as a hash of all your RAM memory contents. You submit this hash of your memory to other game clients when you communicate with them. Every network packet needs to contain this, or else they will refuse to process the packet at all. Other clients can look up valid keys in the blockchain.

Then firstly, you don't need a blockchain. What you're looking for is a relational databa -- scratch that, you need json -- oh wait, not even that. No, what you're really looking for is a plaintext file. What in the world does blockchain have to do with publishing valid license keys?!

Secondly, you have a huge list of valid license keys published, ready to be picked up by cheaters. Don't you think anyone is just going to look at that list, be it in blockchain format or in json or in plaintext, and replace their signature field with one of those keys?!

Thirdly, your RAM continuously changes. It's not as if you can play without getting a new signature a few million times per second, with each write operation to RAM. But let's say we only do it once per frame, so 60 times per second. Then you need to know what all the possible states are going to be... you know what, this is making zero sense. Tying some key computed from your game state to a license is nonsense.

I would think you're a troll but your messages seem just a little bit too long for it, it seems like too much effort... but I kinda do think you're a troll. The more I think about what you're saying, that's the only logical explanation.