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Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat

engineering.riotgames.com

1–10 of 412 posts

Re: Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat

#2
I wonder if Riot would consider building the scripting UI they show into some kind of training mode. It's a bit like the argument that no one would pirate if they content was easy to get for a reasonable price.

If players could train with the spell range circles, skill shot path projection, last hit helpers, etc in a sanctioned way, I wonder how much this would remove the desire to seek out the cheating programs.

Edit: I see they have a "training mode" already: https://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/news/game-updates/features...

Re: Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat

#3
This is a great technical breakdown of some modern high level approaches to common cheats. I think this the most transparent approach (even though the author admits leaving some detail out) to modern anti-cheat for massive multiplayer games. Good on riot for having an open dialogue about this. I don't think you'd ever see someone like Valve going a transparent route with something like this. (Not making a judgement on that decision, just an observation).

Re: Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat

#4
Great writeup, and nice that they mention telemetry only once and work more with obfuscation than the usual process scanning, document scanning, blacklisting and reporting all back to shady servers, etc.

It's scary that one can easily get nasty anticheat software installed, even when playing only single player(!) games.

Re: Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat

#5
post #4

Great writeup, and nice that they mention telemetry only once and work more with obfuscation than the usual process scanning, document scanning, blacklisting and reporting all back to shady servers, etc. It's scary that one can easily get nasty anticheat software installed, even when playing only single player(!) games.

Buy Linux games on gog.com?

Re: Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat

#6
post #4

Great writeup, and nice that they mention telemetry only once and work more with obfuscation than the usual process scanning, document scanning, blacklisting and reporting all back to shady servers, etc. It's scary that one can easily get nasty anticheat software installed, even when playing only single player(!) games.

League of Legends is an online-only multiplayer game.

Re: Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat

#7
I feel like the industry would be better off being transparent about anti-cheat strategies and maybe even embracing open-source. Protecting "secret sauce" is basically admitting their anti-cheat are largely through obfuscation and can be defeated by knowing any details.

Re: Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat

#8

I feel like the industry would be better off being transparent about anti-cheat strategies and maybe even embracing open-source. Protecting "secret sauce" is basically admitting their anti-cheat are largely through obfuscation and can be defeated by knowing any details.

You obviously shouldn't rely entirely on security through obscurity, but obfuscation can absolutely be an important component of defense in depth.

Especially when your attackers own the hardware.

Re: Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat

#9
I wonder if there's an optimization to be made about tolerating a minimum amount of cheating while being vociferous about the countermeasures? Along the same lines as "no such thing as bad publicity", having just enough cheating to piss off a few people and getting them to talk about it and the countermeasures seems like a great way to get free advertising and game engagement of players just curious to see who is cheating or the drama between cat and mouse.

Re: Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat

#10
post #4

Great writeup, and nice that they mention telemetry only once and work more with obfuscation than the usual process scanning, document scanning, blacklisting and reporting all back to shady servers, etc. It's scary that one can easily get nasty anticheat software installed, even when playing only single player(!) games.

League of Legends is an online-only multiplayer game.

I know, that's why I wrote about single player games. Many games have both and the telemetry for anti cheating is not needed for single player.
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