Preventing Cheating

[Tsukihime]

Let's say you built a browser game and uploaded it to a game portal that supports in-game achievements.
You integrate the API into your game and then add an achievement so that when you reach level 50, you earn an achievement.

Now, someone comes along, opens up their debug tools (ie: chrome inspector), makes a couple script calls through the console, and modifies his actors to level 100.

Achievement earned in 5 seconds.

People are allowed to choose how they wish to play games, but it becomes a problem when their actions can affect others. If you were holding a high-score competition and people are just submitting bogus scores, you probably aren't going to be holding too many competitions.

Can cheating be prevented?

 

[Rise Evil]

I don't see how to do that except having a team to look everything fishy and see if such feats by people are doable or not etc. Sadly, it's almost impossible to prevent cheating, unless being Nintendo and religiously watch over your servers like a no life stalker and patch every monthes to deter them. But what do I know ^^"

 

[LTN Games]

It would be nice if it was preventable, but it's just not. Most companies know this and include the cheats themselves, even though they are usually debug tools they still don't remove them when the complete their game. It's about having a good enough game that the player would feel sorry for cheating. So I guess the best way to prevent this is to make it a game where the player don't want to cheat but would rather playthrough normally first.

 

[Tsukihime]

Looking at it again, the title isn't very clear.
Maybe someone can edit it to read "Preventing cheating in social environments"

My focus is specifically in situations where the are real consequences for cheating beyond player feeling guilty about it.
Even if you have the best game in the world, if there are rewards involved in completing certain tasks, then the chances of someone choosing to cheat in order to win will increase.

 

[punchybot]

It requires an investment. Unfortunately you can only make it difficult to cheat, but if someone is determined to cheat, they'll find a way to do it. As such, if you are to hold such a competition, then you
Would need to acquire logs somehow and check them....