Gaming’s pre-eminence as a past time means that innovations are drawn to the industry. It is developing rapidly, incorporating various new trends and technologies like 5G, virtual reality, and massive-multiplayer gaming. The market is only set to grow closer and closer to half-a-billion-dollars over the coming decade. As such, with this interest and investment, certain safety concerns and measures are being addressed pre-emptively and reactively to ensure players are engaging with content and each other in the most optimal and conducive way possible. These threats can come from the game itself being exploitative, from the in-game competition, and from players seeking to acquire other players’ sensitive data. Here are three ways online gaming is growing safer in 2021.
Loot Boxes
Electronic Arts have frequently used loot boxes in their major titles like Battlefield, Star Wars Battlefront, and FIFA. It has been a consistent model for them, no matter the genre of the game. Players can purchase or earn in-game currency to spend on loot boxes that contain items of varying value – low tier to high tier. For Battlefield and Battlefront, it can be skins or weapons, even experience points. For FIFA, on its Ultimate Team game mode, it is footballers – which receive exclusive boosts and variants throughout the season, making certain footballers more valuable in the in-game market – kits, stadiums, and other football imagery.
The items which impact aesthetics are fun extras, allowing users to stand out or fit in among friends and competitors. They don’t impact the gameplay. However, the ability to access gameplay-altering items like weapons and footballers, as well as experience points, changes the foundation of the game itself. It creates an economy of pay-to-win. Players criticised this which resulted in Battlefield V and Star Wars Battlefront 2 removing loot boxes from the game totally or limiting their power.
FIFA’s key game mode, the aforementioned Ultimate Team, still uses them heavily. Their necessity to gameplay and the rate at which they are used day-to-day by gamers across the world has resulted in governmental and regulatory authorities beginning to take notice, debate their psychological impact, and commission studies. Their mechanics, then, have been thrust into a different kind of public eye, with more and more passive spectators asking what is a loot box and is it illegal, due to the understanding and suggestion that loot boxes could be akin to gambling. Belgium was the first country to ban them from being used. Other European countries are investigating and will soon be coming to conclusions. 2021 could prove to be a pivotal year for loot boxes as it comes face-to-face with legislation and regulation.
Cheaters and Hackers
Key developments and press regarding Call of Duty: Warzone over the course of its life so far has often been marred by its approach to hackers and cheaters, as well as in-game glitches which players can exploit. The title is one of the biggest on the market, reaching one-hundred million players in April 2021. It’s the free-to-play model which Fortnite pioneered that has no doubt contributed to its success. However, it is also assumed that this model, and the game’s popularity, create a lucrative economy for cheaters and hackers.
Players want an in-game advantage over others. Skill, while being obviously desirable, doesn’t necessarily always guarantee an advantage. Therefore, players seek means of ensuring that, when confronting another player, they find a way of coming out on top. There have been a wide variety of hacks: aimbot which means a player doesn’t miss, “walling” hacks which render walls invisible and enables players to see through obstacles, and “auto-pings” which alerts a user to other player’s positions on a map constantly.
Major developers for games of this size have security teams that try to ban cheaters. They have detection measures, looking for malware within code, as well as an analysis of metrics that helps them find suspicious and policy-breaking accounts, but they also rely on the community reporting cheaters in-game.
Developers for Call of Duty: Warzone and Grand Theft Auto are hiring more people to focus their attention on how they can better handle the extent of the issue and enforce their anti-cheating policies. It’s expected more accounts will be banned. However, with an emphasis on such measures, it’s expected that new measures, techniques, and technology will develop over the course of the year.
Security Threats
Security threats are routine online. Phishing, malware, and other nefarious software and techniques are commonplace, and everyday citizens regularly have to be ready and alert to them. Sensitive data is lucrative. Online gamers often have to be as alert, as their details are registered to the account they are using to buy or play games. However, a notable development used by many outsiders of the gaming industry as well as inside it is the incorporation of AI in security measures.
AI allows patterns and anomalies to be detected and seen too early on. Not only that but they can concoct innovative solutions faster than humans can, making it harder for hackers and the software to adjust its attack.
