Cheating Has Caused a Loss of Players and Revenue For 51% of Game Studios

It doesn’t matter what kind of gamer you might be; you almost certainly know about the impact cheating has on the modern gaming space. It has long since gone past the point of being a ‘problem’, and these days, it’s more of a plague. It seems that there isn’t a single multiplayer-focused game that doesn’t have an issue with cheaters.

The evolution of the problem is that cheaters (and the cheats they use) are becoming increasingly intelligent, countering any advancements made by anti-cheat solutions. In a recent study, it was found that more than half of a surveyed group of gaming studios have lost players and/or revenue because of cheating.

Cheating is Getting Worse

At Gamescom, I attended a few talks on the concept of cheating in video games. It was a telling thing that earned me some valuable insights from the developers focused on countering cheaters. I heard directly from anti-cheat experts from companies like Embark and Electronic Arts.

It’s not a pretty picture, though. Things are getting progressively worse, and the cheating business is now a multi-billion-dollar monster that’s almost impossible to defeat. The rise of AI-powered cheats, cheap hardware, and increasingly malicious companies means that cheating is much easier and more accessible now than it ever has been.

In a recent study from Anybrain, an AI-driven anti-cheat solution trusted by the likes of Embark Studios (ARC Raiders), 250 studios from the United Kingdom and the United States were surveyed.

Perhaps the most shocking figure from the study was the revelation that a single cheat developer made $77 million in 2021 marketing hacks for one game.

But this is a universal issue. It’s so widespread that a whopping 51% of the studios surveyed reported a loss of player retention or revenue as a result of cheaters disrupting their games. Of the studios polled, 69% consider cheating to be a significant problem in their games specifically.

And, as mentioned, the anti-cheat solutions developers have access to now (or have made themselves) are only so effective. It was revealed by the survey that 45% of studios say cheaters are defeating anti-cheat elements, which renders them somewhat useless.

When did you last run into a cheater in a game? Let us know on the Insider Gaming Discord server.

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