When you do everything on the client side, it can be tampered with and you can run software to trick anti-cheat software or trick the server into thinking you’re running anti-cheat software when it’s not running. So if you want to secure it at all, everything has to be done server side. However, there are also some obstacles.
If you’re running late, you can do some action that then gets to the server so fast that it can be “too fast”. But if it is always blocked then it becomes unplayable with lag. So it is usually taken into account that it can happen occasionally and slight deviations are permissible. When using a program like CheatEngine, you can, for example, set your speed to 1.1x or 1.2x the normal speed. Too small to be recognized as a cheat, but faster than all the other players.
Even with server based browser games, you also have things on the client that can be tampered with. And sometimes it is not about doing something that is not allowed, but simply doing an ordinary act that depends on timing very precisely. Or if the ‘first person who clicks wins something’, you can try to click at just the right time, you can sit and click a lot, or you can use AutoClicker to click 10000x per second, use software that tells you you can click and send something at once, or search in Code and send instructions before the dialog appears to click (see also How people across ages have ordered AMD cards on the AMD website from the weekly menu).
Banning cheats has always been a battle between a small group of players and developers. Even simple programming errors can have a huge impact, and if real money can be made in a game, cheaters don’t care if they get caught too often and lose an account. If you can make hundreds or thousands of dollars a week cheating and then have to buy a few licenses of a few dozen every 3-6 months, that’s not really a problem.
Edit: Cheaters often make money with “bots” in games where you can get things or level up by playing. Some people just don’t want to start from scratch (or move forward if they’ve been banned before), and if the bot isn’t very straightforward, you can use it long before you get caught.
[Reactie gewijzigd door Skyclad op 27 november 2021 16:39]
