Systematic Review Maps Technical Defenses Against Cheating in Online Multiplayer Games

Global: Systematic Review Maps Technical Defenses Against Cheating in Online Multiplayer Games

Background and Scope

A new systematic literature review released on December 24, 2025, surveys technical defenses designed to counter software‑based cheating in online multiplayer games. The authors, Adwa Alangari and Ohoud Alharbi, compiled and analyzed peer‑reviewed studies to provide a comprehensive overview of current anti‑cheat strategies.

Classification of Anti‑Cheat Defenses

The review organizes existing approaches into four primary categories: server‑side detection mechanisms, client‑side anti‑tamper techniques, kernel‑level anti‑cheat drivers, and hardware‑assisted trusted execution environments (TEEs). Each category reflects a distinct point of intervention within the game architecture.

Evaluation Metrics

For every class of defense, the authors assess detection effectiveness, performance overhead, privacy impact, and scalability. The analysis draws on empirical results reported in the surveyed literature, highlighting how each metric varies across the four categories.

Key Trade‑offs

Findings indicate that kernel‑level solutions offer high visibility into cheating behavior but raise concerns about user privacy, system stability, and potential conflicts with operating‑system updates. In contrast, server‑side methods impose minimal intrusion on players’ devices yet provide limited insight into client‑side manipulation, reducing detection granularity.

Industry Implications

The authors argue that game developers must balance these trade‑offs when selecting anti‑cheat architectures, especially as the scale of online gaming ecosystems continues to expand. The review suggests that hybrid models combining server‑side analytics with selective client‑side verification may mitigate the drawbacks of any single approach.

Conclusion

Overall, the study underscores an ongoing arms race between cheat developers and anti‑cheat engineers, emphasizing the need for robust, adversary‑resistant designs that can adapt to evolving threats. The authors call for continued research into privacy‑preserving yet effective detection techniques.This report is based on information from arXiv, licensed under Academic Preprint / Open Access. Based on the abstract of the research paper. Full text available via ArXiv.