[calebh]

I'm currently developing an online game and have been looking into anticheat measures. From what I've seen, kernel level anticheats basically keep the honest people honest, and any determined cheater can work around them. I do wish Windows had some better way to ensure things are tamper proof for online games.

I actually think it's a good idea to charge at least a small amount of money for online games, so that when cheaters are banned they will have to pay real money to remake their accounts.

In a previous game I worked on, there were freely available and easy to use cheats. This completely ruined the online experience. At one point I wrote a small script to detect an irregularity used only by the cheaters, and the number of people who were banned was astounding. Of course the cheaters patched their cheat within a week and we were back to square one.

[quanten]

The only issue with charging for the game is you will then lose out on player base, some of the most popular competitive games get that way because kids and teens without an income can play them regardless. It's inclusive of all, especially when the developers focus on ensuring their game can run on as many devices as possible even with low-spec. This is incredibly important for a games community, even if it does make cheating slightly easier.