Do you ever feel like your opponents in a free online game are trying to get you, in particular? It may not just be paranoia. It might be collusion between your opponents. And in a recently published patent application, Electronic Arts details some potential tools and data points, both in-game and out, that might be used to detect and eliminate this unfair practice.
Simply it is an EA title Patent “Detecting collusion in online games”, which was published earlier this month, defines collusion as two or more players/groups “intended to be antagonists” who “contribute to a common cause” to gain an unfair advantage “over one another.” In a Battle Royale shooter, for example, a small group of players who communicate outside of the game can band together and gain a decisive firepower advantage once morest their unique opponents.
Many of the patent-pending methods for detecting this type of collusion use simple, clear play data. If two or more outwardly opposing players or teams display an abnormal amount of “time spent in close proximity…without commitment,” for example, there’s a good chance they’re working together. Even if these players show superficial opposition at some points, metrics such as damage per second can be compared to average to see if it’s just opposition “for appearance’s sake”.
Consistently dropping items picked up by another team or player is another possible sign of collusion, as is the same player(s) regularly appearing on opposing teams match following match. Conspiring players may also tend to end up in similar ranked positions during their matches, especially “once the unfair advantage provided by collusion is nullified” as some collaborating players are eliminated.
Big Brother is watching (for complicity)
In addition to easily detectable in-game data, EA’s patent outlines other signs of collusion that can be extracted from things like “social relationships and communications” and “communications and interactions with third-party systems” outside of the game. This type of data ranges from relationships such as the “Friends List” provided by the game platform to external relationships just like “Social Media Login Data”.
The patent mentions a “inter-team community measure” which counts “the number of members in a group or community … of which the players of both teams are members”. Things like “the number of posts a player has in a given community” with another player can indicate possible collusion.
Even “additional game communication content” can be fed into the algorithm, according to the patent, such as “posts to a forum involving players from both teams.” A “machine learning algorithm” can be used to extract any collusion-related context from this type of communication outside of the game, or a simple keyword search can be used, according to the patent.
To be clear, the patent is explicit in saying that any player data used in any of these detection algorithms “will comply with privacy policies that respect player privacy, and in accordance with the privacy settings or preferences of any player.” players.” Having said that, there’s something slightly Big Brother-y regarding the likelihood that a publisher like EA will analyze your Twitter posts and Reddit community memberships to see if you’re trying to orchestrate cheats in their online game.
Again, in a world where players They will do their best to hide their cheating by using external devices, perhaps this kind of external social graph analysis is required to weed out some of the worst accomplices (or at least some of the least cautious). In any case, having a patented design does not mean that EA is using (or ever will) this type of system in the wild. For now, this is just an interesting insight into how one company is thinking regarding potential ways to detect the human side of cheating online as well as technical side.
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