Rather than fight a losing battle, game developers need to have a deep understanding of the tactics cheaters will use and what measures should be in place to protect their code
For mobile game developers, cheaters are one of the many threats that can ruin months or years of hard work in world-building, stat balancing, and mechanical design. Their need to win by any means necessary, even going so far as to break the rules, will push new and existing players away and tarnish developers’ reputations. Modifying mobile games is one such tactic players use to cheat, and it has the potential to disrupt India’s growing gaming landscape.
According to the Digital 2023: India report, 80.1 percent of Internet users aged 16 to 64 played games via smartphones since January this year. Furthermore, Mordor Intelligence also revealed that the country has dethroned China as the primary consumer of mobile games, accounting for 17 percent of downloads worldwide. These findings underscore the need for mobile game developers to block modding and tweaking techniques that can give cheaters an unfair advantage over other players and spoil everyone’s fun.
Rigging the game
Mobile cheating comes in many different forms, but they generally involve the user winning or surpassing other players in a way that is not intended by the game’s design. Mods and tweaks, in particular, are the result of reverse engineering as well as static and dynamic analysis.
Mods are designed to change game functions, behaviors, or values in a way that benefits the user. Their capabilities differ from one another, and they range from adding minor functions to completely overhauling the way the game is played. There are also mods that expose hidden user interfaces (UIs), making it easy for cheaters to unlock game features or in-game content without having to spend real money.
Tweaks, on the other hand, are pre-packaged iOS programs that are available to download on alternative app stores like Cydia. Just like with mods, tweaks offer numerous capabilities, such as growing in-game cash or credits, activating special powers for their characters, increasing gameplay speed and shooting accuracy, and disabling time limits. Some tweaks can only work on jailbroken devices, which is best achieved through programs like Checkra1n. This particular tool is the go-to program for experienced cheaters due to its ability to exploit a hardware/firmware bug that Apple cannot patch, as well as its compatibility with most iOS devices.
Meanwhile, alternative app stores, like Cydia and Up2Down, are perfect places for cheaters to acquire pre-modified game apps and download them on a jailbroken or rooted device. Alternatively, for those using Android devices, they can use an emulator like NoxPlayer to run the mod. Unlike the former method, NoxPlayer requires no programming skills whatsoever to gain root access.
Gain the upper hand over game modding
Issuing take down notices on modded apps or tweaks is like a game of whack-a-mole; remove one, and five more spring up on alternative app stores. Rather than fight a losing battle, game developers need to have a deep understanding of the tactics cheaters will use and what measures should be in place to protect their code.
For example, tactics like live memory editing – which can be harnessed through cheat engine apps like GameGuardian – can be used to modify a large library of Android apps by locating and altering specific values or running scripts inside the game. By using GameGuardian’s built-in hex editor, cheaters can increase the number of lives they have and gain an unfair advantage over others.
Dynamic code injection is also another tactic in which the cheater uses tools like Frida, Hopper, or IDA-Pro to modify the game’s active memory and state while it is still running. This is achieved through processes like function and method hooking, memory mapping, fuzzing, and ROM-hacking. The changes can then be repackaged as new mods or tweaks that can be sold to less experienced players on the black market.
Mobile App Security Evangelist,
Appdome
The most effective method to prevent game modding is by integrating a no-code fraud prevention solution that can enable the easy building of protections against click bots, speed hacking, cheat engine apps, and dynamic instrumentation tools. Preventing apps from gaining increased privileges and abusing the device’s accessibility feature is also crucial to stop cheating through click actions.
Mods and tweaks may provide great advantages, but they also make the game less fun for players who can’t compete, which will eventually cause them to drop out. They are also opposed to fair play, which encourages all players to have an equal chance of winning. For this reason, developers looking to deliver the best gaming experience possible need to be better equipped to stop the use of mods and tweaks from running rampant.
