CODEWITHSUNDEEP
androidgoogle-play-servicesgoogle-play-games
Kamalen
Kamalen

Reputation: 526

Google Play Game Services Multiplayed and Cheating

I am thinking about using Play Game Services, with turn-based multiplayer, to power my Android game.

I have concerns regarding cheating. Neither real time nor turn based games seems to need a backend server with game logic (except Google servers). I don't trust the client and I fear the data can be tempered with if they don't go to a backend server.

How cheating prevented through Google Play Games Service ?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 566

Answers (2)

Michael A.
Michael A.

Reputation: 4218

From what I've seen (I'm only experimenting with this myself, so no guarantees), it seems like you can counteract cheating by saving the game state after every action of the player. I'm not sure how practicable it is (e.g., takes too much time to do?), but this is at least doable in theory.

Basically, you call takeTurn() with the participant ID of the currently active player. This stores the save state, but without advancing the turn to the next player. Essentially, you are doing a cloud save with the multiplayer server, and it should be impossible for the player to manipulate the game data, as long as you make sure to pull down data at a restart.

Manipulating the game logic or memory manipulation is another matter, but generally speaking I'd say that the effort of preventing such hacking is unlikely to be worth the benefits. Unless you have money/real values involved in the situation, it is usually better to just trust your users.

Upvotes: 0

class
class

Reputation: 8681

You can use the Web API (REST) with a client-server configuration to use your own backend server for multiplayer.

Upvotes: 0

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