CODEWITHSUNDEEP
androidgoogle-play-servicesgoogle-play-games
DroidHeaven
DroidHeaven

Reputation: 2464

Google Play Anti-Piracy - Cheated Scores in Leaderboards

If Google Play Game Services' Anti-Piracy Mode is enabled, then does it mean that, no more ridiculous high-scores will be appearing on Leaderboards? Because, as per Google:

If anti-piracy is turned on for your game, the Game service checks if a user is licensed to play your game. If none of the user accounts on a device are licensed for your game, the Game services calls sent by your game will fail and return a LICENSE_CHECK_FAILED status code.

To be licensed for your game, users must install it from Google Play.

I am just an ordinary developer and haven't reached the hacker level(probably will never ever) :D . But my deduction is that to hack the scores, you need to:

  1. open the apk
  2. modify the api call
  3. repack it
  4. install repacked apk.

But the last step will invalidate Google's condition(last line of the quote) hence making it impossible to hack. Is it true?

PS: Take Flappy bird's leaderboard for example. There are so many insane scores but the developer HAS'NT enabled anti-piracy mode since I can post my scores to it's leaderboard(I installed apk after downloading from a website). And hence that may be the reason.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 5212

Answers (2)

free3dom
free3dom

Reputation: 18978

Score manipulation is done during runtime using some application that modifies values in memory (requires root). Turning on anti-piracy will NOT prevent this from happening.

You can (if you really want to) detect root and prevent your app from running on these devices (see this question/answer). I would not advise this though.

The best way to deal cheating in leaderboards would be to set a maximum score limit for leaderboards (something reasonable and almost possible, but not quite). Then also monitor the leaderboard for scores that reach the limit and remove them manually.

Edit:
Google has added tamper protection for leaderboards.

Upvotes: 2

Sam Stern
Sam Stern

Reputation: 25134

You should enable tamper protection for leaderboards. While this will not eliminate scores that have already been submitted, it will automatically hide tampered scores submitted in the future.

Upvotes: 0

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