Stop All cheaters

The best way to prevent cheating is to use a network of trust. This is the magic phrase that comes up over and over again for those who are engaged in real security work. Public key cryptography is an excellent example. You could easily have a server that uses the current state-of-the-art public-key cryptography to ensure that, for example, only players who share at least 2 other players in their trusted keyring can log in to play. The effect of this is that you are simulating real human behavior — people tend to avoid taking risks (in this case, the possibility of a ruined gaming experience because of cheating) with complete strangers. You could even enforce draconian measures, such as, “if a trusted person has been confirmed as a cheater, all other associated players will have their trust level reduced.” Such a rule would severely dampen the spread of new cheats, as the banned player will be prevented from playing on trusted servers, and all of his real-life friends who added him to their keyring will have their “trustworthiness” level reduced. In short, real-life peer pressure would dramatically affect the game.

Sadly, the only problem with the network of trust is that it prevents millions of players from playing against each other immediately, because, let’s face it, the vast majority of online players one encounters are complete strangers. Still, I think that this method is a viable option; I am 99.999999% sure that there are thousands, if not tens of thousands, of players out there who would be willing to sacrifice maxed-out (full player) servers in order to enjoy hours of trusted gaming that guarantees a system that no one in the world, not even world governments, is able to hack.