Last weekend, 343 Industries, an Xbox game studios developer responsible for the Halo series, dropped an interesting topic regarding online multiplayer gaming, they've mentioned anti-cheat. Let’s dive into an approach and see what the team is currently working on and what the future may hold for players.
ANTI-CHEAT SYSTEM UPDATE
The anti-cheat system, Arbiter was specifically designed for Halo Infinite was designed specifically for Halo Infinite, with the main goal to have little to no impact on the experience, performance, compatibility, and even privacy of legitimate players. The team’s desire is to make sure the prospect of cheats seems slow and difficult, and easily traceable. The work was done internally within the scope of the development team, which allows them to stick to their vision and assemble it in the most effective way feasible for the gaming experience in years to come.
The team avoided the media about Arbiter for one sole reason: the more detail they grand about its framework or how it operates, the more data they grand to cheat developers and their clients. That is why 343 is working behind closed doors, for as long as possible, which is completely understandable.
Whatever they can say or do - or in the particular case, not say, to assist with safeguarding their strategies - is pretty much worth the effort to protect players and their experience. The team expected some disagreement in the community with the choice to keep this discussion out of the spotlight, and since the team does not entirely believe the viability of their methodology depends totally on secrecy, they want to be as transparent about the present status of Arbiter as they can.
FUTURE UPDATE
There is no "one size fits all" answer for cheating, we should discuss some of the features 343 will be adding to the game. There will be steps they can take rapidly, some that will work on reliably over the long run, and a few bigger endeavours will take additional time as they work out the supporting frameworks.
DETECTION AND REPORTING
In the future, 343 said it desires to deliver an in-game player-report framework, yet it most likely will not be here at any point in the near future. It's a component they are working on, yet it will take time as they construct and renew every one of the supporting frameworks required ready to go to make it run as expected and precisely. 343 already made some recent updates, but in the short term, they will turn their attention to more visible issues right now. As we get closer to the point when the feature is ready to launch, the team will make further announcements.
ENFORCEMENT
The existing bans system is proving to be compelling at eliminating bad actors from matchmaking, however, the framework could be more powerful. Since our multiplayer is free to play, cheaters begin to re-enter the field by creating new accounts or even changing devices in an attempt to avoid enforcement actions. The team is currently working on multiple solutions to counter this such as the requirement to play a certain number of multiplayer games before they can queue up for rank. This gives the system some space and time to detect cheaters. And from the players’ perspective, they can help new players “find their feet” in social playlists before entering the more challenging rank play.
CONCLUSION
There are certainly some visible efforts from 343 to counter the cheating problem, and we can expect some improvements in the mid-season update and later on, as the cheating is addressed and will be delivered to players as soon as they become available.