Fireside Chat: Why Protecting an Indie Game Is Easier – & Cheaper – Than You Think?

[Music] you pitched us why uh you know you've given us some thoughts about uh the why it's important to protect your game and the benefits that i'm trying to give you but i want to open up with the most important question uh what's your favorite single player game to cheating single player [Music] i don't know that's that's an interesting one uh i would say

uh well okay that's gonna sound very shameless uh at this point or shameful i'm not sure but i i'm just catching up on uh on gta 5 at the moment yeah about 10 years after everybody or more it's still in the best selling years so it is it is pretty awesome um so i would that that seems like one of the way you would want to be able to come down uh in your presentation earlier you highlighted a lot of uh very large-scale mainstream games that have suffered from um kind of cheating and piracy such as diablo immortal battlefield um so why are your why do you think that indie developers are a little more relaxed when it comes to um cheating um it's not so so i think i think what happens is that um the the basic the basic thinking is that for for perhaps for indie developers and

obviously i'm not one so um i would welcome something good too but is that any any using publicity is a good is a good publicity in practice but so i think there is there is a score of focusing well it doesn't matter if my game is because then there's more players in in the game um of course the problem with that is like if you think especially in games that are multiplayer then as an indie you're basically um covering the cost without getting the benefit from uh from a potential revenue perspective which which creates a problem uh longer term yeah what's the um you mentioned that players uh tend to abandon games uh when one of multiplayer is afflicted by cheating what is the abandonment uh so so hard to tell and that probably varies by game and and and by amount of cheating that's during

practice um you know what what we could at least find out was was you know almost 80 percent of people that stopped noticing cheating in a game decide it's time to move on and that's that means almost everybody if you can't find um basically an environment that you consider is fair then then you move on is this a platform agnostic steps is it as likely to happen in mobile yeah yeah it was certainly not specifically competing in terms of selling yeah um well we've spoken a bit about uh what happens with the play base and obviously that's going to impact revenue but how much um income and revenue is at stake when uh things like cheating piracy are uh on math well like there's there's no there's many ways to look at it and if you if you look at the most drastic version right it's um the gaming the gaming industry is uh it's

about maybe 70 billion dollars as a as an industry so if um you could go as extreme as saying about eighty percent without first as a consequence of of basically things like cheating because if people don't stay in a game then you know it's it's you think you need that revenue um so but it's it's always hard to quantify what we have seen is that um for play games for example if you actually deploy technologies to to protect your game um then it doesn't get cracked based upon day zero which is uh which is of course a big thing um and and then the revenue is typically 20 30 percent higher than when there is no protection so there is an absolute top and bottom lining back to uh yeah um i was talking quite a bit about the impact cheating and uh piracy but can you tell me a bit more about how cyber security protection works

sure um so the the process of at least applying so the scripts because in our press right and i can only talk of course about technology in this instance as is very very very simple because all you need to do in our philosophy is that all you need to do is to supply the game in a binary form and if you think our pc then it's going to be it's going to be executable the final build or in the case of say android video apk you submit that to us we will apply the technology for you and then once it's ready uh we basically provide you the the protective version of of your game and will provide two links so that every new build going forward the security can be applied to the magic so from uh from a developer perspective what's good is you actually need to express you don't need expertise and it's all automated so it's quite quite neat from that

perspective yeah how much do the introduction of uh digital rights management influence the development of cyber protection uh it's it certainly had a added influence and that's that's perhaps also why there is sometimes so so much passionate engagement from the gaming community around around security technologies because there is there is always a tendency for people to see that as a restriction of freedom um and you know there there is some truth to that but the intent with this theory and technologies as such is is to make sure that people that only people that pay for it that should get access to it um but so i think it certainly has been a driver to to push forward the technology uh to actually have these hearings and make them stronger and it's uh it's a constant

pricing but you cyber security you're always always being pushed by people that are trying to break and so you're constantly in the in the cycle of innovation to prepare for the next breach as a consequence okay can you uh can you outline associate with um i like a obviously a lot of experience in this field so could you underline the process of implementing social security what does that look like yeah so it's it's kind of um how i i explained a lot of us so we the the way the way this works and and there's a lot of misconceptions around around the nova technology specifically what's the general technologies is the world of today um and it's kind of significant when it comes to security but so when when you when you actually give us a game what happens in the background is we we then actually start uploading technology the security technologies and we do a full profiling of the game where we

understand where security can be applied without impacting the performance we have a number of iterations around that to make sure that we find tuning such that what the game developer gets is a game that's secured but where the performance is still at at hp and that's that's the biggest misconception in practice is performance is impacted that's what people expect or somehow see or believe um and it's very very easy sometimes for for people to to derive that from from uh from poor performance to the game if you look at principal cyberplank as an example de novo was absolutely blamed for performance by the press and then the game came out without any protection and i think it was very evident that uh both in terms of quantity of the game but also performance etcetera that it had nothing to do with us yeah so

well um when thinking about the whole process how much does cyber security protection cost um that that is uh perhaps a harder question to answer here but i'd say the cost is very very low in comparison to the revenue that you you professionally generate as well so if you if you go back to the statement you can probably increase your revenue by 10 20 30 then the cost of security is actually a lot lower than that so you have always a positive return on investment on applying security technologies i'd love to do a show of hands actually for the people in the audience who here is currently implementing um anti-piracy or anti-cheating anti-tampering uh protections in their projects right now who here is considering it

he is now thanks to that discussion and who is uh who remains somewhat skeptical be honest thanks okay um well i think especially given new york subway uh a lot of uh the younger independent studios that we've welcomed that pgc toronto um is this is this um an option that indie studios can really afford and consider yes absolutely we have first of all our pricing model is is absolutely structured around around supporting me in the community as well and ensuring their uh their success um so absolutely but also there are there are options for us to to try things out with with the indie so that we can actually try it out test it feel and see the results as well yeah right

so if you think of mobile technologies it's quite quite easy to apply the technology except for a month and for you and typically you know if you think of mobile games there is a cycle of development that's quite rapid and you have a batch recovery so it's very easy to publish a new version with security and then you know a month later version without it if they don't see the value for it at that point but you see the results and and people just like i was i was mentioning super plus they saw the results immediately and they were very impressed with like all piracy all cheating based off everyone you need to line it up with content that's valuable because if you just do a let's apply security on the game a year later after it's released and there's nothing new in it then that's kind of worthless it needs to it needs to line up with new content a new version of the game that people want i mean i'm going to be picking on your uh members of the audience so they put their hands up because i'd love to get a

sense of your perspective as far as what you want uh the um anti-cheating anti-tampering protections to offer and why you remain skeptical so i'm gonna i'm gonna break k-state by going into the audience now the gentleman in uh well you're both wearing dark shirts would you like to start with discussing your project and uh you know why you think that will be to apply to choosing software of course so we're doing online uh hacking rpg and you know in this kind of uh genre the players want fair play right so someone's cheating and we have competitive elements in it too so that means that you know if there's not fair play players won't play like you mentioned they're gonna exit in droves and so the biggest thing anthony cheating is you know not tampering with the files of using us obfuscation in order so that they can't do that and also you know to the point we want like people to hack a game to see and make sure that it's going to be um as you know tight so that they're not you know putting this fair play what we want to do so it feels competitive people are going to like you know keep going to the rankings and leaderboards

and just having a fun time playing the game enjoying the game is that currently in uh practice now are you looking at uh are you looking at providers or solutions um we're going to provide as a solution so there's actually not many points we found but you know we're currently looking for them because we know how important it is and we want to make sure we include that um in our production so that as we're going through that um it's not like a last minute thing it's going to be like not very well executed so we're actively looking and talking with uh seriously fantastic and uh mcmahon uh our resident skeptic please uh yes tell us who you are and what your project is uh my name is usman and we're building a vr game so i don't know how this would apply to it i think i think that's a point question how would this vr experience well it look it's uh piracy on um

say for example oculus is also something that exists um the there is there is presently i think the attack vector is a little bit different because there is not as many um headset vr headset out there so the the community of people that work pirates is a lot less than on pc everybody has a pc all mobile everybody has a mobile um but i think that time that's that time is certainly coming and the risk is there but of course the impact is not as broad because there is not a as more of a community of player today but as as it expands it's going to become bigger and bigger just on other uh platforms that satisfied your curiosity or do you have uh anything else that you'd like to add i'm walking around a lot have there been issues current uh in the past few years yeah with vr yes

there has been uh and we don't know how much i can talk about certain things around that but the the there is a it's uh so vr had said there is is there's a fascinating dynamic today um and it's equivalent to um for example the um the ipods and music 20 years ago so what apple discovered is that the more piracy there was on music the more they could sell their their iphones in practice because it was kind of fueling the the use of of the device and i think at this point there is there is certain incentive for surface apologists to actually have the games pirated because that means more people will buy the headset for the purpose of being able to create a part of the games

so i think again it's uh it's it's in the cycle where the interest of everybody is not necessarily aligned yet um so absolutely prices is possible and right now it's it's in the interest of those that sell the devices now i can see it happening so with with oculus you can you can also add side quest yeah so if somebody really wanted to pirate the game it's doable yeah wow now that was high from a few more voices try to have oh i'm wondering if you have any if you can like any figures anything you can share about how much money you could actually save by having the security set up um like earlier on rather than like you know after you have like an attack or whatever happened how much can that actually potentially save or you know save the company yeah um but it's it's it's it's based on pld

most of the triple a's today first of all use user technologies um so the most valuable premium games those that are most widely purchased are typically protected by by the novel and that's because there is simply no good alternative to us in practice it's it's really hard getting the high kick the helping community is very strong and very active and so the alternative to uh to us would typically get to the point where the game is cracked on day zero day day one so it gets released on first upon steam and the next day it's already all over fifth generation versus with us we have an average hold up of about six months which means that for the first six months in average um your gains will not get voted which is your revenue is secured and that's that's a big thing

and so how that translates to revenue depends drastically on the game in practice and how successful it is and things are up but what we've we've seen from some of our customers uh uh you know in the triple s is that they can easily quantify you know say 20 30 additional revenue uh by having the security versus stuff so you know how how much money is it depends on on the game but it's a lot of money very very quickly is there a sense of complacency um when it comes to anti-piracy i mean i know in the um television industries like when when game of thrones was the most pirated tv show that was a statistic that hbo would produce press releases around because it still generated uh noise for for the for the show and for them yeah is there a sense of similar if it's not complacency then

appreciation there i say in the games industry yeah i'm sure there is um and that's that's where it comes it comes down to to come back to the discussion of of you know it depends on the kind of games um if it's a single player game then it's just revenue lost it's still revenue loss but it's just that but then if you go into into online games then suddenly you still have the publisher of bearing the cost of people playing without actually getting any money in return whether that's you know the uh the the subscription or the game not being you know paid for or whether there's a version that's been that's been attacked such that it's um you know the ads are not displayed or whatever that might be so um i it's it's always it's always a funny discussion i i don't know i don't know how to resolve it um it's clear that publicity is good but

you need to consider them you know honestly did revenue better i you think so right from a business perspective it seems like that's that's priority number one and publicity is probably priority number two uh go up so i'll trust you the mic so let's say a developer is using your services and it still gets pirated and what happens um so it's gonna it's gonna depend a little bit on the game and the kind of services um for example um if it's if it's anti-cheap technologies then that's a that's a that's an ongoing service you you will have a battle forever on chiefs uh cheating uh and so that's why it's important to actually have a partner with you that's gonna be there to constantly fight and identify new

cheats and your cheetahs and help you actually deal with it so so that's that's one aspect when it comes to piracy it will depend on the time again specifically whether the game has an evolving life and what i mean by that is if it's a premium game and it's published once and that's it then once it's cracked it's out there it's too late there's literally nothing you can do so if you think of random example fifa 23 it gets flat tips out there there's very little you can do if however it's a game that has regular updates then you can the security at the next the next update and people will want that one like if there's new seasons if there's like if it's in the mobile space there's new content coming up coming out regularly then there is a compelling event for people to get the new one and actually you can probably even force that

in practice for for people to only be able to get the latest version and when you publish the new version you can actually again apply newest security because what happens in practice in our businesses we're constantly improving security there's new security engines every couple of months and so it depends on the game and the situation okay thank you excellent well um i think given that conversation i'd like to do a second show of hands if anyone has been particularly swayed by the argument in favor of anti-piracy anti-cheating anti-tampering software no new hands anyone feels more passionately against it moving away from it nope this conversation has had an entirely neutral impact thank you thank you well we're coming up to time but if you have any closing things that you'd like to make maybe you'll slay the audience in one way or another but uh um

you know from my perspective um the only advice i can give you is think think enough of security and how you're gonna protect your business that starts with focusing on how you're planning to make money and there's been i've been attending a number of sessions where that's that's been about that that's been about building the experiences around how you want to monetize but don't forget about how you're going to secure that how are you going to make sure that ultimately that's not going to go up the realms once you figure that out then find the right partner to support you if you don't have internal resources it's not an easy job security is hard um and uh cyber security specifically there is a shortage all around the world today of resources so it's uh it's only good to find a partner that you can rely on because that's that's that's something that takes years to build up in terms of spaces excellent oh no we have one last question hi c thanks for joining us um

a bit of a question related to your last talk i was wondering um well i'm cognizant that cheating in multiplayer games can have quite a big effect on fairness but i was wondering in single-player games i know you mentioned that your favorite single-player games cheating in this graphic i was wondering if um you have any ideas or i'm a little bit curious as to why there's been such a decrease in i guess like cheat codes and things like that um in like big like triple a titles where um say like grand theft auto san andreas had like 76 or like 75 plus cheats um whereas like grand theft auto 4 and grand theft auto 5 have like 10 to 15 maybe is it just um is it more profitable to have that content in a multiplayer space where people have to pay for it or is it um sort of like the emergence of single-player mods and that becoming a lot easier to access for a big scope of the player base

[Music] certainly the um our customers can do to recognize that cheating in a in a single player environment is is okay and it's acceptable because you're currently you're playing with yourself and if you decide that a level is too hard or that you want to you know somehow buy your way through the game by unlimiting the amount of coins you have whatever it is absolutely okay because that's your gaming ultimately every tire is entitled to their own experience as long as they're not impacting anybody else why is there more or less you know cheaters i don't know i i think that's perhaps perhaps the world is certainly evolving a lot more well there's a lot of trends i'm going obviously but you can see you can see gradually the world is moving step by step towards free to play um

it's moving towards multiplayer in practice i think this perhaps less attention given to that as a consequence and if you look at call of duty for example which used to be a premium game um in practice activision is making three or four times more money by having shifted to to free to play for example but so i i don't don't really know how to to answer answer your question in practice i think there's um there is a very active community of people that want to cheat in multiplayer and that's simply because it's a human nature you want to gain an advantage you want to be at the top of that leaderboard and therefore that that fuels everybody um but from there i wouldn't know what else to give you thank you highly recommend uh checking out the uh big mb uh stage in our um expo hall to chat with the developers to see what insights they might have as far as why there are fewer cheat codes and options

uh but that actually looks like uh we're at time please welcome uh jeremy welcome to me um uh properly uh apparently steve hoon for uh his time with us and showing his expertise and my fabulous co-hosts lovely show man black branded shirt man and lighter blue shirt man [Applause]