Quasi-functional Technology

In the spirit of GDC, I wanted to share a topic that I am passionate about and, hopefully, readers can learn something new.

Datamining – the act of digging through all of the data in a game with external tools – is something that happens to every game. With the rise of live service games, spoilers obtained through datamining are becoming a bigger problem for game developers.

Having worked on this issue in the past, I wanted to create a blog series about preventing leaks from datamining. Every engine is different so not all strategies will be as useful, but by covering a variety of aspects there will be something for everyone.

(Temporarily on hold)

• Our Goals: Clearly defining our goals and focus for this blog series.
• The Data of Datamining: A discussion about what types of data that dataminers look for and why they look for it.
• Removing Data from Builds: We will go over strategies for removing data from your builds and why you may take this approach instead of relying on branching to separate data.
• Encrypting Data: This post will go over when encryption should be used, how to extend data removal to include encryption, and different strategies for decryption at runtime.
• The Executable: Executables can contain leaks, too; let’s go over some ways to scrub them clean.
• Leveraging Servers: Many live service games are server-driven, let’s go over some ways we can take advantage of that.
• Gaining Confidence: A review of useful reports to help identify potential leaks in a build, as executables are full of leak potential, and ways to address common leaks.
• The Battlefield: There are a lot more dataminers than engineers on your team. We will evaluate strategies to help even the playing field.

I haven’t determined the posting schedule yet, but I aim to post one topic per week.

Let’s start! “Minimizing Leaks: Our Goals“