If you’ve ever played online multiplayer games, the chances are, you’ve encountered bots. Whether you recognize them or not, they are everywhere, especially in free and cheap games. They’re not typically bothering anyone, so what’s the big deal? Why should anyone care?
A handful of bots is not usually a big deal, but botting is not just about a few people cutting corners. It has gronwn, in fact, into an entire industry and some people, in fact, make a living out of it. It can have serious consequences to game integrity.
What is botting?
At its core, botting involves automating gameplay tasks that would otherwise require human attention. This can be basically any in-game activity, but most bots are made for simple, repetitive tasks, such as collecting resources or killing monsters. Bots can run on simple scripts, like auto-clickers, or dedicated, complex applications made just for botting.
Why is it a problem?
Bots can seem harmless at first glance. Why should you care if someone uses a script to collect virtual flowers for 12 hours a day? In single-player games, this is not an issue because the resources are tied only to their own account. However, in multiplayer environment, these resources are typically gathered to be sold on open market.
Bots flood the in-game market with massive amounts of resources. Without proper countermeasures from the game’s developers, will inevitably crash the in-game market. It drives the prices of the botted resources down to almost nothing, which destroys legitimate money-making methods for regular players who actually play the game.
Botting and real-world trading
Botting and real-world trading (RWT) often go hand-in-hand. The resources gathered by bots are either sold directly for real money on third-party websites, or they are traded for in-game currency first, and then real money. For example, the trade of Old School RuneScape gold is a classic and well-known example of this phenomenon, shown in Figure 1.
In some parts of the world, botting has become organized business. It can be executed on an industrial scale by running massive bot farms on cloud servers. Depending on the resources being sold and the local real-world economy, some people can even earn a full-time living simply by operating these automated accounts.
The endless fight against bots
Game developers have been fighting bots for ages. New bot-detection technologies come out constantly , and large ban-waves frequently wipe out thousands of automated accounts. But the unfortunate reality is that bots also evolve.
Eventually, the bot developers always find a way around the detection systems and new, more sophisticated bots emerge. This leads to an endless cat-and-mouse game between the devlopers and the botters. For the community, this can be frustrating and make legitimate players feel as if nothing is being done to stop the cheating.
Conclusions
Botting has grown far beyond individuals merely trying to save some time in video games. It has developed into a large-scale industry deeply connected to real-world trading. At first glance, the issue seems small, but a closer look reveals how it disrupts game economies and harms legitimate players. This leads to massive market inflation and an overall decline in game integrity.
Even though game developers are doing what they can to combat bots, the fight is never-ending. Botting remains a significant challenge for online multiplayer environments, and it is an issue the gaming industry is going to have to deal with for the foreseeable future.
