Patent Detects in-Game “Collusion” by Tracking “External Connections”
Freeman writes:
Algorithm also analyzes in-game data to find opponents secretly working together:
EA's simply titled "Detecting Collusion in Online Games" patent, published earlier this month, defines collusion as when two or more players/groups that are "intended to be opponents" instead "contribute to a common cause" to "gain an unfair advantage" over others. In a battle royale shooter, for instance, a small group of players communicating outside the game could stay together and gain a decided firepower advantage against their single opponents.
Many of the patent's potential methods for discovering this kind of collusion use simple and obvious in-game data. If two or more ostensibly opposed players or teams show abnormal amounts of "time spent in proximity... without engagement," for instance, there's a good chance they're working together. Even if those players show some cursory opposition at points, metrics like damage per second can be compared with the average to see if this is just opposition "for appearance's sake."
[...]
Beyond easy-to-detect in-game data, though, EA's patent details other signs of collusion that can be gleaned from things like "social relationships and communications" and "third-party system connections and interactions" outside the game. That kind of data ranges from simple relationships like a "friends list" provided by the gaming platform to completely external relationships like "social media connection data."
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.