Microsoft introduces anti-cheating tool for UWP games developers

Developers now have additional tools at their disposal to prevent cheating in PC games developed for the Universal Windows Platform.

As part of the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, Microsoft has introduced a new system called TruePlay, which runs games in a "protected process" that prevents the most common types of cheating or attacks and monitors player behaviour for any manipulation that might occur.

Crucially, this is not a system that has to affect the entire game. TruePlay's page at the Windows Dev Center assures that the tool is "not a 'block on launch' experience" and is in fact something consumers can opt into using.

Developers can then decide which parts of the game are accessible to players who have opted out. For example, the single-player mode may be fully enabled but it may require users to activate TruePlay if they wish to participate in the multiplayer.

Functions include the ability to monitor which parts of a game the user is playing, therefore dictating whether the anti-cheat alerts are generated, and correlations IDs that allow devs to match TruePlay data logs with the game's own session logs.

You can find more details on how to use TruePlay at the Windows Dev Center.

Any data TruePlay collects will generate alerts if cheating is suspected, and only informs developers when the system has determined how likely it is that a player is cheating. This is partly to protect customer privacy.

Cheating has long since been a problem for PC games developers, despite increased efforts to clamp down on such behaviour. Brendan Greene, the developer behind smash hit PUBG, recently tweeted that his team has banned 150,000 cheaters over the last seven months, while back in July Valve banned 40,000 Steam users in a single day for various cheating offences.