Ubisoft buys anti-cheat company to fight game ruiners

PC game developers are fighting a seemingly endless battle against cheaters, and Ubisoft is willing to spend to stay one step ahead. Gamasutra reports that Ubisoft's i3D.net subsidiary has acquired GameBlocks, the creator of the server-side anti-cheat tool FairFight. The i3D.net team intends to both integrate FairFight into the ONE Game Hosting Platform used by "AAA" publishers and expand the cheat detection system's capabilities.

Ubisoft has already closed the deal. It also declined to say how much it paid for GameBlocks, but it did promise to support existing customers.

The buyout could give Ubisoft an edge. FairFight has been used for a range of major games, including Ubi's own Rainbow Six Siege and EA's Battlefield V, and it offers a "non-invasive" approach that looks for cheating by algorithmically analyzing behavior in real time. As developers themselves establish the tolerances of the algorithm, the system can theoretically keep up as cheats evolve, and without forcing gamers to deal with intrusive game integrity measures on their computers. There's no guarantee you'll see fewer aimbots and other hacks as a result of the GameBlocks purchase, but the efforts to counter those bots could be more elegant.