research-article
Authors: Jhih-Hua Jhang-Li and I. Robert Chiang
Volume 64, Issue C
Published: 02 July 2024 Publication History
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Highlights
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Third-party cheats lower the revenue from legitimate in-game purchases.
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A game publisher can ignore or block suspected accounts.
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Banning suspected accounts can drive up the price of third-party cheats.
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Isolating suspected accounts cannot discourage the use of third-party cheats.
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The price of third-party cheats fluctuates under zero-tolerance strategy.
Abstract
Some players of online games download third-party cheats to gain an unfair advantage, which frustrates regular players and lowers the publisher’s revenue from in-game purchases. The publisher may respond by turning a blind eye, banning suspected accounts, or sequestering suspected players against each other on isolated servers. In this study, we apply the technique of industrial organization to investigate the dynamics between a game publisher and a cheats developer in a vertically differentiated market to figure out whether these countermeasures can effectively curb the use of cheating add-ons. Depending on the countermeasures adopted and their impacts, the cheats developer may either cater to a small but loyal customer base for avoiding further removal action or attract a large group of players to evade isolation. Particularly, this study, based on market mechanisms, explains the prevalence of cheating in massively multiplayer online games, despite the efforts to curb such behavior.
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Published In
Electronic Commerce Research and Applications Volume 64, Issue C
Mar 2024
327 pages
ISSN:1567-4223
Issue’s Table of Contents
Elsevier B.V.
Publisher
Elsevier Science Publishers B. V.
Netherlands
Publication History
Published: 02 July 2024
Author Tags
- Free-to-play
- Pay-to-win
- In-game purchase
- Anti-cheating software
- Detection accuracy rate
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