Back in December, we announced Referee - our proprietary anti-cheat software that will let us identify and respond to hackers more quickly. We can be quicker than the current systems because when it’s owned and developed by us, we can:
- Address the issues most prevalent in Rec Room, rather than what might be happening across the gaming sector
- Fix issues without a client update, which means we don’t have to wait for an update schedule and individual platform approvals that come with client work.
Since December, we’ve pushed out a couple of updates that prevent specific exploits by hackers that were causing significant disruption for our players. We’ve seen some early signs of success that we wanted to share.
In cybersecurity, it’s not always easy to know for certain what we stopped from happening once we’ve patched an exploit. But when we have that data and we know that it won’t help hackers get around our protective systems, we want to tell you. Just one example of that - our server-side patch from 2/7 blocked about 27,000 attempts to use network manipulation software for lag switching.
The extra layers of protection Referee now gives to Rec Room makes it more difficult for cheaters to find and exploit parts of the game. One of our most recent patches was designed to reduce the recent cases of disruptive cheating and high visibility hacker instances, like Draculas spawning in the Rec Center.
That doesn’t mean that the job is done though. There are always people looking for new and different ways to disrupt and cheat, but Referee is getting better at putting up even more blockers in the hacker’s paths. We’ll keep you updated as we fix more of these exploits.
If you have been affected by hacking, you can share exploits in the community-help channel in Discord and if you want to join the white hats and help us combat cheating more directly, join BugCrowd to earn real cash and exclusive in-game rewards for exploits you find.