Security Handbook for Game Developers and Publishers

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With the arrival of online gambling, massively multiplayer games and services like XBox Live come a much larger audience and a widening demographic scope. These players have helped turn the game industry into a money-making behemoth. As large and popular as this industry has become it has done a surprisingly poor job of addressing the darker side of gaming. Protecting Games attempts to solve this problem by shining a light on piracy, cheating, account theft, privacy, protecting children online and more.

The book is broken into four primary sections with piracy and cheating having the most obvious relevance. The latter two sections address social attacks from griefing to gold farming and finally a "Real World" section that seems to act as a catch-all covering relationships with third parties, real money transactions and even a brief chapter on terrorism.

Security measures are a critical piece of the game development process because they not only affect the player’s ability to safely access and enjoy a game but a publisher’s ability to profit from it. Protecting Games : A Security Handbook for Game Developers and Publishers provides IT and game security professionals with the solutions and tools they need to solve numerous game security problems, and an understanding of security principles that can be applied to game projects to prevent security issues. The book covers longstanding issues such as piracy and cheating and also new concerns like gambling, privacy, and protecting children. Security issues are addressed at the technical, business, operational, and design levels, with both technical and non-technical countermeasures and solutions discussed. And case studies are presented as realworld examples of the types of security concerns games and game developers face. You can easily jump to the key topics that are of interest to you, or work your way through the book. Protecting Games: A Security Handbook for Game Developers and Publishers makes understanding and resolving game security issues less intimidating, and provides practical security solutions that can be applied right away.