It seems like cheating only pays until it doesn’t. According to a report by BBC, a collaboration between Chinese police and Tencent led to the arrest of ten members of a video game cheats operation known as “Chicken Drumstick.” The police tout this as the “world’s biggest” cheating operation based on the company’s revenue stream and the caliber of games that its cheats impacted.
The cheat manufacturer made “roughly $76m” in revenue based on subscriptions it charged clients for access to cheats in games like Overwatch and Call of Duty. The operation sold its services to hundreds of countries and regions around the world, charging anywhere from $10 a day to $200 a month for subscription fees. Along with arresting 10 people associated with the cheat operation, $46m in assets were seized by the police, including several luxury super cars. The police also said they “found and destroyed 17 cheats,” though it’s unclear exactly what this means. With the expanding interconnectivity of games and more and more titles turning to multiplayer and living games in order to retain players and bring in revenue, cheating and hacking in games has also grown, with the BBC report calling it a “massive criminal enterprise.”
Developers and publishers are in a constant battle to find and eliminate exploits and cheats in their games, both at the player level with bans and by pursuing lawsuits against cheat manufact...