Is cheating a game a criminal offence ?

QuentynTaylor — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 10:53:00 GMT

When does cheating in a video game become a criminal matter ? I recently came across this story where by 2 men was accused of “cheating” video poker machines in Las Vegas.In essence they are alledged to:

“the men would make small bets over and over again until finally winning a hand, then use a special button sequence to change the credits to a higher denomination and “access the previous winning hand of cards,” triggering a jackpot.”

Now they have been charged with 650 felony counts of theft, criminal conspiracy, computer trespassing and other charges, it is believed that they may have netted perhaps as much as 1.4 million US $ not a small amount. Now what does this have to do with information security ? well what have they done ? lets look a little deeper.

They managed to manipulate video poker machines, commonly found in casino’s to allow them to win more consistently and increase the odds of them winning. The “attack” worked by :

“…..a special “double-up” feature had to be internally activated. The men persuaded casino technicians to alter “soft” options on the machines, such as volume and screen brightness controls. Such perks aren’t unusual for high-rollers, who can wager anywhere from a few hundred to thousands of dollars in one day.”

So it needed prior knowledge but the settings that were changed were commonly changed for “high rollers” such these gentlemen certainly appeared to be. But is it criminal to exploit software weaknesses in a game of chance or a game of skill against a computer ? Lets take the analogy of counter strike, it is a 1st person shooter and you have the option of playing against “bots” or computer controlled players. Now when you play against computer “bots” you will quickly rise to the top of the leader board, why ? Well with computer players a human can very quickly anticipate their moves and so allow you to beat them. Is this cheating ? possibly ? what about playing against other humans ?

Lets stick with 1st person shooters, there have been “bugs” on maps that allow players who know about them to effectively win very easily as they have a massive unfair advantage over other players. Is this fair ? in my opinion no, is it illegal ? probably not, is it cheating ? possibly. Certainly Valve Software’s Anti Cheat system will ban players if they are caught using any programs to assist them in their playing but that is not what we are talking about here. What we are talking about is a player identifying a problem in the software an exploiting it. So here is my question…

When does it become illegal to cheat a computer game ?

When money is involved ? when other humans are involved ? And before anyone thinks that there is never money involved in computer games I refer you to World Cyber Games where prize funds have topped half a million $. If a player were to be accused of exploiting poor programming ( or indeed poor level design ) to give themselves a competitive advantage such an event would the outcomes be the same ? Can we expect to have criminal investigations if someone manages to exploit a bug in a computer game for profit ? Or is this reserved to games that are regulated by a Gaming Comission ?

Lets look at another type of game, in Korea the game StarCraft is almost a national sport, they have training academies, televised events it is big business. People also bet on it all the time. Imagine if one were to be able to generate a competitive advantage for a relative newcomer, the betting revenue could be quite considerable. Would it still be illegal ?

To return to the original story, it seems that the defence that may be used is that the players did little more than card counting, a blackjack technique that may get you kicked out of a casino but is certainly not illegal, time will tell if this defence works.

What do you think ? why don’t you contribute below. If you are a lawyer I am really interested to hear from you and don’t worry your post can be anonymous. Please note that none of the above post constitutes legal advice as I am not qualified to give it.

Quentyn Taylor's Blog : gaming

Is cheating a game a criminal offence ?