Anybrain has published research indicating that cheating is causing measurable revenue and player retention losses for multiplayer game developers. The findings are based on a survey of 250 developers in the UK and US.
The study found that 69% of developers see cheating as a significant problem in their games, while 51% said it had led to a measurable decline in player retention or revenue. It also identified an organised global market for cheats, bots, and related services worth USD $8.5 billion.
Cheating in online games has long been a nuisance for players and studios, but the figures suggest it is now a commercial issue as well. Subscription cheat services, boosting operations, and manipulation of in-game economies have turned what was once seen as player misconduct into a business model.
Although most studios have introduced countermeasures, many said those systems are not stopping the problem. Three-quarters of respondents said they use some form of anti-cheat, yet 45% said cheaters are still finding ways around their existing protections.
Player frustration is adding to the pressure on studios. The survey found that 58% of developers face regular community complaints about cheating, highlighting the reputational risk as well as the financial cost.
Defensive gap
Anti-cheat systems can create problems of their own. Among those surveyed, 55% reported technical issues linked to anti-cheat software, while 31% said false positives had led to innocent players being banned.
The most commonly used anti-cheat tools were client-side systems, cited by 50% of respondents. AI-based anti-cheat followed at 48%, with third-party products at 42%. Many studios said they use more than one approach.
A large majority of studios have made cheating a standing operational issue rather than an occasional fix. The research found that 93% of surveyed studios have a dedicated anti-cheat team.
Even so, 24% of studios said they have no anti-cheat protection in place. Among that group, 25% said they had not found a solution that works, while 22% cited concern about community backlash and another 22% said they did not believe they had a cheating problem.
Budget constraints also remain part of the picture. Among developers now introducing anti-cheat after previously going without it, 47% said dedicated funding had allowed them to move ahead.
Growing market
The wider economics of cheating have drawn increasing attention across the games industry. One cheat developer linked to a single game was estimated to have made USD $77 million from a cheat service, illustrating the scale of the commercial incentives involved.
Anybrain argued that generative AI and dedicated hardware have widened the range of tools available to cheat makers. In turn, that has made detection more difficult for studios relying on older approaches.
"We're seeing cheating change from something individual players did for an edge into a professionalized economy in its own right. The tools available to cheaters now, from generative AI to dedicated hardware, have raised the bar for what a cheat can do, and that's forced studios to rethink how they approach protection entirely. With this study, we wanted a clear, current read on how the problem of cheating is actually playing out in industry, built on real data from the game development teams fighting it on a daily basis," said André Pimenta, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Anybrain.
Despite the scale of the problem, surveyed developers were largely confident that it can be contained. The research found that 92% remain optimistic that cheating can eventually be eradicated from their games.
That optimism appears to be translating into higher spending. Some 88% of respondents said they plan to increase investment in anti-cheat measures over the next year.
AI-based tools were the most frequently cited next step, chosen by 44% of developers planning future changes. Third-party systems followed at 42%, while 33% pointed to in-house kernel-level options.
Among studios that currently have no anti-cheat tools, 73% said they are considering introducing them within the next year. The findings suggest the market for anti-cheat products is likely to expand as developers try to limit revenue losses and respond to player complaints.