Let’s start with some statistics pulled from our surveys. In 2021, 20% of mobile game developers reported that piracy and cheating were threatening at least 6% of their revenue. This number skyrocketed over the course of 2022, with nearly 33% of them suffering a moderate to significant impact on revenue due to cheating, tampering and piracy.
The exponential increase in the number of affected developers and the huge proportion of their lost revenue have urged a lot of them to take action and safeguard their mobile games. But the question is, how do they choose the right method of protection?
Mobile gaming protection is a difficult undertaking. Threats can differ based on a number of elements, such as game genres, game architecture, platforms and so on. With hackers and cheaters becoming a more rampant issue in mobile games, there is a greater pressure placed on developers and their internal teams to implement the appropriate security measures, particularly if they don’t have strong in-house security expertise.
As a result, getting external specialists under their belt is a strategy utilized by the majority of mobile game developers today. According to the aforementioned survey, 31% of the participating mobile game developers depend on third-party security measures to protect their titles. Meanwhile, the most popular option employed by 56% of developers is combining in-house solutions with external ones. For many studios, this is an effective way of maintaining an optimal balance between cost and expertise.
These statistics demonstrate the tendency that mobile game developers rely more on the help of security partners to protect their titles. Nevertheless, this also opens up another challenge for developers, determining which security partner best suits their needs.
Even though selecting a suitable security partner for a mobile game depends on various factors, a big cybersecurity company possesses a competitive edge over smaller ones in many aspects.
Maintaining uninterrupted protection for a mobile game is essential. Searching for a suitable vendor as well as the integration process takes time, which can discourage developers from switching security partners.
As a result, it is ideal to work with a big vendor with a stronger corporate basis that can sustain them for decades in the market. This can ensure a game always has constant security throughout its lifecycle and relieve the developer of the concern that their title can suddenly become unprotected.
Fraudsters do not stop their actions after work hours and game developers should never let their defenses down!
A large security partner can offer this. With a bigger team of experts, they possess sufficient resources to provide the highest level of service availability through round-the-clock monitoring and people on duty. This makes sure the game is always protected and the developer can receive alerts when their title is abused.
There is no one-size-fits-all security solution for all mobile games because threats vary dramatically. It is therefore essential to customize the security measures according to the game developer’s business demands and the features of their game.
Big security partners can optimize the protection setup on a case-by-case basis, depending on the profiling data and static analysis. They put a preliminary analysis into practice to ensure that there will be no gameplay impact and to make final performance optimizations.
Furthermore, those partners can also offer an all-in-one solution package with various mobile game security plug-ins to meet the diverse needs of the games in different genres, allowing developers to properly protect their titles from different angles.
What happens if the developers decide to release their games on other platforms in addition to mobile? Does it mean that they need to employ multiple partners to protect their titles across several platforms?
It is not necessarily the case! Big companies offer a one-stop-shop of security measures for many platforms, enabling developers to access solutions for mobile, console and PC. This contrasts with many smaller companies that only offer a single solution, forcing developers to engage with several of them for the protection of each game on different platforms.
One of the biggest concerns for game developers when selecting a third-party security solution is how their data and Intellectual Property (IP) is handled and protected.
With a highly reputable security company, a transparent system is developed and quality-tested by many small to large gaming studio customers. All data pertaining to game security belongs to the developers and is exclusively shared with them on a regular basis.
Moreover, these partners are capable of providing great protection for the developers’ IP (i.e., their apps) to ensure that nothing inadvertently leaks, as well as to shield the gaming app from malicious actors gaining unauthorized access.
Although guaranteeing mobile gaming app security is essential to preserving their lifespan, it is neither a quick fix nor a low-hanging fruit for developers to address on their own. Choosing the right security partner to fight alongside you is therefore equally important.
Contact us today to ensure premium protection for your mobile game!
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Mobile gaming is popular - so are cheating and piracy around it. Uncover the latest trends in mobile game security in our blog!