Unbotify Detects Bots Operating in Mobile Games
February 12, 2021
As an online gamer, I see bots as cheaters and unfair competition. For game developers, they are sources of lost revenue. It is no surprise that bots have followed gaming onto mobile platforms. VentureBeat discusses one solution in, “Detecting 10 Times More Bots and Stopping Fraud with Behavioral Biometrics.” The article describes the problem:
“Bots interfere directly in the monetization of apps, disrupting in-app purchases and user engagement, creating bad user experiences that are the direct cause of churn in every category, including dating apps and social networks. … In gaming, there are bots that watch the ads, see impressions, click on ads and they install the game over and over again. There are the bots that actually play the game. Players use service solution bots for the games they’re playing to harvest resources so they don’t have to buy them, or invest the time in harvesting themselves. It’s a growing problem, specifically in the last year of the pandemic, he said. More and more games are seeing traction and it’s very natural that if a player likes a game, then they might want to skip all the boring stuff and get leveled up as fast as possible. They can buy cheap bots that do all the leveling for them. Fraudsters use bots to play the game and then sell those aged accounts to players who want to start at an advanced level, skipping earlier levels.”
In-app purchases and advertisements that cannot tempt bots are how many games make their money. Those leveled-up accounts can sell for a pretty (real-world) penny, providing more motivation than simply getting ahead in a game. It is frustrating to developers and players alike. And, of course, the bots grow more sophisticated alongside security measures. So what is a game host to do?
For mobile apps, Unbotify is one option that approaches the issue from a fresh angle—it uses biometric sensors to analyze user behavior. Finger pressure and speed, motion of the device and speed of device movement, even light conditions and battery use can all be collected from a phone’s sensors. The software uses this information to create a profile of the user’s behavior. Deviations from this behavior may indicate a bot is at the wheel. Unbotify’s CEO claims the tool detects 10 times more bots than any other solution they have seen. The company is based in Tel Aviv, Israel, and launched in 2015. Unbotify was acquired by Adjust in 2019.
And with gameification in the future, bots will be there.
Cynthia Murrell, February 12, 2021
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