How Risky Is It? A Closer Look at Game Anti-Cheat Software
Amanda B. Viescinski, Tiago Heinrich, Vinícius Fülber-Garcia, Carlos Maziero · 2025
Anti-cheat software is a system designed to detect cheats (or hacks) in a video game. This paper investigates operations executed by anti-cheat software and their impact on user privacy. We collected data and analyzed three popular anticheat solutions: BattlEye, FACEIT, and Vanguard. Our analysis reveals that these programs interact with system files, memory, and users’ directories. In addition, the privileged access of these anti-cheat solutions to the operating system and the lack of clarity on what data is collected directly affect user privacy. This conduct risks not complying with current regulations.