14 DAY TRIAL // The new Windows 10 Fall Creators Update that’s now being rolled out to users across the world comes with a surprise feature whose purpose is to help developers combat cheating in their games.
Called TruePlay, the anti-cheating feature is turned off by default and can be enabled from the gaming section of the Settings app. While very little has been said about the way it works and its purpose, VG247 has come across MSDN documentation explaining that TruePlay can automatically detect suspicious activity and report it to game developers, who can then block it with game updates.
“A game enrolled in TruePlay will run in a protected process, which mitigates a class of common attacks. Additionally, a Windows service will monitor gaming sessions for behaviors and manipulations that are common in cheating scenarios,” Microsoft explains.
“These data will be collected, and alerts will be generated only when cheating behavior appears to be occurring. To ensure and protect customer privacy while preventing false positives, these data are only shared with developers after processing has determined cheating is likely to have occurred.”
Turned off by default
The feature comes off by default and users need to enable it manually from the Settings app to have the anti-cheating system run when playing games. But since this could substantially fight cheating, why should users enable it on purpose? you could ask.
It’s because by keeping it off, you could lose certain functionality in your games. A short description in the Settings app says it all: “turning this off may limit the games you can play.”
What’s important to note, however, is that developers have full control over their games and they can enable the anti-cheating section only in certain parts of their games, such as multiplayer. Furthermore, they can restrict any feature they want should this option be off.
The good news for those who don’t imagine gaming without cheating is that this feature will only be available for games published in the Windows Store. This means that before anything, the game must be published in the Windows Store, and judging from how many titles are there right now, there’s little chance the end of cheating is close.