Identifying MMORPG Bots: A Traffic Analysis Approach

Abstract

Massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPGs) have become extremely popular among network gamers. Despite their success, one of MMORPG's greatest challenges is the increasing use of game bots, that is, autoplaying game clients. The use of game bots is considered unsportsmanlike and is therefore forbidden. To keep games in order, game police, played by actual human players, often patrol game zones and question suspicious players. This practice, however, is labor-intensive and ineffective. To address this problem, we analyze the traffic generated by human players versus game bots and propose general solutions to identify game bots. Taking Ragnarok Online as our subject, we study the traffic generated by human players and game bots. We find that their traffic is distinguishable by 1) the regularity in the release time of client commands, 2) the trend and magnitude of traffic burstiness in multiple time scales, and 3) the sensitivity to different network conditions. Based on these findings, we propose four strategies and two ensemble schemes to identify bots. Finally, we discuss the robustness of the proposed methods against countermeasures of bot developers, and consider a number of possible ways to manage the increasingly serious bot problem.

Embedded noninteractive continuous bot detection

“…• Network traffic: One of only a few papers to address bot detection in games "Identifying MMORPG Bots: A Traffic Analysis Approach" by Chen et al [2006] suggests that a traffic-level detection system is possible. Bot-generated traffic differs from human-generated traffic with respect to the regularity of the release time of commands, the trend and magnitude of traffic bursts in multiple time scales, and the sensitivity of interaction to network responsiveness.…”

Plug: Virtual Worlds for Millions of People

“…To maintain and keep interesting personalities and behaviors always online, we can encapsulate them in the forms of autonomous agents that follow certain behavior scripts to act similarly as, and in the interests of, the original users. Many of today's popular MMOGs are troubled by bots [6], which are autonomous agents that continuously act and mine the resources inside games. They are often banned by game companies due to their disruptions to gameplay balance and fairness (i.e., players would gain experience points or virtual money without actually playing).…”

Security issues in massive online games

“…Chen et al [24] proposed a traffic analysis approach to identify MMORPG bots. By investigating the traffic generated by mainstream game bots and human players in Ragnarok Online (one of the most popular MMOGs), it is observed that the traffic is distinguishable by: (1) the regularity in the release time of client commands, (2) the trend and magnitude of traffic of traffic burstness in multiple time scales and (3) the sensitivity to network conditions.…”