Increasing Need For Esports Cybersecurity
What many do not realize is that the gaming industry is rife with issues in security, moreso than many other contemporary businesses. They have a seemingly endless, growing supply of users rising with each generation. Many of them are poking into the most essential coding structures to gain an ‘edge’ on their opponents in the competitive field. Since these tournaments have arisen from anonymity to a whopping yearly revenue of $1.6 billion in 2021, the esports community might require a second glance at security. With the ever-present risk of cheating, hacking, or piracy present in the gaming field, many esports hosts are beginning to find themselves at the wrong end of cyberterrorist sights. However, with an improvement in their esports cybersecurity technique, they can continue operations in a fun and fair manner to their player base.
Unfair Play In Esports Tournaments
One aspect of this that is more malicious is unscrupulous players choosing to forego tests of their gaming skills by ‘enhancing their performance’ through the use of coding to ‘cheat’ the system and give themselves advantages over other players. This could be something as simple as a slight boost to their character’s speed to something as complex as assisted aim in games tailored to the first-person shooter genre, like the popular ‘Rainbow Six Siege.’ While in-game ‘hacking’ and other forms of cheating are one cybersecurity threat that is isolated to the game itself, there are others that can be more malicious.
Piracy and Lost Revenue
Piracy is another cause for concern in the community; allowing less-scrupulous players to acquire illegitimate copies of the game to do with as they will, mostly for malicious purposes. With the incredibly large community of pirates ready to tear apart a game’s security the moment it arrives on shelves for computers, there is another aspect of cybersecurity that these games are lacking. As a result, their games are vulnerable to being ‘stolen’ in massive numbers, which hurts the sales of their product immensely.
Noncontemporary Cybersecurity Threats
With the always-online aspect of many video games, these networks they use can become the targets of information fishing. Anything from location to some information about the PC to even essential tips about an individual’s identity can be ‘hooked’ from these games if their network security is lacking. The gaming community is rife with security patches, updates, and more to combat the surge of loose ends found by players, but there are always backdoors.
Specific Esports Cybersecurity Threats to Tournaments.
Cybersecurity is something that has been overlooked severely in this field, and many do not realize the drastic implications against both establishment and player base that might occur if truly vital information is leaked.
According to several reports, many of these events spend less than $5,000 on cybersecurity; nearly have used no cybersecurity whatsoever. This promotes the fact that these events can quickly become overwhelmed by a series of attacks against their services and games – Something that should be addressed in the near future. Elsewise, the consequences might be dire for any fledgling or established tournaments alike.
