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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-28T16:23:22+00:00

I have a multiplayer mobile game out in the wild, it’s backed by a

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I have a multiplayer mobile game out in the wild, it’s backed by a sql database. Each game gets an ID which is just an auto-increment field. I can look up a game with a url like:

http://www.example.com/gameId=123

That url is not visible to players at the moment, but I was thinking of displaying it so users can invite friends and let non-players look on in the game as they play (through a browser – at the moment everyone plays through a native app).

But the fact that I’m putting the game ID out there in the open seems like a bad idea. If someone guessed an endpoint for say deleting a game, they could do bad stuff knowing the ID (of course my endpoints are protected by user auth, but still).

Do most services mask IDs of this sort, should I send out a url like:

http://www.example.com/gameId=maskedIdAbc

and then my game server has to translate that ID into the corresponding ID in my database?

Not sure if that’s overkill. If not, what’s a good way to generate a unique alpha-numeric string based off a unique integer?

Thanks

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Why not change the primary key of the game from an incremental ID to a GUID? The game is out in the wild but you should be able to get there in a number of steps. Add the Guid as a Field and allow games to be looked up either by ID or GUID. Update your clients to use the GUID, phase out the ID, and finally change the primary key to be the GUID.

    You could hash the int, or even use the hex, but its breakable. Better to implement a complete fix, if you don’t want to use a GUID you could implement your equivalent random characters that you store against each db record but why go to the trouble when GUIDs are usually Nativity supported by databases.

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