Question

I’m currently developing a game using JavaScript/JQuery. It’s a simple brick breaker type of game keeping score, levels etc. I’m planning on implementing a leader board that users can submit their final score to. The only problem I see with this is users manipulating the score using developer tools on most browsers. I understand that keeping things server side will resolve most of these issues, however if there is a high volume of users, it will hit my server hard with requests. Cookies – Easily changed client side. I’m honestly out of logical ideas to promote fair game play because there is ALWAYS people who seek to cheat/become top of the leader board. With that said, what’s an efficient and effective way to keep track of the user’s score without giving them access to changing it?

Answer 1

Obfuscate their score by creating an equation that can only be calculated on the server side.

Edit: RobG is correct in that it will need to be calculated on the client side.

I hacked the Angry Birds game when it launched on chrome:

http://wesbos.com/all-levels-html5-angry-birds/

However, they have since obfuscated the code so much that its impossible to figure out which function calculates the hash..