The New World Assembly Group, a U.K.-based gaming organization, is giving away its proprietary X-ray anti-cheat software to anyone who wants it.
The software works by monitoring individual PCs during online play, searching for irregularities and generating reports and screenshots of any potential shenanigans. The program also maintains a database of players who have been caught cheating, which prevents them from taking part in future X-ray-equipped games.
Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, TNWA Managing Director Paul Sulyok said the decision to make the software freely available despite its $1 million development cost grew out of a desire to help the gaming community. “The reason why this came out is because we had a number of smaller leagues and tournaments in the U.K., the States and in Australia who approached us asking to borrow the anti-cheat software that we had,” he said. “We’re not in the game of saying, “No, you can’t have it, everyone’s got to play in our tournaments,” so we sat down and tried to come up with a solution whereby people could use the anti-cheat technology that we built, and are updating and improving on an ongoing basis.”
“It’s about community, it’s about nurturing and helping the community – and the community helps each other. We’ve had a number of companies help us out in the past, and there’s absolutely no reason why we shouldn’t feed that back in to help other communities grow as well.”
Describing itself as the largest gaming community in the U.K., TNWA Group supports hosting, tournaments and “play for cash” arenas for a wide range of online games. More information about the X-ray Anti-Cheat software, as well as download and registration links, are available at xraygaming.com.
