February 12, 2025

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Staying Secure : Cybersecurity Challenges for the Indian Gamer.

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Staying Secure : Cybersecurity Challenges for the Indian Gamer.

Cybersecurity is not a concern in industries with limited audiences and low financial volume. Gaming used to be one such industry, but not anymore. Gamers in India are now hundreds of millions in number. Real money games like poker are more popular than ever before. The national average gaming time increased from 2.5 hours to 4.1 hours after the pandemic.

All of this means that Indian gamers must be as acquainted with cybercrime as they are with poker rules. According to a survey, 75% of Indian gamers have had a first-hand experience of cyberattack in their gaming account. Established gaming platforms are extremely alert on this front. Typically, businesses now spend 5-20% of their IT spending on cybersecurity.
As a result, online safety preparedness in India is all the more dynamic now.

Cybersecurity Challenges and the Indian Gamer

Going into the specifics of the cybercrime-related experiences of Indian gamers mentioned above, 35% of them detected malicious software in their gaming device. 29% of them also reported instances of unauthorised access to their gaming account. In the last couple of years, cyberattacks have consistently increased in the gaming industry, doubling in instances in a year.

Cybersecurity is a global concern that extends beyond the gaming industry. However, the increase has been more noticeable in the industry. For instance, there was a 167% increase in web application attacks on gaming accounts between 2021 and 2022. A common purpose for these attacks is data theft. Hackers mine for personal and financial data from gaming accounts.

Hackers also access sensitive information from gamers through phishing. Phishing attacks trick gamers into revealing their sensitive information by creating fake websites or sending emails impersonating genuine gaming companies. Last year, more than 1.6 million phishing attacks were reported in the first quarter alone.
India is among the most attacked countries by cybercriminals, alongside the USA, Switzerland, Japan, and the UK.

Pressing Cybersecurity Issues in Gaming
Gamers are not alone in the fight against cybercrime. Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks irritate the gamer but damage the gaming platform in many ways. Bot-generated traffic is created by remotely located cyber offenders, inundating the capacity of the gaming server. As a result, authentic gamers are denied access to the gaming platform. Platforms are deprived of genuine gamers and may end up suffering reputational damage. IT watchers would remember the largest DDoS ever in 2020, which was successfully foiled by Amazon Web Services. More recently, the gaming industry experienced a 94% surge in DDoS attacks.

As far as gamers are concerned, the more pressing issue could be the presence of cheats in the game ecosystem. The presence of cheats was a major issue a few years ago and needs regular attention even now. Back in 2018, a survey reported that cheats were present in 86% of the top 50 games in the Play Store. This was based on feedback from top gaming markets like the US, UK and China. Cut to the present day, and leading gaming platforms have robust in-house measures to take care of cheating elements.
Poker platform like Pocket52 ensures that poker rules are not twisted by such elements through a series of measures. Its 24X7 monitoring system implements fair play through randomised seating, anti-fraud algorithm, collusion alerts, etc.
Summarising the Threats
For the average gamer, online frauds like phishing attacks and identity thefts remain the primary threats. Selecting legitimate gaming platforms and taking adequate discretion while sharing personal information and credentials are the keys to safety.

Surprisingly, some games are under more attack than others. In the one year till July 2024, Minecraft faced 3.1 million cyberattacks, while Roblox faced 1.65 million. Popular games like Mario Kart, Subway Surfers, and Overwatch 2, on the other hand, had less than 15,000 each! 

Phishing scams that are rampant now include free skins, free in-game currencies, and rewards. The scammers lure gamers into phishing sites through these freebies and acquire the account credentials in the process.

In-game items, downloads and updates may carry malware, which is another security threat for gamers as well as developers. A malware threat named GodLoader has been in the news recently for exploiting the game development engine Godot. By the end of November 2024, the malware had impacted over 1.2 million gamers globally.

The absence of strong encryption, authentication protocols and regular security audits has troubled gamers with data breaches. Once again, the security measures of the gaming platform are of immense importance in such scenarios.

Securing Gameplay
The game developers have substantial funds dedicated towards cybersecurity. Globally, cybersecurity in gaming has a value of $3307 million. By 2033, it is estimated that gaming companies could be investing as much as $24,000 million in this area.

Given its market size and growth rate, Indian gaming companies would certainly be in a bid to secure gaming experience at all times and nullify the challenges faced by gamers.

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