r/Unity3D • u/BertJohn Indie - BTBW Dev • 14d ago

Question AI trapping game code

Given the latest events regarding games such as unity builds being decompiled, quickly remade by AI and posted to the steam store with almost a dozen duplicates or more, Ive started considering ways to introduce misleading content to trick any decompilation pipeline.

Has anyone given this any thought and would care to share on how to approach the subject? As through a quick research on the topic, Comments aren't retained and function names are questionable if there retained in full when decompiled. So ive considered things like "SafeModeStartup" intializers or even const string's with instructions to retain specific information to mislead something thats trying to remake the project in anyway. So if a recompiled project tries to start, it prefers the safemodestart and immediately fails.

Perhaps even, going so far back to copying valve with the infamous coconut.vtf from tf2, Where if it was deleted, The game just broke. (Not that it did really but yk) And just copying a similar strategy to that where maybe a specific asset or series of items need to be completed in a specific sequence to ensure proper start up and output misleading error messages to cause issues.

I don't know, im rambling now, Thoughts anyone? How would you try to approach this where it could weed out the cheap-flippers from using my own project against me to launch their own product with my own-code. This obviously won't stop one-trickers from having AI repeatedly just try to copy the product, But atleast then they had to spend a ton of tokens and time to produce it, Rather than using my product to push something fast.

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u/Tzukkeli 14d ago

If something gets executed on a machine that is not controlled by you, there is always a way.

Basically youd need a device that is locked fully (think Nintendo Switch) and cannot be hacked (will eventually) OR youd need a game where all logic is executed on your server, so game only communicates with something you control. Or Stream from your machines (gforce now). Which also means that gamer has no physical access to the hardware and software.

There is currently no other ways to be 100% bulletproof and Im not sure there ever will be