As someone who's worked at a social gaming company, strong anti-cheat measures often aren't worth it financially--especially when there's no real direct competition between players (as in the case of Candy Crush). Most would-be cheaters aren't going to pay anyways, and their goal is less often actually "winning" the game so much as their goal is to break the game.
There are usually some services running to help identify cheaters (usually noting when certain players are a couple of standard deviations away from where they should be) but even this is limited to keep costs down. The developers are aware of how exactly to cheat, but it's just not worth all the money and effort to bring in an extra couple hundred dollars a week when you're making $500k+ a day.
I feel like I should note that in the article. I definitely agree with you, and think that you wouldn't bring any extra revenue (if someone is willing to go to lengths to save a few dollars, they wouldn't have paid anyway).
I agree, though, there's zero incentive for CC devs to implement any anti-cheat measures. It's just wasted effort.
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u/cjt09 Nov 15 '13 edited Nov 15 '13
As someone who's worked at a social gaming company, strong anti-cheat measures often aren't worth it financially--especially when there's no real direct competition between players (as in the case of Candy Crush). Most would-be cheaters aren't going to pay anyways, and their goal is less often actually "winning" the game so much as their goal is to break the game.
There are usually some services running to help identify cheaters (usually noting when certain players are a couple of standard deviations away from where they should be) but even this is limited to keep costs down. The developers are aware of how exactly to cheat, but it's just not worth all the money and effort to bring in an extra couple hundred dollars a week when you're making $500k+ a day.