From online poker to esports and bingo, real-money gaming (RMG) has recently exploded in popularity along with the rising interest in online gaming. RMG is any game played online where real money is staked on the outcome.
Revenue from real-money gaming is expected to reach nearly USD 200 million by 2025 in India alone. Because real-money gaming includes monetary incentives, it’s a goldmine for fraudsters.
Multi-accounting is the basis upon which many fraud attacks take place on real-money gaming platforms. Fraudsters use malicious tools such as app cloners, app tampering, and jailbroken and rooted devices to create multiple accounts and appear as different players. Multi-accounting enables collusion and chip-dumping to rack up bonuses and rewards. Fraudsters may also use chip-dumping to launder money.
Multi-accounting can also be used for gnoming, where several fake accounts are used to enter a tournament to ensure guaranteed wins for the fraudster. This creates an unfair advantage because genuine players can never win. Over time, this could dilute customer confidence and trust.
Real-money gaming platforms often hold promotions and referral programs to acquire new gamers and retain their current users. Fraudsters will exploit this by creating fake accounts to use the same promo code over and over again. They may also use bots and emulators to create fake accounts at scale. This prevents genuine users from using the promo codes because they may be used up before the user gets the chance to redeem them. Fraudsters exploiting promo and referral codes also depletes the resources of the company.
Many real-money gaming platforms hold country and region-specific tournaments. Oftentimes, this is done to grow their user base in a specific locale. Fraudsters will use VPNs and GPS spoofers to mask their location and take part in these tournaments. They sometimes do this to take part in tournaments in countries where players have lower skill levels. This again creates an unfair advantage since the fraudster has a higher skill level and will skew the results of the game. It would also hinder the growth of a genuine user base in the target country.
SHIELD’s technology enables real-money gaming platforms to ace trust and safety while maintaining mushrooming growth.
One of the features of SHIELD’s technology that enables this is the SHIELD ID, the global standard for device identification. The SHIELD ID detects devices linked to multiple accounts and enables RMG companies to identify fake accounts and multi-accounting. This empowers them with the insights they need to block fake accounts from their platform and maintain a level playing field for their genuine users. On top of this, the SHIELD Risk Indicators identify when and which malicious tools are used to conduct fraudulent activity.
SHIELD provides online businesses with real-time risk intelligence, empowering them to stop fraudsters before they can do any damage. By doing so, they are able to provide a safe and fair gaming experience for gamers worldwide.
