A study of anti-robot agent mechanisms and process on online games

The target of this paper is to solve illegal software agent or so called the robot (or Bot) agent problem in online game environment. By installing and activating illegal online game agent programs, online game players can get unfair gaming benefits such as gaining credits of his game character from automatic game playing control of Bot programs. An online game with many active Bot players can disperse the playing interest of human players and quickly lead the life cycle of game to an end. To solve this both problem, we propose a Bot detection and handling process. Four phases are adopted in sequence: Bot filtering with random tester selection mechanism, automatic CAPTCHA (completely automated public turing test to tell computers and humans apart) test, potential Bot player tracing, and Bot player sanctions. In addition, we physically implement a CAPTCHA test module onto a primitive online game server to demonstrate the adoptability of automatic CAPTCHA test in online game environment.