Jan Sablatnig

Researcher, Technical University of Berlin

Virtual environments and online games are becoming a major market force. At the same time, the virtual property contained in these environments is being traded for real money and thus attains a real value. Although many pressing legal issues involved with this virtual property are still open, they will have to be resolved soon.

On the other hand, virtual environments will have to change architectures very soon to accommodate the growing amount of users. To protect virtual property, virtual environment systems will have to conform to certain requirements. We analyze what these requirements are in order to prevent or at least trace cheatingand fraud.

Along with greater security, this will also reduce the cost of support, which is one of the major cost factors for online games.