73% of gamers are in favor of online ID verification for games if it stops cheating.

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If you have to submit an ID for every new account/game purchase

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i would expect Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, Steam, etc. to adopt this and force it's users to link their respected accounts for those that want to play online... if this was a real deterrent.

I don't see how this would deter cheating.

KR and CN have had this for ages. Not for all games but a good amount.

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Imagine someone buys or downloads a game that requires ID verification to play. They decide they want to cheat. They get banned. Not the account, them as a person are banned. If they tried to buy a new copy or create new account it doesn't matter because when they ID verify, they personally would have been banned from access to the game. The only way around this would be to use the identity of others, which would is possible, but eventually will cause a huge barrier for chronic cheaters.

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cheaters will find and share a loophole in this system and be back to playing within hours. it’s what they do. it’s what they enjoy. the actual cheating is just their victory lap.

What are examples of ways people cheat that have made it such an extreme issue?

Free games ruined the industry..

I'd pay $500 for CoD if it guaranteed no one was cheating..At this point, I assume that everyone on PC cheats

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cheaters will find and share a loophole in this system and be back to playing within hours. it’s what they do. it’s what they enjoy. the actual cheating is just their victory lap.

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While true, severe barriers mitigate their ability to actively cheat. The reason they're back to cheating so quickly is they just make a new account and grab the game again. All you need for that is a throwaway email and maybe some money since free games are a thing.

Having to go through an ID verification is a much more complex layer since I assume any implementation of this is checking that the person entered is actually real. So they would need another person's information, but using that enters the world of fraud. Actual legal trouble could pop up at that point (in theory anyway).

Cheating in video games to my knowledge has never had a barrier remotely close to that in the west.

I have no desire to sacrifice one more iota of freedom or anonymity for something that likely will not work.

We already give corporations and governments far too much influence over our lives and control over our data as it is.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

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Really? I'm honestly curious, are people cheating at a video game really going to go through the effort to procure a fake ID, vs simply creating a new account with a new email that takes minutes to make?

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I think you're underestimating how many "cheaters" are farmers leveling and tweaking high level characters to sell them.

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Doesn't that really only apply to an MMO type game?

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Definitely does apply to MMOs, but I would not say "only" to MMOs. People are willing to pay good money to get to the top of the list.

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And does that actually affect other players experiences?

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Well, from an MMO perspective, it definitely did negatively affect my experience when I played WOW over a decade ago when farmers were running around using hacks to destroy every mob in an entire area of the map while I'm trying to run quests. Also had a negative affect on the economy on those servers. I'm sure the problem is worse now.

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Is there anything to be gained, money wise, to that type of game cheating?

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People claimed Elon Musk was doing this sort of cheating back when he was talking about his high level characters on whatever games he was playing, so apparently a large number of people think so. Maybe those are MMOs but I don't recall thinking that was the case at the time.