Can We Prevent Collusion in Multiplayer Online Games?

Collusion is covert co-operation between participants of a game. It poses a serious problem to multiplayer games that do not allow the players to share knowledge or resources with other players. Fair play requires that players act independently to gain best possible individual result and are also able to analyse the action-reaction loop of the other players. In this paper, we discern two basic types of collusion – among the participants and among the players – and give a classification of different collusion types. Since collusion cannot be tackled using real-time methods, we propose how to counteract collusion using prevention and detection methods.