Games are moving fast, think about that time when single-player offline gaming was considered to be the most successful task in the gaming industry, that was the era when gamers were playing against a computerized opponent to complete the game.

It was the era of gaming when users interacted with the computer and played the fancy story mode of the game to reach the end. But in modern-day gaming things are changing as most new users prefer to compete with real-world players rather than the computer itself. It is called Multi-player gaming by which players can play with each other from all around the world.

Statistics show a great increase in the online gaming market with more than billions spent on multiplayer gaming in recent years during the pandemic. In the year 2020, the US was among the top market revenue holders with a huge number of $42.1 billion.

Age Verification Solution

The age verification process is carried out to ensure the user's credibility. It is performed by gaming corporations to prevent cheating and online gaming fraud. The Age verification process is a part of the KYP (Know your Player) compliance. It involves several technologies to determine the age of the user online.

The process includes multiple steps to verify the user’s age.

Getting Age Input from the User

At first, the user is prompted to input their personal information such as complete name and date of birth. The information is usually gathered through a form provided by the system.

Getting User Document for Authentication

After getting the user’s input of date of birth, new demanding gaming systems ask for the user’s legal document or papers such as an Identity card issued by the government or other legal documents that contain information regarding the age and identity of the user.

Extracting Required Information

The system then processes the provided documents online by comparing the user input with the information extracted from the documents. It uses several backend online extraction methods such as OCR.

Verifying Age

The user age is verified by the system when document identification and processing are complete. After age verification the system checks for the eligibility criteria of the game against the verified age of the user. This check is a major part of the KYP (Know Your Player) cycle to protect the community, especially minors from accessing content that is not appropriate for them.

After the age verification check is complete the user is allowed to enter the game environment where multiple people can interact and play with each other online.

KYCC in Gaming

Likewise, KYP compliance to prevent thefts and cheating in games, Most companies also verify their users with the KYCC (Know Your Customer’s Customer) compliance. This is also a major process that provides a broad idea of the audience playing the game. The KYCC check ensures the game audience and verifies the identity of the players from other perspectives such as how players interact with them digitally in-game. 

As new games are giving multiple opportunities to win exciting prizes to the players, many fraudsters cheat in gaming to get the most out of the game either in terms of in-game currency or the real-world prizes won by the users. 

The types of threats faced by gamers online are:

Cheating by Automating game engines

Cheaters exploit game engines by malfunctioning the developer code in their own way. They inject various infected scripts into the online engine for the purpose of winning every single time. The gamers are heavily affected by this issue as it causes unfair gameplay.

Profile Theft and Takeovers

The in-game profile carries all the necessary data of the user. It also contains information related to users’ banking credit cards and financial data they used for multiple scenarios of buying in-game items and resources. The cheaters try every possible way to steal the identity of the user to manipulate the system for money laundering and privacy leaks.

The KYCC check verifies customer relationships with each other and monitors the type of activities they perform in-game to maintain a suitable gaming environment.

Wrapping it Up

As most games are getting their multiplayer updates the cheaters are also being updated with new ways to cheat with other players online, for this purpose companies have strict checks for each user to verify their identity before entering the in-game lobby. The very first stage of identity verification is the age verification check. To protect the gaming community online, the game industry is switching towards more modern methods of age verification.