The illusion of growth: Up to 80% of your co-players in Web3 games may actually be bots

Web3 games are teeming with bots, and many games residing on Binance are seriously compromised, according to research released by Jigger, a bot detection tool.

Bots are everywhere

Project Jugger specializes in detecting and preventing the use of bots in Web3-based entertainment projects. 

Project Jugger recently analyzed more than 60 leading decentralized games and reported that, on average, 40% of active accounts in those games are bots. Some projects had over 80% bots, with even DeFi projects being targeted through the exploitation of referral schemes. The expert also noted that the games on Binance’s gaming platform require more attention in terms of security.

Two main reasons lead to an increase in this kind of parasitic activity:

• DeFi and GameFi have a huge amount of money flowing in today — about $20 billion was invested in such projects in the first half of the year alone. So to attract investment, some developers are trying to overstate the user base and activity in their games, which has become a common problem in the crypto industry. 
• Experts note that the play-to-earn model creates additional motivation for developing such networks of bots and introduces additional challenges.

The conclusion suggests itself — at the moment, in the area of blockchain and Web3 games, a bubble is growing. At the very least, one should be more cautious about the statistics of the rapid growth of activity/audience, as these figures are likely to be overestimated.

Opinion of an expert

Head of Gaming at Polkastarter Gaming, Omar Ghanem, exclusively told CryptoSlate that he was unsurprised to read the findings in the report:

“This comes as no surprise; the truth is, the data we have in the space shows almost 2M wallets have interacted with gaming dApps – which is far from a good indication of REAL active players.”

On a subsequent point, Ghanem blamed the earning mechanics of Web3 games for stimulating the bot issue:

“As long as we continue to have games that are essentially “click to earn” by nature, with token farming through task repetition at the core of their gameplay loop – bots will continue to exist.
This is why our focus at Polkastarter Gaming has been on supporting high quality, skill based & competitive games with no entry barriers.”