I'm curious whether game developers can effectively hide their source code to prevent players from figuring out how a game operates. For instance, in Minecraft, could developers create a new mob that attacks from underground at an unknown range so that players can't discover that distance by examining the game code? What are the common techniques used to protect game logic from being reverse-engineered?
3 Answers
Obfuscation tools definitely exist that can make reading the source code harder, but even with Minecraft's code being obfuscated, it hasn't stopped the modding community. Obfuscation typically just raises the bar for people trying to see how the game works, making it a tad more complex than just reading the code directly.
Games can be designed to make it tough to figure out their inner workings, but they can't make it impossible. When developers compile code, it becomes machine code, which is cryptic compared to human-readable code. They may obfuscate and use anti-debugging measures, but a determined player with the right tools can still reverse-engineer what's happening. For example, in Minecraft, even with obfuscation, players might use dynamic analysis—like modifying memory while the game runs—to derive game mechanics.
Right, and even with anti-tampering measures, if someone is skilled enough, they can usually find ways around those protections! It's a cat-and-mouse game for sure.
There's a difference between having a program and accessing its source code. Once you run a compiled game, your computer must interpret it, meaning that code can sometimes be decompiled or analyzed at the machine level. While there are indeed obfuscation measures to mask certain behaviors, advanced tools can still reveal much of what's going on under the hood. For something like your Minecraft example, players might just test the mob at various distances to figure things out, playing around in the game is often enough to gather that info without needing to dive deep into the code.
Actually, Minecraft has been quite open in the past, leaving debug symbols in for modders, especially in the Java versions. Bedrock may be a different case, though!