One of the creators of Path of Exile, Chris Wilson, co-founder and former lead of Grinding Gear Games, admitted that he slipped fake assets into his games to prank data miners.
In a YouTube video, he discussed the mechanics behind data mining, the reasons players and third parties engage in it, its impact on developers, and what studios can do to address it.
Wilson explained that game logic written in code is generally easy to restrict to server-side executables. Assets are harder to protect, though, unless the game is streamed from the cloud. He noted that the main ways to protect the data are not to include the unreleased content in the downloadable file and to automatically delete such files before shipping the game content.
The developer also revealed that he planted fake assets specifically to throw off data miners' efforts: "Some developers, including me in a past life, have added in decoy assets, so players don't know what to believe." However, he called it a "pretty wasteful process" overall, though he added that it was "very good for trolling."
Among other methods, Wilson mentioned encryption, but pointed out that it delays data mining rather than preventing it.
Watch the full video here:
