Microsoft's Fall Update Includes an Anti-cheating Feature That Monitors Your Games

Microsoft has added a new feature in their recent Fall Update that keeps an eye on your games to make sure there's no questionable activity going on.

The gaming tool that was added within the latest Windows 10 update is known as TruePlay, a feature that attempts to cultivate honest, cheat-free gaming experiences as its name suggests. TruePlay is a collection of tools that are designed to prevent cheating within PC games by monitoring gameplay and picking up on signs that point heavily towards foul play.

"A game enrolled in TruePlay will run in a protected process, which mitigates a class of common attacks," a description from Microsoft reads. "Additionally, a Windows service will monitor gaming sessions for behaviors and manipulations that are common in cheating scenarios. These data will be collected, and alerts will be generated only when cheating behavior appears to be occurring. To ensure and protect customer privacy while preventing false positives, these data are only shared with developers after processing has determined cheating is likely to have occurred."

Should players choose to turn off the TruePlay function so that their in-game activities aren't tracked, they'll still be able to launch their games without issue. However, developers will have some control over what functions are available to players should the option be turned off.

"Developers may have some game features and experiences which do not require active game monitoring. In recognition of that need, TruePlay is not a "block on launch" experience—customers who have not opted into TruePlay's game monitoring are still able to launch protected games," the TruePlay description continued. "Developers can then make decisions around which experiences are allowed from within their games. Whatever the decision, use the provided APIs to indicate to the system whether active game monitoring is required."

While this feature affects PC players directly, it also has an impact on console players as well. For games that have cross-play enabled, PC players occasionally have the option of using cheats that might not accessible to console players. If the cross-play games fall under the Universal Windows Platform umbrella of games that will use the TruePlay feature, it should help cut down the cheatings habits that cause imbalance in cross-play games.