You can't trust the client

I recently read an article entitled "Linux Users Banned From World of Warcraft?"
on Slashdot.org.

http://linux.slashdot.org/linux/06/11/15/1652222.shtml

I also read the resulting discussion which went into more detail about exactly what challenges Blizzard employees faced while developing World of Warcraft.

Blizzard engineers learned from MMORPGs past and Battlenet that you cannot trust anything the client says or does. You cannot assume anything about the hardware, the operating system, the user, or anything going on outside of your servers. Despite all of this you have to listen to your clients because if you don't they are going to stop paying you. You have to listen to potential customers even though they are not paying you.

Balancing this paradox is the challenge that Blizzard faces. Sensationalist articles like the one mentioned above only serve to misguide the public about the true difficulty of social software. However, the discussion that resulted really showed how wonderful the level of discussion is on Slashdot. People mock the site but articles like this show how unique a discussion Slashdot engenders.

This is one of the challenges that Geebis Faces. How do we balance the fact that we cannot control the clients? The way Blizzard regulates cheaters is to make everything server side. This brings up questions as to how reasonable it is to ask people to run server side accounting software. After all, accounting software is even more susceptible to cheating than a game is. If you cheat in a game you can get banned, if you cheat in your accounting software you can go to jail. The stakes are much higher.