With the online games market valued at EUR 140bn, a lack of player accountability has led to widespread cheating, child grooming, and hate speech
A critical ethical crisis is gripping the global gaming industry, where the foundational “social contract” of fair play and respect is being torn apart by a relentless cycle of cheating and toxic behaviour.
With the online gaming population swelling to 3.6 billion people, experts warn that the sheer scale of modern platforms, coupled with the ease of creating disposable accounts, has rendered traditional moderation tools nearly useless against the worst offenders.
The problem, according to a recent analysis by industry leaders, boils down to a fundamental lack of accountability. When players break rules—ranging from severe abuses like child grooming and death threats to deploying hackers and bots the consequences are minimal and temporary.
“The challenge is that while detection tools are highly effective in finding cheaters and predators, they’re not designed to stop them from returning,” the analysis noted. Offenders simply create a new email address, spoof their hardware ID (HWID), and are back in the game within minutes, leading to an endless cycle of disruption.
The commercial damage is also significant: 55 per cent of players report having reduced or completely stopped spending money on in-game purchases specifically because of cheating.
Call For Biometric Anchor
To enforce meaningful consequences, technology experts are now calling for a radical shift away from account-based punishment toward verification tied to the human being.
The proposed solution centers on using biometric verification and Know Your Customer (KYC) checks—typically involving matching a player’s facial biometrics to an official government ID—to create an identity anchor that cannot be spoofed or bypassed.
Proponents argue that by connecting a person’s unique identity to their gaming account, the act of attempting to return after a ban escalates from a violation of game rules to the serious crime of identity fraud.
However, this solution runs directly into players’ two major demands: privacy and optionality.
Zero-knowledge Verification for Privacy
To address intense privacy concerns around storing highly sensitive facial and passport data, experts suggest relying on Zero-knowledge Verification (ZKV) technology.
In this model, the studio itself would never store a player’s passport details, documents, or biometrics. Instead, a certified third-party platform handles the verification and immediately deletes the source document. The gaming company only receives a random, anonymised token.
This token acts as a unique, unchangeable identifier, confirming that the player is a real person without revealing who they are. If a player is banned in one title, the penalty is applied to the token, effectively blocking them across all games that participate in the verification system.
This approach ensures “consequences are tied to the human being, not the easily replaced username.” Furthermore, the system is advocated as optional, allowing players who wish to avoid cheats and abuse to choose to enter verified multiplayer lobbies where all participants have accepted this higher level of accountability.
As the industry struggles to police its vast and diverse player base, the debate over whether private biometric identification is a necessary evil to curb rampant abuse will likely become one of the defining ethical challenges of the next decade.
