What do you do to keep the cheaters, and “Hackers” out of your games? The best i have been able to do is make a simple background application that waits and see’s if any know tools are being used then closes them and closes the game. 
Not the best method ever…
Is the game single or multiplayer?
The most effective method I’ve seen is people who spend so much time guarding against players they don’t have, they end up making no game at all… problem solved.
Seriously though, if you manage to create a game that has enough players who apparently care enough about it to start hacking it, then you’ll be celebrating. Just focus on making the game.
If your game is not multiplayer, who cares who cheats? Dont waste your time.
If there is a leaderboard, likely you have some level of access to the server and can remove obviously fake high scores.
If I was to find out there is an app in my computer that I did not intentionally install, scanning my processes and shutting down whatever it thought was a “cheat”, I would at minimum demand a refund and uninstall the game. If I had the time, I’d call my lawyer. Note that even Blizzard had faced loads of heat for their anti-cheat scanning software in the past.
This would be a game I would stay away from
Anything that wants to scan my system and close things sounds bad
My favorite solution to cheats, that I’m aware of, is isolation. Take these dweebs and unleash them on one another. What’s more poetic than that? Same goes for griefers.
If your game gets popular enough to attract cheats, worry about it then.
Alternatively, make it easier to kick people.
The problem with kicking is that even more common than cheaters are accusations of people cheating, good players would be getting kicked all the time. I think the best method is to have the game assess the player’s skill and promote them to a harder server. If they cheat they will end up with all cheaters. Then use the community voting system to kick people who are obviously cheating (because the cheaters would hack a way to make the system think they are not a doing good to stay in the lower ranked servers).
The community would know that A: the person has legit skill but is in the wrong server =hacking B: the person is hacking and in the wrong server = hacking. Then players could confidently kick cheaters.
Well, if the rest of the team agrees to kick you, so what, go play on another server?
This idea only works on smaller sized teams. l4d/l4d2 is an example of what im talking about.
Your method may end up putting cheaters against top players, which is hardly fair on the good player.
When you make your game include VAC (Valve Anti Cheat) if you are on steam or something like it.
But untill then do not worry about it.
If it’s a serious large scale multiplayer game then you’d first want the game to periodically check the assets to make sure they’ve not been modified (wallhacking/some forms of noclipping) and if assets have been modified then ban that players client/account. Second is to place loads of ‘fake’ invisible player nodes, this will thwart most forms of ESP and some aimbot cheats. Run a check to make sure the players view is not ‘snapping’ into position… and if it is every time then mark that players account for review.
Lastly create an external anti-cheat program that must run along side your game (server will refuse connection if the anti-cheat program is not running), this will do external checks on the client and what is going on. You’d ideally hire a small team of programmers specifically for anti-cheat. Lastly is have as much as you can run server side. This is the most fool proof way but has it’s obvious downsides. It all depends on what you want to do with your game and how popular it will be. You’ll never get rid of 100% of cheaters.
One thing blizzard did with WoW was put the odd mine under the ground… Only way to mine it would involve hax.
This Valve gets away with it since I trust them and they ONLY scan your computer after you’ve been banned like 6 times in a row . I think BF3 install punkbuster or something , but honestly you shouldn’t care as an indie , if people cheat they cheat .
It has to be a REALLY popular game for that to happen though
Keeping the cheaters out? No you can’t even is there a anti-cheat tool it can be bypass.
I must admit leaderboards are crap and will always crawl with cheaters, adding a replay would make investigating easier.
Cheaters aren’t better players. Be creative make gameplay mechanic they benefit from player.
Heh… I like that.
This.
Your program should only close the game, nothing else otherwise you could end up in a tonne of trouble but most of the time if the game is popular people simply make a program that the game thinks is the checking software and delete it(like GameGuard)