Cheating in browser games is very common, especially when you can get free accounts that have resources or anything else which might be helpful to a primary account.

The elements needed in an Admin Control Panel (ACP) vary a lot based on the game type and how you choose to run it.

If you go on multi hunting you would need to have tools available to help you in this task, possible tools can be:

• Player info which would hold e-mail, IP, login name if different than player nickname, player nickname, password , browser session, cookie, …
• A wildcard search on the above info in your database, eg on username John search on John* so it will give all usernames that start with John. 
• Logging player interactions eg, item transfers, cash transfers, attacks whatever suits for your game .
• Staff notepad, so that game staff can place a note on the players account (non visable for players)
• Staff tools to suspend, penalize the account(s)
• Staff logs, yes you need to track also the actions of your staff. Especially if they play the game on the same server as where they have staff powers

You can also have a large part of the above automated, a machine can weed through it a lot faster than a human, yet a human still needs to oversee the actions of the machine.

With the above we made once a NPC in a game , the NPC main goal was to discourage the creation of multi accounts.

examples of the NPC named The Bailiff actions

• If player A has interaction with player B and it’s same IP a msg will show that the account(s) get flagged as multi and that staff will be informed
• If player A has interaction with player B and same browser session, confiscate the items/cash that gets traded
• If player A attacks player B and again similar info, no experience gain

The players that got annoyed by the NPC could still contact staff to look into the issue, but that was a minority that did. Overall the discouraging of creating multi accounts (as there is no gain possible) reduced the amount of multi accounts created. And it reduced also the workload for staff to go on multi hunting.

Another method instead of banning a player account for multi creation is called public execution.

Public execution is actually letting the community suffer for the actions of a player. The player in question gets placed eg in a hospital or jail. Other players can bail out the player in jail/hosp yet this will cost them a lot, a single player wouldn’t be able to bail the ‘hidden way of banned’ player out on it’s own so it will be a community effort.

The banned player would still have access ingame to contact friends, but most of the possible features would be locked. eg Just contact the players that are in the same guild / clan / faction / …

You can also let the community inform you about possible multi accounts, but note that you can get fake reports. Some players take the competition in a game very far….

In part II we will look deeper into it how to track players