Proposal for a New Course in Computer Science and System Engineering: Advanced Design Techniques; Analyzing the Arms Race between Anti-Cheat Developers and Cheat Developers

The University of Virginia is slowly transitioning to a new computer science curriculum. However, there is a lack of courses that prepare students for their internship experience, which is a major stepping stone for a professional career in software development. Those few computer science courses that do prepare students have a specific focus on developing a project as a team of software developers. The proposed course, Advanced Design Techniques, will introduce a new course that can simulate an internship experience for students that will work closely with colleagues with other expertise outside of software development. The course will be a special topics elective course for both computer science and system engineering that will encourage students to work and communicate in an interdisciplinary team while exploring the process of brainstorming and designing that most computer science courses gloss over.
On the other hand, there exists a major problem within the gaming industry that plagues both the players and the producing companies for years: cheating in video games and the costly arms race between cheat and anti-cheat developers that come with it. Solving this problem starts at the root cause of the reasons why cheating exists in video games in the first place. Understanding the motivation of cheatings in the online landscape and subsequently, the reasoning for the escalation of the aforementioned technical arms race is important to explore and determine potential neglected actors that could lead to a solution that satisfies the incentives of cheating instead of enforcing anti-cheats.