How Anybrain Uses Behavioral Biometrics to Detect Cheating in Online Games

That insight led to the creation of Anybrain, a startup focused on using AI to protect competitive integrity in esports and multiplayer games.

What Anybrain is

Anybrain is an AI cybersecurity and anti‑fraud startup for the gaming industry, headquartered in Braga, Portugal and founded in 2015.

Its platform provides anti‑cheat protection for:

• Online multiplayer games
• Competitive esports environments
• Digital platforms where fair play and identity verification matter

Instead of relying primarily on software scans on a player’s device, the company focuses on analyzing how players behave inside the game itself.

How the behavioral anti‑cheat system works

Traditional anti‑cheat tools often rely on client‑side monitoring, such as scanning software processes or installing kernel‑level drivers to detect known cheat programs.

Anybrain’s approach is different. It uses behavioral biometrics—machine‑learning models trained on patterns in human interaction—to detect suspicious activity.

The system analyzes player input signals such as:

• Keyboard dynamics
• Mouse movement and click patterns
• Controller or joystick input
• Timing and rhythm of actions

These signals form a detailed behavioral profile for legitimate human play. AI models can then identify anomalies that indicate automation, scripts, or other forms of cheating.

In 2019, the company filed a patent application describing a system capable of detecting cheating purely from player input data such as keyboards and controllers—an approach that initially drew skepticism in an industry accustomed to invasive monitoring tools.

Because the analysis focuses on behavior rather than device inspection, the approach can be deployed across multiple platforms including PC, console, and mobile environments where traditional anti‑cheat solutions are harder to implement consistently.

Some deployments also highlight the system’s non‑intrusive design, operating without requiring kernel‑level access on players’ devices.

Why cheating is a major business problem for games

Cheating is not just a technical nuisance—it is a large economic and reputational problem for game developers and publishers.

Research shows the scale of the issue:

• Around 80% of gamers report encountering cheating in online games.
• 55% say cheating has reduced or stopped their in‑game spending.
• Surveys show 60% of online gamers say cheating has negatively affected their experience.

When fairness breaks down, the entire ecosystem suffers. Suspicion spreads quickly in competitive environments, and players begin to disengage from games they perceive as unfair.

Meanwhile, cheating itself has become a lucrative underground industry. Estimates suggest the global cheat economy has grown into an $8.5 billion market, including cheat software subscriptions, account boosting services, and hardware spoofing tools.

For developers, that means cheating threatens:

• Player retention
• In‑game spending and monetization
• Competitive integrity in esports
• Brand reputation and community trust

Anti‑cheat technology is therefore increasingly seen as core infrastructure for live‑service games, not just a security add‑on.

Patents and technical milestones

Anybrain’s approach has resulted in patented technology related to fraud prevention and cheating detection in esports environments. One such patent describes a system and method for detecting fraudulent gameplay behavior using AI analysis of player interaction data.

Industry interest in the approach has grown as the technology matured. According to reporting in 2026, the company secured a European patent after international filings and began working with AAA game studios on large titles.

The company reports analyzing tens of millions of hours of gameplay data to train and refine its detection models.

Beyond anti‑cheat: toward broader digital safety

Although gaming anti‑cheat is the company’s primary focus, the underlying technology has broader potential. Behavioral biometrics are already used in sectors such as:

• Financial fraud detection
• cybersecurity authentication
• digital identity verification

Gaming provides a particularly rich environment for this technology because player interaction is continuous, measurable, and highly individualized, making behavioral signals easier to model with machine learning.

As a result, technologies like Anybrain’s may expand beyond anti‑cheat into general digital trust and safety systems for online platforms.

The bigger picture

Cheating has evolved from isolated hacks into a global industry targeting competitive online games. At the same time, anti‑cheat tools are evolving from simple rule checks into sophisticated AI systems.

Anybrain represents one of the more unusual approaches: instead of trying to inspect a player’s computer, it tries to understand the human behind the controller. By analyzing the subtle patterns of how people interact with games, the system aims to detect when something—human or machine—doesn’t behave like a real player.

In an era where both cheats and anti‑cheat tools increasingly rely on AI, behavioral analysis may become one of the most important layers in protecting the fairness of competitive gaming.