How AI erased the barrier to cheating (and why trust is the real fix)

About this episode

Most anti-cheat scans your game. Anybrain watches how you move. Andre Pimenta, CEO and cofounder of Anybrain, joins Player Driven to explain why your mouse and keyboard are a fingerprint, how AI just made cheating easy for everyone, why consoles are no longer safe, and why the real product isn't detection, it's rebuilding player trust.

Episode summary (longer, for YouTube / site)

Cheating touches every player, and almost nobody covers it well. In this episode Greg sits down with Andre Pimenta, CEO and cofounder of Anybrain, a company that takes a completely different approach to anti-cheat. Instead of scanning your game's memory, Anybrain reads your inputs, your mouse, keyboard, and controller, because the way you play is effectively a signature that a human can't fake.

Andre traces the unlikely path from his PhD on detecting mental fatigue, through workplace wellness and esports performance coaching, to catching aimbots, bots, smurfing, and boosting. Then the conversation gets to the part every operator needs to hear: AI has collapsed the barrier to cheating. You used to hunt a forum or GitHub for a script. Now an LLM writes it and computer vision lines up the shot, and new input-injection devices bring the same techniques to consoles that everyone assumed were safe.

But the through-line is trust. Most players genuinely can't tell if they were beaten by a cheater or by someone better, and that doubt is what erodes a game. Andre makes the case for transparency (publishing ban numbers, like Crytek did on Hunt: Showdown), explains how humans stay in the loop on every ban, and shares one of the most surprising uses of the tech: flagging a likely adult on a kids' server from behavior alone, without ever revealing an identity or an exact age.

What you'll learn

• Why behavioral anti-cheat reads your inputs, not your game's memory, and why humans aren't random
• How AI (LLMs plus computer vision) lowered the skill floor for cheating, and why volume is rising
• Why "you can't cheat on console" is no longer true
• Why the real damage from cheating is the doubt, not the loss
• How transparency and published ban numbers rebuild community trust
• How Anybrain estimates a player's age band from behavior to help keep kids' servers safe, without revealing identity
• Why cheaters are still bad players (you can automate aim, not game sense)

Chapters / timestamps

• 1:30 The most impossible cheat patterns you'll ever see
• 4:19 From a burnout-detection PhD to anti-cheat
• 9:39 How a cheater looks in the data
• 14:18 Beyond aimbots: bots, parallel economies, smurfing, boosting
• 18:48 The cat-and-mouse game, and why you can't fake a signature
• 20:08 AI erased the barrier to cheating
• 21:18 Consoles aren't safe anymore
• 23:55 Fireball round
• 26:42 Why you can't tell a cheater from a good player
• 31:32 Crytek, Hunt: Showdown, and the case for transparency
• 34:51 Where the humans fit in (appeals and evidence)
• 37:36 Age verification with no ID
• 41:56 Where to find Anybrain, and one thing operators should understand

(Times are on the raw-recording timeline. They'll shift by a few seconds once your edit cuts land, re-stamp against the final export.)

Notable quotes

• "As humans, we are not random. We have our own way of playing, and the random is possible to detect, because the way we play games is not random. We have our own signature."
• "In the past, you needed to look for a forum or a GitHub to get your script. Nowadays, you can use an LLM that will help you create a program."
• "Most people have no idea if they were killed by someone good or a cheater. At the end, it's about trust that we need to build."

About the guest

Andre Pimenta is the CEO and cofounder of Anybrain, which he cofounded almost eleven years ago out of his PhD on using AI to analyze human-computer interaction. Anybrain's behavioral platform monitors millions of players and works with studios including Crytek (Hunt: Showdown) and Embark. Andre is based in Portugal.

Links

• Anybrain: https://www.anybrain.gg/
• Andre Pimenta on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrepimentaribeiro/
• Full episode: [full episode link]
• Get The Operator's Briefing (weekly, Tuesdays): https://playerdriven.io/level-up
• Join the Player Driven Discord: https://discord.gg/GC5PkbKFH

Call to action

If you design, run, or rebuild live games, this is the conversation to send your trust and safety and community team. Subscribe, drop your take in the comments, and join the operators talking it through in our Discord.