Ubisoft acquires middleware developer GameBlocks to bolster its anti-cheat efforts

Gamer girl behind PC with headphones on and smiling
2 April 2021

GameBlocks’ proprietary FairFight® system provides i3D.net, a Ubisoft company with an even more inclusive ecosystem for Game Publishers on its ONE Game Hosting Platform.

Pasadena / Rotterdam – Today, Ubisoft announced the acquisition of GameBlocks, a middleware developer for server-side software for game studios. With this acquisition, Ubisoft subsidiary i3D.net plans to integrate GameBlocks’ proprietary FairFight® anti-cheat system and player statistics into its ONE Game Hosting Platform.

GameBlocks

GameBlocks was founded in 2012 and specializes in anti-cheat, gameplay management and performance monitoring software for game studios. Among their software suite is Fairfight®, a non-invasive, customizable, server side anti-cheat engine using agnostic technology that operates in real time. Contrary to other anti-cheat solutions, Fairfight® uses GameBlocks’ proprietary GameChanger™ rule engine and database structures to evaluate players gameplay actions to make the game fair for everyone.

ONE Game Hosting Platform

i3D.net’s ONE Game Hosting Platform is a unique ecosystem utilized by AAA game publishers and hosts over 300 million users. It allows access to compute and network capacity in over 40 edge locations worldwide. These edge locations are connected by a vast global network (AS49544) including local peering ecosystems to ensure fluid gaming experiences. The ONE Game Hosting Platform is easily integrated through an SDK (Software Development Kit) for both Unity, Unreal or through i3D.net’s API system.

Furthermore, the ONE Game Hosting Platform includes features that support game publishers with managing their live games. These features include a built-in CDN (Content Delivery Network) for game build distribution, Anti-DDoS software that deals with attacks at the edge without adding latency, matchmaking software and an orchestration system that allows multi-cloud scaling to deal with peaks in concurrent users.

Integration

The inclusion of GameBlocks’ middleware into the ONE Game Hosting Platform will ensure that i3D.net provides the best experience on its platform for both developers and gamers around the world. Greg Howard, CEO of GameBlocks said ”My entire team and I are thrilled to be joining i3D.net and the Ubisoft family. We will continue to support our existing clients and look forward to enhancing the capabilities of Fairfight® so that it remains the most flexible, effective and transparent cheat detection service in the industry. We are also excited to incorporate the Fairfight® system into i3D.net’s ONE Game Hosting Platform – allowing game publishers large and small to run and scale their game hosting, anti-cheat and other services absolutely seamlessly”.

The acquisition of GameBlocks closed on March 31, 2021. Additional terms of the acquisition are not being disclosed.

About i3D.net

i3D.net – A Ubisoft company, is one of the leading providers of high-performance hosting and global infrastructure services. Operating a global low-latency network, with thousands of servers spread over 40+ point of presence in 6 continents. i3D.net excels in the gaming market and hosts a variety of AAA games for PC, Microsoft Xbox, Sony PlayStation, Nintendo Switch and mobile. With over 300 million daily users on our platform we are proud to call ourselves the game hosting specialists.

Media contacts

For more information on this press release, please contact:

Zahaid Rehman
Content & Communications Specialist
Email: marketing[at]i3d.net