After months of intense development, Mirror Networking has officially released GUARD, a groundbreaking anti-cheat solution designed specifically for multiplayer games regardless of game engine. In their words—it's a complete reimagining of how anti-cheat technology should work in modern gaming environments.

What is Anti-Cheat?

Anti-cheat software is a critical security layer that protects multiplayer games from players who attempt to gain unfair advantages through cheating tools, modified game files, or unauthorized software.

Traditional anti-cheat solutions often run as separate processes alongside games, monitoring for suspicious behavior and blocking potential threats.

However, GUARD takes a fundamentally different approach by embedding directly into the game's source code, making it virtually invisible to potential cheaters while maintaining robust protection.

GUARDS’ Unique Philosophy: Silent Detection Over Aggressive Blocking

GUARD operates on a revolutionary principle that sets it apart from conventional anti-cheat downloads. Instead of aggressively blocking suspected cheaters with obvious "CHEAT DETECTED" messages, GUARD silently reports suspicious activity to your game server. This approach maintains the crucial element of surprise—cheaters believe they were reported by other players rather than caught by automated systems.

The solution currently detects mod loaders, DLL injection, instruction patching, debuggers, and virtual machines.

Each detection comes with a confidence rating (High, Medium, Low) and detailed evidence, allowing developers to make informed decisions about how to handle each case.

Technical Innovation: Source-Level Integration

What makes GUARD truly unique is its integration approach.

Rather than shipping as an obvious AntiCheat.dll file, GUARD embeds directly into your Unity project at the C# source level. Using Unity's IL2CPP compiler, the anti-cheat functionality becomes part of your game's final assembly, making it nearly impossible for cheaters to identify or circumvent.

This source-level integration works across all Unity platforms, though detection capabilities currently focus on Windows.

The system is completely netcode agnostic, working with any multiplayer Unity game, with specific integrations available for Mirror Networking.

Privacy-First Design

GUARD takes a privacy-first approach that addresses growing concerns about intrusive anti-cheat systems.

The solution only scans the game's own process and folder—it never accesses other parts of a player's computer or phones home to external servers. There's no cloud component, no CCU tracking, and no subscription model.

All reports go directly to your own game server, giving you complete control over the data.

Real-World Testing and Development

The development of GUARD involved extensive real-world research that goes beyond theoretical threat modeling. The Mirror Networking team joined underground cheating communities, purchased and analyzed actual cheats from various sources, and gathered feedback from real players experiencing cheating in production environments. This hands-on approach ensures GUARD targets actual threats rather than hypothetical ones.

As the creator of Mirror Networking, Mischa alias "vis2k", and developer of GUARD explains:

Traditional anti cheats usually sit next to your game's executable, and love to announce themselves on startup. While effective, they all get circumvented eventually. The idea for Guard is to keep an information advantage: We don't want anyone to know that there's anti-cheat at all. We want cheaters to think that other players reported them, so they don't start looking where they shouldn't.

Being able to compile Guard along side your game's source code allows us to hide it very easily. Long term the vision is to detect cheats on all Unity platforms and automatically apply extra protections to your existing game code before even compiling it!

No Performance Impact for Legitimate Players

GUARD is designed with stability as a core principle with zero-risk implementation. The system runs in read-only, user-mode within a worker thread, ensuring no performance impact on legitimate players.

This zero-risk approach means honest players will never encounter issues, crashes, or false positives that could harm their gaming experience.

Easiest Anti-Cheat for Unity: Availability and Integration

GUARD is now available for Unity developers, with integration possible in just three clicks for Mirror Networking users.

The solution requires IL2CPP builds (not Mono) to maintain its stealth characteristics and works with Unity versions 2020 and above.

With its combination of effectiveness, privacy protection, and seamless integration, GUARD represents a significant advancement in anti-cheat technology for the Unity ecosystem. As gaming continues to evolve, this anti-cheat expert approach of silent detection and source-level embedding may well become the new standard for protecting multiplayer experiences.

Enterprise-Ready Features

For larger studios requiring additional security measures, GUARD offers source code access and custom obfuscation options.

The solution ships as an obfuscated DLL by default to prevent reverse engineering, but serious studios can request full source access at no additional charge. This flexibility allows enterprises to maintain their security standards while benefiting from GUARD's innovative approach.

This also represents an opportunity for studios to minimize their dependencies on traditional game services.

Current Usage by Game Studios

As of writing, the solution is currently deployed in a successful Unity game where it detects cheaters daily, validating its real-world effectiveness.

Mirror Networking itself, the development team behind GUARD, has its flagship open-source networking solution that is used by massively popular multiplayer games including BigBoxVR’s Population: ONE, Wildlife Studio’s Zooba, and titles like Liars Bar, Unleashed, Dinkum, HAVOC, Empires Mobile and many, many more.

Future Roadmap

The development team has outlined its immediate roadmap that includes expanding detection capabilities to mobile, Mac, and WebGL platforms, as well as implementing IL weaving for even deeper integration.