Smurfing might be a thing of the past.
The new filing showcases a system that builds a behavioral profile from input datavia controllers: which buttons you press, how long you hold them, the gaps between presses, how you move through menus, your play patterns and your skill level.
The patent’s own description “The user interacting with an input device can cause one or more user interaction signals to be generated. Examples of the input device can include a mouse, a keyboard, a keypad, a video game controller, a touch screen, etc. The user interaction data can include a timing parameter related to the user interaction signals. For example, the timing parameter can indicate a duration of a key press, a button press, or another user interaction with the input device.”
Claim 1: the system determines “whether the first set of one or more characteristics of the user interaction data match a second set of one or more characteristics of different user interaction data associated with a second player account interacting with the gaming platform.”
What that actually is
A multi dimensional fingerprint.
Basically profile of a specific human’s motor habits, persistent enough to recognise them on a different account. So your controller habits become an identifier tied to you across accounts.
Which does work at least in theory for catching smurfs, and works equally well for anything else you might want to identify a person for. The patent doesn’t propose those uses, and Sony hasn’t suggested them.
The input list also isn’t console-specific. Mouse, keyboard, keypad, touchscreen are included.
The holes
Households where several people may use the same PSN account would generate inconsistent data, and it isn’t clear how the system handles that, or whether it could flag one account as a smurf of two different people.
Reporting on the filing indicates Sony has designed filtering layers intended to reduce false positives of that kind. The detail available doesn’t establish how well they’d work.
The usual caveat
Sony patents a great deal it never ships. This year alone: a controller with buttons that physically harden around your finger, an AI system that plays difficult sections for you, a feature that detects player frustration and adjusts the game.
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