Game Dev - Make Identity Easier and Quicker with Auth0

Developing video games is a lengthy and expensive process. An old rule of thumb is a game costs roughly $10,000 per person per month to develop. Of course, video game economics are far more complex than that, but all of the statistics point to a simple truth: game development is expensive, and the longer a game is in development, the more it costs.

To boost profitability, many games turned to microtransactions. For example, Grand Theft Auto V has generated more than $500 million in microtransaction revenue, and the uber-popular Fortnite made $300 million in one month off of microtransactions. However, these models require a strong method of managing and verifying customer identity to ensure a user has access to only what they've paid for and to prevent account takeover and fraudulent charges.

Why Identity is important — and difficult

Most game developers aren't experts in identity and access management because it doesn't contribute directly to the bottom line. It is simply the cost of doing business. And making mistakes when it comes to identity management can be quite costly. It can create unwieldy, complex systems that must be maintained or else customers cannot log in. At worst, missing critical elements of identity management can lead to data breaches, fraud, and account theft -- all of which can have a drastic negative impact on profits.

However, when done right, identity can also have a positive impact on the business. Social Logins can help players quicker and easier. Universal Login can make it easier to manage identity and push updates across multiple games or applications.

Perhaps most important is multi-factor authentication (MFA). Account takeovers can cause a lot of headaches for players and companies alike. In the worst-case scenarios, an attacker could take over a high-value account and get it banned through fraudulent charges or cheating, or even steal enough personal data to take over the customer's entire digital identity. This hurts the paying customer, and can lead to bad publicity and consumer sentiment.

Look closely at gamer forums and you'll find numerous posts asking for MFA. Here is one for League of Legends, which sees more than 80 million players each month. Epic Games offers MFA to its 78.3 million Fortnite players and even incentivizes it with a free emote.

Auth0 takes the complexity out of Identity

By outsourcing your Identity needs to Auth0, you can see as much as $11.7 million in total benefits, including up to 548 percent return on investment. Auth0 provides a universal Identity as a Service (IDaaS) platform for web, mobile, and legacy applications. NVIDIA used Auth0 to get "100 percent" of their focus back into building value services for their developers.

Auth0 can be implemented in nearly any environment, regardless of programming language or technology stack. With more than 65 SDKs and pre-configured Quickstarts, you can rapidly deploy Auth0 in your cloud, Auth0 cloud, or hybrid environment. It can work side-by-side with your existing Identity provider or migrate users over to Auth0.

You can easily enable a variety of Identity features with Auth0. With a simple toggle, you can enable social login -- we support more than 30 providers. You can quickly implement Universal Login across your various applications and management portals.

Auth0 can easily enable multi-factor authentication. Use the Guardian iOS or Android app to receive push notifications, get one-time codes delivered via SMS, or connect with a third party token generation app such as Google Authenticator.

And for an extra layer of security, enable Anomaly Detection to prevent brute force attacks or identify accounts involved in third-party breaches. Additionally, you can use Auth0 rules to help prevent fraudulent account activity.