Currently the console is not as susceptible to these problems as most of the game code is running within a closed platform. Essentially a fair and pristine environment where you can trust the numbers.
Some random final thoughts from someone from the game industry:
I actually recommend reversing your initial-release platform from PC/iOS/Andriod to console-driven. Your game economy and other statistics will be more reliable on console. A quick search on the internet reveals players are editing treasure hunting turns and various other data on PC. How can you balance a game when the numbers used are artificially inflated?
Someone with access to an ‘overhead view’ such as Windows 10 telemetry might potentially be able to reveal that your botting numbers are as high as 9.4% on same operating system.
It is very costly (time and money) to battle and prevent cheating on PC… you would essentially need to move much of your local processing to the sever side. This might work for a small game population but could potentially double your maintenance cost and server/service allocation.
It’s been a wonderful few weeks playing your game. Thanks!
Console and PC/Mobile are not planned to be linked, for legal reasons at the very least (technical issues may also exist, but the devs have cited legal issues specifically when asked previously).
All of those situations are ephemeral and I am specifically stating that even with the removal of those barriers I would not recommend linking PC with console.
The points you bring up are valid, but the reasons they have for not linking are not trivially solvable, so I don’t think you have to worry about the Wild West PC ecosystem polluting your console space anytime soon.
That being said, to expect a reversal of focus from PC/mobile to Console is very unlikely. I don’t have their numbers, but it’s easy to assume that the game is much more lucrative on a platform that encourages drop-in drop-out gameplay, like the phone.
Makes no difference to me as I personally lose zero time and money. It is really a program management issue. Many of the major game development houses abandoned PC driven development last decade. I laughed when I read the above web page where the guy mentions editing the treasure quest mini-game turns with a memory editor. Then… I wondered if the recent reduction from 10 turns to 8 turns was related to some data based on PC players cheating.
I certainly hope they do not have thousands of employee man hours invested into chasing PC/Android cheating issues.