On Wed, 26 Jul 2000, Dave Ahn wrote: > http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20000724/pritchard_01.htm > > An article that may interest some of you. I only skimmed it, but it appears > that Netrek never got mentioned in it even though it is one of the first > (if not _the_ first) Internet games to use client binary authentication > to help curb cheating. The article got a mention on slashdot, too. It's written by someone from microsoft, so what do you expect? That, like usual, their software has flaws that were discovered and solved 10 years ago by others? I'm sure netrek was the first internet game to use a public key based binary authentication system. But I wonder, was netrek the first graphical real-time internet game? It predates xpilot, xtank, xbattle, and crossfire. xconq was ported to X10 in 1987, but it's turned based, and I'm not sure it predates netrek though it could.