Patent ID: 8388441

Claim:
A method for use in an online game system in which a plurality of client systems, a game server and a security server communicate with each other over an Internet, and in which the game server stores game-related information for a game Identification (ID) of each of a plurality of gamers and transfers the game-related information to the client systems, and the security server stores a number of times that one or more hack tools have been used for the game ID, the method for displaying information about use of one or more hack tools for each game ID on the client systems, the method comprising: a first step of each of the client systems accessing the security server, requesting a number of times that one or more hack tools have been used for each logged-in game ID, and receiving the number of times that the hack tools have been used for each logged-in game ID from the security server; a second step of each client system sending the number of times that the hack tools have been used for each logged-in game ID to the game server, so that the number of times that the hack tools have been used for each logged-in game ID can be shared amongst the gamers; a third step of each client system receiving the number of times that the hack tools have been used for each logged-in game ID from the game server and displaying the number of times that the hack tools have been used for each logged-in game ID on a screen; a fourth step of a security process installed on a client system determining whether one or more hack tools are being used on said client system; and based on the determination that one or more hack tools are being used on said client system, a fifth step of, said client system updating the number of times that the hack tools have been used for an associated logged-in game ID by increasing the number of times that the hack tools have been used for the logged-in game ID by one, and sending the updated number of times that the hack tools have been used for the logged-in game ID to the security server.