Path of Exile Developer Discusses How Grinding Gear Games Fooled Dataminers With Fake Files

It is simply impossible to completely hide files.

Path of Exile creator and former development lead Chris Wilson has discussed developers’ ongoing battle with data miners. According to him, completely preventing the examination of game files is practically impossible, so studios must find ways to at least minimize the amount of information players can discover ahead of time.

In a video on his YouTube channel, Wilson shared insights gained while working on the original Path of Exile at Grinding Gear Games. He even joked that his years-long battle with data mining gave him gray hair.

According to the developer, one protection method involves automatically deleting everything from game files that is not directly required for the game to run. Additionally, developers should ensure that unused assets, cut content, or elements of future updates do not remain in the client.

However, Wilson himself used a much more unusual method in the past—adding fake files to the game.

Wilson named encrypting game data as another option. It can indeed help hide information before release, but its effectiveness drops sharply after the game launches. The client ultimately has to decrypt the necessary data so the player can run the game, meaning it can be examined if desired.

According to Wilson, completely eliminating data mining is practically impossible, especially when dealing with large and popular games. Developers can only limit the amount of available information and hope that players treat the discovered data critically.