Security, Accounts, and the Online Economy

Once an online economy matters, I do not want the phone to be able to simply tell the server that a player gained money, hatched a rare animal, or finished a timer.

The direction I am taking is server-authoritative: important commands are validated on the backend, transaction history is recorded, suspicious activity can be surfaced to staff, and repeated commands can be made idempotent so reconnects do not duplicate rewards.

The community stays in its own database. Account linking proves that a community member owns a game identity, but the website does not get permission to rewrite the game economy. That separation is intentional.