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Epic launches anti-cheat support for Linux, Mac, and Steam Deck

dev.epicgames.com

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Re: Epic launches anti-cheat support for Linux, Mac, and Steam Deck

#91

Post by s_dev »

donkarma wrote: post #70
jtms wrote: post #61

This is great and all, but I feel like all of these client side cheat detection tools are basically a waste of time. Trying to enforce the trustworthiness of the client is basically an unwinnable arms race between anti-cheat and the cheat makers. A better approach is for the server to treat all clients as hostile and untrustworthy and use a combination of heuristics and statistics to ferret out malicious client behav…

All Valve has done is made it so people cheat and pretend to be legitimate, you can't beat cheaters outside of making it a non-cheatable game, you can just reduce it. Then again, if nobody notices that you're a cheater, are you a cheater?

>Then again, if nobody notices that you're a cheater, are you a cheater?

Yes, you're just a successful cheater as all cheaters are deceptive by definition.

Re: Epic launches anti-cheat support for Linux, Mac, and Steam Deck

#92

Post by judge2020 »

hpfr wrote: post #69
judge2020 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worth noting that the VAC games on that list, CS:GO, TF2, and Dota 2, have effectively given up on actually detecting and preventing cheaters and now rely on server-based or community-consensus methods of finding and punishing cheaters (with TF2 being the exception with how little maintenance Valve performs on it). Both CS:GO and Dota 2 have a report+overwatch system where users watch a replay to determine if someone…

I can’t quite tell if you think this system is reasonably effective or not. It certainly seems less invasive, so it would be good if it were. Are you able to comment on that? > You can readily download the biggest script client for Dota 2, and VAC ban waves for using it have been unheard of for years now (you only get an in-game ban when enough other players verify the cheating via Overwatch). Does this mean you thin…

The system is effective for CS:GO and Dota mostly because the nature of the games; things like Fog Of War[0] (which applies to both of these games and Valorant) help bring down the upper bounds of how much a cheat can help the cheater, and the rest of the potential things a cheat can do (like aimbot in CS:GO, or auto-disable in Dota[1]) are easy for VACnet/Overwatch reviewers to detect since the movements are usually non-human-like.

> Does this mean you think the ban process is too slow and involved?

As VACnet and Overwatch reviewers become more experienced it really brings down just how much the cheats can help the player, to the point where using them barely makes a difference or only allows them to use informational cheats. I just don't think this will work for every game, and certainly isn't something every game developer wants to have to implement & maintain.

0: https://technology.riotgames.com/news/demolishing-wallhacks-...

1: https://redd.it/psb7h7 - an example. In the second part of the video, the Invoker cheater targets the Axe with one of his items without moving his mouse to the Axe, which saves him from being disabled/taunted - but a human would have to click or hover their mouse on the Axe to disable him.

Re: Epic launches anti-cheat support for Linux, Mac, and Steam Deck

#93

Post by 015a »

peanut_worm wrote: post #7

I could totally see Linux hitting 5+ percent market share for desktops on the next couple years

I'll go on the record and say above 5% by December 31st 2022.

Depending on who you ask, its at ~2% today. If that feels high to you, remember: it includes Chromebooks.

As it grows, you'll absolutely hear people say "Chromebooks" or "Steam Decks should be their own category, they don't count". These arguments effectively reduce to "Linux cannot be popular, so I'll move the goalposts so it never is." Ignore them, and pour cement around the goalposts: running a distribution of gnu/linux.

Of course, if all we cared about was the "linux" part of gnu/linux, then its already the most popular operating system kernel in use by mankind. Its already won.

Re: Epic launches anti-cheat support for Linux, Mac, and Steam Deck

#94

Post by thaumasiotes »

Thaxll wrote: post #80
jtms wrote: post #61

This is great and all, but I feel like all of these client side cheat detection tools are basically a waste of time. Trying to enforce the trustworthiness of the client is basically an unwinnable arms race between anti-cheat and the cheat makers. A better approach is for the server to treat all clients as hostile and untrustworthy and use a combination of heuristics and statistics to ferret out malicious client behav…

Because it's not as trivial as you think it is to get good results if you rely only on the server side, if it was the case everyone would do that. Server side cheat detection actually don't detect that much, like how do you known someone is wallhacking? As for manual review it just does no scale, when you see that CoD banned 100k cheaters, imagine if one person from activision would have to review every cases. Cloud…

> Cloud gaming is the solution against cheats.

The solution to cheating is to stop playing with strangers.

Re: Epic launches anti-cheat support for Linux, Mac, and Steam Deck

#95

Post by temporarrry0923 »

subw00f wrote: post #77
temporarrry0923 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or worse machine-learning-to-bounding-box that takes the video stream through HDMI, identifies character heads, intercepts the USB HID mouse, and injects movement commands to move the center of the screen towards the nearest "head". Literally (not nearly) impossible to detect, there is no difference between this and just aiming by hand. The video is already out of the box, and the USB HID packets look the same as the…

Just out of curiosity, how does it fare with smokes?

Pretty well. It doesn't shoot through them, because it can't see through them. Sometimes it aims/shoots through them somewhat early before it dissipates completely, because rxn time is way faster than a human. But it's close enough to not be suspicious.

Re: Epic launches anti-cheat support for Linux, Mac, and Steam Deck

#96

Post by xd »

Anyone remember PunkBuster? If anything took more out of the soul of gaming in them days I'd love to know what. It never managed to keep on top of "hackers" but some how managed to destroy the legitimate gamer communities - I got kicked so much I just gave up in the end playing publicly.

Does anyone even bother anymore with online gaming without using hacks? I've never strayed far from private servers for over a decade now.

Re: Epic launches anti-cheat support for Linux, Mac, and Steam Deck

#97

Post by sylens »

sneak wrote: post #83
sylens wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think at this point I just need a Google Drive client. 1Password is already there, Obsidian is there, I'm ready to go

Why would you run Linux and use Google Drive? If you don't care about FAAN(M)G reading your data and activity, Windows is simpler and has better compatibility.

Consider that I may use a tool like Google Drive for a subset of data that I don't feel is particularly sensitive or identifying in nature

Re: Epic launches anti-cheat support for Linux, Mac, and Steam Deck

#98

Post by temporarrry0923 »

sevenf0ur wrote: post #87
jtms wrote: post #61

This is great and all, but I feel like all of these client side cheat detection tools are basically a waste of time. Trying to enforce the trustworthiness of the client is basically an unwinnable arms race between anti-cheat and the cheat makers. A better approach is for the server to treat all clients as hostile and untrustworthy and use a combination of heuristics and statistics to ferret out malicious client behav…

As someone that has played CSGO recently, it's still normal to come across cheaters. Server side cheat prevention is preferred when possible, but there are just too many opportunities for client side cheating in multiplayer FPSs. You can't prevent the client from auto-aiming or knowing the enemy player position behind a nearby wall. If you do not stay on top of cheating, cheaters will ruin your game.

>You can't prevent the client from auto-aiming or knowing the enemy player position behind a nearby wall

Valorant and Edan.gg's defender [1] has the best fog of war system I've ever seen. CSGO has probably the worst; in fact, at one point, the game had NONE and sent player pos's to everyone at all times.

I completely agree, but there are a lot of server-side mitigations that haven't been nearly as explored as I'd hope.

[1]: https://edan.gg/defender

Re: Epic launches anti-cheat support for Linux, Mac, and Steam Deck

#100

Post by beebmam »

fletchowns wrote: post #89

I wish there was some well respected third party reputation service that I could prove my identity to (government id, utility statements, etc) and then all games just integrate with this third party reputation service. Sort of an Olympic committee for gaming. Give me the option to only play with other verified players. Getting caught cheating in one game then impacts your reputation in _all_ games. There's a gazillio…

This is probably the best solution I've seen around anti-cheat solutions. I also think this is the best approach to prevent abuse on social media.

I can't be the only one sick of what a sewer the internet, like multiplayer gaming and especially social media, has become.

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