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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

#171

Post by Cu3PO42 »

cmeacham98 wrote: post #47
doublerabbit wrote: post #15

I feel that if we can could work on introducing more online cross-play, the gaming community would be a better place. There should be no reason why I can't play online with Xbox and PlayStation players.

At least on Playstation, that is 100% Sony's fault. They refuse to let you have cross-platform play unless your game is huge. Unsure if Microsoft has/had similar policies for Xbox games.

In the PS3/XBOX 360 days it was Microsoft who were all against cross-platform play whereas Sony was more open to it. In the early days of that console generation, XBOX was arguably more successful than PS. Now PS is more successful.

The pattern is that the player ahead doesn't want cross-platform and the one behind does. That makes sense to me.

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

#172

Post by nitrogen »

dyingkneepad wrote: post #147
cmeacham98 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least on Playstation, that is 100% Sony's fault. They refuse to let you have cross-platform play unless your game is huge. Unsure if Microsoft has/had similar policies for Xbox games.

That doesn't make sense. The main reason in favor of letting cross-platform play is exactly unfragmenting the player base. I'm sure I'll never run out of PS4 players to fight against in Fortnite or CoD of whatever, but I simply can't find an opponent when I play Skullgirls on PS4, while on Steam I can. Games with a small population benefit immensely from crossplay. That said, if I'm on a PS4 (a platform where cheatin…

There's also the mouse+keyboard vs pad thing for FPS games.

You can get adapters for older consoles that will convert mouse+keyboard input to control pad input. I haven't used consoles in years, so I'm not sure if they're available for newer generations.

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

#174

Post by temporarrry0923 »

exporectomy wrote: post #157
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…

Congratulations on your fun project. Be careful about "literally impossible" though. If it's truly identical to aiming by hand, it won't help you. If it isn't, there might be some statistical (in)consistency that's detectable with enough play.

>If it's truly identical to aiming by hand, it won't help you

Except it's identical to incredible aiming (yet human) skills, which I do not have ;)

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

#175

Post by babypuncher »

danShumway wrote: post #149

I still hold that many of our anti-cheat systems are based on a flawed starting premise for multiplayer games and how competitive and how "fair" they should be. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21949201 I have softened on this a bit. I don't think that global/regional ladders are universally bad, I don't have anything against competition as a motivator, and I concede that for some games this is important. But I s…

I don't think many cheaters themselves actually care about ladders and rankings. They just derive personal entertainment from ruining other peoples fun. This is why cheating was always a significant problem in online shooters long before they introduced ranking systems. It's also why entirely non-competitive games (like Minecraft) have problems with griefers.

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

#176

Post by temporarrry0923 »

babypuncher wrote: post #154
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…

Once you start requiring external hardware setups like that, I think the barrier to entry for cheaters becomes high enough that they become far less prevalent. The goal of good anti-cheat should never be to eradicate it entirely, since that is obviously impossible. You just need to make it so the vast majority of players rarely encounter it.

Very true. I wasted hundreds of hours doing this, if it takes an extra hour to do, cheating would drop overnight

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

#177

Post by tester756 »

schmorptron wrote: post #161
yesbut wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> China-owned State owned is problematic, I'm not in disagreement with you. But so is corporate owned. I'd like to see an industry standard anti-cheat root-kit developed as a publicly reviewable open source project at the very least.

Anti-Cheat is the only industry where security by obscurity is valid.

Obscurity is always valid because it increases security, doesn't it?

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

#179

Post by mrmuagi »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #42
pstrateman wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure except EAC doesn't work, even on windows with the full kernel rootkit installed. Money back guarantee SaaS cheats are like $10/month that are undetected by EAC.

You know this? You've personally tried them? Or is this secondhand, thirdhand, hypothetical knowledge? It seems to me that anti-cheat works the same way DRM works: It poses a barrier to entry that keeps NN% of people who would hack from hacking, which is sufficient to keep the game from becoming a hacker cesspool.

That's not really what DRM IMHO -- sure it says that on the tin... Once the video or game is cracked once, the DRM is done. It just provides hurdles and extra barriers for the first person. Once somebody finds a "hack" method that works, they can clone and resell it up until their greed belies their customer's wishes of being undetected due to small player pool using the hack.

And yes, hacks are "rootkits". It's kind of funny how they work. Some of them work at the memory level, or packet level. They require you to disable anti-virus, all firewalls, etc. The only incentive for them not to hack the user is a recurring subscription cost that's often more expensive than the game itself (leading to rage hacks where they are known to detected but the delay in detection-ban lets the user play still and farm RMT items).

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

#180

Post by temporarrry0923 »

eertami wrote: post #152
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…

>I wholeheartedly believe I could have played top 500 region online matches and gotten away with it Unless you were already near the top, climbing rapidly up rankings (in a 3rd party ladder) is going to be very suspicious. Draw enough attention and I think it's not unlikely someone would find evidence (not evidence of how your system works, but video proof that shows cheating). And if the humanization is so good that…

>climbing rapidly up rankings (in a 3rd party ladder) is going to be very suspicious

Hard agree here. There's always been people accusing semipros of cheating (see r/VacSucks for more) though, so unless it was pretty concrete, it wouldn't mean anything.

>And if the humanization is so good that it can literally never be detected

It's not that the humanization is good, it's that the cheat is poorly designed enough to be only as good as a really good consistent human. Though you're right that it's not going to be the holy grail.

>The only way to be totally sure are if the game is played on a LAN and the equipment is sufficiently controlled.

Hard agree as well. I've been hoping for online majors to be called off, but alas.

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