Great! Now I just need Netflix to work at decent res in Linux and then it’s almost usable for day to day
Epic launches anti-cheat support for Linux, Mac, and Steam Deck
281–290 of 327 posts
Re: Epic launches anti-cheat support for Linux, Mac, and Steam Deck
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 p…
I'm curious as to why should the Steam Deck be in its own category. To me, it runs a mainstream, open and not-locked-down Linux distro. I could see an argument for Chromebooks being in their own category, but the Steam Deck, in my eyes, is a legitimate "full" Linux device.
Branding is important and an ordinary person (I think) will hear more about Steam Deck than Linux. And it makes sense that it's in its own category (or rather, game console category) because it's made for that purpose. The fact that you can do whatever you want with the HW is just a bonus.
PS. Nice user name. But why pair those two? :D
Re: Epic launches anti-cheat support for Linux, Mac, and Steam Deck
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
Another source engine cheat dev here. Source has had dormant entities at long ranges in culled-off areas [sectors of the map demarcated by func_areaportal] since... as long as I can remember. Your cheat couldn't see those players because the server was doing a very cheap and primitive visibility calculation, deciding the player entities are dormant for you, and choosing to not send you the data for them. This is diff…
> Your cheat couldn't see those players Would an anticheat work if you did the opposite of this? Send the client random movement data above and behind them and if they spin and shoot towards it instant permaban forever Random wonder. I have no idea in or around anticheating, please do feel free to shred it as an idea to pieces
I've seen, in other games, anti-cheats that spawn fake [player-specific] entities that if you attacked too much you would get hit with a ban.
Re: Epic launches anti-cheat support for Linux, Mac, and Steam Deck
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
What kind of massive startup ROI are you expecting to make from a highly niche bit of middleware? Just because something is possible doesn't make it profitable.
Worse the game publishers make more money from cheaters than from legit players. Cheaters have to keep re-buying the game when they get banned. The incentives are for publishers to ban cheaters... but not too fast... and that's exactly what we see happening in practice. Kinda interesting huh
I doubt it. Especially since the games where cheaters are most rampant are f2p.
Re: Epic launches anti-cheat support for Linux, Mac, and Steam Deck
#285I 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…
That sounds like a great way to get lots of non-cheating players to give up online gaming once it becomes mandatory for the majority of online play (which it would if it took off).
I'm not sure if you actually believe that. If the population I've observed is any way representative, we'd be more than happy to give full root level access if it means the cheaters actually vanish.
You might be severely underestimating how much comp gamers hate cheaters.
Re: Epic launches anti-cheat support for Linux, Mac, and Steam Deck
#286For context, ProtonDB is a database of Steam games and how well they work on Linux through Wine/Proton. A huge number of the "borked" games are using some kind of anti-cheat and that's the main reason the game doesn't work. EAC is one of the most-used anti-cheat systems in gaming. Between EAC and BattleEye, you're hitting the Pareto Principle for anti-cheat support. Four of the top 10 Steam games use anti-cheat and t…
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…
If I’m bored I can jump into either dota2 or cs:go and play and win and have fun.
If I join warzone modern warfare… omg i sometimes die right after dropping from the plane due to aimbots. Or I could be inside a building not standing next to wall not in line of sight with 1 door. Boom dead from someone shooting outside with wall hack. I didn’t install it on my gaming laptop because it’s filled with hackers now.
Re: Epic launches anti-cheat support for Linux, Mac, and Steam Deck
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
With all my heart, I'm rooting for the authors of this approach. Anti-cheat and DRM hide behind the defense of practicality and cost efficiency, but these products are absolutely evil. As personal computers are becoming more and more an extension of our bodies and minds, it is essential that they act in our interests and nobody else's. Imagine a prosthetic leg that phoned the insurance company if it detected illegal…
This will eventually lead to online multiplayer games to only be playable of a game console of sorts for ranked matches, where you are not the root user is implicit from the start.
My take is that it will lead to a lack of interest in these games.
Why bother trying to be the "best" (or even good) at a thing, if a robot can outperform you by leaps and bounds?
Re: Epic launches anti-cheat support for Linux, Mac, and Steam Deck
#288Earlier 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…
To be honest I have completely given up on competitive fps games. The cheating situation has only gotten worse and I really don't see anti-cheat makers winning.
This is mostly where I am.
I was 4 when the first DOOM came out, 7 when Quake was released - I LOVE me some fps games.
But I don't find playing online fun anymore - The first 3 days are great, then you've ranked up a bit and start hitting the rampant cheating, and you realize it's just a waste of time sitting for 20 minutes in a game where some 12 year old (or much worse, some 30 year old) has just bought hacks to feel good.
To be honest - I actually blame the automated matchmaking systems more than anything else.
Give me the good ol' server lists back, where a real person is an admin, and you can make a group of friends. This monotonous, automated, matching bullshit sucks the soul out of most games. It's not fun anymore, it's designed to be a chore to prove that you're "better", with an intentionally game-ified rewards systems built to trigger gambling impulses.
Re: Epic launches anti-cheat support for Linux, Mac, and Steam Deck
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah except he's right, the vast majority of cheaters can be detected server side. Literally no game does this, because ?????
Valve have been doing it with Counter Strike for at least 3 years. And the "VACnet" they have is still far from perfect. Especially with the less obvious cheats. They used to be a talk on youtube, but it seems to have been taken down.
I did a few hundred cs overwatch (it's a system where people with 150+ won matches can review suspicious behaviours reported by system/other users - https://blog.counter-strike.net/index.php/overwatch/) cases and 95% of them were people using Spinbots. You can write a program/script that parses demos and detects those in few hours (assuming you don't know how to parse a demo file). Why is this even a thing? I want to help them with fighting less than obvious cheaters but if almost everything I get can be automated by any 1st-year cs college student then what is the point?
Re: Epic launches anti-cheat support for Linux, Mac, and Steam Deck
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be honest I have completely given up on competitive fps games. The cheating situation has only gotten worse and I really don't see anti-cheat makers winning.
As a former CSGO player who would've said this previously... Valorant is impressively legit
As someone who was really into CSGO, I can tell you the cheating just gets more subtle.
Up near LE/LEM ranks - no one is using the obvious hacks anymore. Instead it's things like a small autosnap radius for heads (ex: mouse within 3px of a players head? snap to head on fire), auto-recoil control, and map awareness hacks (4 went A, we go B)
It's a similar problem in Valorant - the goal of the cheater in the higher ranks is to get an unfair advantage with just enough of a cheat to leave the other players wondering if they actually cheated at all.
Hell - there are actually hardware cheats now - ex: mouse that will handle recoil for you in these games now.
It's destroyed my interest in the competitive FPS genre entirely.