71–80 of 332 posts
This is an arms race that game developers won't win, it's just whack-a-mole. They should invest instead in server-side models for detecting cheating, then it can't be circumvented and you don't need to bother learning all the different ways they can produce inhuman inputs.
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Easy: code your game correctly and check for impossibilities server-side. But that costs money in development and infra.
Could you expand on "code your game correctly"? Let's say I'm playing your (correctly coded) game and I've got an aimbot, that snaps onto someone's head, how do you detect/stop that from the server-side (the only place you can trust)?
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Then there's CS:GO, whose developers refuse to use intrusive practices to counter cheating. And the game is ruined by rampant cheating. (Neither for nor against. Just saying.)
Then there's PUBG (BattlEye) ruined by rampant cheating. Then there's EFT (BattlEye) ruined by rampant cheating. Then there's (was?) Combat Arms (multiple anti cheats over the years) ruined in-part by rampant cheating. I wouldn't mind _that_ much if anti-cheats actually helped, but they don't.
I do think that anti-cheat helps, if the developers are mostly engaged with it, but it's a long fight over a long time. Most of the strategies to do with 'ban waves' - ie, not banning cheaters immediately - are pragmatic concessions to that reality.
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How about no? This will just lead these companies to implement anti-cheat to protect the "integrity" of their single player games (and their MTX) as well. Say goodbye to mods and other forms of benign game hacking (particularly hacks that fix games like Dark Souls).
Would it be in a game company’s interest to implement anti-cheat for single player games? Mods and other forms of benign game hacking increase the popularity and longevity of games which presumably benefit profitability.
Microsoft should implement an Xbox mode for Windows that has these protection features for all games. It will probably require some virtualization and performance degradation but it's better than each game rolling out their own half assed drivers.
How about no? This will just lead these companies to implement anti-cheat to protect the "integrity" of their single player games (and their MTX) as well. Say goodbye to mods and other forms of benign game hacking (particularly hacks that fix games like Dark Souls).
Aside: are there any good tutorials that provide an overview on how to write such an anti-cheat?
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If I write a cheat for your game that operates on the kernel level, how would you detect it from the game that runs in user space?
Easy: code your game correctly and check for impossibilities server-side. But that costs money in development and infra.
Do you have any experience developing networked multiplayer games? I do it for a living, and it's not that easy, at all. In a situation where I shoot at your head on my screen, but you were already around the corner on your screen, what happens? This happens _all_ the time due to latency, and has nothing to do with development costs or infra. There's no way to avoid the problem when you have people with varying levels of connection quality, and different distances to the game server.
Cheaters are going to figure out a way to cheat. Even if it means some kind of TASBot device to physically press the buttons on a controller there will always be a way for someone to cheat.
It's cheating really that big of a deal? How do they try to stop it now? Do they really need a kernel driver?
It's when there's a whole cottage industry around this that you know things are out of hand.