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Thank You, Valve

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Re: Thank You, Valve

#191

Post by striking »

erwincoumans wrote: post #14

And damn Valve for not supporting a 64 bit Linux Steam client. Having to mess with installing 32bit OpenGL drivers just for Valve, sometimes messing up the installation left a bad taste. At least give users the option to pick either 32bit or 64bit client. I'm sure many would happily drop 32bit games support for that. And people who want 32bit games pick the 32bit client. https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-lin…

This would also mean maintaining multiple runtimes, wouldn't it? That's not work I'd be excited to do.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#192

Post by steadyready »

Rooster61 wrote: post #28

I dig most of this article, and I do applaud the work Valve is doing for the Linux gaming ecosystem, but I draw a line at supporting kernel level anti-cheat drivers. That trend in gaming bothers me to no end, and I refuse to knowingly install a game that features one. The presence of 15 year old script kiddies using aimbots does NOT IN ANY WAY justify having kernel level control over my machine, Linux or otherwise. V…

I did a lot of cheat development and always read the related forums. Let me tell you that kernel anti-cheats are the funniest and ugliest pieces of software out there.

Almost ALL exhibit rootkit behaviour. Capture all OS events, dig through system and user directories, list all processes, fetch DNS and browser histories, block certain system calls, and more just to name a few. But hey! Their software (including drivers) are signed by Microsoft, so that’s alright :))

Funny part is that all those drivers are created by no other than ex-community members, under no advisory from system specialists or security experts. So guess what? Security vulnerabilities all around. Pretty much all their drivers are wide open and unsecure.

Nice fun having persistent, kernel-level, system-trusted exploits auto-installed on your system!

Oh, almost forgot, BattlEye has the ability to download custom bytecode from their servers and execute it. RCE baked right in. Good stuff.

So your frustration is more than reasonable..

EDIT: I will try to find the posts pointing to all vulns that I mentioned, and cite them.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#193

Post by usrusr »

azemetre wrote: post #166
alexb_ wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valve is probably only able to do all this stuff BECAUSE it is private. Public companies are concerned more with what pushes up numbers for 1 quarter and keeps shareholders happy than anything else.

Well that and literally owning the money printing machine known as Steam (a gaming marketplace where you can not only buy games, but sell skins, avatars, and other pictures for your profile; Valve takes their cut in every transaction). I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Valve generates multiple billions+ in revenue annually.

Right. And if it was publicly traded, the share price would quickly rise to a point where anything less then 10x those billions would make the stock a bad investment, forcing late-buyers to push leadership into making that 10x real. Rinse and repeat.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#194

Post by throwthere »

charcircuit wrote: post #155
scrollaway wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incorrect, there’s lots of cheats that are completely seamless and just improve your performance without being a completely binary “perfect headshot” vs “always miss” or something. I guess your last encounter with aimbots was in the early 00s…

If other players can't tell someone is cheating then it's not actually a problem since everyone will feel the game was fair.

Ah, the old Lance Armstrong argument.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#195

Post by zulban »

Vermeulen wrote: post #31

As a game dev it surprises me the constant push from some Linux players to still make a native Linux version, considering how good Valve's Proton layer is. I don't think they understand that while making a new Linux build can be trivial (in Unity), dealing with all the support issues for that isn't. I don't have time to track down audio issues for some random Linux version for 0.001% of players Yet if I say I'll only…

Linux users write the best bug reports. This may interest you: "38% of my bug reports come from the Linux community"

https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/qeqn3b/despite_hav...

Also, any decently complex commercial game has a long ongoing list of bugs. If you feel overwhelmed by an obscure bug from one user, you probably just need better issue tracking.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#196

Post by jjkmk »

Rooster61 wrote: post #28

I dig most of this article, and I do applaud the work Valve is doing for the Linux gaming ecosystem, but I draw a line at supporting kernel level anti-cheat drivers. That trend in gaming bothers me to no end, and I refuse to knowingly install a game that features one. The presence of 15 year old script kiddies using aimbots does NOT IN ANY WAY justify having kernel level control over my machine, Linux or otherwise. V…

The problem is it's not just kids using public cheats. There are private cheats that really damage the integrity of competitive gaming. Counter Strike Global Offensive is a good example of this.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#197

Post by tomc1985 »

dagw wrote: post #56
Rooster61 wrote: post #28

I dig most of this article, and I do applaud the work Valve is doing for the Linux gaming ecosystem, but I draw a line at supporting kernel level anti-cheat drivers. That trend in gaming bothers me to no end, and I refuse to knowingly install a game that features one. The presence of 15 year old script kiddies using aimbots does NOT IN ANY WAY justify having kernel level control over my machine, Linux or otherwise. V…

If I played competitive video games seriously I would absolutely want them to take cheating seriously and take any necessary measure to stop it. At the same time I think they should also make the most serious kernel/driver level anti-cheat software optional. If you don't to want to install it you can still play the game, just not on any of the 'pro' servers. Think of it a bit like doping tests in sports. As long as y…

> If you don't to want to install it you can still play the game, just not on any of the 'pro' servers.

The worst thing gaming has ever done was think it was anything like professional sports. I think that I'm in favor of cheating in games just because it rankles people who take gaming way too seriously.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#198

Post by willis936 »

jowsie wrote: post #165
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need thousands of dollars of hardware. You need one (1) Raspberry Pi 4, plus an HDMI capture card and a Raspberry Pi Zero to act as fake mouse/keyboard. You can totally do that for $50. (Probably less if you use an Arduino clone instead of a Raspberry Pi Zero.) Heuristic software works against the most common cheats. Standard anti-piracy tricks work against the most common cheats. Kernel-level anticheat is…

You're still talking about a bunch of work and effort. The people aimbotting in CSGO aren't doing it because they love hard work and a challenge.

It boils down to a risk assessment. The fact is people interested in cheating continue to escalate the norm. That's the arms race.

Meanwhile we are letting shady companies illegally spy on users [0] and mine crypto [1], for what? What is the gain? What is the value proposition of kernel-level drivers in the anti-cheat application? What's more, the average gamer doesn't know anything about computers. How can they be expected to make an informed decision about whether or not they should buy a game with kernel-level anticheat if they don't know what that means? Even worse, there is no legal requirement that a game's marketing material say anything about its anti-cheat implementation. These aren't tin-foil hat concerns, these are the enablers of real scandals that have happened and are happening.

0. https://www.wired.com/story/kernel-anti-cheat-online-gaming-...

1. https://play.esea.net/forums/492152

Re: Thank You, Valve

#199

Post by notriddle »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #135
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average cheater is most certainly not investing in thousands of dollars of hardware to run intense AI models on a second high power machine. These are mostly theoretical hacks. The average cheater is paying $10-50 for cheat software. You may not like the anti-cheat software, but it works against the most common cheats. I think they could have an opt-out league that doesn’t require anti-cheat but remains separate.…

You don't need thousands of dollars of hardware. You need one (1) Raspberry Pi 4, plus an HDMI capture card and a Raspberry Pi Zero to act as fake mouse/keyboard. You can totally do that for $50. (Probably less if you use an Arduino clone instead of a Raspberry Pi Zero.) Heuristic software works against the most common cheats. Standard anti-piracy tricks work against the most common cheats. Kernel-level anticheat is…

Heuristic anti-cheat works about as well as heuristic anti-spam. It might actually catch more legit players than cheaters, due to the false positive paradox[1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_fallacy

Re: Thank You, Valve

#200

Post by Chris2048 »

donatj wrote: post #173
Chris2048 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why? Shouldn't Apple be doing the work?

Apple dropped 32 bit support, it was intentional. They’re not going back on it. They have a long history of showing no interest in software preservation. Valve has the technology. Wine runs on macOS. Just need to apply it to Steam for Mac.

That's why Valve can do it, not why they should.

If Apple treats its platform like this, let it rot.

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