211–220 of 458 posts
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The officially approved mouse timestamps and signs the click using a hardware embedded cryptographic key (only slightly joking).
That's when you just rig up a solenoid to click the real mouse :P
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> but without money They do have money. They made tons from Half-Life etc. Then they now have a huge continual income stream from Steam.
And I believe the amount the made from Half-Lifes is peanuts compared to amount they are making with TF2, CS:GO and Dota 2...
While not technically "a console" it's still one of the best line-up ever for a new hardware launch, and it's probably going to be in thousands later this month.
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…
Downside to all of this is it would have to take longer to get into matches to keep players in their pools. I know games already do this, but they seem to match players up or down too quickly to keep the velocity of matches going.
As I type this I realize this system wouldn't work. Pro players would complain about long waits whiles average players would play the most frequently. Lose pros and you lose average players.
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The serious cheats in competitive games these days don't rely on hacking the game anymore. They use a separate computer connected taking your HDMI out as an input and then controls your mouse and keyboard inputs. They use ML models and OpenCV. You watch the second computer's monitor and it draws huge boxes around things you shoot and it assists your aim. It doesn't even have to be a PC game, you can do the same with…
> Kernel level anti-cheat is meaningless Anti-Cheat on the Account-Level is meaningless. You ban a cheater? Who cares. He will back with a new Account some Minutes later. Hardware Bans are useless aswell, as they can easily be spoofed. The only effective strategy for Anti-Cheat is a Universal Identity Provider, which can proof you are a real Human with no Cheat Record.
Isn't that what you are talking about here?
You can create a new Steam account, sure, but that would start you again from scratch as a total newbie (and losing access to anything you'd bought)
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This is why anti-cheat should be performance based. Build a model based on the way that verified elite players play the game, and their performance. Compare “normal” players against the model and look for outliers. Manually review accounts that look suspicious. Cheat behavior is obvious. Ridiculous long distance accuracy. Weird movement. Weird map awareness. Weird awareness of other players. Etc.
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…
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…
As far as I understand, it is coming via Proton/Wine, so these programs would need some kind of kernel level access as well (if they don't have it currently)? Or maybe they're just emulating Windows kernel calls or something like that. I mean, less intrusive (but also less effective) in a Linux system.
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First people complain that no one will use Linux because theirs no hardware. Then they complain they can’t use Linux because of the software support. We now have both and now people won’t use Linux because Microsoft acquired studio’s games will only run on Windows? That moving goal post doesn’t look good for the Switch or PlayStation platforms then.
I mean, there are a lot of reasons not to use Linux still, just because Valve solved a few of them doesn't make any of the others illegitimate. I mean, christ, the desktop user experience is still pretty goddamned terrible, and the only reason I'm personally considering switching in the near future is that Microsoft is working hard to make Windows even worse.
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 wish you to play a competitive multiplayer game filled with cheaters. You don't know if your opponent is good or cheating. It simply kill all the fun. If it won't work on PC, multiplayer gaming will simply moves to consoles. Great, now you are stuck with a closed standard, with a closed OS, where you can't run the programs you want.
If you're playing against someone who's sniping you across the map every thirty seconds, it (usually) does not matter whether or not they're cheating or doing it legitimately. Both outcomes aren't fun for players, and both outcomes make the game less competitive. The idea that toxic behavior saps the fun out a game only when it's automated is just silly -- cheating doesn't really change anything about that dynamic.
Yes, this is admittedly more complicated than I'm making it sound, and yes, there is a valid conversation to be had about players wanting to feel that multiplayer games are fair, even when they mostly aren't. But while that player instinct around fairness does exist, it is also true that for a huge portion of your playerbase if someone is cheating convincingly enough that other players are still having fun then (outside of esports leagues) it often doesn't really matter. Let them, especially if they're convincing enough that players can't tell the difference. And if someone is purposefully creating a bad/toxic experience for other players, they should be either matched differently or banned anyway, even if they're just that good entirely out of their own skill. Good players who legitimately win can still be toxic and annoying to play against.
This isn't a universal hard rule, but in general you should optimize for the outcomes you want, not for the way that people get there. It is better to have a game with cheaters/bots where people are still constantly playing at the edge of their skill level, where there are consequences for griefing, and where players are trying to create competitive/fun matches, than a game where all of your energy is devoted to just figuring out whether or not a match was miserable for "legitimate" reasons.
And for a lot of games, probably >90% of your playerbase is in this group where they care more about competitive, interesting matches that help them grow as a player and get better at the game than they care about the extreme low-level integrity of the game. Most of your playerbase is frankly not good enough or competitive enough at your game at the global levels where it matters whether or not everybody on the global ladder deserves their win count. So why are we collectively optimizing everything around such a small percentage of players?
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> First, anti-cheat software doesn't guarantee anything of the sort. There are still plenty of cheats out there. It's not a binary thing. There will always be cheats. It's about raising the bar to be difficult enough for enough people to not bother. If you want an example of the effect cheating can have on games, look at Fall guys. It shipped as a unity game, was immediately reverse engineered and the game was effect…
> It's about raising the bar to be difficult enough for enough people to not bother. It does not do that either. I've been on certain... interesting forums, shall we say (in Tor; and I don't remember the names, was a casual stroll through it and I made no effort to write down any place I checked on -- before you ask). Whoever wants a cheat eventually finds the best cheat authors who are quiet and are not drawing atte…
It clearly does. There's a world of difference between running tor/finding onion links, and googling "cheats for battlefield 2042". There are multiple stories out there of games destroyed by cheaters who add in Anti-cheat after the fact and the problem practically disappears. Note that doesn't mean no cheaters, but for games like Fall Guys (post linked above) it was practically every game was won by a cheater literally `noclip`'ing to the finish line.
> Whoever wants a cheat eventually finds the best cheat authors who are quiet and are not drawing attention to themselves but have public Web 2.0 sites where they sell their software.
While those cheats will continue to exist, most people aren't going to go to the trouble of installing Tor, finding an unlisted website and buying via bank transfer, they're going to google "Cheats for " and if the first link lets them spend $40 they will. _Those_ cheats are what utterly destroy games.
> And everybody else loses, including the companies because if Valve wants to install a kernel rootkit on my Linux machine they'll lose my business there
Honestly, the number of people who care enough to not install the kernel level anticheat is so small for modern games it doesn't really matter. I'd put $20 that there are cheaters out there that would install linux to avoid the kernel level anticheat than there are legit players who are ok with running closed source games, but not closed source kernel modules.