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Thank You, Valve

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Re: Thank You, Valve

#241

Post by nindalf »

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’m not sure I understand peoples objections to the existence of anti-cheat software. As far as I can tell, as long as we don’t play these games, it doesn’t affect us at all right? I can’t play Valorant on Linux today because the developer won’t offer it. Even if they started offering it tomorrow then with a Linux anti-cheat, it’s existence wouldn’t bother me because I don’t play it.

What’s the issue here, really? Who’s being affected by a game they don’t play and don’t want to play?

Re: Thank You, Valve

#242

Post by moffkalast »

goda90 wrote: post #10
iamricks wrote: post #3

Considering Valve is private, it's very impressive what Gaben has accomplished (and everyone who works there).

I'd argue being private is the only reason Valve has accomplished what it has accomplished. If they had to answer to non-gamer shareholders, they'd have not done a lot of things that have made gamers happy, but looked risky initially.

On the other hand, making Artifact was a very shareholder style move of them. Such an utter cashgrab it's was actually disgusting.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#243

Post by evanmoran »

aceazzameen wrote: post #214
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've always wondered if just having a really strong matchmaking system would be enough. It would keep cheaters playing against cheaters. Pro players in theory shouldn't be as good as cheaters, so they'd be in their own rank. But I suppose cheaters could purposefully play poorly sometimes to keep their ranking down. Is that even worth it to cheaters? Downside to all of this is it would have to take longer to get into…

You already figure it out from the pro side, but it sadly is not enough on the casual side as well. The issue is streamers would show their audience how easy it is to cheat and this would lead to a perception by more casual gamers that cheating is rampant and so they would be less inclined to join. This reduces the audience, hitting worse match making (as you suggest), lower stream viewership, less game success for the studio, etc.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#244

Post by vintermann »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #215
longsword wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I never got how this worked on Steam. You have a consistent Steam ID, which the game is tied to, and all your achievements/ranks/etc. 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)

I'm amazed at how much money some people have to burn on new accounts. Looking at minecraft servers, there are so ridiculously many people banned.

I've wondered if there's some sort of economy here, i.e. someone with a ton of stolen accounts monetizing them by offering to cheat all day on your competitor's server.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#245

Post by parkingrift »

scrollaway wrote: post #136
parkingrift wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Have you ever played Warzone? People sniping 700+ meters and they can't even see you on their screen. Obvious map hacks, aim bots, and even some hilarious shit like super speed or the ability to drive a car through walls to run you over.

Besides, it's not just a matter of improving accuracy. Elite players are elite in multiple facets of the game. Movement, general awareness, map awareness, accuracy, etc. Many of these metrics are easy to measure.

Cheaters will show up as outliers and it is at that point that their accounts should be manually reviewed.

With casual gaming I really don't even care if someone is "cheating" to improve so long as I feel the game was fair. I can put a red dot on my screen to improve my aim, as an example.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#246

Post by rnhmjoj »

gambiting wrote: post #209
hfourm wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Abuse usually...

Yep, people just spamming cheater reports on someone who killed them, it's worthless without human verification and that's expensive/difficult.

It's already human verified if you require say >50% players to vote, assuming the cheater is not running a Sybil attack too.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#247

Post by Karsteski »

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #18

In a very practical way, I agree with the thought behind the post. Still, I want to offer a counter, because as linux is becoming more and more popular ( I myself am an anecdote since I recently jumped to PopOS as my main driver ), I worry that it will become another Windows. Linux principles are slowly being eroded for the ease and convenience of the user. It is both awesome and awful. Convenience destroyed mobile t…

Can you elaborate? Would you prefer the Linux ecosystem to remain less user-friendly, to maintain whatever principles you have in mind? Also, what principles are you referring to?

Re: Thank You, Valve

#248

Post by longsword »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #215
longsword wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I never got how this worked on Steam. You have a consistent Steam ID, which the game is tied to, and all your achievements/ranks/etc. 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)

I'm talking about steam accounts. There are many cheaters our there, who just dont care if they lose an account. They will cheat on an alternative Account and when they get banned, they will buy a new one. They dont even care spending some bucks on the Game again. Edit: Take Rust as an example. A year ago, the Developers made some stats public: 12 Million copies sold, 600.000 Banned Accounts. Thats 5% of all sold Accounts. There is even a Twitter Feed, showing all the Bans:https://twitter.com/rusthackreport Most of the Accounts will show a Playtime of under 30 hours in the Game, mostly no Friends or other games, indicating they were only made for cheating.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#249

Post by mastax »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #8
raxxorrax wrote: post #2

Indeed. Valve established DRM to a degree many previously hoped it would get rejected. But they offered a decent service and proved that piracy is a service problem. What they did for Linux as a gaming platform is spectacular. Not many people use it yet, but Windows does look less and less like a dependable long term solution, especially with Microsofts other ambitions in that industry.

>What they did for Linux as a gaming platform is spectacular. Definitely yes, but let's not kid ourselves. Valve is not doing this from the generosity of their hearts or love for the Linux community, or the gaming community, but Proton and the Steam Deck are their future insurance policy against Microsoft coming after their profits in the future. The writing was on the wall, they saw how much money Epic was giving to…

> Definitely yes, but let's not kid ourselves. Valve is not doing this from the generosity of their hearts or love for the Linux community, or the gaming community,

GOOD! That means our incentives are aligned, and the arrangement is much more likely to survive long-term.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#250

Post by donatj »

striking wrote: post #201
donatj wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think you're missing the spirit of the question. If Apple doesn't want to wreck gaming on its platform, and if there are few gamers on Apple platforms, and supporting Apple platforms doesn't give Valve the upper hand against MS the same way supporting Linux would... Why would Valve bother? Why shouldn't it be on Apple to make it work? Maybe install Crossover and play the Windows versions of games through there?

I think you miss Valves motives entirely. They want to sell games.

Windows 8 was bad for them selling games. Microsoft showed their hand at wanting an Apple-like walled garden. They made their own OS to sell games. They want to sell games.

There are a lot more Mac users to sell games to than Linux users or even potential Linux users. Mac users are far more willing to pay for software. If you can sell more games to Mac users, that’s money from selling games for Valve. They want to sell games.

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