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Thank You, Valve

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Re: Thank You, Valve

#271

Post by oauea »

charcircuit wrote: post #150
oauea wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never trust the client. Trying to install a rootkit on your users' computers won't change the reality of client-server security.

We have to trust the client to an extent. How can a server tell if a player clicked their mouse or if a triggerbot did?

It can't. There's not much more to say, even with the current anticheat it's no way to be certain a real human being clicked a real mouse. As the other comment shows, you can start adding more and more invasive monitoring solutions but this likely won't be tolerated by many and will eventually be bypassed anyway.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#272

Post by foxfluff »

dijit wrote: post #233
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…

This comment deserves a much more detailed response than I'm able to give at the moment, but I can give some very brief thoughts: Let me say that I have been working in AAA online game development for more than 7 years now; I have worked on games that had 10's of millions of players, and these were full fat $60 AAA games. Cheating was the second[0] biggest issue of our games, it sucked the entire enjoyment out- getti…

I've had good experience in games with human moderation and recorded demos that you can play back to catch and report cheaters. After building some reputation and trust in the community, you'd be permitted to join a server with fewer random new users and practically no cheaters (and usually far more skilled players). No need for intrusive anti-cheat solutions (that IME just gave legit users trouble and still failed to stop cheaters).

Of course, I don't expect AAAs to offer an experience like this, because human moderation doesn't scale cheaply to 10s of millions of players.. race to the bottom <3

Re: Thank You, Valve

#273

Post by demindiro »

toomanydoubts wrote: post #77
Thiez wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How exactly would an open source anti-cheat do its job effectively?

Being opensource doesn't imply the game server will allow modified builds to work. Being able to see the code doesn't mean you will find a suitable way to circumvent the anticheat. That being said, I agree it would be harder to maintain an open source anticheat effectively.

> Being opensource doesn't imply the game server will allow modified builds to work

The client can lie about being modified. E.g. it can send false hashes.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#274

Post by bananasbandanas »

moffkalast wrote: post #263
zulban wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How many of those bugs are only linux-specific I wonder.

According to that post, 0.75% (3/400).

Re: Thank You, Valve

#275

Post by account42 »

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…

> I'm sure many would happily drop 32bit games support for that.

Really? There are still many x86-only games on Steam, tons of which probably won't ever be updated. And if Valve does not make that clear on the Store pages then they will receive part of the blame and support burden.

I think what is more likely to happen is for Steam to come with it's own 32-bit dependencies that marshal to the 64-bit system GL/Vulkan/etc. The client itself might be ported to 64-bit too but that would not even be needed at that point.

This is already partially the case today - the Steam runtime contains most required 32-bit (and 64-bit) libraries and Steam is already (optionally) using containers for games: https://gitlab.steamos.cloud/steamrt/steam-runtime-tools/-/t...

Presentation on this from 2 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrbWbBYAolo

Re: Thank You, Valve

#276

Post by delecti »

moffkalast wrote: post #263
zulban wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How many of those bugs are only linux-specific I wonder.

From the link:

> Do you know how many of these 400 bug reports were actually platform-specific? 3. Literally only 3 things were problems that came out just on Linux.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#277

Post by gurkendoktor »

alkonaut wrote: post #258
dagw wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Just not on any of the 'pro' servers. No, the other way around. On "pro" servers there is moderation that makes cheating a non-issue. It's in the casual space that cheaters ruin everything, because there isn't any human moderation. I'd phrase it as "you can still play the game, just not against other humans".

"...other humans that you don't trust"

I often care about online multiplayer, but only with my friends (who I trust not to cheat). I don't want to install a rootkit for that.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#278

Post by Ragnarork »

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…

Very interesting to see this criticism in a topic about Valve, who don't go there with VAC, and are often criticized for not going the kernel level anti-cheat route (by a chunk of the playerbase that thinks it will solve cheating).

They even backpedaled when people found out that they were analyzing your DNS cache on Windows to search for known cheat provider websites.[0]

[0]. https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/1y70ej/valve_vac_an...

Re: Thank You, Valve

#279

Post by croon »

tomc1985 wrote: post #197
dagw wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

22 adults competing over a ball isn't inherently any more serious than 2 people playing a game of Starcraft.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#280

Post by Zababa »

longsword wrote: post #204
busterarm wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Side question but what's up with all the capitalization?
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