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Thank You, Valve

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Re: Thank You, Valve

#341

Post by db65edfc7996 »

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 draw a line at supporting kernel level anti-cheat drivers

Especially given the poor record of video game companies to take security seriously [0]. Even Rockstar's cash cow game [1], there was the lowest of low hanging performance fruit available that was not addressed by any ongoing effort. Why should I believe that any game company rushing to push some release out the door is going to take their kernel patch seriously? Security is hard and Intel/AMD/professional kernel devs screw it up all the time.

[0] https://www.vice.com/en/article/wjwd8n/hacker-drops-steam-ze...

[1] https://nee.lv/2021/02/28/How-I-cut-GTA-Online-loading-times...

Edit: fixed the formatting

Re: Thank You, Valve

#342

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #294
Karsteski wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I think the biggest one is this: "Each Program Does One Thing Well." followed by: "Store Data in Flat Text Files." I can't really say new programs adhere to either of these principles. In fact, it seems those seem to be actively shunned. I enjoy PopOS and I still have Vietnam flashback to my very first linux install way back when ( I installed it next to Win95 and results were not fun since it was my dad's PC ), but…

> I can't really say new programs adhere to either of these principles. In fact, it seems those seem to be actively shunned.

They are being actively shunned, largely because they didn't actually work that well outside of running terminal programs that interfaced largely with ASCII text.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#343

Post by deadbunny »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #337
deadbunny wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how do you get to a big enough market share to become a default compilation target? I'd argue that Wine/Proton are a bridge to that. If you can make every game available on Linux via wine/proton then you would have to assume that every one of the Windows holdouts (Ok, most. Some people always find excuses) will swap to Linux as their primary machine, you can then, with reasonable confidence say "Linux has X marke…

> And how do you get to a big enough market share to become a default compilation target? The problem isn't even market share, it's that Linux Desktop doesn't constitute a targetable platform because it is so fragmented and unstable. This is why Steam has to pack in its own runtime libraries just so native Linux games have some kind of known base system. > Ok, most. Some people always find excuses Excuses? Like there…

>> Ok, most. Some people always find excuses.

> Excuses? Like there's some kind of moral imperative to use Linux?

That's not what I meant at all, apologies if I was unclear.

I meant of the people (gamers specifically in this context) who say things like "Oh I would use linux but X" and then X gets solved so it's now Y that is the blocker for them moving to linux. These are the excuse finders I was talking about. They speak a big game about wanting to switch but always find one more thing preventing it from happening. They are of course a small minority.

Also I didn't mean to imply that everyone wants or needs to move to linux, more that there are already a number of people wanting to move but they are waiting for X to happen before they can/will move and that wine/proton has been great for helping some of them to make the switch.

> I've used Linux Desktops on and off for 20 years and I've watched people like you consistently turn away interested users through this kind of dismissive bullshit.

I'm not sure where this is coming from or how I'm turning away interested users but that was not my intention.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#344

Post by ribit »

neogodless wrote: post #331
ribit wrote: post #313

I vehemently disagree with sentiment expressed in the article. Sure, on the surface the work done Valve does significantly improve the state of Linux gaming. But this is not Linux gaming. This is Windows gaming under Linux. We need to think about the long-term effects, about maintaining a healthy ecosystem. I cannot imagine how delegating Linux and Vulkan to be a long-term emulator of DX12 and Win is supposed to be h…

Someone better educated than me can probably help me out here, but I think you're either misunderstanding what some things are, or mixing up your terminology. Proton is the emulation layer created by Valve. Vulkan is a cross-platform graphics API. Your point might still stand, but it's worth debating. Without Proton, gaming on Linux is limited to native Linux games. With it, the story changes. Someone who likes PC ga…

I was not mentioning Proton explicitly. But the core of my point is that Proton de-facto delegates Vulkan to be a second class citizen whose purpose it is to serve as a backend of implementing a Microsoft-compatible technology stack. With Proton working well, the incentive to develop native Linux applications and games goes to wards zero — why would you even bother if you can just develop and test for Windows and let the Proton maintainers sort out the rest?

Currently, there are some games that use Vulkan to target both Windows and Linux. Proton encourages the developers to use the Microsoft technology stack instead. Apple has their own Metal, so Vulkan is dead in the water there anyway. Where does this leave Vulkan? Android? That is likely to move to WebGPU as I mentioned. GPGPU? That is totally dominated by CUDA and other vendor-specific APIs. Linux pro applications (Blender)?

Re: Thank You, Valve

#345

Post by coldpie »

flowless wrote: post #288
coldpie wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think they started using their proton layer for dota2. Nope, DOTA 2 is a native Linux game: https://steamdb.info/app/570/config/

Recently it switched to running via Proton if you had Steam Play enabled (and broke completely for me). Solution is/was to disable Steam Play and it will use native version.

Hm, that's surprising to me. It's historically been that you have to enable Steam Play for a specific title to switch that one title over to using the Windows version via Proton. Possibly that changed so the global setting does it as well, but it would surprise me.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#346

Post by Ragnarork »

btdmaster wrote: post #307
Ragnarork wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You should not need to reverse engineer a piece of software for it to not spy on your network activity. Either way, it's not clear whether resolving cheatsite.com is that well-correlated with cheating. There's a reason why this is called Hacker News.

That's another topic, but that's kind of my point: Valve weren't doing anything akin to kernel-level shenanigans, and even without that, some of the stuff they did already backfired because of privacy concerns.

Since then, they've focused on other avenues to combat cheating (e.g. Overwatch, a replay reviewing system involving the community, or VACnet, a ML model that they trained to recognize in-game behaviours linked to cheating).

Re: Thank You, Valve

#347

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

deadbunny wrote: post #343
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And how do you get to a big enough market share to become a default compilation target? The problem isn't even market share, it's that Linux Desktop doesn't constitute a targetable platform because it is so fragmented and unstable. This is why Steam has to pack in its own runtime libraries just so native Linux games have some kind of known base system. > Ok, most. Some people always find excuses Excuses? Like there…

>> Ok, most. Some people always find excuses. > Excuses? Like there's some kind of moral imperative to use Linux? That's not what I meant at all, apologies if I was unclear. I meant of the people (gamers specifically in this context) who say things like "Oh I would use linux but X" and then X gets solved so it's now Y that is the blocker for them moving to linux. These are the excuse finders I was talking about. They…

Ok, fair, I've altered the wording. I may have reflexively lumped you in with the kind of Linux Evangelist who likes to claim that "Linux is good enough for everyone" and actively dismisses any use case that contradicts that.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#348

Post by d3fault »

txdv wrote: post #161
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…

With all the machine learning we have, game makers could train models to spot hackers. The hacking patterns were obvious even during counter strike 1.6 days. Maybe they got more subtle? I don't play a lot of FPS, but In Dota2 I see a bunch of hackers where the replay literally shows you how they do not even react with their mouse to a threat that appears suddenly but still manage to cast a spell somehow. I don't even…

As far as I'm aware Valve does use ML (called VACnet) to detect cheaters. At the time of the GDC talk[0] it was only implemented for CSGO but it could've expanded since then

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTiP0zKF9bc

Re: Thank You, Valve

#349

Post by bee_rider »

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…

As a pretty bad FPS player (was ok on consoles but never got the knack for aiming with a mouse in the same way), matchmaking works well enough for me. My better friends are always complaining about hackers, but I almost never encounter them.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#350

Post by p_l »

Chris2048 wrote: post #200
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.

That's why Valve can do it, not why they should. If Apple treats its platform like this, let it rot.

According to some gamedev friends, Apple is the single worst platform they support (at least for anything that isn't Apple-only).

And it's not just things like outdated APIs (OpenGL), but various tasks related to preparing a distributable program in this time (with codesigning etc.)

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