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Thank You, Valve

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Re: Thank You, Valve

#371

Post by dijit »

steadyready wrote: post #192
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 drive…

As a person in the industry: Everything this person is saying is true.

We need a real solution to this honestly, it’s not enough to just kick up a fuss about game devs including anti-cheat and ever-more-invasive anti-cheat, but actually providing solutions people can use.

The economic incentives do not exist on consoles to cheat, so publishers are convinced that control of the platform is the problem.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#372

Post by Bigpet »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #174
NmAmDa wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are small subset of players because there are no wide support for gaming on Linux. If this change by game developers then this percentage will increase dramatically.

There's no wide support for gaming on Linux Desktop because historically there hasn't been anything one could call "The Linux Desktop" for them to target. The landscape is so ludicrously fragmented that you can't rely on any software to be installed other than the kernel. Valve got around this by just packing their own runtime libraries with Steam.

It was pretty obvious when Stadia "made" devs port to Linux. When the economic incentive was there, the technology wasn't much of an issue.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#373

Post by dijit »

pdimitar wrote: post #157
sbarre wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So here's a question: What is it about games that makes you particularly worried about this? Why is that an industry that is more susceptible to this kind of "nefarious" activity as you put it? Wouldn't it make more sense for business-related products to do this, since the odds of being on a computer that has actual useful information to steal would be much, much higher? Why would a company invest in this kind of tec…

> Wouldn't it make more sense for business-related products to do this, since the odds of being on a computer that has actual useful information to steal would be much, much higher? Not necessarily. That gaming machine has good odds of being in a local network with other, more important and interesting machines. It can also scan local Wi-Fi area and scoop up even more information that can be used later. Thought these…

If you’ll sign an NDA I can show you TC anticheat and EasyAnticheat.

Tencent anticheat has a hard baked logger that prints out every network call it makes, which believe it or not was intended to create trust.

You can see in the disassembled code that it can’t make outbound calls without that function that prints the payload.

We can’t be open because it’s too risky. We can’t be closed because people think we’re scum.

Why not just make console games? This thread has me depressed.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#374

Post by adventured »

webkike wrote: post #329
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Oh please. Any time a company does something good. "Let's not kid ourselves. It's all for the money, honey!" I didn't say that I'm not happy for what Valve is doing, but I don't trust any billion dollar tech megacorp like Microsoft, Apple, Google, Nintendo, Valve, etc. to have the best interest of the consumer in mind, regardless of how fun their IP is for my entertainment. Pro-consumer actions on their end are alwa…

I wouldn’t exactly consider valve a billion dollar mega corp. For one, they aren’t public and therefore aren’t beholden to the whims of share holders.

Valve is valued at $10+ billion. They're not big tech in the style of Microsoft, however they are a mega corporation (a very large company). Any company with their scale, revenue and influence is a mega corporation. If Valve had been public in this extreme stock market era, they'd probably have gotten a $30+ billion valuation (Unity at the peak was worth $60 billion).

Gabe Newell is worth $8 billion courtesy of his ownership stake.

https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/profiles/gabe-newell/

Re: Thank You, Valve

#375

Post by tomc1985 »

croon wrote: post #279
tomc1985 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I don't think highly of regular sports either.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#376

Post by PixelOfDeath »

vintermann wrote: post #236
jowsie wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The people they do buy cheats from do the work and effort. They don't seem especially bothered by kernel-level anti cheat stuff. It keeps them in business, since they get less quick home-brewed competition.

And just consider how much money flows for "micro" transactions. There is plenty of "players" willing to pay money for hardware cheats.

My observation is that competitive online gaming is over. It's just a cesspool of cheaters now.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#377

Post by foxfluff »

dijit wrote: post #366
foxfluff wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

We did record demos and play them back, but cheaters are intelligent and will do things like change their ID after a game. They use IDs like “iIiiIiliiiiIii1” too, which means getting your report from someone who just takes a screenshot and doesn’t use the in-game report is just noise. Cheaters also do things like buy CD codes/stolen accounts which are sold cheaply on various websites. It also doesn’t help when there…

> We did record demos and play them back, but cheaters are intelligent and will do things like change their ID after a game. They use IDs like “iIiiIiliiiiIii1” too, which means getting your report from someone who just takes a screenshot and doesn’t use the in-game report is just noise.

So you didn't check the demo corresponding to the reporter's account and timestamp? Why not? Why don't you have IDs in logs?

My experience comes from 100% free games. Codes and accounts were irrelevant. If you can't earn some reputation and trust on a public server, you can't get invited to a private one. Simple as that. It doesn't matter if wannabe-cheaters can make a million accounts.

> Regardless of that, human moderation efforts are a full time job

For many clans and gaming communities, moderating their turf is a passion project and having the keys is a sought-after position of privilege. They love to spectate and look out for potential new "hires" while keeping the chat clean and kicking out any griefers and cheaters.

> personally I’d be happy to release the server, but the server requires 40 cores and 256G of ram to boot

> the gameserver itself is nearly impossible to load for most people anyway.

I think you lack some imagination. Letting gamers operate their own servers doesn't mean they have to host their own servers. Just like discord "servers" aren't actually hosted by their "owners".

> It sounds easy from the outside; if you think it’s easy I really do have a job for you.

Sorry, not interested in AAA games.

> Maybe I’m stupid.

You're probably not stupid but it's all too common to see people not being able to think outside the box.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#378

Post by enragedcacti »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #251
crtasm wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valve do this, here's a good talk: Robocalypse Now: Using Deep Learning to Combat Cheating in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTiP0zKF9bc

This is kinda weird, CSGO has spinbots and xp-farming bots: one moves faster than is humanly possible, the other moves on the spot or in a circle with exact constant rotation ... the only conclusion I can make is CSGO want these bots, because auto-blocking them seems trivial. Why use deep learning when so, so many bots (and their host accounts) could be blocked with trivial heuristics? My only guess is allowing spinb…

> My only guess is allowing spinbots/farming somehow provides a financial gain in CSGO?

Valve devs have a lot more leeway than your average developer. They honestly might have just thought it would be cooler.

Beyond that they now have the infrastructure to detect more subtle forms of cheating through deep learning using Overwatch (the reporting system, not the game) as ground truth data to train their AI.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#379

Post by arminiusreturns »

ribit wrote: post #344
neogodless wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If I may, I suspect your angle on this might be slightly askew at least from my perspective. Almost all the major game engines are now supporting a native vulkan/linux renderer. I'm running in godot 4 right now. If anything, watching things like glorious eggrolls proton and the dxvk repo [1] I think the people working at the direct translation level are causing more eyes on vulkan than it would otherwise be getting.

My actual concern for proton/wine on linux is security related. The binary game space is a security nightmare, and enabling the windows side to run with very little compartmentalization is going to be a security disaster.

1. https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk

Re: Thank You, Valve

#380

Post by howinteresting »

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…

> 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.

This is the correct way to deploy most software on Linux. Everything outside of glibc and openssl should be part of a standardized runtime. Look at what flatpak is doing.

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