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Anti-Cheat Expert: all your pixels are belong to us

invlpg.dev

11–20 of 161 posts

Re: Anti-Cheat Expert: all your pixels are belong to us

#11

> banning having reverse engineering tools open, or having used them recently on game files Seems like a smart way to catch inexperienced/up and coming cheat devs. How many non-cheat devs really have IDA on their gaming PC? I did and it was for developing cheats

It's not so uncommon for homelab / cyber security researchers. I have an older licensed copy of Ida and Ghidra on my main gaming pc. Mostly to keep dumb research of workstations I use for legit work.

Re: Anti-Cheat Expert: all your pixels are belong to us

#12
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used x64dbg to crack some accounting software that went EOL and forced us to buy a new software based on a new subscription model. You can basically patch the executable to skip the function that locks you out

I recently saw that Roblox kids are trolling each other by putting "x64dbg" in their display names, because the game checks the window title of every running app and refuses to run if it sees that string anywhere :^)

gotta love it. ALT+F4 to show your respects. ;D

Re: Anti-Cheat Expert: all your pixels are belong to us

#14

A perk of gamimg on Linux is that none of these invasive anti-cheats work. I consider that a plus since I never care enough about a video game to surrender my privacy or my kernel over to it.

The really invasive kernel level ones don't and probably will never work, but there's a chunk of them that do. One of the big ones, Easy Anti Cheat, mostly works[1].

I, too, consider it a benefit of gaming on Linux.

[1]: https://areweanticheatyet.com/breakdown

Re: Anti-Cheat Expert: all your pixels are belong to us

#15
post #10
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but that's a really narrow minded take. There are a lot of good reasons to have IDA or Ghidra installed on your computer, if only for fun and learning reverse-engineering. This should NOT prevent you to play others games. ( To everybody reading this : if you like computer and puzzles, you should absolutly try to reverse-engineer a simple binary at least once. It's fun !)

If you installed it to learn RE and the game refuses to run because of it, now you have a project to try your skills on.

I assume this is a joke, but still... I have had Ghidra open in the background for a while (weeks), as I worked on some IoT projects for my cats. While I'm biased and I hold some unpopular opinions... I think not just me, but most people definitely would get offended if suddenly some game would refuse to start and/or ban online account.

Honestly, banning players because they have RE tools feels like a generally counter-productive idea. Best-case scenario is that it'll require an engineer who was actually going to RE game files to get another account, stalling them very briefly. Worst-case scenario is getting someone with technical skills and free time pissed off enough to actually start messing with the game (potentially, in a less respectful way than your average cheat developer might - looking for game-breaking exploits than just automating things or providing extra information to the player), even if they didn't mean to.

Re: Anti-Cheat Expert: all your pixels are belong to us

#17

> banning having reverse engineering tools open, or having used them recently on game files Seems like a smart way to catch inexperienced/up and coming cheat devs. How many non-cheat devs really have IDA on their gaming PC? I did and it was for developing cheats

As someone who has lost a fair bit of my hand eye coordination as I've aged, I wanted to say thank you to you and your community for developing some cheats.

Specifically those for single player games, I've used them to finish games so I can view the story/endings.

Re: Anti-Cheat Expert: all your pixels are belong to us

#18
Nothing ruins the fun faster than lag-switching lamers. Accordingly, one can never trust client side security enforcement, or you just create a tit-for-tat economy with cheat-code authors.

The better solution is often live admins with a cheat-report button, server-side physics reconciliation trip-wires/audits (no time-travelers), and using clipped areas for character buffering (x-ray vision attempts floods buffers and crashes the client.)

The only information an online game-engine should be pulling is the hashed GPU chip serial-number for account ban enforcement.

The worst part about cheats is they ruin the fun for themselves too, as a game becomes pointless and boring.

Installing a RAT has no justification on hardware people didn't pay for...

Re: Anti-Cheat Expert: all your pixels are belong to us

#19

A perk of gamimg on Linux is that none of these invasive anti-cheats work. I consider that a plus since I never care enough about a video game to surrender my privacy or my kernel over to it.

totally agree, but there are some things we just cant do.

I bought Marauders to play with my son, and had maybe 4 months of excellent fun play with him. Then the dev's enabled EAC... now I cant play it anymore :-(

I cant blame the mods, they never wrote the game to work on linux it was just a happy happenstance that i could use proton to play it before the EAC transition.

Every game i have in my steam catalogue is at risk of this (except for the native ones obviously)

Re: Anti-Cheat Expert: all your pixels are belong to us

#20

Nothing ruins the fun faster than lag-switching lamers. Accordingly, one can never trust client side security enforcement, or you just create a tit-for-tat economy with cheat-code authors. The better solution is often live admins with a cheat-report button, server-side physics reconciliation trip-wires/audits (no time-travelers), and using clipped areas for character buffering (x-ray vision attempts floods buffers an…

Some chunk of the problem comes from companies trying to avoid spending money on dedicated+good servers, and choosing business models that are hostile to the idea of players banding together to subsidize their own little institutions.
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