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

invlpg.dev

101–110 of 161 posts

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

#101
Anti cheat engines are effectively spyware, except accepted spyware.

How can you reliably ensure someone's machine is not running a cheat without having access to what it's running?

Anti cheat is not easy and just the perception of cheaters will nuke pvp games. But personally I want better anti cheat, the only question is at what cost?

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

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valorant took a massive amount of market share from CS:GO, in large part because of a very intrusive but highly effective anti-cheat system. Cheating in online games is a hard problem to solve and can make games completely unplayable. Gamers are generally much more bothered about cheating than about the privacy risks of anti-cheat, whether you agree with them or not. For the paranoid, dual-booting to a games-only OS…

In my experience game engines just suck. How can cheats exist in a server authoritative game engine architecture? But alas, most programmers have apparently no idea what they're doing when it comes to "netcode".

For performance reasons a lot of stuff has to also be calculated (and guessed) clientside (and corrected when discrepancies are found).

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

#103
post #7

The screenshot function pointed in the article out will only be able to take screenshots on older versions of Windows with no compositor, i.e. the ones that draw directly to the scan-out framebuffer. That's why he found it's not used anywhere--it's obsolete.

No, this works fine even on current versions of Windows that can only run with the compositor, as the DWM special-cases blits from a display DC or GetDC(0). It will even switch windows out of independent flip if necessary to do this, which can be seen with PresentMon.

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

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valorant took a massive amount of market share from CS:GO, in large part because of a very intrusive but highly effective anti-cheat system. Cheating in online games is a hard problem to solve and can make games completely unplayable. Gamers are generally much more bothered about cheating than about the privacy risks of anti-cheat, whether you agree with them or not. For the paranoid, dual-booting to a games-only OS…

In my experience game engines just suck. How can cheats exist in a server authoritative game engine architecture? But alas, most programmers have apparently no idea what they're doing when it comes to "netcode".

It can be hard to differentiate between insane aim and clever aim assistance

Wallhacks can be mitigated but can't be shut down completely. Valorant for example limits the information provided to clients based on pre-generated tile maps (for example, players in a tile won't have information about enemies on the other side of the map but will have information on the enemies on the adjacent tile within reasonable LoS) but wallhacks still exist because the LoS check has to be overly generous to account for ping and such

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

#105

I’m not much of a gamer, but my kids are growing up and will soon want to play the real stuff. Is there any easy way to see whether a game requires anti-cheat to run? I’d hate to spend top dollar on a game only to find it’ll take over their entire computer and I’ll want to make a hard rule “no games with kernel level anti cheat in this house” or something like that.

Steam sometimes lets you know with a banner in the store page about a required 3rd party software, but there's also https://areweanticheatyet.com/ maintained by Linux gamers.

What's frustrating to me is that games will run the hyper invasive kernel level version of an anti cheat on Windows but will allow Linux plays, which has no such level of access. If we're trusting Linux players with no kernel level monitoring, why not windows players? Have cheater really not caught on that there's a lower bar on that platform? I hope they don't because I like being able to play competitive games with friends without having to reboot first.

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

#106
Im not sure if this is somthing we will ever be able to solve to a satisfactory degree with these top down/automated approaches.

I have been gaming my whole life and I miss the "old" days of having community run server as being the default.

You would go online one day pick a server and play on it in the mode you want (For context: I am talking about Counter Strike:Source). Over time you would get into talking with the regulars on the server and you form some bonds. And if someone does something the majority does not like the can be vote kicked/banned. We took care of cheaters/flamers/grievers that way. An admin on the server can still revoke the ban if the banned person explains why it was unjustified.

No it wasnt streamlined, and it was sometimes unfair, and establishing global leaderboards were difficult (see ESL company).

But you had community involvment and soooooo much content (game mods and skins; all for free btw.) and it felt good to be part of it.

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

#107
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Specifically, it can access screen content, but not window content. As in, passing in the desktop hwnd gets you a picture, passing in a different hwnd gets you a bunch of black. At least as of when I tried it a few months ago on Windows 10.

Does the screen content contain all the windows that are visible, or is it the desktop image?

All of the windows visible on screen. For my use case, I was taking a screenshot of my app (for automated testing), so I ended up taking a full desktop screenshot and cropping it to the window.

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

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Buy that used cheap rtx3090 at your own risk... ;) Which is why this is completely unreasonable.

The admin process differs between companies. Usually if you can verify you are a different person living at a different address, than IT support might remove the flagged signature with proof of sale. I wouldn't count on the admins mercy though, as cheats will often set up shilling-circles or cloud-instances to try to get around bans. I think 2 strikes is quite reasonable to remove people breaking the game for other u…

> The admin process differs between companies. Usually if you can verify you are a different person living at a different address, than IT support might remove the flagged signature with proof of sale. I wouldn't count on the admins mercy though, as cheats will often set up shilling-circles or cloud-instances to try to get around bans.

I'm glad we agree that this is unreliable and therefore not a defense of the approach.

> The probability one will experience problems before a legitimate purchase return window period expires is very low.

Okay, so I buy a card I can actually afford on eBay, put it in my machine, buy a game, and get my account permabanned. What refund am I asking for that makes this okay?

> Have a wonderful day, and maybe try a card game like MTG. =3

This reads as condescending. If you don't mean it that way, then you should consider a different way to try and be friendly lest it undermine your argument. If you do mean it that way, please stop being rude.

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

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valorant took a massive amount of market share from CS:GO, in large part because of a very intrusive but highly effective anti-cheat system. Cheating in online games is a hard problem to solve and can make games completely unplayable. Gamers are generally much more bothered about cheating than about the privacy risks of anti-cheat, whether you agree with them or not. For the paranoid, dual-booting to a games-only OS…

In my experience game engines just suck. How can cheats exist in a server authoritative game engine architecture? But alas, most programmers have apparently no idea what they're doing when it comes to "netcode".

> How can cheats exist in a server authoritative game engine architecture

I don't follow. How does the game being server-authoritative stop clients from running software that automatically aims at people's heads?

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

#110
post #77
post #63

Anti cheat software because one needs to play with people one does not trust and so attempts to get good behavior from strangers by force. Should Magnus Carlsen have required Niemman to get a cavity search? When tons of kids have neuralink implants, should they be polygraphed before taking a spelling test? Cheating is not a technical problem, it's a people problem.

I too wish we didn’t have to encrypt every communication over the Internet

That's a good point. Though I feel there's a significant difference between defenfing comms from external and intermediary parties as opposed to forcing the behavior of the parties one chooses to interact with.
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