Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Steam games will need to disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages

gamingonlinux.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 660 posts

Re: Steam games will need to disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages

#261

Post by mafuy »

bmicraft wrote: post #187
prerok wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the problem is eventual consistency and these games have a hell to consolidate properly. One user is on a connection with 10ms latency, the other user is on 50 ms latency. Now, if first user does something, and second user can either do something to evade or can do something that actually prevents the first user from acting, how do you consolidate that? The actual timestamp of when exactly what happened helps i…

You might be able to match-make between clients with similar latency and then "enforce" that latency server side by delaying things that "happen faster" then the previously measured latency

No, this implies that actions are in response to something. This is not true. I can shoot my gun at any time, and even randomly. It does not depend on an opponent starting to move.

Re: Steam games will need to disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages

#262

Post by YPPH »

eertami wrote: post #209
ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back when communities hosted servers instead of companies, it seemed less common, even though it was easier to do.

Back then you could just quit the server/match if somebody was obviously cheating (or they got banned). With competitive matchmaking cheaters can hold players hostage until the end of the match, as leaving incurs penalties and cooldowns that temporarily ban you from playing.

There are also cheaters on old games (Modern Warfare II (2009)) that will inject code into your client to disable the quit menu, so you have to dashboard. I can't imagine what psyche someone must have to not only cheat, but force people to play against them.

Re: Steam games will need to disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages

#263

Post by YPPH »

Thaxll wrote: post #47
throwaway48476 wrote: post #2

After the crowdstrike disaster 3rd party kernel drivers need to be shunned for non critical applications. Games publishers have been bad actors in this space for a long time now. The genshin impact anticheat was used in a malware campaign. Rockstar was very misleading trying to imply their kernel driver not being compatible with the steam deck was valves fault.

Cheats and bots are ruining online games though.

This is why I preferred console gaming. You never encountered cheaters until very late in the console's generation. Crossplay ruined that.

Re: Steam games will need to disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages

#264

Post by fngjdflmdflg »

flessner wrote: post #249
fngjdflmdflg wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>nor kernel level anti-cheats to catch cheaters. Do you have some examples of good anti-cheats that are not kernel-level? Do you have any that are as good as Riot's Vanguard? I'd prefer examples of FPS games since these are the most mechanically skill based compared to other genres that have more strategy, but would like to hear any examples you are thinking of. Lastly, if you say server-side, that may work, but many…

As someone that plays CS2 and Valorant regularly... Vanguard hasn't been effective for a while now. The cheating situation is a lot worse than CS in my experience, but every discussion gets shutdown because... well... it's Vanguard. With CS2 I have talked to many players about this and everyone says the same thing: "There's a very noticeable decline in cheaters above 10k Elo."... personally I have pushed beyond 15k a…

I have a very hard time believing that the rate of cheaters go down in high elo. IIRC the new CS2 leaderboard still regularly features cheat companies on it (eg. config by [cheat dev] as the leaderboard name.) I myself do not have any data to back up that claim, but yours completely goes against what I have experienced.

I think the point about wallhack being more common in higher elo is more likely. I would add that some forms of trigger botting and recoil control cheats are actually more difficult to tell than wallhacking. Spinbotters don't get very high elo because they get mass reported because of how blatant they are, likely not due to VAC. I would need some real evidence to believe that claim (although as I said I similarly have no evidence myself to convince you to accept my claim).

One thing I can say is that I do frequently meet cheaters in CS these days, and the issue has gotten so bad in my experience that many cheaters even announce at the start of the game that they eg. have wallhack. Or one team member will turn on cheats if a game is getting close towards the end of the game. Also, the main reason FACEIT exists is for its anti-cheat, and on FACEIT there are almost no reports of cheating, and it's a big deal when it happens. If VAC was really working now we would see more people leaving FACEIT. I must ask when you started playing CS? Because the only way your post makes sense to me is if you started playing around the time when CS2 came out, which indeed did have more cheaters then it does now, but that was truly an exceptional level of cheating and I don't think that is a fair point of comparison, especially as a comparison to Vanguard.

I admit to taking claims about Vanguard at face value and I've never played Valorant (in part due to Vanguard, as I don't want to install a rootkit). But what you say about Vanguard also completely goes against what I have heard about it.

Re: Steam games will need to disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages

#265

Post by odo1242 »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #126
tapoxi wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The API doesn't provide root access, it's typically a simple "is this game running in a secure environment" read API. I really hate "it's a rootkit!" posts like this because it diminishes the severity of actual rootkits.

Can you please clarify how an API which runs in the kernel does not have root access? Because I don't believe that's possible, but perhaps I'm wrong.

The API itself has root access, but does not give user space root access, is what I think the commenter is trying to say.

Re: Steam games will need to disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages

#266

Post by skizm »

fngjdflmdflg wrote: post #171

I hate to say this but a large percentage (in fact, I believe a majority) of gamers simply do not care about invasive anti-cheats. Right now CounterStrike players are mostly begging Valve for kernel-level anti-cheat since their current solution isn't working at all. If anything, this warning will actually make many player's more impressed with the game. That said, more consumer information is almost always better in…

As a counter strike player, I definitely shy away from the invasive anti cheat stuff… but I’d let valve inject it into my veins if it meant I could actually play and not suspect everyone of cheating all the time. Mostly because Valve has earned my trust. I won’t install games from other companies using similarly invasive techniques though.

Re: Steam games will need to disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages

#267

Post by Matheus28 »

akira2501 wrote: post #256
logical_person wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prop 65 went great! Let's get a warning out for every game with peer to peer networking while we're at it.

> Prop 65 went great! The secondary effect is that business will stop using processes and chemicals which require them to carry this warning. You've effectively created a new market segment. Are the labels annoying to the point of comedy? Sure, but it's not /your/ behavior we were trying to modify.

Seeing the warning everywhere has mostly desensitized people to it, which makes it ineffective.

Re: Steam games will need to disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages

#268

Post by ryankrage77 »

nathants wrote: post #236

kernel level anticheat is not enough. client inputs have to be trusted, and there is no provenance. the kernel has no visibility of inputs. i’m shipping a 100 player matchmaking game now. clients tick at 360hz, server ticks at 120hz. fair up to 60 ping, which covers entire continents. servers are metal, not vms. epyc 4244p with 2Gbps egress, 1 server per 15 minute game. mitigations=off and nosmt on all clients and th…

I assume this is satire, because nobody would play a game with those requirements.

Re: Steam games will need to disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages

#269

Post by FactKnower69 »

dbrueck wrote: post #176

The anti-cheat problem is long-running and complicated. If you choose not to run anti-cheat because you understand that these are opaque rootkits, good for you! That's a totally, 100% valid choice. But please keep in mind: - you are a tiny minority and not the target customer - online multiplayer games are an absurdly big business (i.e. there are huge incentives here) - no, you can't completely solve this server side…

>no, you can't completely solve this server side

This is what every dev who can't be bothered to implement relevancy filters says when their server broadcasts the locations of every hidden player to every other player every tick and wallhacks drop a week later

Exactly what can't be fixed server side? Are you just talking about aimbots and other situations where script kiddies can trivially author bots that generate optimal inputs? Because at a certain point that's more a problem with shitty, boring game design that got stale 20 years ago; if the top of your game's execution ceiling is "can the player click on heads perfectly" you have bigger problems

Re: Steam games will need to disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages

#270

Post by throwaway48476 »

ThatPlayer wrote: post #128
throwaway48476 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With community servers an admin only has to police their server, which is a fixed number. More players, more servers, more admins.

But as gaming has grown and become more mainstream, the ratio of enthusiasts who are willing to admin to casual players who don't has changed. Server sizes have changed over time with smaller games like 5v5 becoming way more common.

Just put a password on the server then.
Post reply on HN