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Games using anti-cheats and their compatibility with GNU/Linux or Wine/Proton

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161–170 of 485 posts

Re: Games using anti-cheats and their compatibility with GNU/Linux or Wine/Proton

#161
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it still doesn't prevent cheating.

No, but it seems to vastly reduce it. Compare VAC2 to FACEIT on CS2 for example.

Comparing VAC2 (released in 2005) to FACEIT in 2025 is pretty dumb. There are still absolutely cheaters running rampant on FACEIT and FPL.

The real solution is to limit information sent to the client, make it harder for cheaters to have reliable solutions to get access to critical game information. ARC Raiders has Theia anti tamper (very poor performance) but right now the number of cheaters is minimal because the select few who are smart enough to break the anti-tamper are keeping quiet. See other examples; The Finals, Roblox (Byfron) and Overwatch

https://codedefender.io/sigbreaker/

Re: Games using anti-cheats and their compatibility with GNU/Linux or Wine/Proton

#162

As most of you know, these anti-cheat systems are functionally equivalent to rootkits. There is zero visibility into how these privileges are used for targeted attacks. Due to geographic location of the large game companies this has a geopolitical angle. Fingerprinting of devices and the networks they are in provides a lot of metadata that is most definitely fed into their intelligence apparatus.

Unpopular opinion, but we would be better off with a single open trusted implementation of anti cheat (aka drm) which can attest whatever requirements are desired by the game is met. The only real problem is that it would likely be limited to approved kernel images and someone would need to own that validation and signing infrastructure, but you could imagine having multiple trusted entities have this role.

Kernel anticheat is not really effective because it can be circumvented on the hardware level, for example using direct memory access with a second computer and screen to show the hidden game state.

Cheating is a meat space problem and there is no technical solution to it. Thats why in tournaments there are referees standing behind the players. Ultimately it comes down to checking if metrics like reaction speed are humanly possible, but a rootkit is not really needed for that.

Re: Games using anti-cheats and their compatibility with GNU/Linux or Wine/Proton

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux is resistant to rootkits, which is what these things are, and allows you to remove them, yes. The correct solution is to verify everything server side, or actually have humans watch replays and ban cheaters, but both of those would reduce profits, so will obviously never happen.

CSGO has actual humans watch replays to determine whether people were cheating, it's called overwatch. As can be seen, it doesn't actually stop cheating, at most it ensures that blatant ones are banned after the fact already happened.

CS2 Does not have overwatch anymore. VAC Live is completely AI and its a known fact that valve have a few buttons and sliders to play with to go through ban/boom cycles for cheaters to maximize impact

Re: Games using anti-cheats and their compatibility with GNU/Linux or Wine/Proton

#164

As most of you know, these anti-cheat systems are functionally equivalent to rootkits. There is zero visibility into how these privileges are used for targeted attacks. Due to geographic location of the large game companies this has a geopolitical angle. Fingerprinting of devices and the networks they are in provides a lot of metadata that is most definitely fed into their intelligence apparatus.

Unpopular opinion, but we would be better off with a single open trusted implementation of anti cheat (aka drm) which can attest whatever requirements are desired by the game is met. The only real problem is that it would likely be limited to approved kernel images and someone would need to own that validation and signing infrastructure, but you could imagine having multiple trusted entities have this role.

Imagine wanting tivoization. Horrifying.

Re: Games using anti-cheats and their compatibility with GNU/Linux or Wine/Proton

#165

I'm ordering a new laptop to work on LLM stuff, and while I thought about jumping through the hoops to get Linux running with secure boot... I had a realization, it's a cold day in hell when someone else is going to tell me what I can run on my computer. All the latest multiplayer games are now requiring secure boot on Win11 as well I'm actually wary of all these anti-cheats, they're literally hyperinvasive maleware.…

I honestly don't understand why any game is even checking if secure boot is enabled.

If anything it's for the OS to care about that, not individual programs. Afaik, secure boot doesn't (on it's own) prevent the running of arbitrary software, so how is it actually preventing cheating?

Re: Games using anti-cheats and their compatibility with GNU/Linux or Wine/Proton

#166
The only multiplayer game I currently play is Beyond All Reason (a RTS game).

It's a free and open-source game, so creating a cheat client would be especially easy. But I've never encountered cheating.

I think there's a few reasons for this:

1) The playerbase is small and there is no auto-matchmaking, just a traditional list of servers. This results in the same group of people always playing together. People don't want to cheat when they're playing with acquaintances they see frequently.

2) Spectators are allowed in every game. The top-ranked games usually have several spectators.

You might think this would result in even more cheating, but in practice the spectators would prefer to watch a sneak attacks succeed, because it's funny. It's boring to be whispering the enemy secrets to you buddy on a private Discord, it's more fun to watch your buddy die in a surprising and funny way.

Also, the spectators can spot if a player does something that suspiciously well timed or lucky. The spectators see all, so they have the information needed to spot suspicious behavior.

3) Official servers create an official record of what happened in every game. The entire community has access to all the recordings. If someone thinks cheating is happening they can link to the official game recording on Reddit (or whatever) and everyone can see what happened.

4) An active moderator team reviews every report of cheating. There are official moderators that do the banning, but also volunteer moderators which can watch the recordings and create a trusted written account of what happened; this makes the official moderators have an easier job.

Re: Games using anti-cheats and their compatibility with GNU/Linux or Wine/Proton

#167
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just get a ps5. I went through the same adventure.

I'd much rather invest one powerful machine that cand do work and games instead of two that take up extra space and generate more e-waste.

I still play on my ps2 ... because consoles are linked closely to the games of that generation I would guess that they are tech that are on relative terms least discarded

Re: Games using anti-cheats and their compatibility with GNU/Linux or Wine/Proton

#168
post #151

Amongst the discussion of rootkits and anti-cheat, I would like to add that part of the reason it is necessary is caused by the game companies that took away the standard method of playing multiplayer -- players running their own servers. It used to be pretty easy to just ban people from playing, now we're 100% reliant on their ability to do it. So we have anti-cheat which roots our computer, and still doesn't 100% s…

> caused by the game companies that took away the standard method of playing multiplayer -- players running their own servers

Let's be real, what % people among those who game are interested in running their own game server? I'm definitely one of them, and one of my earliest tech memories was setting up a CS 1.6 game server for a bunch of classmates (and being unable to play myself because the computer had nowhere near enough capacity for both the server and the actual game running at the same time); but it's a minuscule percentage.

Re: Games using anti-cheats and their compatibility with GNU/Linux or Wine/Proton

#169
post #41

kernel anti-cheat are notoriously inefficient and are weaponized by hackers.

Are they? Cheats for games like Fortnite, CS (Faceit), Rust, LoL have become very expensive (100 USD per month are not unheard of) or require you to purchase special hardware. And I have yet to come across an anti cheat driver of the big publishers (EAC, Faceit, Javelin, Vanguard) being exploited and allow access to r/w kernel memory. It is more likely that the driver of some hardware is being exploited for, rather t…

The thousands of RGB drivers from the various manufacturers that are just copy+paste jobs on RWEverything is actually disgusting and Microsoft letting that just happen is a serious problem. Ah yes you added AES to your IOCTL very secure! I'd say the only reason that these drivers haven't been exploited is because of the insane bug bounties in place. There are also other big issues in games, see the whole hack with Apex Legends lmao

Re: Games using anti-cheats and their compatibility with GNU/Linux or Wine/Proton

#170
post #71

Cheats aside, are there any competitive games that include Uber-like rating system? Meaning that you'd need to provide feedback whether you'd play with your opponents/teammates again after a game.

Overwatch (1) had something like that. Not sure if Overwatch (2) still has it, or how it functions now. In higher ELO, people would target good players with "avoid player"^1, effectively soft-banning those people from match making because the pool was small enough. They would still get put in matches eventually but their queues would blow out a lot. From memory it did not have an explicit "match me with this person"…

Overwatch (1 and 2) had/have an avoid system, but it only avoids as teammate. Overwatch 1 use to at the very beginning have a system to avoid a player as a whole and they wouldn't be matched in your game at all, but that was remove really early on, as it is easily abusable against good player (I don't want them on the enemy team, they are too good so just get rid of them entirely) and there was a report system anyway for other kinda bad stuff.

Then there is just the endorsement system, which is just a level from 1-5 and you can endorse people you liked playing with. It doesn't really do much in matchmaking but you can't do certain things if you are below a certain level (I forgot what all it was but you can't make (public?) custom games if you are too low and I think text and voice chat could also get disabled if you are too low).

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