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

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

#221

Post by hparadiz »

Kuinox wrote: post #217
hamdingers wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All true, but of course you're missing the player agency component that renders those issues moot. If any of the above happens, you can simply find another server. Private games (now called "custom lobbies") were available back then too, they're not equivalent to a public server browser.

They are functionally equivalent for the player. The problem with player hosted servers is that it was very hard to get a fair and balanced competitive match, where now it's extremely common with matchmaking on servers hosted by the game company.

Back then at least you could do something about it. Now if there's an obvious cheater you just kinda sit there and take your L, and ask people to make reports.

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

#222

Post by archerx »

embedding-shape wrote: post #108
j-bos wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Even kernel level anti-c-spyware can't stop a cheap vision model hokked to a mouse, see youtube for examples from simple auto input up to full on elctromuscular stimulation.

Based on the latest report from Dice/EA/BF6, seems indeed like they're detecting hardware-based cheating as well: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2807960/view/4972134... Although who knows, they might be outright lying about that just to scare cheaters, but I tend to default to assuming what they're saying is more or less true.

They can’t detect me splitting my hdmi output, feeding one of them to a separate machine with a vision model to detect what needs to be detected and the same machine moving and clicking the mouse. People are already doing this.

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

#223

Post by lwansbrough »

Anti-cheat is a necessity for an enjoyable game experience. If you are a casual who doesn’t care about game integrity, you probably aren’t the target audience.

I don’t want any cheaters in my games. I don’t care if a rootkit is required. Riot has a kernel level anti-cheat and it’s _really_ good. It’s so good in fact that it deters most cheaters from even trying. This is the dream for anyone who wants fair games.

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

#224

Post by hparadiz »

sofixa wrote: post #168
LanceH wrote: 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 ne…

We used to run these servers on machines that today aren't even 20% of the M1 in my MacBook air.

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

#225

Post by hamdingers »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #213

It will be interesting to see how this evolves. It used to be that game developers could safely ignore Linux. But with a growing number of Steam OS, Steam Deck, and Linux + Steam users gaming, it's going to get increasingly more painful in terms of revenue to be telling those users "our game only works on Windows" and just miss out on the revenue and deal with the angry users, forums full of users complaining the gam…

Most game devs can continue to ignore linux and trust that proton will work it out.

It's only the highly competitive online games that have this issue. While they make up a lot of playtime, they're worked on by a tiny minority of developers.

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

#226

Post by maccard »

bflesch wrote: post #162
surajrmal wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

> Cheating is a meat space problem and there is no technical solution to it

Cheating is an arms race - the number of people who are willing to run a second computer with DMA connected to a single machine is vastly smaller than the number of people who are wiling to download a dodgy file from the internet and run it.

> Ultimately it comes down to checking if metrics like reaction speed are humanly possible, but a rootkit is not really needed for that.

If it was that easy, cheating would be a solved problem. An awful lot of play is "I know the reload time is 0.75s, so they're going to appear when they've reloaded" - that's way beyond human reaction time. And that's at "mid level" play - at gold/sliver levels in league of legends knowing cooldowns is considered base knowledge. At higher levels of play, _all_ of your players are statistical outliers.

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

#227

Post by xeonmc »

pmarreck wrote: post #140
bflesch wrote: post #131

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.

I remember trying to install Valorant for the first time, and its ridiculously invasive anticheat kernel mod (or whatever it's called) gave me my first blue (or was it red??) screen I'd seen on Windows in years. Immediately uninstalled it and haven't ever played Valorant to this day. Fuck that crap, if your community is so toxic that you need a rootkit to keep cheaters at bay, then maybe it's more of a community prob…

Is it any coincidence that such state is from the same company behind League of Legends?

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

#228

Post by hamdingers »

Kuinox wrote: post #217
hamdingers wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All true, but of course you're missing the player agency component that renders those issues moot. If any of the above happens, you can simply find another server. Private games (now called "custom lobbies") were available back then too, they're not equivalent to a public server browser.

They are functionally equivalent for the player. The problem with player hosted servers is that it was very hard to get a fair and balanced competitive match, where now it's extremely common with matchmaking on servers hosted by the game company.

They are not functionally equivalent, unless there are games I'm not familiar with where custom lobbies are published in a list for strangers to join. Normally a custom lobby implies invite only.

Not everyone is interested in a "fair and balanced competitive match" where you're guaranteed to win no more and no less than 50% of the time. I actually find that intolerably boring.

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

#229

Post by OkayPhysicist »

Kuinox wrote: post #204
LanceH wrote: 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…

Did you played in this era ? - If you were too good on some server, you'd get banned. - If the admin doesn't know well cheating, he could tolerate something that was obvious cheating. - Cheaters could just change server often. It used to be easy to just ban peoples yes, and it was as easy to switch servers. Plus on most competitive game today, you have custom lobbies, which do exactly what you want, and there is a re…

Custom lobbies don't meet the same need. That's for playing with your friends, or at least, people you vet yourself. Community servers are a sub-community in of themselves: people tend to play on the same servers on a regular basis, allowing you to build rapport, community norms, and have substantially more direct moderation than company-run servers.

Yes, sometimes you run into power-tripping moderators. That comes with the territory of having moderators. But the upsides, of being embedded in a usefully-sized community, and having nearly constant human moderation, not to mention the whole "stop killing games" of it all, far outweigh the need to shop around a bit for a good server.

I think the ideal middle ground is something like Squad's server system: The developers offer a contract to server owners, establishing basic standards that must be met to be a recommended server. Rules forbidding the crazy bigotry that milsims tend to attract, minimum server specs to ensure smooth gameplay, an effective appeals process. If a server meets those requirements, and signs the agreement to keep meeting those standards, they get put on a "recommended" server list (which 90%+ of the playerbase exclusively use). Other servers go on the "custom" server list, which can be modded, or spun up for certain events, or whatever.

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

#230

Post by bigstrat2003 »

limagnolia wrote: post #134
gishh wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

A PS5 is an even more locked down system! There are vastly more games, many I already own, that work on Linux.

I don't personally have a problem with a system being locked down in general. I have a problem with my computer being locked down, or getting rootkits installed on it. So for me at least, playing those games on console is a good solution.
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