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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

#271

Post by maccard »

vablings wrote: post #250
xeonmc wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And under such system, how do you stop people from abusing latency-compensation to make their character appear out of thin air on the opponent’s perspective by fake-juking a corner to trick the netcode into not sending the initial trajectory of your peeks?

Fortnite had this same issue when BR was first released. It was promptly fixed after cheaters started abusing it by adding more stringent checks.

Fortnite has a fairly invasive root kit level anti cheat too, don’t forget.

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

#272

Post by hparadiz »

Kuinox wrote: post #270
hparadiz wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is drudging up some formative memories. In the counter-strike / TF2 communities you'd have servers that would grant vote kick rights with more playtime and some of those regulars would then apply for mod rights. It worked quite well.

It still doesn't solve the unfair votekick problem. People with more play time, doesn't have necessarly the abilities nor tools to judge if someone is cheating. Take a look at the trackmania community, some cheaters are caught years later, because they played it smart. Some cheating can't only be observed by looking at the statistics, or hard proof of cheating being ran.

It's a pub. It doesn't matter as long as it's not obvious aim bots and people are having fun. Besides when it's a 32 player instant respawn death match server you have like 200-300 regulars. That type of cheating was never an issue in those because the servers were always full during peak times and everyone kinda knows each other.

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

#273

Post by drdaeman »

dmayle wrote: post #262
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…

The only actual problem with cheating is leaderboards. When you have accurate matchmaking, you will be playing against other players of a similar skill level. If you we're playing in single-player mode, it wouldn't bother you that some of the players were better than others. Whether the person you're playing against is as good as you because they have aim assist, while you have a 17g mouse and twitch reflexes shouldn…

Not just single player. Even in competitive multiplayer a lot of the complaints about "cheating" are actually complaints about matchmaking, and "cheating" is a giant red herring (griefing is a different matter, of course, that gets lumped into the umbrella term of "cheating"). But trying to explain this is typically like pissing against the wind, because people already believe in the existing status quo (no matter how irrational it is) and no one wants to change their beliefs unless it obviously and immediately short-term benefits them.

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

#274

Post by maccard »

lwansbrough wrote: post #260
kamranjon wrote: post #145

At this point - you would think that cheaters could be detected on the server side by either training a model to flag abnormal behavior or do some type of statistics on the movement patterns over time - is a client-side anti-cheat really required?

What you’ll find is that a subset of players define a behaviour and now you have to prove that that behaviour is cheating. For most behaviours that could be cheating, it will overlap with skilled players. Examples would be pre-aiming corners and >99th percentile reaction time. You need a false positive rate well below 1%.

It’s estimated that cod warzone has 45 million players - a 0.1% false positive rate at that player count is 45000 people. That’s a _lot_. It needs to be orders of magnitude less than that.

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

#275

Post by cortesoft »

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…

There are still plenty of games that use community hosted servers for multiplayer. I play some of them (Rust, for example).

First, cheating is absolutely still an issue in Rust. Sure, server admins can kick them out... once they have been discovered, verified by an admin, and kicked. The damage is usually done by then, and that is the best case scenario... often, the admins aren't available at that moment, because they are normal people who are not online all the time.

Plus, this means you have to search and find a good server to play on. That isn't always easy, and limits your ability to find a good game.

Second, lots of games I love to play don't make sense in the 'server hosted by a community member' model.

I love playing sports games... Madden, FIFA (now called FC), NBA2k, etc. The best way to play those games is often 1on1 against someone who is close to your skill level. It isn't fun to play against people way worse or way better than you.

The only way to do this in a way that lets me get a good game whenever I want to play is to have some sort of matchmaking system, that keeps track of how good i am and finds players who are about the same skill level. There is no way this would work on user hosted servers, and even if it did, why would a user hosted server be better at solving this problem than a company hosted one? You need a TON of players to be able to do good skill based matchmaking 24 hours a day.

I have been playing multiplayer online games for over 30 years. I started playing when I had to call my friend on the phone, tell him to tell his family not to answer the next call because it was my modem calling, and then hope to god my sister didn't pick up the phone during our game and break the connection. We had to develop a code to signal if I was actually trying to call him to talk about an issue; if I called and hung up immediately it meant I was voice calling and the next call he should answer with the phone.

I have played every iteration of multiplayer gaming. I played Warcraft II when you had to pay $20 to subscribe to Kali to use their virtual IPX service. I played local Counterstrike games at the college dorms on the local network (which was not even a switched network!) I run Minecraft servers for my kids on my local network. I have written multiplayer games for both peer-to-peer and server based multiplayer.

No, you can't recreate the modern convenience and pleasure of company provided matchmaking by going back to community hosted servers.

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

#276

Post by Tadpole9181 »

dmayle wrote: post #262
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…

The only actual problem with cheating is leaderboards. When you have accurate matchmaking, you will be playing against other players of a similar skill level. If you we're playing in single-player mode, it wouldn't bother you that some of the players were better than others. Whether the person you're playing against is as good as you because they have aim assist, while you have a 17g mouse and twitch reflexes shouldn…

Comments like this just make me upset to the point I can't cohere an appropriate argument. It's so out-of-touch with reality and completely ignores the core problem that I have to believe you're just fucking with us.

No, it is not fun to play against smurf accounts using hacks. They aren't doing it for the leaderboards, they actively downrank themselves to play against worse players!

And no, it's not fun to play against cheaters who are so bad at situational awareness their rank is still low, but who instantly headshot you in any tense 1v1 and ruin your experience.

And no, I actually do care that people are cheating in multiplayer games because it's not fair. Since when do we reward immoral fuckwits who can't or won't get better at the game?

Why don't we just start letting basketball players kick each other and baseball players tar their hands while we're at it. Who cares if the sanctity of the sport or competition is ruined - we're a community of apathetic hacks.

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

#277

Post by LanceH »

LMYahooTFY wrote: post #235
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…

This isn't the reason. The reason it's necessary is because players want to be able to play with/against other players around the world. Matchmaking requires some form of anti-cheat. Running your own server as admin can't give you the degree of competitive global ranking that players enjoy today. And cheating is an arms race. It's just hacking. You either preserve game integrity or you're going to have cheaters.

We lost a lot of other things as well. Like modding and especially maps.

It doesn't matter how good the game developers are, someone out there is could make a better map.

The studios took control of everything, and their answer is to rootkit our computers, and to buy more DLC if we want another map.

Personally, I don't accept the premise that such studio control is necessary for me to have fun playing a game.

I especially miss custom maps.

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

#278

Post by bee_rider »

organsnyder wrote: post #261
t-writescode wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did it work in the early Steam (CS 1.4, 1.5, 1.6, CS:S) and GameSpy days?

I think a big part of it is the stakes were just lower. There wasn't money and careers in it the same way there is with egaming now.

I think it’s streaming in particular. With actual competitive games, like, tournaments and whatnot, the players are well known and they are competing in actual tournaments, right? The play is broadcast and all the players have their professional game-player reputation at stake, so there’s a strong incentive to not cheat (it is a very cushy and high-skill job with almost no transferable skills, so like, better not get booted). It is just that streamers might bump into cheating and that’s annoying for their viewers I guess.

When people play in these “competitive” matchmaking queues, it is more like a pickup game. If somebody shows up to a pickup baseball game with a corked bat, they are just kind of a loser and it isn’t a big deal, right? There’s no actual reward for hitting “platinum rank” or whatever in most games, other than skins or something. Nothing real is on the line.

IMO: we really should just have let these people cheat their way out of the normal matchmaking population. Smurfing is a much bigger problem. I don’t actually care if the guy dominating the match with some 60:0 kill-death-ratio is cheating or a semi-pro beating up on casuals, haha.

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

#279

Post by cortesoft »

dmayle wrote: post #262
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…

The only actual problem with cheating is leaderboards. When you have accurate matchmaking, you will be playing against other players of a similar skill level. If you we're playing in single-player mode, it wouldn't bother you that some of the players were better than others. Whether the person you're playing against is as good as you because they have aim assist, while you have a 17g mouse and twitch reflexes shouldn…

This is fine if you are low level, because the cheaters will be too good to play in the low level games.

If you are in the higher skill levels, you might end up playing too many cheaters who are impossible to beat. If the cheat lets you be better than the best human players, the best human player will end up just playing cheaters.

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

#280

Post by ndriscoll »

organsnyder wrote: post #261
t-writescode wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did it work in the early Steam (CS 1.4, 1.5, 1.6, CS:S) and GameSpy days?

I think a big part of it is the stakes were just lower. There wasn't money and careers in it the same way there is with egaming now.

Are the stakes not still zero? Aren't like 99.9% of players not at all competitive in any meaningful sense basically by definition? Like if Counter-Strike has 1M active players, and you are in the 99.9%-ile, you are still only in the top 1,000. Do people watch the rank 1000 players? Are they making a career out of it? What fraction of the player-base thinks they are actually competitive vs. is just playing a game?
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