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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

#301

Post by LMYahooTFY »

LanceH wrote: post #277
LMYahooTFY wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 espec…

I agree with you in sentiment and am very nostalgic for the pre-monoculture days, but I also acknowledge that competitive games are a multi-billion dollar industry, and trying to moderate a game with millions of players in a distributed environment is just a non-starter.

You reject the premise that such control is necessary for your idea of fun.

But millions of players enjoy ranked matchmaking enough that without aggressive anti cheat you will wind up with cheaters.

I hate the root kits as well, but if you spend any time playing Valorant vs CS, you will see the difference. If I play CS consistently I'll get cheaters once or twice a week. In Valorant it's almost unheard of by comparison. It sucks, but that's just what's happening.

Do I wish I at least had the option in Valorant or whatever to host a server? Absolutely. Do I think they use the rootkits maliciously? No, generally not. Do I think studios are disincentivized to provide server hosting due to DLC or microtransactions? Definitely. But I also think there's often also a game integrity component. All of these things can be true simultaneously.

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

#302

Post by alex7734 »

zeta0134 wrote: post #96
360MustangScope wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn’t have to be 100%. The point is to make it inconvenient. The majority of people will not do it if it is inconvenient. Thats the point to many things in life that you just make it more difficult and most people won’t be bothered to attempt to circumvent whatever it is. There will still be circumventers but it is will be less than if you just said fuck it.

Sure. That also means it doesn't have to be kernel-level rootkits that fundamentally break the security model of my operating system and risk my bank account. Most people will be stopped by userland anticheat, right? It's inconvenient. So ... put it *there.* And if someone does the kernel bypass thing, well, rely on server-side heuristics (which are imperfect, but also unknowable to the attacker) and you'll discourag…

> Helpfully eSports players tend to have video captures of their gameplay, and most of these "undetectable" cheats are real obvious if you actually watch the footage. That catches most of the serious stuff at the upper level. It's why video verification has been a thing in the speedrunning scene for such a long time.

There's a subreddit called /r/vacsucks which is full of pro players blatantly cheating and getting away with it while the rest of the idiots think they're just good players.

Or, depending on your point of view, full of idiots flagging any player better than they are as cheating.

Aimbots can be "humanized" enough that any such determination becomes subjective.

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

#303

Post by krelian »

Mindwipe wrote: post #172
gordonfish wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It does mean that a signed OS image is running, so demonstrates that the kernel was unaltered at start-up. It also demonstrates further levels of driver signing robustness.

I'm not really familiar with Secure Boot too much. Researching suggests that users can add their own keys so they are trusted by UEFI. Won't this resolve for linux users that must have secure boot on?

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

#304

Post by AJ007 »

ndriscoll wrote: post #280
organsnyder wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The problem is the reverse of what is being argued here. The stakes are high because of how much money these companies are making off of DLCs/in-app purchases. The game operator thus has an incentive to ensure that high value customers can't be banned by third parties. Instead of just being banned, the player is suspended 24 hours or something, and then they come back.

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

#305

Post by rasz »

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?

oh but that would mean more computation on the server, cant have that!

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

#306

Post by rowanG077 »

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…

Not really true. For years you had both co-existing. Anti-cheat and people running their own servers where they could ban people.

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

#307

Post by LMYahooTFY »

Rohansi wrote: post #298
LanceH wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 espec…

This has nothing to do with anti-cheat. I work on Rust and most servers are hosted by the community and there is a good modding+custom map scene. The game has an anti-cheat because it's a big target for cheaters.

Do you work on community maps?

Rust remains maybe the last true community game that's just solid all the way through where the studio is good to its players and doesn't patronize and betray them. I can have the sort of fun I would have had 20 years ago in Rust, and everything else feels like monocultural slop by comparison.

I wish more of my friends wanted to play it, and wish I had more time for it.

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

#308

Post by squigz »

keyringlight wrote: post #210
squigz wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let's be real, what % people among those who game are interested in running their own game server? Let's put it differently: What % of people among those who program are interested in maintaining open source software? A very low %, and yet it's a thriving ecosystem. To bring it back to gaming: How many people who game are interested in modding, or creating models/maps/etc? Again, a very low %, and yet...

Running/renting hardware and connectivity and administrating a service and development are slightly different.

It's not the 2000s anymore - you don't have to run/rent "hardware" and worry about "connectivity" and whatnot. For most games that offer dedicated servers, there are services with easy to use panels with fancy colored buttons and everything.

As another example: how about hosting a website?

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

#309

Post by jsheard »

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.

> 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.

Case in point, Counter Strike is a rare example of a popular game which supports both the "modern" matchmaking paradigm and the classic community server paradigm... and for better or worse the playerbase overwhelmingly prefers matchmaking.

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

#310

Post by 999900000999 »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #267
iknowstuff wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes a stable ABI and a single target for apps. Don’t expect music production to ever show up for gnu/linux. Maybe Android

Bitwig is available for Linux, but I don't know what the limitations are.

A lot of VSTS aren't going to work even with tricks like WINE.

They often have complicated auth systems, etc.

I don't really want to learn a new DAW.

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