Live data from Hacker News

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

areweanticheatyet.com

311–320 of 485 posts

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

#311
post #262
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…

At least in the world of chess (which has the OG matchmaking system, ELO), cheating is genuinely a problem.

The problem is that it doesn't matter how good you are. You will not beat a computer. Ever. Playing against someone who is using a computer is just completely meaningless. Without cheating control, cheaters would dominate the upper echelons of the ELO ladder, and good players would constantly be running into them.

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

#312
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.

> can't give you the degree of competitive global ranking that players enjoy today

I'm curious to know how player stats and global rankings truly affect game adoption (not that you can accurately measure what I'm asking for). It seems to me the more popular the game the less it matters because everyone becomes a small fish in a big pond. Rank one billion out of a gajillion. The games where it matters more would be the smaller games, which have less of a cheating problem to begin with.

I do agree however that you won't get the adoption without centralization, if only because centralization is exactly where all the money resides, via DLC and other nonsense. Therefore centralization is exactly where all the marketing money goes. And without marketing you don't usually get blockbuster games. So expecting the rootkits to go away is a lost cause, until client-side rendering goes away, at least.

That may be the answer to playing these rootkit titles on Linux: just stream it. I know it's somewhat lame, and I know it adds latency, but I seem to recall a recent demonstrate of a service where the latency is very minimal. Clearly I'm a bit out of touch with the state of the art, heh.

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

#313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The server also doesen't need to tell you they are behind it if they're sneaking This requires the server to calculate line of sight checks for every player, which is costly, requires loading the entire geometry into the server and would be horribly prone to latency. Then you're looking at potential performance problems on the client due to only knowing about a player the second its in view and having to stream the…

Cs2 and Valorant does this, but start sending positions around corners before they're visible.

Basic distance checking is doable, but any kind of "they're ducking behind a 2 feet wall in front of me" is going to be horrible to detect server side.

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

#314

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.

> 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 communi…

> and the playerbase overwhelmingly prefers matchmaking

The server browser is buried under a couple layers of obtuse menus (and, at present, is completely broken on my SteamOS machine) while matchmaking is obvious and straightforward. You cannot come to any reasonable conclusions about player preference given the way the UI drives players towards matchmaking and away from servers. If they were presented on equal footing you might have a point.

Consider also TF2. It launched as a server-based game, and in the years after matchmaking was added Valve went through many UX iterations designed to drive traffic to it before it was more popular.

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

#315

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.

> can't give you the degree of competitive global ranking that players enjoy today I'm curious to know how player stats and global rankings truly affect game adoption (not that you can accurately measure what I'm asking for). It seems to me the more popular the game the less it matters because everyone becomes a small fish in a big pond. Rank one billion out of a gajillion. The games where it matters more would be th…

WRT player stats and rankings: I'm inclined to disagree. Rankings in small team-based game communities tend to be pretty noisy. Matchmaking often ends up constrained by the number of online players searching for a game at the same time, so the teams may not be well balanced, and the outcome of the match can be decided by the presence of a single highly skilled player who happened to be searching for a match at the right moment. The resulting rankings aren't necessarily a good measure of player skill.

Larger games have the luxury of being able to place players into teams consisting entirely of other players of similar skill levels, against teams of similar composition. The results of those games are a better reflection of those players' skill.

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

#316

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.

> If you are a casual who doesn’t care about game integrity, you probably aren’t the target audience.

Friendly reminder. 90% of games are not competitive multiplayer and don't need any anti cheat to be enjoyable.

My main entertainment is video games and books (no TV) in equal proportions so I'm far from "casual". I play zero competitive multiplayer due to the "communities" being invariably toxic.

Last time I played something like that it was Starcraft 2 when it was new. Enjoyed being called a stupid noob when I won.

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

#317
post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Back then at least you could do something about it. Back then, the most common option taken was leaving the server to find another one.

Something you are explicitly punished for in modern matchmaking. Unless you want to be downranked or even temp banned you must suffer the cheater.

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

#318
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.

UGC Highlander and the countless CS pug servers show otherwise, to some extent.

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

#319
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…

Community-run servers weren't a magic bullet, and they had a lot of other problems that modern matchmaking systems solve more effectively.

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

#320

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.

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

PunkBuster and later VAC were commonplace. Anti-cheat middleware is not new by any stretch.
Post reply on HN