I hate to say this but a large percentage (in fact, I believe a majority) of gamers simply do not care about invasive anti-cheats. Right now CounterStrike players are mostly begging Valve for kernel-level anti-cheat since their current solution isn't working at all. If anything, this warning will actually make many player's more impressed with the game. That said, more consumer information is almost always better in any case, especially in this case considering that this is not a requirement of law but of a private company.
Steam games will need to disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages
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Re: Steam games will need to disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
...but you don't buy the game anymore, you acquire a license for using (playing) it. If you want games that you can re-sell, you will have to keep buying them on physical media (or on appstores that don't have DRM like GOG)
I know, that's why I added quotes around "owned", so in other words what I meant is that the EU should force Steam to create the option to transfer that license among its own users.
Yeah but I can just assume that this would also apply to e.g. Microsoft Windows licenses, and that Microsoft lobbies strongly against such a law (also every other vendor who locks software licenses to a particular end-user or licensee)
Note that I wouldn't very much welcome such a law but I wouldn't bet on it happening any time soon
Re: Steam games will need to disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages
#173After the crowdstrike disaster 3rd party kernel drivers need to be shunned for non critical applications. Games publishers have been bad actors in this space for a long time now. The genshin impact anticheat was used in a malware campaign. Rockstar was very misleading trying to imply their kernel driver not being compatible with the steam deck was valves fault.
> The genshin impact anticheat was used in a malware campaign. Rockstar was very misleading trying to imply their kernel driver not being compatible with the steam deck was valves fault.
I mean, nothing of this is new. ESEA, one of the most influential esports leagues, was caught using its anticheat to mine Bitcoin in 2013. [1] This is long out of control, probably since the days BattlEye switched to ring0 in 2012 due to chronic cheating in the DayZ mod, or maybe earlier. Modern anticheats are full-fledged rootkits with extremely complex and targeted payloads siphoning customer data and hijacking all sorts of stuff, and that's not a theory, they actively abuse players' trust and indifference.
If you care about your data and the control of your devices, you should probably avoid them entirely, or at least use them on dedicated gaming PCs on a clean identity, and keep them separate from your LAN and your non-gaming digital life.
Re: Steam games will need to disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages
#174Not a gamer - Is Steam basically a package manager like 'yum' or 'brew', but for games?
More like flatpak/flathub since it has it's own runtime, with the addition of community features and purchasing.
Re: Steam games will need to disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages
#175I hate to say this but a large percentage (in fact, I believe a majority) of gamers simply do not care about invasive anti-cheats. Right now CounterStrike players are mostly begging Valve for kernel-level anti-cheat since their current solution isn't working at all. If anything, this warning will actually make many player's more impressed with the game. That said, more consumer information is almost always better in…
Prop 65 went great! Let's get a warning out for every game with peer to peer networking while we're at it.
Re: Steam games will need to disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages
#176The anti-cheat problem is long-running and complicated. If you choose not to run anti-cheat because you understand that these are opaque rootkits, good for you! That's a totally, 100% valid choice. But please keep in mind:
- you are a tiny minority and not the target customer
- online multiplayer games are an absurdly big business (i.e. there are huge incentives here)
- no, you can't completely solve this server side
- elite players are insanely good - they are by definition outliers, so looking for statistical outliers is not in itself a solution
- game companies are highly incentivized to work with (or at least not antagonize) the elite players (so just throwing them in matches with cheaters is not a solution)
- the stakes are high both for the devs and their users, so "pretty good" anti-cheat is usually insufficient
I hope to see more discussion on possible solutions and tradeoffs - this is a challenging technical problem whose solution (if there is one) is fairly valuable.
[edit: hopefully fixed the tone, per feedback]
Re: Steam games will need to disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
Rampant cheating will wreck competitive multiplayer games fast, so there are perspectives from which this critical. (I’d still lean towards expecting game houses to find another way, kernel drivers are still client side trust mechanisms).
I think the point is that competitive multiplayer games are not critical. Scripting in e.g. league of legends probably doesn't register on 99% of humanities "top 100 most critical things in my life" radar.
The LoL game development studio probably rates their game being a commercial success as a significantly critical thing.
Re: Steam games will need to disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages
#178Not a gamer - Is Steam basically a package manager like 'yum' or 'brew', but for games?
Similar to Google Play with Google Play Services: both an app store and a set of services for games to use
Re: Steam games will need to disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
What? The current PC gaming model where things run on a machine controlled by the user is fundamentally against solving the issue of cheats. You can't prevent everything server-side.
Not our problem. The problem of cheating in games does not weigh more than the users ultimate ownership of and control over their own property. No one has a right to a business model. They can do plenty enough server-side. It's not a blocking problem at all, it's just easier to take over all control of the users pc for your own convenience. Everything, including all valid goals, is easier if you could just have the p…
> The problem of cheating in games does not weigh more than the users ultimate ownership of and control over their own property.
What the users want to use their ultimate ownership and control over their own property for is preventing cheating.
It's not like Riot is forcing this on people against their will, people just don't like playing against cheaters.
The only place I ever hear complaints about kernel anti cheats are people complaining because they want to use Linux and it isn't supported or forums like Hacker News, where people paradoxically care so much about peoples computing rights that they are perfectly happy to limit what gamers are allowed to do with their computers.
Re: Steam games will need to disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
When was the last time you had to install a Linux driver from out of tree?
Most people do install Nvidia’s out‐of‐tree graphics driver. It is definitely a risk.
A few things to consider here:
- This is an abnormal case. Most hardware will work with in-tree drivers. Indeed, few vendors provide out-of-tree drivers for Linux.
- Nvidia is an established and reputable source. We aren't talking about some small hardware developer who doesn't have the resources to create secure drivers.
- Most Nvidia cards have in-tree drivers. There is a loss in performance, but the option usually exists.