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Thank You, Valve

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Re: Thank You, Valve

#281

Post by account42 »

toyg wrote: post #151
tapoxi wrote: post #30

Is it too little, too late? Microsoft now owns a lot of the biggest game franchises through the Activision and Bethesda acquisitions, and I wouldn't be surprised if they actively block Proton support by using UWP or Windows-specific anticheat.

Microsoft cannot politically afford such brazen anti-competitive moves. Because of accidents of history, their position is somewhat unique. They can close the platform to third-parties if they really want (although I don't think it will ever happen), but actively blocking interop efforts would directly contravene a lot of very well-established legislation.

Just like they cannot affort to use their OS to push Edge? Doesn't seem to be stopping them.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#282

Post by skinkestek »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #232
unityByFreedom wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Profit is fine, monopolies are not. It's not a hard line to draw.

OK, but Steam has a near-monopoly on games, Spotify has a near-monopoly on music, and both of these are working great for me as a consumer. Netflix had a monopoly, but now not, and it's shit. I have to work out what platform a show is currently streaming on, and decide whether it's worth paying for that to see the show, and the lineups are constantly changing. Honestly, going back to piracy for video is looking good…

> OK, but Steam has a near-monopoly on games,

Playstation, XBox and Nintendo all want a word with you first.

After that Fortnite and PUBG developers are waiting.

> Spotify has a near-monopoly on music,

ITunes wants a word with you too it seems.

> and both of these are working great for me as a consumer.

Good. That is because both Valve and Spotify know how vulnerable they are.

> Netflix had a monopoly, but now not, and it's shit.

Unlike Spotify they weren't humble.

They abused customers by enforcing the dumb rules of the film industry.

I'd almost say good riddance to them but it's not in me to enjoy others misfortune.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#283

Post by 0x7f5da9 »

parkingrift wrote: post #245
scrollaway wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incorrect, there’s lots of cheats that are completely seamless and just improve your performance without being a completely binary “perfect headshot” vs “always miss” or something. I guess your last encounter with aimbots was in the early 00s…

Have you ever played Warzone? People sniping 700+ meters and they can't even see you on their screen. Obvious map hacks, aim bots, and even some hilarious shit like super speed or the ability to drive a car through walls to run you over. Besides, it's not just a matter of improving accuracy. Elite players are elite in multiple facets of the game. Movement, general awareness, map awareness, accuracy, etc. Many of thes…

Warzone is weird. I can't understand why speedhacks, 'silent aim' (you can shoot in a direction different from your view angle) or flying cars are even a thing.

This was impossible in Q3A (1998) without introducing an input lag thanks to client side prediction. Server also didn't send you updates on other clients that are too far away, behind a hill - you'd pretty much only receive positions of those you could see, hear or that could see you. In Warzone, you can see everyone on the map with a wallhack.

I really wonder why the game is designed this way. I guess it might be to limit required computation power of the servers? They still do stuff like hit detection, so server surely has some idea of the physics.

On top of all that, this stuff is possible even today, months or even years after such exploits being widely known. They do have a kernel-level AC driver, but they don't even seem to detect trivial hacks from the server-side.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#284

Post by meheleventyone »

parkingrift wrote: post #125
busterarm wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The serious cheats in competitive games these days don't rely on hacking the game anymore. They use a separate computer connected taking your HDMI out as an input and then controls your mouse and keyboard inputs. They use ML models and OpenCV. You watch the second computer's monitor and it draws huge boxes around things you shoot and it assists your aim. It doesn't even have to be a PC game, you can do the same with…

This is why anti-cheat should be performance based. Build a model based on the way that verified elite players play the game, and their performance. Compare “normal” players against the model and look for outliers. Manually review accounts that look suspicious. Cheat behavior is obvious. Ridiculous long distance accuracy. Weird movement. Weird map awareness. Weird awareness of other players. Etc.

If you want to detect obvious cheating behavior shouldn't you train the recognition software on cheating behavior not elite players?

Re: Thank You, Valve

#285

Post by grae_QED »

At this point, Valve has yet to disappoint me. Even their failures, like the Steam Controller, were amazing pieces of tech. The Steam Deck is no exception. It's exactly what I've been wanting: a SFFPC that doubles as a portable gaming console with Linux natively installed. Bravo Steam!

Re: Thank You, Valve

#286

Post by dncornholio »

deadbunny wrote: post #264
dncornholio wrote: post #86

Thanks Valve, indeed. But no, 2022 will also not be the year of the Linux desktop. I compare Wine with ductape. It works but don't ask how. It's fine for casual gamers, but these are few. The year of the Linux desktop will only come when all the developers treat Linux as a native compilation target. When Linux has all the drivers. As long as games get "emulated" on Windows in Linux, people will always choose Windows.

And how do you get to a big enough market share to become a default compilation target? I'd argue that Wine/Proton are a bridge to that. If you can make every game available on Linux via wine/proton then you would have to assume that every one of the Windows holdouts (Ok, most. Some people always find excuses) will swap to Linux as their primary machine, you can then, with reasonable confidence say "Linux has X marke…

I totally agree, I'm just debunking the year of the Linux Desktop hype. This has been sad so many times, and still not happening. Just as it's not happening this year.

This is from personal experience because I was very excited about SteamCMD. But after trying to run some dedicated servers (for some sim-racing titles), I still got win32 binaries and had to run them thru Wine. Switched back to Windows because the performance was noticeable worse.

Again, it's fine for casuals but for the average PC gamer a big no no.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#287

Post by skinkestek »

emersion wrote: post #24

To add on this: Valve works with upstream developers on upstream code, so their work benefits the whole FOSS ecosystem. They are funding a lot of kernel, Mesa, Wayland, Wine and KDE developers. (Disclaimer: I'm a Valve contractor.)

Thanks for your effort too then! Good work!

Extra well wishes if you work on the general kernel improvements or KDE tech, that stuff has made my life more enjoyable for close to 20 years or so.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#288

Post by flowless »

coldpie wrote: post #235
txdv wrote: post #181

I think they started using their proton layer for dota2. I am lately experiencing lags during their heavy animations when presenting Arcana and special game modes, other than that it works fine. I have a lot of games since I buy 3 year old games for 5 dollars and most of them work fine. The newest games with special anti cheat systems probably do not work. But this is a huge step. They are ahead of the competition. I…

> I think they started using their proton layer for dota2. Nope, DOTA 2 is a native Linux game: https://steamdb.info/app/570/config/

Recently it switched to running via Proton if you had Steam Play enabled (and broke completely for me). Solution is/was to disable Steam Play and it will use native version.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#289

Post by LinuxBender »

Rooster61 wrote: post #28

I dig most of this article, and I do applaud the work Valve is doing for the Linux gaming ecosystem, but I draw a line at supporting kernel level anti-cheat drivers. That trend in gaming bothers me to no end, and I refuse to knowingly install a game that features one. The presence of 15 year old script kiddies using aimbots does NOT IN ANY WAY justify having kernel level control over my machine, Linux or otherwise. V…

I agree with this. In my professional past I always pushed back on kernel modules unless everyone on the project agreed that once installed this was no longer Linux but rather a proprietary appliance and the 3rd party is now responsible for the uptime and security of the server. The DevOps and operations teams are entirely off the hook for supporting that appliance. I won most battles, lost a few. There was always some vendor trying to sell a SSD card that required a kernel module instead of just presenting itself as a generic SAS devices really a really high queue depth.

I would make an exception if someone managed to get Linus Torvalds to sign off their kernel code. Nobody ever bothered and there were always awkward but predictable silent pauses from vendors.

Oh and add to this all of the servers handled the most sensitive data to ever touch the internet. Vendors would sometimes entertain the idea of their code getting 3rd party code and security reviews but it never got past the idea stage.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#290

Post by [deleted] »

airstrike wrote: post #226
hbn wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Claiming will be the year of the Linux desktop has become a running joke among me and my friends. It's an inside joke across a much larger chunk of the PC gaming zeitgeist than your friend group! And it's what the author was referencing. But he didn't really make a claim, he said "hopefully"

In fact, it was never really associated with gaming. It's arguably the most quintessential Linux joke since, I don't know, at least the early 2000s

[deleted]
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