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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

#281

Post by janderland »

dietr1ch wrote: post #272
skizm wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a counter strike player, I definitely shy away from the invasive anti cheat stuff… but I’d let valve inject it into my veins if it meant I could actually play and not suspect everyone of cheating all the time. Mostly because Valve has earned my trust. I won’t install games from other companies using similarly invasive techniques though.

While I trust valve, I'm not willing to mess up with my workstation to play. Also, there's hardware cheats, so I don't need a rootkit on my machine, but a server side thing that properly weeds bad players out through reports/trust and automated bans.

Reports only work so well. Overwatch has MANY cheater in spite of vigorous reporting.

Re: Steam games will need to disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages

#282

Post by froggit »

quenix wrote: post #276
andyferris wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, here’s a thought I’ve never had (but might be obvious to others). Could I run windows as a VM guest under Linux and play Fortnite in that (with good GPU performance)? I don’t mind their rootkit running on some dedicated VM - I’ll just consider it my Fortnite unikernel. (I’m also ok with the host OS being Windows or MacOS).

The anti-cheat will be very unhappy when it performs a bunch of arcane heuristics and determines it’s running in a VM.

Why would that matter? Pretty sure running in a VM doesn't facilitate cheating.

Re: Steam games will need to disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages

#283

Post by janderland »

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #116

I think the population of game developers and their knowledge of multiplayer networking is fundamentally getting worse over time, because I see things that should not be architecturally possible in a lot of newer multiplayer games. This whole thing anti-cheat thing is just a separate problem entirely, but it's so painfully exacerbated by the first.

Strange take. These things are being put forward by major companies who hire very good engineers. Riot Games makes the most popular game in the entire world (League of Legends) and they use kernel-level anti-cheating. I interviewed with them and found their test to be one of the more difficult ones I’ve taken. I’m not under the impression they lack the necessary knowledge.

Re: Steam games will need to disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages

#284

Post by righthand »

dmonitor wrote: post #77
Topfi wrote: post #72

Does anyone know whether disclosure of Denuvo and similarly controversial "add-ons" does negatively affect sales? Maybe I am cynical, but I have come to the conclusion that whether it is always online DRM, rootkit-level anti-cheat or the need to have an account for offline play, community anger is often only maintained when a game had other things going against it from the get-go. Not against disclosing this of cours…

The most recent study I saw showed that Denuvo significantly helps revenue capture within the first few months of a game's release https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S18759...

FYI - Denuvo paid for that study.

Re: Steam games will need to disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages

#285

Post by chainingsolid »

drilbo wrote: post #254
wilsonnb3 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People really need to find a better word than 'rootkit' to describe software that users willingly and intentionally give root access.

I think it's fair to say that a lot of users have no idea they're doing so, hence why changes like the one in TFA are necessary to encourage transparency around these practices

I've ran the installer for Vallorent. I don't remember it telling me it was going to go run code in ring 0. And I would likely have ended the install there if they listed any of the downsides.

For most gamers you'd have to invoke Cloud Strike, to explain whats happening. They play games not study CS.

Re: Steam games will need to disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages

#286

Post by dwattttt »

screcth wrote: post #196
0x457 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you are not installing a random anti-cheat kernel driver, you're installing anti-cheat kernel driver provided by a game you've already put on your computer. It's very much the same thing.

User space is not the same as kernel space. User space applications can't access hardware or physical memory. They can't bypass permissions enforced by the OS. None of that applies to hardware or kernel drivers.

I've always appreciated the forthrightness League of Legends deployed here (talking about introducing a kernel driver for anti-cheat: https://www.leagueoflegends.com/en-au/news/dev/dev-null-anti...):

> This isn’t giving us any surveillance capability we didn’t already have. If we cared about grandma’s secret recipe for the perfect Christmas casserole, we’d find no issue in obtaining it strictly from user-mode and then selling it to The Food Network. The purpose of this upgrade is to monitor system state for integrity (so we can trust our data) and to make it harder for cheaters to tamper with our games (so you can’t blame aimbots for personal failure).

Re: Steam games will need to disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages

#287

Post by j-bos »

tw04 wrote: post #277
OtomotO wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly what I tell my friends. I can't play certain games, because they don't run on Linux and even if they did, I am not gonna install a rootkit to run them.

Ultimately, this is why we have consoles. We can have rootkits, or we can have cheating. Nobody has solved cheat prevention without rootkits. If you can, you’d make millions, if not billions. It’s not like the game creators want to have software on your system that has the potential to brick your system.

By this logic wouldn't chess and go need to be played after cavity searches? Cheating is enabled by tech but based on what people decide to do.

Re: Steam games will need to disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages

#288

Post by jhardy54 »

froggit wrote: post #282
quenix wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The anti-cheat will be very unhappy when it performs a bunch of arcane heuristics and determines it’s running in a VM.

Why would that matter? Pretty sure running in a VM doesn't facilitate cheating.

Running a VM gives the parent the ability to read/write arbitrary memory without [even rootkit] anticheat being able to detect, which can facilitate cheating, and therefore can earn you bans. The whole point of the rootkit is that the game can confirm that you don’t have any way to read/write arbitrary memory.

Re: Steam games will need to disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages

#290

Post by j-bos »

steelframe wrote: post #278

I built a separate Arch Linux box just for Steam gaming. I will never log into any of my sensitive accounts -- email, banking, etc. -- on that machine. It's a Framework laptop so I can physically keep the camera and microphone disconnected. I basically treat it like a public terminal.

This is the way.
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