Steam games will need to disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages • Hacker News Board

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

#431

Post by lupusreal » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 10:21 AM UTC

arp242 wrote: post #107

plopz wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think server side statistical analysis can go a long way to detect stuff like that. Obviously its always a cat and mouse game between devs and cheaters, and there are always workarounds, but theres a lot more the devs could be doing without relying on invasive client side detection.

You can tune the aimbot to be as good as the server allows, maybe with a bit of variation to throw it off. And realistically, some real non-cheating players will by chance just have similar statistics to bots, especially since the bots will start doing their best to mimic real players. Also many players don't need to cheat all the time; just in that critical moment when it really matters. Didn't Magnus Carlsen say he…

> Didn't Magnus Carlsen say he only needs a single move from a chess computer in the right moment to be virtually guaranteed win?

That's because he's an elite chess player. Him cheating once per game could make the difference between being number 1 or number 10 but either way he's up there.

But for you or me, cheating once per game wouldn't make a difference. We'd still be ranked as nobody plebs. To get ranked high enough for people to know our names we would have to cheat dozens of times a game, and experienced players would easily peg us as cheaters.

Try cheating on chess.com, if you cheat enough to make a meaningful difference their servers will automatically nail you with statistics.

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

#432

Post by proaralyst » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 10:25 AM UTC

wiz21c wrote: post #390

> kernel-level anti-cheat Add UEFI on your PC and DRM in your browser. And next, your governement will ask you to add its anti pedo-pornography tools. And then we have a new episode of Black Mirror...

What's your problem with UEFI? If your OEM wanted to install malicious firmware they can do that in BIOS no?

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

#433

Post by gigatexal » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 10:25 AM UTC

mrpippy wrote: post #349

yreg wrote: post #195

I've just reinstalled GTA V last week and I was very surprised to find out that I now have to install a rootkit to run it. They had the balls to add a mandatory kernel extension into a game that I've bought 10 years ago and that I wish to play in single player only. I find it utterly ridiculous. As usual, piracy would have been the superior experience.

Add ‘-nobattleye’ to the Steam command-line launch options and you can play single-player without any installs. (Rockstar really should’ve made this a separate launch option like other games do)

Call of duty 6 launches the single player campaign from the main launcher and I noticed they advertise the anti cheat stuff being enabled (I forget what it’s called). For a single player game. Smh.

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

#434

Post by pjc50 » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 10:26 AM UTC

Aeolun wrote: post #370

neilv wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the reasons I run a PS5 instead. AFAIK, there's fewer cheaters on PlayStation current-gen than on PC, and I don't have to worry about anti-cheat kludges corrupting my "rig".

You mean all the anti-cheat options are pre-built into your rig?

Yes. It's kind of an odd situation, because it's one where it's a benefit to me if other people are running anti-cheat. A limited sort of remote attestation that the people you're playing with aren't running certain kinds of software that peeks into or alters the memory image of the game or its graphics drivers.

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

#435

Post by maccard » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 10:30 AM UTC

gspetr wrote: post #413

Aeolun wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you truly expect any steam games to have anything like a root kit that’d exfiltrate your credentials? I feel if this were the case literally anything I install on my PC would be suspect. Installing ssh would be a much more scary thing than a random steam game.

>Do you truly expect any steam games to have anything like a root kit that’d exfiltrate your credentials? https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/steam-game-mo... "Downfall, a fan expansion for the popular Slay the Spire indie strategy game, was breached on Christmas Day to push Epsilon information stealer malware using the Steam update system. Once installed on a compromised computer, the malware will collect…

That's not a steam game, that's a user mod (read: random binary downloaded from the internet and executed). Also, it doesn't need kernel level access to do any of that stuff, it can get by just fine with normal application level permissions.

This is no different to downloading a random binary off the internet and being surprised it's malicious.

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

#436

Post by maccard » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 10:40 AM UTC

nathants wrote: post #344

dlock17 wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of this, when you can just play on console. I know cheaters theoretically exist there, but in low enough numbers on my PS5 games that they don't impact my user experience. Kudos to your insane game plan. Gonna be hard to get any marketing from Twitch streamers though.

thanks! if the plan isn’t insane, why bother. ps5 can’t play 360hz and can’t use performance mode graphics. consoles are great, but esports will always be on pc. input cheats are common on pc and console, there isn’t a difference anymore. dual pc streaming will work fine. maybe we include obs in the iso at some point, but probably not. also, this game is mnk only. next game will be controller only. gotta keep inputs…

> thanks! if the plan isn’t insane, why bother.

This is the only reason you need to keep going.

> ps5 can’t play 360hz and can’t use performance mode graphics. This [0] is your game. Without running it (because I'm not installing your OS on my machine, no offence) there's no reason that wouldn't run at 360Hz on a PS5. A PS5 is an 8 core machine with a dedicated GPU; it's going to be vastly more powerful (and has the advantage of being standardised hardware) than the random beater laptops your players are going to run. If you're talking about rendering at 360Hz - How many people realistically have that sort of monitor? And if they need to splash out £250 for it, we're getting close to the price of a console _anyway_ where you can play other games too.

> consoles are great, but esports will always be on pc.

Except for fighting games, sports games, and most importantly CoD.

> input cheats are common on pc and console, there isn’t a difference anymore.

Theoretically, yes. Practically speaking, input cheats are widespread on PC, and non-existant on console. (that's not to say XIM and co don't exist, but they're nowhere near the adoption level that's seen on PC).

[0] https://better.game/#/

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

#437

Post by nathants » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 10:42 AM UTC

red_admiral wrote: post #409

nathants wrote: post #236

kernel level anticheat is not enough. client inputs have to be trusted, and there is no provenance. the kernel has no visibility of inputs. i’m shipping a 100 player matchmaking game now. clients tick at 360hz, server ticks at 120hz. fair up to 60 ping, which covers entire continents. servers are metal, not vms. epyc 4244p with 2Gbps egress, 1 server per 15 minute game. mitigations=off and nosmt on all clients and th…

DOS era "insert game disk 1 and reboot to play" vibes.

building an archiso, flashing it, and then booting is very satisfying.

[x670e][~/repos/WickedEngine/Protoverse/reboot-to-play][better-game][us-west-2][-][master]

>> bash flash.sh /dev/sda 1224736768 bytes (1.2 GB, 1.1 GiB) copied, 52 s, 23.3 MB/s

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

#438

Post by johnisgood » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 10:48 AM UTC

veunes wrote: post #382

yreg wrote: post #195

I've just reinstalled GTA V last week and I was very surprised to find out that I now have to install a rootkit to run it. They had the balls to add a mandatory kernel extension into a game that I've bought 10 years ago and that I wish to play in single player only. I find it utterly ridiculous. As usual, piracy would have been the superior experience.

Piracy shouldn’t feel like the "premium version" of a product...

But the reality is that it often is.

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

#439

Post by nathants » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 10:48 AM UTC

maccard wrote: post #436

nathants wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

thanks! if the plan isn’t insane, why bother. ps5 can’t play 360hz and can’t use performance mode graphics. consoles are great, but esports will always be on pc. input cheats are common on pc and console, there isn’t a difference anymore. dual pc streaming will work fine. maybe we include obs in the iso at some point, but probably not. also, this game is mnk only. next game will be controller only. gotta keep inputs…

> thanks! if the plan isn’t insane, why bother. This is the only reason you need to keep going. > ps5 can’t play 360hz and can’t use performance mode graphics. This [0] is your game. Without running it (because I'm not installing your OS on my machine, no offence) there's no reason that wouldn't run at 360Hz on a PS5. A PS5 is an 8 core machine with a dedicated GPU; it's going to be vastly more powerful (and has the…

i mean, i haven't built an os. it's just standard archlinux with minor conf. my binaries will run, but they would regardless of the platform.

i can't tell users to go into bios and turn off smt. i can tell them to boot an iso, and have it preset to do that via kernel cmdline. owning the os means i can tune the network stack, the os, the kernel, anything that helps performance. the game itself has minimal config, only keybinds.

i'm really targeting one player base: fortnite ranked/competitive players.

fortnite competitive does exist on console, but barely. it's an after thought, and the game can barely run, even on ps5. most importantly, it doesn't let you set graphics to the settings every pro uses. on console you have default high graphics. all serious players migrate to pc.

the game will run on beater laptops, but it's not a great experience. the players i'm targeting all have desktop pcs and 1080p240 monitors already. if i can get 1% of 1% of fortnite ranked players to try, that would be inglorious. if it's just me haning out with 99 aws servers, that's fine too.

i want there to be an on ramp for new players, but optimizing for low end spec is not a goal. especially with 100 players all standing next to each other, low end hardware falls over. will probably have to limit to 50 or even fewer players depending on how much low end hardware shows up to play.

input cheats are common on console for fortnite, i'm not sure about other games. reads video from hdmi, mitm controller outputs. multiple generations of that, some of it works on pc too, and then pc has a whole new host of similar tech.

input provenance is the only real solution that i can see. the rest is shadows on a cave wall.

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

#440

Post by soderfoo » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 10:50 AM UTC

parl_match wrote: post #410

soderfoo wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (Rockstar really should’ve made this a separate launch option like other games do) This is what happens when a producer's/product manager's cherished KPIs come before UX. In their mind, adding a toggle in the launcher would lead to lower engagement and player acquisition. We, the players, fail to recognize how our gaming experience can be enhanced by using social features like leader boards, guilds, or in game chat…

> This is what happens when a producer's/product manager's cherished KPIs come before UX. > In their mind, adding a toggle in the launcher would lead to lower engagement and player acquisition. Not "in their mind". It does and they have the data to show it. Very frustrating situation.

Yeah, it's just me being an idealist and projecting.

I acknowledge what the analytics show, but always allude to the hypothetical casual loner segment who we lack data on because we pushed them away or we don't measure things relevant to them.

I'm a boomer millenial, or whatever we're called now, and never took to online gaming, so I'm part of this segment.

Casual loners are irrelevant to the monetization and in game economy people, resulting in relegation to second class status.

Until someone figures out a way to milk this segment for that juicy recurring revenue, consumable$, $kins, etc..., we must accept our fate, largely an afterthought.