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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

#481

Post by BoorishBears »

Eisenstein wrote: post #457
Arch-TK wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason games companies reach for KLA is not because they're dumb and can't be bothered to secure their network protocols on the server side, it's because they don't want to have to hire an inordinate number of human reviewers to make unreliable decisions on whether someone is cheating or not in their game. While KLA is fundamentally flawed (DMA and even CV based cheats are becoming more popular as a result of KLA…

> Want FPS without cheaters? Encourage people to do DIY matchmaking again, DIY server hosting and DIY administration. Yes. This is the answer. There is no solution that relies only on technology that will fix human problems at scale. You can make it harder, but once one person figures it out, everyone has access to it. You need to break it into pieces and let people deal with it on the community level, where communit…

It's only the answer if the goal is to not feel like you're being cheated by cheaters: realistically cheating would be absolutely fucking bonkers if you actually tried to treat DIY matchmaking as a form anti-cheat.

Voting to kick/ban and sharing ban lists only works for ragehacking, but the most joy stealing form of cheating is people using hacks and cheats subtly enough to beat an average player, but not strongly enough to guarantee they'll be caught by the community.

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

#482

Post by bitsandboots »

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...

Ownership is the premium version of a product. Turns out piracy is sometimes the only ownership option. Everything else is just a subscription, license, service.

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

#483

Post by immibis »

BoorishBears wrote: post #481
Eisenstein wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Want FPS without cheaters? Encourage people to do DIY matchmaking again, DIY server hosting and DIY administration. Yes. This is the answer. There is no solution that relies only on technology that will fix human problems at scale. You can make it harder, but once one person figures it out, everyone has access to it. You need to break it into pieces and let people deal with it on the community level, where communit…

It's only the answer if the goal is to not feel like you're being cheated by cheaters: realistically cheating would be absolutely fucking bonkers if you actually tried to treat DIY matchmaking as a form anti-cheat. Voting to kick/ban and sharing ban lists only works for ragehacking, but the most joy stealing form of cheating is people using hacks and cheats subtly enough to beat an average player, but not strongly en…

How's that any different from just having a really good player in your community - which, in many cases, also spoils the fun?

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

#484

Post by strogonoff »

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.

Big game publishers will inevitably flex the “we can impose any restrictions we want at any time, go sue us” in your face at some point. Piracy is indeed the superior experience, unfortunately, though I would add a caveat that as a rule it does not apply to indie titles.

(At least while they stay indie… Not long ago I was reinstalling Minecraft after a long break and found out that Microsoft has the balls to demand that I verify a phone number to play a game I bought more than 10 years ago. Like with GTA V’s rootkit, they don’t care if you want to play single-player—once you’re locked out of the loader, you’re locked out and no human will help you.)

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

#485

Post by BoorishBears »

immibis wrote: post #483
BoorishBears wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only the answer if the goal is to not feel like you're being cheated by cheaters: realistically cheating would be absolutely fucking bonkers if you actually tried to treat DIY matchmaking as a form anti-cheat. Voting to kick/ban and sharing ban lists only works for ragehacking, but the most joy stealing form of cheating is people using hacks and cheats subtly enough to beat an average player, but not strongly en…

How's that any different from just having a really good player in your community - which, in many cases, also spoils the fun?

Are you seriously asking me how getting killed by someone cheating to know exactly where you are feels different than just being outplayed?

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

#486

Post by bitsandboots »

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…

Hey man I just play games to have fun. I guess fun isn't for everyone.

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

#487

Post by bitsandboots »

dbrueck wrote: post #176

The 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…

Perhaps true of competitive games. But I find anticheat mainly exists to protect microtransaction games. And generally those games aren't worth playing, so having the little badge on steam can help avoid wastes of time.

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

#488

Post by lovehashbrowns »

madeofpalk wrote: post #429
musjleman wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With the way that computer vision and AI continue to improve, I imagine that we will soon have completely external and undetectable cheating peripherals, simply capture the screen direct from the display output, and pass inputs via mimicking a usb human input device. This already exists. You can stream your screen to another machine running image recognition and pass your mouse input through a controller that injec…

And all of that for something that is worse - software cheats usually get access to more information than just the pixels rendered to the screen. Seeing through solid walls and stuff like that.

You can do DMA cheating if that’s a non-negotiable for you but it is far more expensive. You install a direct memory access (DMA) card on your “clean” machine and flash it with firmware that hides the fact that it’s a DMA card since some rootkit level anticheats will look for that.

The card then sends memory data to a second computer (dirty) which has the cheat software installed but no rootkit anticheat. The dirty computer can then read all the memory it wants, look through walls, shows enemy health, etc. but on a second computer and monitor. Pretty sure there’s hardware to blend both monitor outputs, though most people do two monitors I believe.

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

#489

Post by sphars »

WithinReason wrote: post #407

Hope there will be a tag. I wish they also had a tag for "requires third party account" so I could just filter those games out so I never see them.

I use the Augmented Steam extension[0], which shows a more prominent banner if a game has DRM, anti-cheat, requires a third-party account, or other gotchas. Plus a bunch of other useful features

[0]: https://github.com/IsThereAnyDeal/AugmentedSteam

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

#490

Post by CursedUrn »

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…

Making a webcam work on every hardware configuration is very difficult. I don't think this is possible.
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