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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

#541

Post by digging »

nathants wrote: post #332
andrewmcwatters wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

honestly, we have consoles for this dude

exactly! what we need is more power, and more mouse room. anyone playing fortnite ranked already has the needed hardware, and the motivation. if you haven’t won a solo build game on 1440p 360hz, you haven’t ever actually played a video game.

> if you haven’t won a solo build game on 1440p 360hz, you haven’t ever actually played a video game.

I think this is the most insane thing you've written here today, the one thing I truly disagree with. I'm not sure you even agree with it, given you seem to already understand well the difference between casual, competitive, and hardcore competitive play. But are you aware of solo play?

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

#542

Post by notabee »

jakebasile wrote: post #534
wrren wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an incredibly naive perspective. KLA represents a real risk to companies, as something going wrong can crash player computers instead of just game processes; this is a PR nightmare if/when it happens on a large scale. Not to mention the cost of hiring engineers capable of building kernel components in the first place, it's a niche skillset that's not cheap to hire for. Games companies don't turn to KLA out of…

We had the best alternative decades ago. Let the community run the servers and ban cheaters while allowing individual servers to form their own culture and community. The obsession with matchmaking and games as a service (requiring publisher run servers) is what painted the industry into this corner. Note that I like matchmaking, specifically skill based matchmaking, in some games and at some times but completely end…

But then it's harder to shim in the money-makers like microtransactions, loot boxes, and all the other recent "innovations" in the gaming industry.

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

#543

Post by jokoon »

gnuser wrote: post #538

Im annoyed at all the servile responses in defense of these bad companies. Wanna hear my conspiracy theory? Three letter agencies are using games as an intel gathering tool, and KLA is part of that. What if the CEOs are getting NSLs, etc?

what if they do? does that bother you?

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

#544

Post by wing-_-nuts »

lxgr wrote: post #495
portaouflop wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is fine on a device that you only use for gaming, or am I missing something?

Not nearly every "gaming PC" is used for only that. When I grew up, I had one PC to do everything: Homework, gaming, learning to program, storing the single copy of treasured family photos, gaining painful experience in why to make backups before modifying the MBR to dual-boot Linux... Especially with iPads and Chromebooks becoming more prevalent in an education context, a "gaming PC" might well be the only computer…

I get where both sides are coming from.

On the one hand, buying a console and a reasonably spec'd laptop is clearly the better value. I did this during college, and both my laptop, and my console both lasted about a decade without requiring any upgrades. I did this again with the PS4. You wind up spending far less than you otherwise would trying to keep a gaming pc reasonably up to date, and both devices are optimized for their usage.

On the other hand? At some point most of us will realize that we've been successful enough that we don't have to optimize for value, and we can choose 'all of the above'. I now have a PS5 AND a stupidly overspec'd AI / gaming desktop. I've enjoyed having both.

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

#545

Post by jokoon »

ryankrage77 wrote: post #268
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…

I assume this is satire, because nobody would play a game with those requirements.

could be made necessary for pro players many of them were caught cheating

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

#547

Post by nemomarx »

dingnuts wrote: post #540
NeoTar wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm a boomer millenial, or whatever we're called now, and never took to online gaming, so I'm part of this segment. And you are not alone - apparently 53% of gamers (total) prefer single-player games, [although this falls to only 30% in the 16-19 years age-group]. https://www.midiaresearch.com/blog/most-gamers-prefer-single... I wonder how much of this is familiarity (i.e. I play games in the style I did when I was…

REAL-TIME multiplayer is worse for that use case. There's no reason a game that is asynchronous, like an old school play by mail game, couldn't be fun for twenty minutes when you have time, and maybe there's a limit or a turn involved so you don't get too ahead, and your partner does their thing when they get time I have wanted to see a game like that for years and years. I think this is why chess.com is huge with th…

it's a little old but check frozen synapse - top down tactics games like that have done asynchronous multiplayer a decent bit

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

#548

Post by LinXitoW »

wrren wrote: post #491
ho_schi wrote: post #404

First step. Second step? Ban games with kernel-level anti-cheat. It is not acceptable on Linux. Apple will also not accept that shit further, that said Apple lost relevance in gaming with Mantle and the M-Processors (both mean a lot of incompatibility). And Microsoft is regretting every choice in this regard: https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/12/24242947/microsoft-window... But that is a usual pattern. Microsoft makes…

That's an incredibly naive perspective. KLA represents a real risk to companies, as something going wrong can crash player computers instead of just game processes; this is a PR nightmare if/when it happens on a large scale. Not to mention the cost of hiring engineers capable of building kernel components in the first place, it's a niche skillset that's not cheap to hire for. Games companies don't turn to KLA out of…

Until the obviously detectable cheaters like spinbots get INSTANTLY banned, I don't believe for a second they've "tried everything".

If hackers have to limit themselves to behaviour that looks like real skill, it's kind of unimportant to the games community if they're cheating. Cheaters only ruin the experience if they're obvious to the player.

Finally, something like Overwatch in CS, together with paid employees and PUBLIC bans of high paying cheater accounts (including hardware bans) would create a chilling effect, further forcing cheaters into hiding.

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

#549

Post by wafflemaker »

reginald78 wrote: post #470
WatchDog wrote: post #320

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 won’t provide all the same capabilities as cheats that hook into the game process, such as wall hacks, but it would be possible to build a super hu…

> We already have external “radar” cheats that use the game stereo sound to give the direction that a certain sound(such as footsteps) came from. Did you just imply my headphones are a cheating device? More seriously, I've heard these type of devices already exist.

I once played some Hunt (difficult, highly competitive game, a little like CS) with people on ex professional level. They obviously had gaming PCs, but they ALL had super expensive 7? Channels headphones. It's apparently a thing among ex pro (or high level) Counter-Strike players to have these super headphones that let you know where people are before regular people can hear them.

They hushed me all the time because "someone's coming". Still a fun experience - to win for a change. Don't have to add that my role was more as a decoy then anything else.

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

#550

Post by LinXitoW »

dartharva wrote: post #446
ho_schi wrote: post #404

First step. Second step? Ban games with kernel-level anti-cheat. It is not acceptable on Linux. Apple will also not accept that shit further, that said Apple lost relevance in gaming with Mantle and the M-Processors (both mean a lot of incompatibility). And Microsoft is regretting every choice in this regard: https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/12/24242947/microsoft-window... But that is a usual pattern. Microsoft makes…

> Second step > "Ban games with kernel-level anti-cheat." > "It is the duty of game developers" It's hilarious that people actually think the publishers will ever have two hoots to give about notions like that. FWIW I agree we'd all be better off without those things but the entitlement to believe private businesses should run on your personal whims and that developers have a "duty" to make things only as you prefer…

I agree that profit driven companies will never ever care about the morality or the safety or the social impacts of their choices.

I don't think, however, that "publishers would use disabled children slave labor if they could" is really an argument you ought to make.

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