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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

#621

Post by nathants »

jokoon wrote: post #554
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…

Valve now catches cheaters using machine learning, which analyzes the demo. Apparently they catch a lot of cheaters this way, and it's more reliable than player reports. But to be really honest: it's impossible to prevent cheaters. The only way is to play with friends, or to change the incentives of the game where it becomes less interesting to cheat. For example, a game like counter strike will have a lot of cheater…

i’m trying to align monetization and all other incentives in the direction of a better game.

yet cheaters will still cheat.

non-human inputs IS cheating. period. there is no information cheating possible in this game.

input provenance is the only anti cheat that has a chance.

full fidelity 120hz server replays with handcam seems a good place to start.

we’ll see how it goes!

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

#622

Post by soderfoo »

romwell wrote: post #453
soderfoo wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 gam…

I'm disagreeing with everything you're saying here. Not because you're wrong. But because I'm in this picture and I don't like it, and I just found out that "boomer millennial" is a fitting descriptor. Goddamit.

Thanks for the chuckle, brightened up my day.

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

#623

Post by nathants »

Retr0id wrote: post #583
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'm booting your OS in a stealthy hypervisor and operating my cheat logic from there.

and i will award you cash from the bug bounty pool!

then you will be banned from ranked, unless you have a clever way to synthesize perfect handcam video.

in which case, you get the entire bounty pool and 10% profit for 6 months.

then you will be banned from ranked.

the bugs won’t discover themselves. i salute you.

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

#624

Post by Hercuros »

aenis wrote: post #530
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…

And fundamentally, the anti-cheat software is fighting a loosing game because of some quirks of x86: - hardware breakpoints on memory latch to logical, not physical addresses - one can map the same area of physical memory to different logical addresses thus allowing arbitrary memory reads - simulating inputs through the PnP stack can be made indetectible with polymorphic code doing the injections - detecting the aimb…

I suppose the memory being mapped twice could be detected by anti-cheat though. You can then also make more mitigations to prevent detection of the mapping (e.g. hooking the syscall to check the active mappings), but it’s always a cat and mouse game.

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

#625

Post by gradientsrneat »

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.

I've heard good things about the Framework laptops from a modularity perspective, but how are the thermals? Can it have a dedicated GPU?

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

#626

Post by 15155 »

Levitating wrote: post #478
15155 wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EAC and other kernel-level anticheat software will dynamically load and execute signed payloads at runtime. Does Vanguard do this? If so, does Microsoft check these payloads?

> EAC and other kernel-level anticheat software will dynamically load and execute signed payloads at runtime Are you sure about that?

100%

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

#627

Post by rmholt »

LinXitoW wrote: post #550
dartharva wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I would make that argument https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/02/11/child-lab...

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

#628

Post by pphysch »

JohnMakin wrote: post #611
pphysch wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cheating is an existential threat to a good game experience online, and I really don't know of any other solution. Cheating is downstream of the trust problem with an anonymous global "community". Anti-cheat is just an arms race, but there are other avenues to addressing it (weak "KYC", like requiring a phone number to play ranked modes). Deadlock is potentially doing something interesting with its invite-only EA s…

This is a really interesting and potentially great idea, but I am fundamentally against the KYC thing because it puts me in a position where I'm at the whims of whatever BS automated moderation systems they put in place these days, which is usually quite terrible.

With effective KYC, each moderation action has more weight (because user accounts have more weight), so in theory the moderators can focus more on quality than raw throughput.

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

#629

Post by tightbookkeeper »

nathants wrote: post #620
tightbookkeeper wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cheating is a human problem. The technology just makes us feel in control. I will not be playing games that make me feel like a prisoner. The experience taking standardized tests is enough for one life.

i respect your feelings and your choice. happiness, privacy and security are important. there are however legions of fortnite players who would mortgage their lives for a better game. a handcam without audio during gameplay seems a more reasonable and low price to pay. time will tell what gamers think! very exciting.

Wish you and your project well!

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

#630

Post by parl_match »

_factor wrote: post #497
parl_match wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Government regulation of toxic waste dumping negatively impacts profit margins. We have the data to prove this, very frustrating situation.

That would not be a frustrating situation, that would be a great situation (the harm is being blocked).
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