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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

#71

Post by bigstrat2003 »

Thaxll wrote: post #47
throwaway48476 wrote: post #2

After the crowdstrike disaster 3rd party kernel drivers need to be shunned for non critical applications. Games publishers have been bad actors in this space for a long time now. The genshin impact anticheat was used in a malware campaign. Rockstar was very misleading trying to imply their kernel driver not being compatible with the steam deck was valves fault.

Cheats and bots are ruining online games though.

Perhaps, but it's far better to have cheaters and bots than to have games require a rootkit to play them.

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

#72

Post by Topfi »

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 course, that is a great move for those who actually are willing to walk-the-walk, just asking whether we should perhaps temper our expectations on the impact of such a measure.

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

#73

Post by throwaway48476 »

PaulHoule wrote: post #68
kulahan wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't wait to find out what China hid in Riot's Vanguard rootkit for all their games. It's 100% a conspiracy theory, but nobody can convince me it's perfectly clean, or if it is, that there isn't an easy way to add some power to it quietly.

If it is written in C you can always introduce a buffer overflow or something similar by just adding a little bit of line noise here or there and nobody can prove it was deliberate.

It's closed source and the assembly is obfuscated. You don't even need to bother with plausible debiability.

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

#74

Post by ChocolateGod »

jsheard wrote: post #31
butterfly42069 wrote: post #28

The biggest giveaway the kernel level anti cheat is stupid is that Easy Anti-Cheat works on Linux without kernel level access.

It only works on Linux if the developer allows it, because it's not nearly as effective on Linux. Rust (the game not the language) uses EAC but doesn't run on Linux by choice for example. Neither does Fortnite. Apex Legends uses EAC and does run on Linux, and now nearly every public cheat for that game targets the Linux version because it's such a soft target. I don't really like the status quo of installing random k…

> game targets the Linux version because it's such a soft target.

I was going to say games on Linux should require secure boot so cheat kernels and modules can't run, but then the kernel could just lie about it being enabled.

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

#75

Post by throwaway48476 »

Thaxll wrote: post #61
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.

And yet you install driver on Linux without knowing it, I mean Linux has 0 security for drivers.

When was the last time you had to install a Linux driver from out of tree?

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

#76

Post by tadfisher »

Nadya wrote: post #11
doublerabbit wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What decides critical or non-critical. One could argue that a game isn't critical but one could say it's critical to stop hackers. If you were to take the stance that gaming isn't critical than with that logic you're then claiming multiplayer hacking is a feature of the game. Doesn't do well for the community or the company. But nor do the rootkits do good for the consumer.

If they worked to any acceptable level of efficacy then they could be tolerated. They're only tolerated by people who think they work as well as they claim to work (security theater) but anyone who knows about the performance impacts and/or are tech-savvy enough to understand it is a rootkit and potential exploit (that would fully pwn your device) hates them. Some cheats are getting rather sophisticated now. There's…

That's child's play. The vogue is PCIe devices that sniff draw calls, memory transfers and network activity on the bus.

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

#77

Post by dmonitor »

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...

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

#78

Post by bigstrat2003 »

Good. I absolutely refuse to compromise my system by using these things. Games should be required to let people know what they are signing up for.

And if that means more companies choose to avoid kernel anti-cheat, so much the better. I'm still mad that I can't play Helldivers 2 - a freaking co-op game where cheaters can't pose a problem - because of this nonsense.

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

#79

Post by evanriley »

Thaxll wrote: post #47
throwaway48476 wrote: post #2

After the crowdstrike disaster 3rd party kernel drivers need to be shunned for non critical applications. Games publishers have been bad actors in this space for a long time now. The genshin impact anticheat was used in a malware campaign. Rockstar was very misleading trying to imply their kernel driver not being compatible with the steam deck was valves fault.

Cheats and bots are ruining online games though.

And Kernel level anti-cheat isn't stopping them.

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

#80

Post by billyoyo »

umvi wrote: post #59
Thaxll wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cheats and bots are ruining online games though.

Yeah life sucks when everything and everyone has to be untrusted (applies not just video games). The solution is to build trusted spaces again IMO. For video games assume that each user is trusted by default. As soon as they violate that trust by cheating, they are banned permanently for that copy of the game. If they want to be trusted again they have to buy another copy of the game to get another license. Make it h…

This is a naive take. Of course these developers already permaban cheaters. Firstly many of these games are free to play so "getting another license" is a non issue. They're doing hardware bans nowadays which are harder to avoid but not impossible.

Half the battle is detection though. If you don't detect cheaters quick enough they ruin enough games that genuine players start getting frustrated and leave. Anti cheats help with this detection.

Probably every anti cheat idea you can think of, in terms of detection, prevention and punishment, has probably already been tried by a large online multiplayer game. It is an extremely difficult problem to solve, a constant arms race.

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