We need the game publishers to face more consequences for shoving BS kernel level anti-cheats and not focusing on where it actually matters, server-side.
(Which would also solve the Linux AC problem by extension)
Game publishers: but server-side anticheat is
more expensiveHARDDDDDDhow do you actually tell in server side if a client is e.g. actually good at a game vs playing recorded moves with a bit of randomisation when you don’t have access to into on what’s actually happening on the client device?
as much as I love Linux this sounds like purposeful partial blindness from hopium/copium
You’ll never catch all cheaters no matter what you do. All the kernel access in the world won’t stop someone from having a secondary device hooked into the monitor output and faking a dumb keyboard and mouse.
A solid robust server-side solution and well architected server-client system will stop 99% of cheating. And no, Kernel AC is not part of a “well architected” system.
It’s, at best, a bandaid for a shitty server-client system that introduces a shit ton of privacy and security issues for everyone that uses it. Shit needs to stay out of the kernel unless absolutely necessary, and that goes for Linux, Windows or MacOS kernels.
Almost every blue screen/Kernel panic I’ve dealt with was traced back to some shit hooking itself into the kernel where it didn’t belong. And absolutely fuck third-party antivirus that hooks into the kernel too.
All the kernel access in the world won’t stop someone from having a secondary device hooked into the monitor output and faking a dumb keyboard and mouse.
I guess that’s true, but that’d be a lot difficult to program and expensive to use compared to a simple program that can read data straight from the game’s memory in machine readable format and send inputs straight into the system’s input framework. by raising the entry bar you’re effectively decreasing the amount of people that will cheat in the game
it’s ultimately the user’s decision if they want to sacrifice the purity of their kernel for a game like this, and I think it’s their problem if their kernel panics for them wanting to play slop made by AAA studios
I mean DMA (direct memory access) devices are only like 170 bucks now:
https://www.dma-cheats.com/dma-cards
These are almost impossible to do anything about even client-side because they operate on a hardware level.
In general state-reading hacks (like invisible walls and Gameworld state information hacks) are almost impossible to do anything about, to the point where when companies are able to find a way to defeat one of these things it’s huge news.
oh damn I didn’t know you could do direct memory access like that, that’s so wild
In addition to what @homicidalrobot@lemm.ee covered on the first part of your response
it’s ultimately the user’s decision if they want to sacrifice the purity of their kernel for a game like this, and I think it’s their problem if their kernel panics for them wanting to play slop made by AAA studios
That’s absolute horseshit, the average gaming consumer doesn’t know shit about the kernel, what it even is or the implications of running Kernel AC. They might know their game has AC, but chances are they won’t even know what kind to make this kind of informed decision.
This is becoming less true for FPS every month - the described method of cheating (off-device reading and input simulation) is becoming more accessible as more cheat makers are selling premade devices that do this. Huge problem even for new shooters like rivals - someone was already caught doing it in one of their ingame tournaments. It’s the primary way people cheat in League of Legends, and it would not surprise me to see evidence of it in dota 2(though I haven’t personally, I haven’t been paying attention to it for some years and it isn’t as frequent that a variety streamer or youtuber plays it compared to lol).
As mentioned before, kernel anticheat won’t catch these guys anyway, so it’s largely just a way to alienate your user base. There’s a new problem it does nothing special to solve.
One part would be to run a shadow client that takes the user’s input and sees how much the game state diverges. There will be a certain amount of it due to network latency, but if there’s some cheater using an engine mod/hack to fly around the map, this will catch that. Though something like that should be caught by a lower level check that makes sure the players are following the laws of physics in the game (like max speed, gravity applies, no teleporting).
Another one would be to see if the player follows things they shouldn’t be able to see. If a player hides behind something they can shoot through but can’t see through, do they somehow seem to always know they are there? Do they look around at walls and then beeline for an opponent that was hidden by those walls?
Another one would be if their movement (view angle) changes when they are close to targeting an enemy or if they consistently shoot when the enemy is centre of target, then it’s a sign they are using a device that even kernel mode anti cheat won’t catch to cheat (it plugs in to your input between your mouse and PC, also plugs in to somewhere that would allow it to act as a video capture device, then just watches for enemies to get close and sends movement or clicks to aim or shoot for you). Though this one is pretty difficult to catch, due to network latency. But those mouse movements might defy the laws of physics if the user was already moving. Natural movement is continuous in position and its first derivative (always, by Newton’s f = ma, though sample rate complicates that), and the way we generally move is also continuous in the second derivative, but banging your mouse into your keyboard can defy that and it’s even more sensitive to sample rate.
Imo these techniques should be combined with a reporting system and manual reviews. Reports would activate the extra checks for specific players (it would be pretty expensive to do it for all players), then positive matches from the extra checks would trigger a manual review and maybe a kick or temp ban, depending on how reliable the checks are.
That said, I believe there will eventually be AI-based bots where detecting them vs other skilled players will be impossible. And those will be combinable with some infrastructure that allows players to take certain amounts of control, maybe even with an RTS-like interface that could direct the bot to certain areas. Though adding an LLM and speech to text and vice versa could allow it to just respond to voice commands, both from other teammates and from the player.
I think at that point, preventing cheating in online games will be impossible and in person tournaments will probably involve using computers provided by the organizers (tbh I’m kinda surprised this isn’t already the case and that some people have been caught using cheats during these kinds of tournaments).
“Sir, a significant market segment says we’re ignoring them.”
“Are they still giving us money?”
“Yes sir.”
“Then fuck 'em.”
“In which hole sir”
No. It’s a video game. Publishers have no business being in my kernel.
Anticheats on Linux don’t have kernel access… Have you ever heard of people needing to type their root password to launch a steam game before?
Anticheats on Linux don’t have kernel access
Yeah, I know. I’d like it to stay that way. Furthermore, this is also why games with kernel-level anticheat still don’t work on linux, despite developments in wine/proton.
Don’t give corpos any ideas
Hu? You don’t need to type root password to load a kernel module automatically , do you?
I mean, do you have to type the root pw if you plug in a wifi dongle that requires an out-of-tree module?
As far as I understand, you have to type root pw only for installation and update of the module and, depending on distribution, even that is not really visible since you type root pw to install tons of stuff all the time.
Where did I say I wanted kernel anti-cheat?
The post is about anticheat that doesn’t work on linux. Non-kernel-level anticheat works fine now thanks to wine/proton. That just leaves kernel-level anticheat. If a game has kernel-level anticheat, the studio is not going to remove it for the sake of a linux version. Therefore, to be compatible with linux, they would be introducing kernel-level anticheat into a linux version. To this, I say “fuck no”.
It’s implied, because anything would behave the same.
Not that client-side anti-cheat makes any sense anyway.
Well i didn’t imply that.
And here I am, not giving a fuck about competitive online PvP.
Casual games require it too
The lengths people go to prevent cheating in single player games is astonishing. I’m really glad Paradox finally allows achievements on modded installs of their games.
Nope, fuck that. I’m not running that anti cheat shit on my machines, I just won’t buy it.
Bro. That’s not what is happening or being talked about. Most anticheat systems have a Linux flag that can be enabled, letting them run on proton without any sort of kernel access. Everything except Denuvo and fuck that shit in particular.
Denuvo et al are exactly what I’m talking about.
Yea. Well. Fuck those guys.
I’m not calling for kernel anti-cheat. I just want all the multiplayer games to work.
Wanting them to work is reasonable, but complaining about the lack of anti-cheat makes no sense. The problem is the insistence on client-side anti-cheat to begin with.
Kernel seems to be where the publisher interest is currently at…
Sure. Harassing developers always works. I remember when everybody did it to CDPR about The Witcher 2 so they fixed all the issues and made a perfectly working Linux version of The Witcher 3. They definitely didn’t swear off Linux completely.
I’m not sure extortion is the best way to get companies to support Linux. I think market share is the only real metric they care about.
If that segment of the market was significant, corpos we be bending over backwards for those dollars.
We need the game publishers to face more consequences for neglecting a significant segment of the market
MacOS?
(please don’t hurt me, it was a joke.)
Yes, Apple should face consequences for making game development for MacOS so difficult.
The only game I currently play is KSP. I’ve grown so tired of all the crap out there.
Is it more stable? I always ended up getting either a kraken or like 2 fps with a giant space station.
KSP 2 is a little better than its first release. I still main play KSP 1 in sandbox mode. If you have a problem with parts counts get a part fusion mod and combine parts to increase your FPS.
unfortunately for us, I don’t think we’re what they would consider “significant”
The steam deck be pretty popular these days.
I know, and game support has definitely increased since its release specifically because of the steam deck (dead by daylight comes to mind), but even so, we’re still a relatively insignificant chunk that isn’t worth the cost to most publishers
Bully for you.
When I eventually make the switch to Linux your efforts will make it even more seamless.
I’m fighting for you!
I dont disagree with this but i don’t know about significant segment, thats kind of delusional
Yeah, I’m Linux-only and have been for the last 17 years, but we are not a significant percentage of the gaming market. Still less than 3% last time I checked.
Otherwise, yeah fuck kernel anticheats that don’t even stop cheating.
There are dozens of us!
Yeah, I also wish they’d have better support, but Linux players are not a huge group.
Steam Deck and Steam machines have helped a lot though. Without Valve’s weight behind it, trying to game on Linux would probably be a lot worse.
Based, imo.
SiGnIfIcAnT sEgMeNt
inb4 all of the “significant segment” gives me a total of 27 downvotes - I am a full time Linux enjoyer on all my personal computers. Including but not limited to all of my gaming purposes. And I’d love for more game devs to release Linux native builds.
I just don’t have illusions about being in any kind of target audience for larger game devs.
The steamdeck runs on Arch. Games with windows-only anticheat excludes millions of potential players.
There are 3.2 billion video gamers in the world, and 1.17 billion play online (numbers are from 2023).
“millions” is a couple percent. (As seen in the steam survey as well as napkin mathing the numbers from above)
Call of Duty is the biggest fps game in the world, every year. Their playerbase is “only” in the millions, so I suppose you agree with the executives that it’s not nearly successful enough?
No, because they are above the average video games market share.
But you can’t argue that Linux gamers are a significant market share, just because the number in front of the % is the same lol.
There are millions of video games, which all have below 1% market share. Compared to the average game, a single percent is huge.
But there are no millions of operating systems with below 1% market share. Compared to the most popular OS, which has above 80% market share, 1 or 2 percent is insignificant.
Ok so if you agree that their playerbase of millions marks a successful game, then why do you consider the possibility of millions of players insignificant?
It’s not absolute but relative.
Because for each individual game dev, linux gamers account for on average 2% of their sales, which is insignificant.
Linux gamers are spread across all of the games and game devs.
Every person excluded from a purchase is money lost in the eyes of corporations. It’s why boycotts work when they’re properly organized. It’s why microtransactions are usually less than $5. I’ve been in corporate meetings for game companies before, I was recently illegally fired. The addition of Linux support is coming, but the big corporations need motivation to do it quickly.
There’s that “I never vote because politicians do not care about the issues of people like me anyway” attitude again.
(Hint: They don’t care because your kind won’t vote anyway.)
Good point!
That’s also a symptom of first-past-the-post only giving people 2 realistic options when we should really have more under mixed member proportional.
I always vote.
But when I vote for a minority favourite, I don’t go around saying that all other parties ignore a “significant portion” of voters.
As for games, I also always vote with my money.
Oftentimes I buy games (and not even play them) just because they have a linux native release. But I still don’t think linux gamers are a “significant portion” of gamers.
So stop with these kind of baseless accusations, where you conjure up a non existing correlation from your ass.
as much as I love not running windows on my machines, this is 100% pure copium
also this post sounds really petty and it’s really sad if this is what the broader Linux gaming community really thinks, can they seriously not just ignore AAA games given how shit they are?
It’s not petty to use your voice to vocalize your displeasure. The squeaky door gets the grease.
