5 ms·

Will hop over to one of these the day that the AAA multiplayer titles I want to play are supported. I know it's down to the anticheat, but I still wanna play 'e

Will hop over to one of these the day that the AAA multiplayer titles I want to play are supported. I know it's down to the anticheat, but I still wanna play 'em. Hopefully Valve are able to push that forward.

xiconfjs 10mo ago
We can only hope Valve‘s new „console“ will hit the market strong so they have another levarage to push the studios to implement appropiate, linux compatible anti-cheat.
- MrDrMcCoy 10mo ago
  Anticheat doesn't need to be Linux compatible, it needs to move server-side.
  - KyleGospo 10mo ago
    Agree 100%, client side anti cheat was never going to work.
    - simoncion 10mo ago
      To the downvoters: client-side anticheat simply cannot stop all the cheaters. Why? Because it's running on hardware that the cheater has full control over. It has been (and continues to be) an enormous amount of effort, and some cheaters are absolutely going to get through anyway.
      - KyleGospo 10mo ago
        Right, you cannot control hardware you do not own and have in your possession. A cheat that uses another computer and a camera to watch the screen and emulate a mouse is an effective aimbot that no client side method will ever detect. The future must be server authoritative net code and behavior-based server-side cheat detection.
        simoncion 10mo ago
        > The future must be server authoritative net code and behavior-based server-side cheat detection. If they actually cared about stopping cheaters (rather than pouring tons of investor money into the appearance of anti-cheat), then yes, the future must be that. But. I'm a USian and I notice that the TSA is still strip-searching people at airports and -worse- wasting assloads of everyone's time, effort, and tax money. I have zero faith that a sudden attack of common sense will redirect efforts (whether they be in the arena of airport security or eviction of match-damaging video game cheaters) in a more sensible direction within what's left of my lifetime.
        recycleaway 10mo ago
        Day Z’s authoritative server‑side detection performed so flawlessly, it let me breach the network bubble and force other players to defecate themselves. 10/10, would recommend.
  - sbarre 10mo ago
    Honest question: given all the companies and people working on anti-cheat systems for the last 20+ years of multiplayer video games, don't you think it would all be server-side if it could be, by now?
    - d3Xt3r 10mo ago
      No, because most companies will make decisions based on time/effort/profitability, and because client-side anticheat is stupid simple and cheap, that's what they go with. Why waste their own server resources, when they can waste the user's?
      - sbarre 10mo ago
        Alright then, sounds like you've got it all figured out.
      - Covenant0028 10mo ago
        So it is the company prioritising their bottom line at the expense of their customer's computers. More simply, they move cost from their balance sheet and convert it into risk on the customer's end. Which is actively customer-abusive behavior and customers should treat it with the contempt it deserves. The fact that customers don't, is what enables such abuse.
        sbarre 10mo ago
        This is such a weird take. In an online multiplayer game the cheaters are the risk to the company's bottom line. If a game is rampant with cheaters, honest paying players stop showing up, and less new players sign up. The relatively small percentage of cheaters cost the company tons of sales and revenue. It is actively in a company's best interest to do everything they possibly can to prevent cheating, so the idea that intentionally building sub-par anti-cheat is about "prioritising their bottom line" seems totally absurd to me. Not to mention these abstract "the company" positions completely ignore all the passionate people who actually make video games, and how much most of them care about fair play and providing a good experience to their customers. No one hates cheaters more than game developers.
  - MindSpunk 10mo ago
    It has been. It's been server-side for decades. It's common industry knowledge that the client can't have authority. But server-side anti cheat can't stop aimbots or wall hacks. Client side anti cheat isn't about stopping you from issuing "teleport me to here plz server" commands, it's about stopping people from reading and writing the game's memory/address space. If you wanted to teleport (and the server was poorly implemented enough to let you) you could just intercept your network packets and add a "teleport plz" message. Real cheats in the wild used to work this way. However a wallhack will need to read the game's memory to know where players are. What modern anti cheat software does is make it difficult for casual cheats to read/write the game's memory, and force more sophisticated cheats down detectable exploit paths. It's impossible to prevent someone from reading the memory on untrusted hardware, but you can make it difficult and detectable so you can minimize the number of cheaters and maximize the number you detect and ban. Linux is incompatible with client anti-cheat because there is no security boundary that can't be sidestepped with a custom compiled kernel. Windows is Windows, with known APIs and ways to read process memory that can be monitored. Secure boot means only Microsoft's own built kernels can boot and you now have a meaningful security boundary. Monitor what kernel drivers are loaded and you can make it harder for cheaters to find ways in. Sure you can run in a VM, but you can also detect when it happens. Sure we can just run with no client side anticheat at all (functionally what Linux always is unless you only run approved, signed kernels and distros with secure boot) but wallhacks and aimbots become trivial to implement. These can only really be detected server side with statistical analysis. I hope you don't ban too many innocent people trying to find all the cheaters that way.
    - anticensor 10mo ago
      > Linux is incompatible with client anti-cheat because there is no security boundary that can't be sidestepped with a custom compiled kernel. Windows is Windows, with known APIs and ways to read process memory that can be monitored. Secure boot means only Microsoft's own built kernels can boot and you now have a meaningful security boundary. Monitor what kernel drivers are loaded and you can make it harder for cheaters to find ways in. Sure you can run in a VM, but you can also detect when it happens. OK I'll just compile a custom ReactOS build that lets me sidestep that boundary.
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
MrDrMcCoy 10mo ago
Personally, I hope that corporate rootkits will never be permitted on Linux in any form. Game studios need to learn that anticheat needs to live on the server side where it belongs.
- jsheard 10mo ago
  Easier said than done for some genres, unfortunately. To catch things like aim assistance from the server-side you'd have to resort to handwavy statistical analysis and somehow thread the needle between catching well-crafted aimbots, but without accidentally banning legitimate players under any circumstances, even if they're extremely skilled and/or lucky. It's been tried but I don't think it's ever been very successful. The Battlefield series used to use Fairfight, which is based on server-side heuristics, but they ultimately gave up on it and switched back to client-side detection for the more recent games.
  - MrDrMcCoy 10mo ago
    That statistical analysis with post-facto game recordings could be pretty accurate, and needn't result in bans. In fact, I think banning cheaters is dumb. Instead, we should weight matchmaking algorithms to put cheaters all on the same servers. If they want to cheat, why not let them cheat against each other?
    - cindyllm 10mo ago
      [dead]
    - jsheard 10mo ago
      Mistakenly hellbanning legitimate players wouldn't be much better than banning them outright. Either way you've got a justifiably angry customer.
  - _cenw 10mo ago
    Cheating creates two problems. Obvious cheats aiming to upset other players and subtle cheats that don't want to be noticed as such. Now, I'm not saying it doesn't matter if people cheat as long as nobody notices or that competitive integrity is not important, but the first category is a much more immediate threat for most games and easy to detect. On a server analyzing locally recorded sampled demos.
d3Xt3r 10mo ago
If your definition of "AAA" includes Arc Raiders and Marvel Rivals, then good news, they work. But if your definition specifically refers to shooters like Fortnite or BF6, then yeah, they're not going to work. Except CS of course, but not sure if CS counts as "AAA" in your books.

xiconfjs 10mo ago

We can only hope Valve‘s new „console“ will hit the market strong so they have another levarage to push the studios to implement appropiate, linux compatible anti-cheat.

MrDrMcCoy 10mo ago
Anticheat doesn't need to be Linux compatible, it needs to move server-side.
- KyleGospo 10mo ago
  Agree 100%, client side anti cheat was never going to work.
  - simoncion 10mo ago
    To the downvoters: client-side anticheat simply cannot stop all the cheaters. Why? Because it's running on hardware that the cheater has full control over. It has been (and continues to be) an enormous amount of effort, and some cheaters are absolutely going to get through anyway.
    - KyleGospo 10mo ago
      Right, you cannot control hardware you do not own and have in your possession. A cheat that uses another computer and a camera to watch the screen and emulate a mouse is an effective aimbot that no client side method will ever detect. The future must be server authoritative net code and behavior-based server-side cheat detection.
      - simoncion 10mo ago
        > The future must be server authoritative net code and behavior-based server-side cheat detection. If they actually cared about stopping cheaters (rather than pouring tons of investor money into the appearance of anti-cheat), then yes, the future must be that. But. I'm a USian and I notice that the TSA is still strip-searching people at airports and -worse- wasting assloads of everyone's time, effort, and tax money. I have zero faith that a sudden attack of common sense will redirect efforts (whether they be in the arena of airport security or eviction of match-damaging video game cheaters) in a more sensible direction within what's left of my lifetime.
      - recycleaway 10mo ago
        Day Z’s authoritative server‑side detection performed so flawlessly, it let me breach the network bubble and force other players to defecate themselves. 10/10, would recommend.
- sbarre 10mo ago
  Honest question: given all the companies and people working on anti-cheat systems for the last 20+ years of multiplayer video games, don't you think it would all be server-side if it could be, by now?
  - d3Xt3r 10mo ago
    No, because most companies will make decisions based on time/effort/profitability, and because client-side anticheat is stupid simple and cheap, that's what they go with. Why waste their own server resources, when they can waste the user's?
    - sbarre 10mo ago
      Alright then, sounds like you've got it all figured out.
    - Covenant0028 10mo ago
      So it is the company prioritising their bottom line at the expense of their customer's computers. More simply, they move cost from their balance sheet and convert it into risk on the customer's end. Which is actively customer-abusive behavior and customers should treat it with the contempt it deserves. The fact that customers don't, is what enables such abuse.
      - sbarre 10mo ago
        This is such a weird take. In an online multiplayer game the cheaters are the risk to the company's bottom line. If a game is rampant with cheaters, honest paying players stop showing up, and less new players sign up. The relatively small percentage of cheaters cost the company tons of sales and revenue. It is actively in a company's best interest to do everything they possibly can to prevent cheating, so the idea that intentionally building sub-par anti-cheat is about "prioritising their bottom line" seems totally absurd to me. Not to mention these abstract "the company" positions completely ignore all the passionate people who actually make video games, and how much most of them care about fair play and providing a good experience to their customers. No one hates cheaters more than game developers.
- MindSpunk 10mo ago
  It has been. It's been server-side for decades. It's common industry knowledge that the client can't have authority. But server-side anti cheat can't stop aimbots or wall hacks. Client side anti cheat isn't about stopping you from issuing "teleport me to here plz server" commands, it's about stopping people from reading and writing the game's memory/address space. If you wanted to teleport (and the server was poorly implemented enough to let you) you could just intercept your network packets and add a "teleport plz" message. Real cheats in the wild used to work this way. However a wallhack will need to read the game's memory to know where players are. What modern anti cheat software does is make it difficult for casual cheats to read/write the game's memory, and force more sophisticated cheats down detectable exploit paths. It's impossible to prevent someone from reading the memory on untrusted hardware, but you can make it difficult and detectable so you can minimize the number of cheaters and maximize the number you detect and ban. Linux is incompatible with client anti-cheat because there is no security boundary that can't be sidestepped with a custom compiled kernel. Windows is Windows, with known APIs and ways to read process memory that can be monitored. Secure boot means only Microsoft's own built kernels can boot and you now have a meaningful security boundary. Monitor what kernel drivers are loaded and you can make it harder for cheaters to find ways in. Sure you can run in a VM, but you can also detect when it happens. Sure we can just run with no client side anticheat at all (functionally what Linux always is unless you only run approved, signed kernels and distros with secure boot) but wallhacks and aimbots become trivial to implement. These can only really be detected server side with statistical analysis. I hope you don't ban too many innocent people trying to find all the cheaters that way.
  - anticensor 10mo ago
    > Linux is incompatible with client anti-cheat because there is no security boundary that can't be sidestepped with a custom compiled kernel. Windows is Windows, with known APIs and ways to read process memory that can be monitored. Secure boot means only Microsoft's own built kernels can boot and you now have a meaningful security boundary. Monitor what kernel drivers are loaded and you can make it harder for cheaters to find ways in. Sure you can run in a VM, but you can also detect when it happens. OK I'll just compile a custom ReactOS build that lets me sidestep that boundary.
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]

MrDrMcCoy 10mo ago

Personally, I hope that corporate rootkits will never be permitted on Linux in any form. Game studios need to learn that anticheat needs to live on the server side where it belongs.

jsheard 10mo ago
Easier said than done for some genres, unfortunately. To catch things like aim assistance from the server-side you'd have to resort to handwavy statistical analysis and somehow thread the needle between catching well-crafted aimbots, but without accidentally banning legitimate players under any circumstances, even if they're extremely skilled and/or lucky. It's been tried but I don't think it's ever been very successful. The Battlefield series used to use Fairfight, which is based on server-side heuristics, but they ultimately gave up on it and switched back to client-side detection for the more recent games.
- MrDrMcCoy 10mo ago
  That statistical analysis with post-facto game recordings could be pretty accurate, and needn't result in bans. In fact, I think banning cheaters is dumb. Instead, we should weight matchmaking algorithms to put cheaters all on the same servers. If they want to cheat, why not let them cheat against each other?
  - cindyllm 10mo ago
    [dead]
  - jsheard 10mo ago
    Mistakenly hellbanning legitimate players wouldn't be much better than banning them outright. Either way you've got a justifiably angry customer.
- _cenw 10mo ago
  Cheating creates two problems. Obvious cheats aiming to upset other players and subtle cheats that don't want to be noticed as such. Now, I'm not saying it doesn't matter if people cheat as long as nobody notices or that competitive integrity is not important, but the first category is a much more immediate threat for most games and easy to detect. On a server analyzing locally recorded sampled demos.

d3Xt3r 10mo ago

If your definition of "AAA" includes Arc Raiders and Marvel Rivals, then good news, they work. But if your definition specifically refers to shooters like Fortnite or BF6, then yeah, they're not going to work. Except CS of course, but not sure if CS counts as "AAA" in your books.