Now if only they could more clearly communicate when games are playable offline.

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      As he said, modlogs are public, and it seems like other user retreived the trace of what you call an “abuse of power” : https://sopuli.xyz/comment/12732467 .

      It is in his right as a moderator to chose how he moderate the communities he has the right to. If he finds your comment pedantic and annoying, and chose to remove it, so be it.

      I’m not taking sides here. I don’t know the whole story, and I doubt anyone else here does. With the little context provided, It’d be hard to take knowingly a side.

      But in both case, this is textbook harassement as you are copy-pasting this comment on every community this is posted on. This community has a pretty clear rule against harrassement (rule 2), which you are breaching, offense for which I’ll use my g… mod given right of banning you for the time being (I’ll re-evaluate tomorrow when I’ll be less tired).

      Edit : After talking with OP via PM, a ban of 7 days was issued

    • Jtee@lemmy.world
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      12 days ago

      Wow, mad because you can be held accountable. That’s sad.

      Thanks for the steam link!

    • yamanii@lemmy.world
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      12 days ago

      4 likes on him complaining that modlogs being public is something bad, cowards that only want to be shitty in the shadows.

    • Voyajer@lemmy.world
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      12 days ago

      He used to relentlessly spam the /r/linux_gaming subreddit and argue with people there too until he deleted his reddit account lol

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      12 days ago

      I was going to ask why the thumbnail on this post is a hexagon shaped bear, but your comment explains it well enough.

    • NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip
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      I really don’t see a need to drag community drama everywhere. GoL is one of the biggest aggregator blogs out there for… linux gaming. Whether we should prioritize original sources over aggregators is a different discussion.

      But yeah. Liam is great for news aggregating but he is 100% the stereotypical linux gamer and has a long history of starting random shit. Still annoyed by how fast he got everyone to shit on the Duckstation devs because they didn’t want to be exploited.

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          11 days ago

          Are you the lemmy cops? Is it your responsibility to chase any link to someone’s website across every instance and make sure people know they are a bit of a jackass?

          If you think GoL should be a banned source, take it up with the various moderators. If you think only primary sources should be allowed (which I actually agree with), that is also a discussion to be had.

          But rushing in to berate people for linking to one of the most popular news aggregators for a story that people would be interested in because you don’t like the guy who owns that site? All you are doing is discouraging people from making posts in the future.


          Which is the problem with dragging community/subreddit drama everywhere you go. It just makes the site a much more hostile place for everyone. And we really aren’t big enough to be doing that.

          • Sunny' 🌻@slrpnk.net
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            11 days ago

            🚨 🚨 🚨 FREEZE! STOP RIGHT THERE!! 🚨 🚨 🚨

            As the official lemmy police I am arresting you for defending a mad lad caught abusing powers. You do not have to say anything. But, it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.

            Jokes aside… I do think people should be allowed to post opinions an discuss other peoples behavior. Gol dude was caught abusing his powers, which is a disgusting thing to do, personally don’t mind him being called out for that in a post here and there. It’s not an attack on the poster, it’s a reminder to folks who the guy really is.

            I’m all for the truth, no matter who it is.

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      Adding kernel malware after the fact should entitle every single owner who requests one to a full refund no matter how long has passed.

      • pressanykeynow@lemmy.world
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        12 days ago

        I don’t think that’s fair. I “own” GTA5 and don’t really care for the last… 8 years? what they add. I had the full content of my purchase. Why should I be able to gain money for this?

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        13 days ago

        Full agree. I do want some kind of policy for games that introduce anti-cheat both during early access and after release. Bricking a game you paid for should offer some sort of recourse.

      • PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.world
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        12 days ago

        That’s exactly what Valve did. The automated refund system wasn’t available, but you could request a manual review and cite the added anti cheat; Valve was refunding those who did so.

          • DragonOracleIX@lemmy.ml
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            12 days ago

            They publish their single player games to steam. Don’t know about any of their multiplayer ones though.

            • xep@fedia.io
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              12 days ago

              I believe those are games made by other studios with the League IP and published by Riot. AFAIK there’s no reason for them to have anticheat.

      • CaptDust@sh.itjust.works
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        12 days ago

        I’d really like Valve to take an official policy on post-release changes that break games, but for what it’s worth they have not given me any hassle with refunds in these scenarios.

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          11 days ago

          That’s a bit much… It’s just not possible to guarantee that as a developer

          Software is a living thing, and anything useful is made up of layer after layer of ever shifting sand. We do our best, but we are all at the mercy of our dependencies. There are trade-offs, there are bugs we can do nothing about, and sometimes moving forward means dropping support for platforms that are no longer “cheap” enough to afford while also working on the game

          I love this though. I also like the idea of requiring access to earlier builds.

          These mitigate anti consumer practices - dropping support for a platform is more likely to be a technical trade-off or unintentional consequence though

          • ad_on_is@lemm.ee
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            11 days ago

            I do agree with the part where software moves, dependencies yada, yada… I’m a developer myself.

            But… this is different. They eliminated a perfectly working game, where they didn’t have to invest a minute of labor to get it working on Linux. The only thing they had to provide was the .so-file (for EAC) when publishing to Steam… Valve did all the work to make EAC compatible on Linux, yes, on user-level… but still… it fucking worked.

            Punishing an entire userbase, because other assholes (assumably) used Linux for cheating is discrimination. Even if there were no cheaters at all… it’s still discrimination… because it used to fucking work.

            • theneverfox@pawb.social
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              10 days ago

              Oh no, I totally agree with you that this is gross behavior - I just think your rule is too broad.

              So we need more focused rules and mechanisms. I think disclosing anti-cheat on the store is a good mechanism, I think forcing them to provide previous releases is a good rule. That obviously doesn’t cover nearly enough, but in the current gaming environment I think it’s a good start

        • NekuSoul@lemmy.nekusoul.de
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          12 days ago

          Yup. If it’s important enough that devs now have to add a disclaimer on the store page, surely devs shouldn’t be allowed to circumvent that by adding it later. Since SteamDeck customers are affected by this the most, it’s weird that this isn’t already a rule, particularly for games that are SteamDeck verified.

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    13 days ago

    Why is kernel-level anti-cheat even a thing?

    If I was trying to prevent cheating, I’d hash the relevant game files, encrypt the values, and hard-code them into the executable. Then when the game is launched, calculated the hash of the existing files and compare to the saved values.

    What is gained by running anti-cheat in kernel mode? I only play single-player games, so I assume I’m missing something.

    • Maalus@lemmy.world
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      13 days ago

      And then a game gets updated so the hashes don’t match and uh oh, everything is fucked. Oh, but we can change the hashes of the files in the executable! Yeah, so can they. People modding shit into the executable is basically a given. Let alone the fact that you’d need to sit through a steam “validation of files” length of time every time you’d need to launch a game (because validation works exactly as you have described).

      What is gained is that it has access to more information. Some cheats use an entirely different program / process that reads memory and outputs info that is available to the game but hidden from the player. Like a client needs to know where a person on the other team is to be able to draw their model. So you read that, you put a little box over where they are, and bang you have wallhacks.

      • unalivejoy@lemm.ee
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        13 days ago

        I think the popular thing now is to mod your mouse so it clicks on the enemy player’s head.

    • SkavarSharraddas@gehirneimer.de
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      12 days ago

      Modern cheats for multiplayer games don’t modify local files (or attribute values in memory), since the server validates everything anyway. They’re about giving you information that’s available but not shown in the game (like see-through walls, or exact skill ranges), or manipulate input (dodge enemy damage, easy combos). Those cheat can run in kernel mode (or at least evade detection from user mode), so the anti-cheat needs kernel mode to be more effective.

      • ysjet@lemmy.world
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        12 days ago

        since the server validates everything anyway

        Oh you sweet summer child.

        The server doesn’t validate shit, because that takes up CPU cycles on THEIR hardware, which costs them money. A huge part of kernel level anticheat is forcing YOU to pay the cost for anticheat, so they can squeeze a few more pennies out of it. And if your computer gets owned because they installed insecure, buggy malware on your system…? Well, they’ll just deny. After all, it’s kernel-level, how are YOU going to prove anything?

      • Katana314@lemmy.world
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        12 days ago

        If server validation was still a common practice (as it should be) then cheats wouldn’t come in the form of speed hacks, teleportation hacks, or invincibility. The traditional thing in CS that was hard to prevent is aimhacks and wallhacks. I respect that those are hard to prevent, but they can be much less impactful in modern hero shooters.

    • ampersandrew@lemmy.worldOP
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      13 days ago

      They can prevent you from running cheats that other anti-cheats can’t detect. For instance, they could modify the value in memory so that your calculated hash always succeeds even when it’s modified. This doesn’t stop cheating though; it just means cheaters have to use cheat hardware that exists at a layer that even kernel anti-cheat can’t detect.

    • kevindqc@lemmy.world
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      13 days ago

      Because there are kernel-level cheats

      What you proposed can very easily be bypassed without even needing kernel access by just editing the executable code that checks hashes to always return true

      • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.zip
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        12 days ago

        … Buuut you can still defeat Kernel level Anti Cheats.

        https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RwzIq04vd0M&t=2s&pp=2AECkAIB

        Which means that you still have to end up relying on reviewing a player’s performance and actions as recorded by the game servers statistically via complex statistical algorithms or machine learning to detect impossibly abnormal activity.

        … Which is what VAC has been doing, without kernel level, for over a decade.

        All that is gained from pushing AC to the kernel level is you ruin the privacy and system stability of everyone using it.

        You don’t actually stop cheating.

        It is not possible to have a 100% full proof anti cheat system.

        There will always be new, cleverer exploitation methods, just as there are with literally all other kinds of computer software, which all have new exploits that are detected and triaged basically every day.

        But you do have a choice between using an anti cheat method that is insanely invasive and potentially dangerous to all your users, and one that is not.

      • msage@programming.dev
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        12 days ago

        Boo freaking hoo.

        It’s not like there are so many other ways to cheat, actually used in many games with anticheats.

        We should all stop pretending it’s necessary to put malware into your computer just so some company can claim they have no cheaters, which is never even true.

        • xep@fedia.io
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          The point of anti-cheat is to create a substantial barrier for cheating. If you have to go the extra mile to run an external hardware cheat so as to be “undetected” then surely this means the anti-cheat is working. If it were as ineffective as you imply, cheaters would be cheating on their main accounts.

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    12 days ago

    I wish Valve would just ban them. It’s weird to have something that looks like pure malware in a Game store.

    • pressanykeynow@lemmy.world
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      Luckily Valve seems to believe in freedom of decision for their users so they won’t do this. There are kernel level cheats so there are kernel level anticheats. Obviously anticheats are mostly lame in what they do so it would probably be better for them to not be kernel level. Still there are “pure malware” anticheats and Valve thinks it’s up to the user to decide if they want one, their job is to inform the user. And that’s the best approach here in my opinion.

    • Maestro@fedia.io
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      12 days ago

      They will be gone with time, but not because anything that Valve does. Microsoft is locking down the kernel after the CrowdStrike debacle. In a few years it will be impossible to run any custom kernel code.

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    13 days ago

    I feel like they’re doing this because they are going so hard with steam deck. Regardless, good on Valve for doing this.

    • yeehaw@lemmy.ca
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      10 days ago

      The steam deck is also amazing, such a nice piece of hardware. I’ve been gaming on Linux for years and I’m surprised how well it works. Feels like a console.

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    12 days ago

    Can someone explain like I’m stupid on kernel level anti cheat and why I should watch out for it? Not a dig at all, a genuine question!

    • mrvictory1@lemmy.world
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      12 days ago

      Imagine a game having higher privileges than what you get with “Run as administrator”

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      12 days ago

      Easy, a bug in battle eye forced me to reinstall windows, this kernel access has to go.

    • LoboAureo@lemm.ee
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      12 days ago

      Also, the most games that don’t work in linux is for this reason (and steamdeck works in linux)

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      12 days ago

      Making it super simple, it runs with full access on your machine, always. It can fuck anything up, and see everything. It can get your browser history, banking details or private messages you enter, activate your webcam or mic without you knowing, or brick your computer even.

      And you can’t even check what it’s really doing on your computer because it’s a crime under US law.

      Finally, it can get hacked and other people than the creator can do all these to your computer as well,as it already happened once.

      • scarilog@lemmy.world
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        12 days ago

        And you can’t even check what it’s really doing on your computer because it’s a crime under US law.

        Is this specifically for kernel level anticheat? Because this isn’t a thing for software in general right??

    • ArchRecord@lemm.ee
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      12 days ago

      To put it very simply, the ‘kernel’ has significant control over your OS as it essentially runs above everything else in terms of system privileges.

      It can (but not always) run at startup, so this means if you install a game with kernel-level anticheat, the moment your system turns on, the game’s publisher can have software running on your system that can restrict the installation of a particular driver, stop certain software from running, or, even insidiously spy on your system’s activity if they wished to. (and reverse-engineering the code to figure out if they are spying on you is a felony because of DRM-related laws)

      It basically means trusting every single game publisher with kernel-level anticheat in their games to have a full view into your system, and the ability to effectively control it, without any legal recourse or transparency, all to try (and usually fail) to stop cheating in games.

      • barlescharkley@lemmy.world
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        12 days ago

        More importantly, if traditional anticheat has a bug, your game dies. Oh no.

        If kernel level anticheat has a bug, your computer blue screens (that’s specifically what the blue screen is: a bug in the kernel, not just an ordinary bug that the system can recover from). Much worse. Sure hope that bug only crashes your computer when the game is running and not just whenever, because remember a kernel-level program can be running the moment your computer boots as above poster said

      • ampersandrew@lemmy.worldOP
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        12 days ago

        And it’s worth noting that trusting the game developer isn’t really enough. Far too many of them have been hacked, so who’s to say it’s always your favorite game developer behind the wheel?

        • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.zip
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          12 days ago

          Or, even better, when you let a whole bunch of devs have acces to the kernel…

          sometimes they just accidentally fuck up and push a bad update, unintentionally.

          This is how CrowdStrike managed to Y2K an absurd number of enterprise computers fairly recently.

          Its also why its … you know, generally bad practice to have your kernel just open to fucking whoever instead of having it be locked down and rigorously tested.

          Funnily enough, MSFT now appears to be shifting toward offering much less direct access to its kernel to 3rd party software devs.

      • Katana314@lemmy.world
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        12 days ago

        It’s not just trust of the game developer. I honestly believe most of them just want to put out profitable games. It’s trust that a hacker won’t ever learn how to sign their code in a way that causes it to be respected as part of the game’s code instructions.

        There was some old article about how a black hat found a vulnerability in a signed virtual driver used by Genshin Impact. So, they deployed their whole infection package together with that plain driver to computers that had never been used for video games at all; and because Microsoft chose to trust that driver, it worked.

        I wish I could find an article on it, since a paraphrased summary isn’t a great source. This is coming from memory.

        • catloaf@lemm.ee
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          12 days ago

          It’s trust that a hacker won’t ever learn how to sign their code in a way that causes it to be respected as part of the game’s code instructions.

          That’s not an accurate description of the exploit you describe. It sounds like the attacker bundled a signed and trusted but known vulnerable version of the module, then used a known exploit in that module to run their own unsigned, untrusted code with high privileges.

          This can be resolved by marking that signature as untrusted, but that requires the user to pull an update, and we all know how much people hate updating their PC.

      • FeelzGoodMan420@eviltoast.org
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        12 days ago

        Not all anti cheats run at startup. Some only run when you play a game. I think vanguard for valorant ran all the time at first and people were pissed. Meanwhile easy anti cheat runs only with a game. So it depends. It all sucks though.

        • ArchRecord@lemm.ee
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          12 days ago

          That’s definitely true, I probably should have been a little more clear in my response, specifying that it can run at startup, but doesn’t always do so.

          I’ll edit my comment so nobody gets the wrong idea. Thanks for pointing that out!

  • MyNameIsAtticus@lemmy.world
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    11 days ago

    This will be helpful for discerning if a game can run on the Steam Deck. There’s not many games that don’t have verification (Either by Valve or ProtonDB) but for newer games with anticheat it will serve as a good rule of thumb i imagine

    • yeehaw@lemmy.ca
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      10 days ago

      Lots of games with anti cheat auto work under wine/proton. The most on top of my head example is Elden ring. Runs fine on my desktop with arch, as well as my steam deck.

    • EdgeRunner@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      11 days ago

      I think that’s the main goal behind,
      To avoid frustration for steamD owners and avoid a bad reputation of “all games are unplayable on it”

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    12 days ago

    Probably a pessimistic take, but I don’t expect this to have any discernable impact on sales, or any other effects that would discourage publishers from these practices. The average user doesn’t care about or understand how these things work; they’ll see an anti-cheat warning on the store page and think “Okay, tell the colonel I’ll be on my best behavior then” and continue to buy the game.

    • snooggums@lemmy.world
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      12 days ago

      It will benefit those that care and won’t negatively impact the experience for those that don’t.

      Win, win.

  • Riccosuave@lemmy.world
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    12 days ago

    Not to be annoying, but can someone please ELI5 how kernel level anti-cheat software actually works, or link good resources where I can read about it.

    • scoobford@lemmy.zip
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      12 days ago

      Eli5: your PC has different access levels a program can run at. This prevents a malicious or badly coded program from completely fucking your computer. Kernel level anti cheat runs at the lowest level access that exists under windows. It can do basically whatever it wants to your PC, and if a backdoor is coded in (happens way more than you’d think), it gives malware basically total access to your PC.

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      It runs with higher priveleges than you have and can see anything that happens on your computer.

      It also creates a giant additional attack vector.

  • sonymegadrive@feddit.uk
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    12 days ago

    Easy Anti Cheat - requires manual removal

    Wait, so this sketchy, privacy-invading stuff remains even after a game is uninstalled?! I had no idea.

    How is this stuff not classed as malware at this point?

    • Crozekiel@lemmy.zip
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      12 days ago

      I’ve been shouting from the rooftops for years that this stuff is malware. I’m not the only one. No one listens.

    • michaelmrose@lemmy.world
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      11 days ago

      Do you remember when Sony released cds that when inserted into Windows computer auto ran an installer that installed a rootkit that made it impossible for Windows to see any processes or files that started with a certain sequence of characters instantly turning any malware that named its files or processes similarly powerful rootkit. Oh and it installed a cd driver that made it impossible to copy their music.

      Suggested removal was a full reinstall of windows.

    • mrvictory1@lemmy.world
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      12 days ago

      EAC installation process includes “registration” of a game, and the uninstall process “unregisters” the game. If all games using EAC are uninstalled, EAC itself also should be uninstalled.

    • yamanii@lemmy.world
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      11 days ago

      Plenty of games use it, if it uninstalled with each one then others would stop working.

      • yeehaw@lemmy.ca
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        10 days ago

        I kind of assumed it would be packaged with each game, a waste of space (but how big could it be?) but leaving a game with anti cheat a global dependency seems like a bad idea.

    • catloaf@lemm.ee
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      12 days ago

      Wikipedia says malware is

      any software intentionally designed to cause disruption to a computer, server, client, or computer network, leak private information, gain unauthorized access to information or systems, deprive access to information, or which unknowingly interferes with the user’s computer security and privacy

      It does not do any of these things. Like any software, it may have vulnerabilities, and being a kernel module it can be high risk. But that’s no different from any kernel module, like your graphics driver.

      • michaelmrose@lemmy.world
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        11 days ago

        It’s a much higher risk than average because games are often abandoned within one year of release and still run as long as 10-15 years later and connects to the internet and other randos on the internet. See the Call of Duty games that allow you to take over the computer of anyone who connects to your online match. It greatly degrades the security of its users.

        Technically lots of things people call “malware” don’t actually do any of those things. For instance they may hijack your default search engine, pop up ads, or otherwise monetize your computer at your expense. The category that was invented by ass coverers is “possibly unwanted program” but outside of those who worry about being sued by scumbags people colloquially refer to both what you call malware AND PUPs as "malware the root of which is “bad” after all. Language being descriptive not prescriptive I think this broader definition of malware is fine.

      • yeehaw@lemmy.ca
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        10 days ago

        It unknowingly interferes with my security or privacy, 100%. It has root access. What’s it doing in there? Nowadays you’re naive to think it’s just to prevent game cheating. I guarantee they’re collecting all kinds of information.

    • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.zip
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      12 days ago

      Oh it was initially classed as insanely intrusive malware when kernel level AC was introduced about a decade ago, by anyone with a modicum of actual technical knowledge about computers.

      Unfortunately, a whole lot of corpo shills ran propaganda explaining how actually its fine, don’t worry, its actually the best way to stop cheaters!

      Then the vast, vast majority of idiot gamers believed that, or threw their hands up and went oh well its the new norm, trying to fight it is futile and actually if you are against this that means you are some kind of paranoid privacy freak who hates other people having fun.

  • Maxxie@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    12 days ago

    I imagine the alternative way to combat kernel-level cheats would be asking player for all his game state data, validating it on a server?

    Wouldn’t work on peer-to-peer and you’d have to do a bunch of unnecessary compute(recalculating every tick if player-generated data is possible according to game rules) but its the only way I can think of.

    • levzzz@lemmy.world
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      12 days ago

      Most games already do this lol Cheats usually don’t do anything that is technically impossible to do on a vanilla client, just highly improbable

      • Maxxie@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        12 days ago

        Don’t tell the client what’s going on outside its vision, I suppose? Add a small buffer to compensate for latency, so wall hack would be more of a “corner hack”.

        • DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
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          12 days ago

          I mean sure, that is how some (mostly strategy and tactical) games do it, but for an FPS, figuring out where the buffer should be would be a programmers nightmare. I guess you would have to try to calculate all possible lines of sights a player could have within some buffer time (100-1000ms) and then all players that could in theory enter them… Add physics and it is practically impossible.

          Also, corner hack is useful enough and it does not address aimbot. IMO the answer is some combination of human moderation and ability to play with “friends” instead of randos. E.g. you could ask people to like or dislike a player at the end of a match and try to pair players that liked each other in the past.

    • bitwolf@lemmy.one
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      12 days ago

      Or bring server browsers back and let server mods handle it.

      I’ve rarely, if ever, had a bad time using a server browser.

      A more modern idea. Put all the chesters into the same lobbies through matchmaking

    • ampersandrew@lemmy.worldOP
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      12 days ago

      It does prevent Linux compatibility, but even if it didn’t, it’s a computer security problem, for those who care. You’re essentially allowing different game companies to install a rootkit on your computer so you can play a video game.

    • michaelmrose@lemmy.world
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      11 days ago

      No its common for anti-cheat on Windows to have full root permission to your entire system Windows users are just on average less intelligent, less concerned about privacy, and, more ignorant about technology. This doesn’t mean using Windows makes you stupid its just the OS of choice for the stupid and ignorant.