5 ms·

What tracking scripts are necessary for any functionality to function (except for tracking/data-mining/selling user behaviour)?

arianvanp 8y ago
Anticheat software for games
- nextlevelwizard 8y ago
  Please explain how anticheats are tracking people.
  - klez 8y ago
    There was a piece of news lately about a gaming company tracking users and exfiltrating data about their web use to catch pirates. I'm afraid I don't have a link handy.
    - freeflight 8y ago
      It was probably this: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/02/flight-sim-devs-say-hidden-password-dump-tool-was-used-to-fight-pirates/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/02/flight-sim-devs-say-h... Tho back then I missed their spin how they are supposedly only targeting "that one specific cracker", they must have come up with that a bit later because on their Reddit they mostly tried to argue "it's only affecting pirates".
    - nextlevelwizard 8y ago
      What does this have to do with anti cheats in general?
- gcb0 8y ago
  giving every random game root access on my machine is what killed PC gaming for me. I could play and encounter the ocasional cheatet. great f... deal. to this day I still play wii mario kart with some friends and there is still some loser spamming bombs all over the maps because nintendo screwed up (I wouldn't mind games havin root access to a console). we simply couldn't care less. yeah everyone will lose to the loser and switch servers asap, but we still had a good time. while on the PC every crap you install from steam (which already have root access, expose network ports for who knows what, etc) will also install with root access for what? so people can't cheat on solitaire2000 mmo? I gladly would like all that crap software to run securely in a sandbox and find the ocasional cheater that I will lose to and then proceed to ignore. heck a blocking list would be better than every single anti cheat code. I don't even know where I am going with this rant. giving up your entire computer to every crap game is dumb. period.
  - Moter8 8y ago
    But then, there would be no competitive gaming anymore. Or even non-competitive, but still matchmaked gaming. It would just plain suck. Nobody would have fun, not even the cheaters, when they are going to play against eachother.
    - fjsolwmv 8y ago
      What about the millions of people who don't care about competitive gaming with strangers?
      - Moter8 8y ago
        What about the millions of people that do? The commenter's case was about removing or not allowing it at all, but de facto it's required. I'm pretty sure non-matchmaked games don't have anticheat features -- it would be dumb, as it is an additional cost.
        feanaro 8y ago
        > What about the millions of people that do? The commenter specifically complained about giving root access to games, which is a pretty insane idea, security-wise. If anticheating techniques really require root access, then people that care about competitive gaming should have an option to consider this trade-off and turn the anticheating pieces on if they think this has a better reward/risk ratio than not giving root access to a game. It definitely shouldn't be on by default and unconfigurable, though.
        vk23 8y ago
        > If anticheating techniques really require root access, then people that care about competitive gaming should have an option to consider this trade-off and turn the anticheating pieces on if they think this has a better reward/risk ratio than not giving root access to a game. In CounterStrike (Global Offensive) this is already the case. The official Valve anticheat is not as intrusive as the anticheat provided by external services like Esea or Faceit. If you choose to use such service they basicly take your system apart. It turns out that in order to get good results this is needed. I think you underestimate the impact massive cheating can have on a game. Even casual players will leave games that have cheaters in every other lobby.
kasey_junk 8y ago
Recaptcha
- gcb0 8y ago
  everything Google you mean. recaptcha was fine without even having a server side confirmation, until google improved it.
ec109685 8y ago
Counting unique users. Counting the number of ads displayed, etc., etc.

arianvanp 8y ago

Anticheat software for games

nextlevelwizard 8y ago
Please explain how anticheats are tracking people.
- klez 8y ago
  There was a piece of news lately about a gaming company tracking users and exfiltrating data about their web use to catch pirates. I'm afraid I don't have a link handy.
  - freeflight 8y ago
    It was probably this: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/02/flight-sim-devs-say-hidden-password-dump-tool-was-used-to-fight-pirates/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/02/flight-sim-devs-say-h... Tho back then I missed their spin how they are supposedly only targeting "that one specific cracker", they must have come up with that a bit later because on their Reddit they mostly tried to argue "it's only affecting pirates".
  - nextlevelwizard 8y ago
    What does this have to do with anti cheats in general?
gcb0 8y ago
giving every random game root access on my machine is what killed PC gaming for me. I could play and encounter the ocasional cheatet. great f... deal. to this day I still play wii mario kart with some friends and there is still some loser spamming bombs all over the maps because nintendo screwed up (I wouldn't mind games havin root access to a console). we simply couldn't care less. yeah everyone will lose to the loser and switch servers asap, but we still had a good time. while on the PC every crap you install from steam (which already have root access, expose network ports for who knows what, etc) will also install with root access for what? so people can't cheat on solitaire2000 mmo? I gladly would like all that crap software to run securely in a sandbox and find the ocasional cheater that I will lose to and then proceed to ignore. heck a blocking list would be better than every single anti cheat code. I don't even know where I am going with this rant. giving up your entire computer to every crap game is dumb. period.
- Moter8 8y ago
  But then, there would be no competitive gaming anymore. Or even non-competitive, but still matchmaked gaming. It would just plain suck. Nobody would have fun, not even the cheaters, when they are going to play against eachother.
  - fjsolwmv 8y ago
    What about the millions of people who don't care about competitive gaming with strangers?
    - Moter8 8y ago
      What about the millions of people that do? The commenter's case was about removing or not allowing it at all, but de facto it's required. I'm pretty sure non-matchmaked games don't have anticheat features -- it would be dumb, as it is an additional cost.
      - feanaro 8y ago
        > What about the millions of people that do? The commenter specifically complained about giving root access to games, which is a pretty insane idea, security-wise. If anticheating techniques really require root access, then people that care about competitive gaming should have an option to consider this trade-off and turn the anticheating pieces on if they think this has a better reward/risk ratio than not giving root access to a game. It definitely shouldn't be on by default and unconfigurable, though.
        vk23 8y ago
        > If anticheating techniques really require root access, then people that care about competitive gaming should have an option to consider this trade-off and turn the anticheating pieces on if they think this has a better reward/risk ratio than not giving root access to a game. In CounterStrike (Global Offensive) this is already the case. The official Valve anticheat is not as intrusive as the anticheat provided by external services like Esea or Faceit. If you choose to use such service they basicly take your system apart. It turns out that in order to get good results this is needed. I think you underestimate the impact massive cheating can have on a game. Even casual players will leave games that have cheaters in every other lobby.

kasey_junk 8y ago

Recaptcha

gcb0 8y ago
everything Google you mean. recaptcha was fine without even having a server side confirmation, until google improved it.

ec109685 8y ago

Counting unique users. Counting the number of ads displayed, etc., etc.