7 ms·

Some context. This is running through Wine (and DXVK, a DX9-11 → Vulkan layer) on Linux. Seems EA is doing —like a lot of very lazy anti-cheats— balls-simple s

Some context. This is running through Wine (and DXVK, a DX9-11 → Vulkan layer) on Linux. Seems EA is doing —like a lot of very lazy anti-cheats— balls-simple stack inspection. They determine whether people are cheating by looking for known signed drivers, known hardware, known bad processes and input drivers. It's cheap and scales well but it's brainless. They have to know about a hack to detect it in the future. Version checks are constantly slackened off because legitimate updates come out all the time. Battlefield is seeing Wine and the drivers Wine reports (which are a mix of real and fake) and baulking out. It's to be expected from such plastic anti-cheat software. Many games do this. There are better options. CSGO's overwatch allows the community to self-moderate by replaying a player's gameplay. They literally record the player's input and rebuild what the player could see in the reviewer's client. Reviewer determines whether or not their gameplay was possible. It sounds hardcore but it's simple, and adds no latency because it's done after-the-fact. Makes it super-simple to detect most wall-hacks and aim helpers. So why isn't it everywhere? Logging data costs money. And EA, for all their moneybags are cheapskates. And you could automate this. You could do a server-side render to determine whether or not a user is tracking players that are not physically visible to the player, or tracking impossibly tight hitboxes, or is triggering massive killcounts far too regularly (ie exploiting a bug). But that's more money. But I'd expect a better response shouting into the wind than asking EA to be better. They're a trash company.

ssully 7y ago
You are also comparing two different games in terms of popularity. CS:GO is usually in the top 3 of most popular games on steam. Last time I checked, it was number 1. I would be surprised if Battlefield V has a quarter of the amount of players (across all platforms) versus CS:GO (which is just on PC). I am not trying to make excuses for EA (Which has been nothing but a trash fire of a company for the last few years), but how could they justify putting those kind of resources behind a game like BFV?
- ilikehurdles 7y ago
  Actually, CS:GO is also on Xbox 360!
- oliwarner 7y ago
  CSGO is absolutely a bigger game, and there's money in it but I don't think BF's smaller scale would hinder efficacy at all. It takes a tiny fraction of players to review suspicious actions and collectively remove players from the community. This scales pretty linearly with your player count. From dozens, to millions. Doing nothing, or doing the wrong thing has atrocious effects on the community. Just read some of the other threads in this post. Seasoned players who wait weeks for flagrant cheaters to be removed. It kills a game quickly. Maybe that's actually what EA wants.
  - asutekku 7y ago
    Saving the replay costs data though. It’s not only the reviewing.
    - IshKebab 7y ago
      Not much data. You don't need to save actual videos, the server already has all the data so there's no network cost, and you don't need to store the data for very long. Developer cost to implement the feature would far outstrip the cloud costs.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - oliwarner 7y ago
      Yes, I cover cost in the head comment. It does slightly come down to what sort of multiplayer experience you want. Budget in the temporary archiving of ranking multiplayer games. Sell it as a feature. It'll keep the whole thing ticking over a lot longer. The review cost is nothing. Really. Communities love to self-police so giving them the tools to do it completely, or to a point where they can identify flagrant cheaters for paid mods to verify... It's the Stack Overflow model. It works.
    - deadbunny 7y ago
      We are talking a couple of hundred kB here. They store more in analytics.
- StuffedParrot 7y ago
  > but how could they justify putting those kind of resources behind a game like BFV? Presumably to fulfill their end of their transactions? It’s not like the game is free; presumably you’re paying for something.
  - LanceH 7y ago
    To add; Servers on FPS games used to be run by the players, who could handle cheaters any way they wanted. EA and others have removed this option and should take responsibility for running the only allowed servers.
- Nullabillity 7y ago
  Pretty much all EA games use Frostbite, so it's not like they would have to redo the work from scratch for each game.
arrivance 7y ago
CS:GO also uses deep learning to automatically put cases into Overwatch, instead of relying on just user reports. Some information in this talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObhK8lUfIlc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObhK8lUfIlc
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
fxtentacle 7y ago
Since tools like DXVK (and ReShade on Windows) can allow people to see through walls, I would expect Valve to ban them, too. Even if they are not used in any blatantly obvious way, e.g. by shooting someone you shouldn't be able to see, they still give the cheating player a large advantage by letting them know where on the map the enemies are.
- jyrkesh 7y ago
  I'd expect the same, especially given Valve's multiplayer games run natively on Linux ;) To be honest, other than having better communication on the issue, I'm not sure how I'd handle this one differently than EA...
- HansHamster 7y ago
  Except that Valve develops and promotes Proton for running Windows games on Linux, which also uses DXVK and other tools.
  - fxtentacle 7y ago
    Maybe Valve will then whitelist the DXVK binaries that they themselves provide. But compiling DXVK from source will surely result in a ban because there's just no way to check what has or hasn't been added to the drivers.
blattimwind 7y ago
> CSGO's overwatch allows the community to self-moderate by replaying a player's gameplay. They literally record the player's input and rebuild what the player could see in the reviewer's client. That's literally wrong, the gameplay you see in OW is not based on recorded inputs of the player's client. You are watching a demo recorded by the server, which does not match the PoV of the player precisely. The demos are also 32 tick, which makes it hard to tell if the aiming of the player is legit [1], unless they are very blatant about it. Due to interpolation and lag compensation the PoV that the player saw is not what you see in the server's demo. If you record the player's PoV using screen capture and compare it to the demo recorded by the server, there are subtle and sometimes relevant differences. tl;dr OW is only there to catch obvious cheaters. [1] Because the server runs at 64 tick, but the demo is only 32, the crosshair snaps every time a shot is taken. The aim of everyone looks way snappier and suspicious in a 32 tick demo compared to their PoV.
- strbean 7y ago
  Change "player's input" to "player's input to the server" and it checks out :)
- oliwarner 7y ago
  That's a rather aggressive rebuttal. Its conclusion is also incorrect. It was a slight simplification. You send your input to the server. Yes, filtered. Yes, not 1000Hz. But essentially what the client was doing. You could increase the resolution here but again, who's paying for it? I do agree that the rebuilt context is what the server saw, not what the user saw after network and screen latency, but we're talking about behavioural analysis. And that's where I think you're flat out wrong. One kill could be a suspiciously-tracked headshot. But systems like this can compile hundreds of kills over dozens of matches from a single user. Its volume builds an accurate picture about whether a user is a cheater or not. And it's a country mile better than games that have no repercussions for cheaters where the cheats haven't been detected by Gaming's answer to Norton AntiVirus 2003. Because zero-days still get by those. (Edit: I'll also use my edit window to add that many servers run a lot faster than 64 - just as you can record at any speed you like - by Overwatch may be locked lower for disk space reasons)
lathiat 7y ago
Fortnite fails to launch due to anti cheat on the windows insider build. Though at least it fails to launch instead of resulting in an account ban. It also doesn’t launch on Linux for the same reason. Is at least a touch more user friendly than getting bans I guess.
stevefan1999 7y ago
> CSGO's overwatch allows the community to self-moderate by replaying a player's gameplay. They literally record the player's input and rebuild what the player could see in the reviewer's client. Not particularly correct. It only works for official matchmaking, because you will have your match game demo stored on Valve's server, for future reference to you maybe. Valve simply took advantage to replay these demo by allowing volunteering moderators to access the private demo and hiding the names of the others (but actually these name & steamid are accessable through cheat client); it does not record precise movement, as part of the engine limits, demos are sampled in 16 ticks, or 16fps that sometimes even creates wrong artifacts that misjudged people. You can see that in some pro CSGO matches there are some fishy kills but in fact thats due to 128 ticks -> 16 ticks illusions

ssully 7y ago

You are also comparing two different games in terms of popularity. CS:GO is usually in the top 3 of most popular games on steam. Last time I checked, it was number 1. I would be surprised if Battlefield V has a quarter of the amount of players (across all platforms) versus CS:GO (which is just on PC). I am not trying to make excuses for EA (Which has been nothing but a trash fire of a company for the last few years), but how could they justify putting those kind of resources behind a game like BFV?

ilikehurdles 7y ago
Actually, CS:GO is also on Xbox 360!
oliwarner 7y ago
CSGO is absolutely a bigger game, and there's money in it but I don't think BF's smaller scale would hinder efficacy at all. It takes a tiny fraction of players to review suspicious actions and collectively remove players from the community. This scales pretty linearly with your player count. From dozens, to millions. Doing nothing, or doing the wrong thing has atrocious effects on the community. Just read some of the other threads in this post. Seasoned players who wait weeks for flagrant cheaters to be removed. It kills a game quickly. Maybe that's actually what EA wants.
- asutekku 7y ago
  Saving the replay costs data though. It’s not only the reviewing.
  - IshKebab 7y ago
    Not much data. You don't need to save actual videos, the server already has all the data so there's no network cost, and you don't need to store the data for very long. Developer cost to implement the feature would far outstrip the cloud costs.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - oliwarner 7y ago
    Yes, I cover cost in the head comment. It does slightly come down to what sort of multiplayer experience you want. Budget in the temporary archiving of ranking multiplayer games. Sell it as a feature. It'll keep the whole thing ticking over a lot longer. The review cost is nothing. Really. Communities love to self-police so giving them the tools to do it completely, or to a point where they can identify flagrant cheaters for paid mods to verify... It's the Stack Overflow model. It works.
  - deadbunny 7y ago
    We are talking a couple of hundred kB here. They store more in analytics.
StuffedParrot 7y ago
> but how could they justify putting those kind of resources behind a game like BFV? Presumably to fulfill their end of their transactions? It’s not like the game is free; presumably you’re paying for something.
- LanceH 7y ago
  To add; Servers on FPS games used to be run by the players, who could handle cheaters any way they wanted. EA and others have removed this option and should take responsibility for running the only allowed servers.
Nullabillity 7y ago
Pretty much all EA games use Frostbite, so it's not like they would have to redo the work from scratch for each game.

arrivance 7y ago

CS:GO also uses deep learning to automatically put cases into Overwatch, instead of relying on just user reports. Some information in this talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObhK8lUfIlc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObhK8lUfIlc

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

fxtentacle 7y ago

Since tools like DXVK (and ReShade on Windows) can allow people to see through walls, I would expect Valve to ban them, too. Even if they are not used in any blatantly obvious way, e.g. by shooting someone you shouldn't be able to see, they still give the cheating player a large advantage by letting them know where on the map the enemies are.

jyrkesh 7y ago
I'd expect the same, especially given Valve's multiplayer games run natively on Linux ;) To be honest, other than having better communication on the issue, I'm not sure how I'd handle this one differently than EA...
HansHamster 7y ago
Except that Valve develops and promotes Proton for running Windows games on Linux, which also uses DXVK and other tools.
- fxtentacle 7y ago
  Maybe Valve will then whitelist the DXVK binaries that they themselves provide. But compiling DXVK from source will surely result in a ban because there's just no way to check what has or hasn't been added to the drivers.

blattimwind 7y ago

> CSGO's overwatch allows the community to self-moderate by replaying a player's gameplay. They literally record the player's input and rebuild what the player could see in the reviewer's client. That's literally wrong, the gameplay you see in OW is not based on recorded inputs of the player's client. You are watching a demo recorded by the server, which does not match the PoV of the player precisely. The demos are also 32 tick, which makes it hard to tell if the aiming of the player is legit [1], unless they are very blatant about it. Due to interpolation and lag compensation the PoV that the player saw is not what you see in the server's demo. If you record the player's PoV using screen capture and compare it to the demo recorded by the server, there are subtle and sometimes relevant differences. tl;dr OW is only there to catch obvious cheaters. [1] Because the server runs at 64 tick, but the demo is only 32, the crosshair snaps every time a shot is taken. The aim of everyone looks way snappier and suspicious in a 32 tick demo compared to their PoV.

strbean 7y ago
Change "player's input" to "player's input to the server" and it checks out :)
oliwarner 7y ago
That's a rather aggressive rebuttal. Its conclusion is also incorrect. It was a slight simplification. You send your input to the server. Yes, filtered. Yes, not 1000Hz. But essentially what the client was doing. You could increase the resolution here but again, who's paying for it? I do agree that the rebuilt context is what the server saw, not what the user saw after network and screen latency, but we're talking about behavioural analysis. And that's where I think you're flat out wrong. One kill could be a suspiciously-tracked headshot. But systems like this can compile hundreds of kills over dozens of matches from a single user. Its volume builds an accurate picture about whether a user is a cheater or not. And it's a country mile better than games that have no repercussions for cheaters where the cheats haven't been detected by Gaming's answer to Norton AntiVirus 2003. Because zero-days still get by those. (Edit: I'll also use my edit window to add that many servers run a lot faster than 64 - just as you can record at any speed you like - by Overwatch may be locked lower for disk space reasons)

lathiat 7y ago

Fortnite fails to launch due to anti cheat on the windows insider build. Though at least it fails to launch instead of resulting in an account ban. It also doesn’t launch on Linux for the same reason. Is at least a touch more user friendly than getting bans I guess.

stevefan1999 7y ago

> CSGO's overwatch allows the community to self-moderate by replaying a player's gameplay. They literally record the player's input and rebuild what the player could see in the reviewer's client. Not particularly correct. It only works for official matchmaking, because you will have your match game demo stored on Valve's server, for future reference to you maybe. Valve simply took advantage to replay these demo by allowing volunteering moderators to access the private demo and hiding the names of the others (but actually these name & steamid are accessable through cheat client); it does not record precise movement, as part of the engine limits, demos are sampled in 16 ticks, or 16fps that sometimes even creates wrong artifacts that misjudged people. You can see that in some pro CSGO matches there are some fishy kills but in fact thats due to 128 ticks -> 16 ticks illusions