4 ms·

Correct me if I'm wrong but anticheat engines, the way I believe they are currently designed, use their proximity to the actual hardware and OS to work, and the

Correct me if I'm wrong but anticheat engines, the way I believe they are currently designed, use their proximity to the actual hardware and OS to work, and the layer of abstraction introduced by Vulkan ruins this. What if the anticheat model was changed to one that detects statistically-improbable scoring (basically, a scientific model)? And triggering that would require some sort of skill verification, almost like a captcha, but for human FPS skill or whatever, generated dynamically? Basically giving up knowing "with absolute certainty" whether there is cheat software installed or not

MattRix 7y ago
There should be a very small percentage of exceptional players. If you allow everyone who cheats to play, even if they're only playing at the peak, it will break the balance of everything. The top tier games will suck because half the players are cheaters, and the lower tier games will be filled with aimbot smurfs on their way up. Unfortunately pretty soon we are going to enter a world where the cheats can be deep learning based and entirely external to the game itself (only using video as input, transmitting raw mouse input, etc). It will be fundamentally impossible to tell the difference from human players. This will be a weird time for competitive games when it happens.
- srajabi 7y ago
  In that circumstance if we had really good auto match making, does it matter? In a competitive environment I don't care if I'm vs.'ing a bot or a human as long as I'm matched with the intent of 50% win rate. Of course with current cheating the issue is not deep learning based agents but seeing through walls or aim assisting. Those just ruin the enjoyment of the game. Similarly I loathe vs'ing an AI that uses the same methods.
  - sdenton4 7y ago
    Really, we should just get rid of the pesky cheating human players and pit them against variable strength AIs...
    - a1369209993 7y ago
      So in other words bring back working singleplayer as was asked for upthread? :)
    - account42 7y ago
      Hah, some games already pit cheaters against each other.
alufers 7y ago
I think you meant Proton instead of Vulkan. Some games run on Vulkan even on Windows. :) Cheers
- pmarreck 7y ago
  Ah, sorry about nomenclature mixup. I love it all!! I want to see Linux become the premier “gaming OS” because gaming shouldn’t depend on a proprietary OS
mjevans 7y ago
Anti-cheat really only matters in 'random' PVP matches... or when money's on the line. Friendly games honestly don't need it.
- chupasaurus 7y ago
  Never thought Masahiro Sakurai would be on HN. `/sarcasm` Most of the online multiplayer games aren't friendly, including my reference above (Super Smash Bros series).
013a 7y ago
Nearly every anticheat system already does this. The thing about anticheat teams is, they almost never talk about how their systems work, but I can practically guarantee to you one thing: There is no idea you could have which has not been tried in the war against cheaters. CounterStrike has, in times past, probably also today, used where you're aiming as a signal for whether you're using wallhacks. Like, if you're aiming and trailing directly on top of another player, but through a wall, for extended periods of time. This is statistical modeling. > And triggering that would require some sort of skill verification How do you remotely validate the skill of someone who is possibly cheating? Why wouldn't they just cheat at the validation? Do you, maybe, accept that they may cheat, but then raise videos of their skill checks to an enforcement team for validation? CounterStrike also already does this! They have the Overwatch system which enables specially trusted players to review gameplay footage of other players which VAC suspects of cheating. Now, Runescape is the most explicit example of these "skill checks" I've encountered. Certain undocumented behavior which resembled botting could trigger an in-game "captcha" where you had to prove you were human. If you were, you'd often get a prize. Simple. Somewhat effective (often, people would just get around this by paying cheap labor in third world countries to oversee a hundred bots per person, and solve the captcha events when they happened. they did not save Runescape's economy from being destroyed by bots, and eventually, the game began enforcing strict value-for-value trading rules between players). What are CounterStrike and Runescape infamous for? Cheaters and botters, moreso than most other games. Statistical methods are a tool in the toolbox of anti-cheat systems, but they're not enough alone. They're far, far too easy to defeat; when a metric becomes a goal, it ceases to be an effective metric. If I keep a wallhack on for an entire game, it becomes very easy to detect; If I turn it on for just one kill, that one kill which puts us on the winning side of a tie, and I'm victorious, the outcome is similar, but I'm far harder for statistical modeling to catch.

MattRix 7y ago

There should be a very small percentage of exceptional players. If you allow everyone who cheats to play, even if they're only playing at the peak, it will break the balance of everything. The top tier games will suck because half the players are cheaters, and the lower tier games will be filled with aimbot smurfs on their way up. Unfortunately pretty soon we are going to enter a world where the cheats can be deep learning based and entirely external to the game itself (only using video as input, transmitting raw mouse input, etc). It will be fundamentally impossible to tell the difference from human players. This will be a weird time for competitive games when it happens.

srajabi 7y ago
In that circumstance if we had really good auto match making, does it matter? In a competitive environment I don't care if I'm vs.'ing a bot or a human as long as I'm matched with the intent of 50% win rate. Of course with current cheating the issue is not deep learning based agents but seeing through walls or aim assisting. Those just ruin the enjoyment of the game. Similarly I loathe vs'ing an AI that uses the same methods.
- sdenton4 7y ago
  Really, we should just get rid of the pesky cheating human players and pit them against variable strength AIs...
  - a1369209993 7y ago
    So in other words bring back working singleplayer as was asked for upthread? :)
  - account42 7y ago
    Hah, some games already pit cheaters against each other.

alufers 7y ago

I think you meant Proton instead of Vulkan. Some games run on Vulkan even on Windows. :) Cheers

pmarreck 7y ago
Ah, sorry about nomenclature mixup. I love it all!! I want to see Linux become the premier “gaming OS” because gaming shouldn’t depend on a proprietary OS

mjevans 7y ago

Anti-cheat really only matters in 'random' PVP matches... or when money's on the line. Friendly games honestly don't need it.

chupasaurus 7y ago
Never thought Masahiro Sakurai would be on HN. `/sarcasm` Most of the online multiplayer games aren't friendly, including my reference above (Super Smash Bros series).

013a 7y ago

Nearly every anticheat system already does this. The thing about anticheat teams is, they almost never talk about how their systems work, but I can practically guarantee to you one thing: There is no idea you could have which has not been tried in the war against cheaters. CounterStrike has, in times past, probably also today, used where you're aiming as a signal for whether you're using wallhacks. Like, if you're aiming and trailing directly on top of another player, but through a wall, for extended periods of time. This is statistical modeling. > And triggering that would require some sort of skill verification How do you remotely validate the skill of someone who is possibly cheating? Why wouldn't they just cheat at the validation? Do you, maybe, accept that they may cheat, but then raise videos of their skill checks to an enforcement team for validation? CounterStrike also already does this! They have the Overwatch system which enables specially trusted players to review gameplay footage of other players which VAC suspects of cheating. Now, Runescape is the most explicit example of these "skill checks" I've encountered. Certain undocumented behavior which resembled botting could trigger an in-game "captcha" where you had to prove you were human. If you were, you'd often get a prize. Simple. Somewhat effective (often, people would just get around this by paying cheap labor in third world countries to oversee a hundred bots per person, and solve the captcha events when they happened. they did not save Runescape's economy from being destroyed by bots, and eventually, the game began enforcing strict value-for-value trading rules between players). What are CounterStrike and Runescape infamous for? Cheaters and botters, moreso than most other games. Statistical methods are a tool in the toolbox of anti-cheat systems, but they're not enough alone. They're far, far too easy to defeat; when a metric becomes a goal, it ceases to be an effective metric. If I keep a wallhack on for an entire game, it becomes very easy to detect; If I turn it on for just one kill, that one kill which puts us on the winning side of a tie, and I'm victorious, the outcome is similar, but I'm far harder for statistical modeling to catch.