44 ms·

Most games will never work on Linux since anti cheat on the platform is infeasible.

oliwarner 6y ago
This is an absurd comment for two reasons. Most games aren't multiplayer with anti-cheat requirements. And you're only talking about lazy, client-side anti-cheat systems. It's impossible to verify everything between eyeball and public network. The drop-in systems available essentially check for known things, good and bad. This war on clients has a front line moving lower and lower into your computer. It used to be process and driver inspection but it's in the process of moving up to UEFI-locked ring0 (Riot's Vanguard) and it'll be a TPM-like hardware module by 2025. There's another way: INSPECT ACTIONS. Every client knows what's going on, the server —if one exists— knows what's going on. Just replay 10 seconds leading up to a suspicious event and you very quickly discover wall-hacking, or aiming too fast and too accurately, or impossible macros. This system can be automated, cross checked by multiple clients, and you very quickly know if somebody is probably cheating. Even if you don't want to spend time tuning your machine learning, you can just replay scenarios to other players. Hackers aren't subtle! CSGO's Overwatch is essentially crowdsourced moderation... and it works. The reason we pretend that client-side checks are the only anti-cheat feature out there is because they're cheap. Drop-in. But they're awful for gamers' freedoms.
- forest_dweller 6y ago
  You are missing the point. The games do not work. As you said some install Kernel Level drivers (I believe this is a Ring-0 but I am not an expert in such things) as a Anti-cheat mechanism. These do not work with Wine/Proton. e.g. Doom Eternal worked fine until the first patch and then didn't once the anti-cheat was installed (for the non-existant multiplayer community). Then they removed it only after the fanbase heavily downvoted the game on the steam store and constantly bitched to bethesda about it. However most companies bet on most players just putting up with the bullshit to play the game and they are normally right. I don't drop £700 on a GPU to worry about software freedoms. I buy it to play games. If I get fed up of messing about (I am the guy that runs unironically runs Arch on my desktop when not gaming and OpenBSD on my office laptop), the vast majority of players just won't even bother. The best solution I've found is GPU passthrough (which a friend of mine has setup and I am going to try in the coming weeks) but that has it caveats and tbh Dual booting and just putting up with BS is just easier than trying to fight it.
  - oliwarner 6y ago
    Those games don't work. And it's important to note that occasionally those games also don't work for Windows users. New drivers, strange setups, perfectly legitimate background software, they've all upset the boat at some point, and will again in the future. Trusted Clients are fragile beasts. It was Denuvo's Anti-Cheat and Anti-Tamper that were added retrospectively to Doom Eternal. Denuvo has a pretty awful track record even on Windows, so seeing its quick removal wasn't too surprising. If anything, the experience was positive to see a large publisher acknowledge Linux compatibility. Games companies can keep betting on the worst anti-cheat mechanisms, I'll keep gaming on Linux thanks. I happily trade a few frames and titles to not use Windows. In my eyes, I'm better for it. If I wanted a locked down system, I'd buy a console.
    - forest_dweller 6y ago
      Well they defintely don't work on Linux which is the point and I definetely can't play them. I personally left a negative review and removed the game until the patch was removed. Whether the anti-cheat should be there isn't the issue. The issue is "does this stop the game from running on Linux". The answer was yes it does. For a lot of people the only reason they buy a PC is to play games. So you might be okay saying "well I don't care about those titles" but for a lot of people those big titles with shitty DRM is literally the reason they bought the PC in the first place and saying the concern was absurd is just incorrect.
      - oliwarner 6y ago
        I'm not trying to give voice to every gamer, just pointing out that there's more to gaming than games that rely on this crap, and that some of us accept that. Life is full of quasi-moral choices like this. You can choose to support hardware that supports your platform. You can choose to buy local rather than carrots flown in from South Africa; wtf Waitrose! You can donate your time to helping people hoping it makes the world slightly better. Not playing games that go out of their way to force me to run Windows is my moral stand here. I get that it's not for you, and it's not for a lot of other Windows gamers, and it might even be stopping the Year of the Linux Desktop... But my view is this too shall pass. Trusted Clients are bound to fail, as they have again and again and again. They're running out of options. Engines with action integrity checks are the future. And e-sports will move to the cloud because that just makes sense for everybody involved.
- rasz 6y ago
  >the server —if one exists— knows what's going on Yes, but deploying even the most basic client input validation will mean we cant just ship a thin message passing shim masquerading as a server! Our cloud costs would go up by at least 20%!!1
jrockway 6y ago
Windows is probably moving in this direction too, so games will have to figure it out regardless. New installs of Windows 10 run in a VM; drivers no longer have access to the entire machine. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/device-experiences/oem-vbs https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/dev... https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/device-experiences/vbs-resource-protections https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/dev...
- pjmlp 6y ago
  The irony of desktop computers in 2020 catching up with OS/360.

This is an absurd comment for two reasons. Most games aren't multiplayer with anti-cheat requirements. And you're only talking about lazy, client-side anti-cheat systems. It's impossible to verify everything between eyeball and public network. The drop-in systems available essentially check for known things, good and bad. This war on clients has a front line moving lower and lower into your computer. It used to be process and driver inspection but it's in the process of moving up to UEFI-locked ring0 (Riot's Vanguard) and it'll be a TPM-like hardware module by 2025. There's another way: INSPECT ACTIONS. Every client knows what's going on, the server —if one exists— knows what's going on. Just replay 10 seconds leading up to a suspicious event and you very quickly discover wall-hacking, or aiming too fast and too accurately, or impossible macros. This system can be automated, cross checked by multiple clients, and you very quickly know if somebody is probably cheating. Even if you don't want to spend time tuning your machine learning, you can just replay scenarios to other players. Hackers aren't subtle! CSGO's Overwatch is essentially crowdsourced moderation... and it works. The reason we pretend that client-side checks are the only anti-cheat feature out there is because they're cheap. Drop-in. But they're awful for gamers' freedoms.

forest_dweller 6y ago
You are missing the point. The games do not work. As you said some install Kernel Level drivers (I believe this is a Ring-0 but I am not an expert in such things) as a Anti-cheat mechanism. These do not work with Wine/Proton. e.g. Doom Eternal worked fine until the first patch and then didn't once the anti-cheat was installed (for the non-existant multiplayer community). Then they removed it only after the fanbase heavily downvoted the game on the steam store and constantly bitched to bethesda about it. However most companies bet on most players just putting up with the bullshit to play the game and they are normally right. I don't drop £700 on a GPU to worry about software freedoms. I buy it to play games. If I get fed up of messing about (I am the guy that runs unironically runs Arch on my desktop when not gaming and OpenBSD on my office laptop), the vast majority of players just won't even bother. The best solution I've found is GPU passthrough (which a friend of mine has setup and I am going to try in the coming weeks) but that has it caveats and tbh Dual booting and just putting up with BS is just easier than trying to fight it.
- oliwarner 6y ago
  Those games don't work. And it's important to note that occasionally those games also don't work for Windows users. New drivers, strange setups, perfectly legitimate background software, they've all upset the boat at some point, and will again in the future. Trusted Clients are fragile beasts. It was Denuvo's Anti-Cheat and Anti-Tamper that were added retrospectively to Doom Eternal. Denuvo has a pretty awful track record even on Windows, so seeing its quick removal wasn't too surprising. If anything, the experience was positive to see a large publisher acknowledge Linux compatibility. Games companies can keep betting on the worst anti-cheat mechanisms, I'll keep gaming on Linux thanks. I happily trade a few frames and titles to not use Windows. In my eyes, I'm better for it. If I wanted a locked down system, I'd buy a console.
  - forest_dweller 6y ago
    Well they defintely don't work on Linux which is the point and I definetely can't play them. I personally left a negative review and removed the game until the patch was removed. Whether the anti-cheat should be there isn't the issue. The issue is "does this stop the game from running on Linux". The answer was yes it does. For a lot of people the only reason they buy a PC is to play games. So you might be okay saying "well I don't care about those titles" but for a lot of people those big titles with shitty DRM is literally the reason they bought the PC in the first place and saying the concern was absurd is just incorrect.
    - oliwarner 6y ago
      I'm not trying to give voice to every gamer, just pointing out that there's more to gaming than games that rely on this crap, and that some of us accept that. Life is full of quasi-moral choices like this. You can choose to support hardware that supports your platform. You can choose to buy local rather than carrots flown in from South Africa; wtf Waitrose! You can donate your time to helping people hoping it makes the world slightly better. Not playing games that go out of their way to force me to run Windows is my moral stand here. I get that it's not for you, and it's not for a lot of other Windows gamers, and it might even be stopping the Year of the Linux Desktop... But my view is this too shall pass. Trusted Clients are bound to fail, as they have again and again and again. They're running out of options. Engines with action integrity checks are the future. And e-sports will move to the cloud because that just makes sense for everybody involved.
rasz 6y ago
>the server —if one exists— knows what's going on Yes, but deploying even the most basic client input validation will mean we cant just ship a thin message passing shim masquerading as a server! Our cloud costs would go up by at least 20%!!1

jrockway 6y ago

Windows is probably moving in this direction too, so games will have to figure it out regardless. New installs of Windows 10 run in a VM; drivers no longer have access to the entire machine. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/device-experiences/oem-vbs https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/dev... https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/device-experiences/vbs-resource-protections https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/dev...

pjmlp 6y ago
The irony of desktop computers in 2020 catching up with OS/360.