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> It's about reducing the impact of cheaters It's putting the collateral damage of these measures on the honest people to deter a few. These rootkits make ever

> It's about reducing the impact of cheaters It's putting the collateral damage of these measures on the honest people to deter a few. These rootkits make everyone's systems less secure and less stable. Some even keep running after you close the game. This is a hidden cost put on the consumers so that the game developers can profit without having to design a game that is safe when dealing with untrusted clients.

maccard 5y ago
> it's putting the collateral damage of these measures on the honest people to deter a few. It's putting the collateral on _everyone_ to deter a few who have a substantial impact. It's completely different to DRM where there is no knock on impact to other legit customers. > Some even keep running after you close the game. They all do. If they don't, then the cheat just needs to run first. > game developers can profit without having to design a game that is safe when dealing with untrusted clients. This isn't about profit, and thinking it is is pushing your agenda. On the most extreme side you can just pixel stream a rendered video feed, but the latency is awful for many kinds of games. You inevitably need to let the client have some sort of say (I shot at X), and it _will_ be abused.
- minitoar 5y ago
  It is about profit. They could simply not ship a root kit, and then presumably fewer people would buy the game because it would be known to have cheaters in it.
  - maccard 5y ago
    This is absurdly reductionist; they could also not ship a game, and less people wold buy it because it is known to not have shipped therefore not shipping the game is about profit, when it might be because the game itself isn't finished.
    - minitoar 5y ago
      I honestly don’t understand what you are trying to say here. Not shipping a game would certainly result in less profit. These entities are profit motivated, so they make decisions to maximize profit. They decided shipping a game with a root kit is the best option available to them.
- the8472 5y ago
  > They all do. If they don't, then the cheat just needs to run first. That is nonsense, otherwise the driver would have to be loaded at boot time, which in turn would mean installing a game would need a reboot which just isn't the case these days. > It's completely different to DRM where there is no knock on impact to other legit customers. The media industry claims that piracy cuts into their profit which would imply that it raises prices for everyone. So no, it very much is like DRM in many aspects. > In the most extreme side you can just pixel stream a rendered video feed Which is expensive since you now have to pay for the hardware instead of your customers paying for it, so that too is about profit. In a more extreme case you could put cloud gaming machines wherever CDNs put their edge acceleration boxes. > You inevitably need to let the client have some sort of say (I shot at X), and it _will_ be abused. No, not really. The client does not have to compute the canonical outcome of game mechanics, after all for any action they predict locally there might be an action taken by another player that is inconsistent with that prediction and they will only learn about that incompatibility once their lightcones intersect (which takes a few milliseconds). Something has to reconcile those, which might as well be the server rather than the client. All a client has to do is to compute a tentative game state and the pixels that go along with it. That state will later be corrected once it learns about the canonical update, which can result in the infamous rubberbanding effect. Most cheats that don't involve a broken game engine are of two flavors A) extracting information that the software has but the human shouldn't know (e.g. wallhacks) or B) having software perform inputs that the human should do (e.g. aimbots). A) Can be prevented by reducing the information the server sends to the client to the necessary amount to render their current view. B) cannot be prevented by any means as one could always hook up the output pixels of a GPU to an external computer and an emulated mouse via USB, this is analogous (heh) to the analog hole in DRM. Neither of those have to do with the client determining "I shot at X" on its own.
  - evh 5y ago
    > That is nonsense, otherwise the driver would have to be loaded at boot time, which in turn would mean installing a game would need a reboot which just isn't the case these days. Riot Games' anti-cheat Vanguard (for LoL and Valorant) loads early during boot, requires a reboot after installing and if I recall correctly they now allow unloading it (because who wants to do banking with a rootkit loaded) but then require a reboot before playing again.

maccard 5y ago

> it's putting the collateral damage of these measures on the honest people to deter a few. It's putting the collateral on _everyone_ to deter a few who have a substantial impact. It's completely different to DRM where there is no knock on impact to other legit customers. > Some even keep running after you close the game. They all do. If they don't, then the cheat just needs to run first. > game developers can profit without having to design a game that is safe when dealing with untrusted clients. This isn't about profit, and thinking it is is pushing your agenda. On the most extreme side you can just pixel stream a rendered video feed, but the latency is awful for many kinds of games. You inevitably need to let the client have some sort of say (I shot at X), and it _will_ be abused.

minitoar 5y ago
It is about profit. They could simply not ship a root kit, and then presumably fewer people would buy the game because it would be known to have cheaters in it.
- maccard 5y ago
  This is absurdly reductionist; they could also not ship a game, and less people wold buy it because it is known to not have shipped therefore not shipping the game is about profit, when it might be because the game itself isn't finished.
  - minitoar 5y ago
    I honestly don’t understand what you are trying to say here. Not shipping a game would certainly result in less profit. These entities are profit motivated, so they make decisions to maximize profit. They decided shipping a game with a root kit is the best option available to them.
the8472 5y ago
> They all do. If they don't, then the cheat just needs to run first. That is nonsense, otherwise the driver would have to be loaded at boot time, which in turn would mean installing a game would need a reboot which just isn't the case these days. > It's completely different to DRM where there is no knock on impact to other legit customers. The media industry claims that piracy cuts into their profit which would imply that it raises prices for everyone. So no, it very much is like DRM in many aspects. > In the most extreme side you can just pixel stream a rendered video feed Which is expensive since you now have to pay for the hardware instead of your customers paying for it, so that too is about profit. In a more extreme case you could put cloud gaming machines wherever CDNs put their edge acceleration boxes. > You inevitably need to let the client have some sort of say (I shot at X), and it _will_ be abused. No, not really. The client does not have to compute the canonical outcome of game mechanics, after all for any action they predict locally there might be an action taken by another player that is inconsistent with that prediction and they will only learn about that incompatibility once their lightcones intersect (which takes a few milliseconds). Something has to reconcile those, which might as well be the server rather than the client. All a client has to do is to compute a tentative game state and the pixels that go along with it. That state will later be corrected once it learns about the canonical update, which can result in the infamous rubberbanding effect. Most cheats that don't involve a broken game engine are of two flavors A) extracting information that the software has but the human shouldn't know (e.g. wallhacks) or B) having software perform inputs that the human should do (e.g. aimbots). A) Can be prevented by reducing the information the server sends to the client to the necessary amount to render their current view. B) cannot be prevented by any means as one could always hook up the output pixels of a GPU to an external computer and an emulated mouse via USB, this is analogous (heh) to the analog hole in DRM. Neither of those have to do with the client determining "I shot at X" on its own.
- evh 5y ago
  > That is nonsense, otherwise the driver would have to be loaded at boot time, which in turn would mean installing a game would need a reboot which just isn't the case these days. Riot Games' anti-cheat Vanguard (for LoL and Valorant) loads early during boot, requires a reboot after installing and if I recall correctly they now allow unloading it (because who wants to do banking with a rootkit loaded) but then require a reboot before playing again.