10 ms·

I'm a huge fan of the work Valve is doing, both in gaming hardware and Linux support, but I'm unconvinced helping game-oriented malware run on Linux is good per

by tl 5y ago

I'm a huge fan of the work Valve is doing, both in gaming hardware and Linux support, but I'm unconvinced helping game-oriented malware run on Linux is good period, let alone the "greatest thing to ever happen to Linux gaming".

colejohnson66 5y ago
The alternative is requiring publishers to remove their DRM, and use Valve’s, and they (the publishers) most certainly would not do that. I’d bet that if Valve tried that, there’d be an antitrust lawsuit against them real quick. It sucks, but the alternative is getting the DRM to work on Linux, so that’s what they chose.
- tl 5y ago
  The arms race between game publishers and the small minority of gamers who actually cheat is harmful to everyone else. Stub the DRM APIs to usefully return nothing quickly rather than enabling voyeurs who think scanning and logging the contents of people's hard drives on their servers is acceptable.
  - asoneth 5y ago
    > the small minority of gamers who actually cheat The small minority of gamers who cheat impact the experience for a much larger number of customers who don't. So each cheater might cause dozens of lost subscriptions. (Contrast to software piracy, where each pirated copy only represents a probability between 0 and 1 of a lost sale.)
  - michaelt 5y ago
    I've heard of some online-only games - such as Fall Guys - being basically killed sales-wise by insufficient anti-cheat protection. After all, if another player can run faster or fly or has perfect aim, everyone else is basically playing an unwinnable game. This isn't helped by the current fashion for automatic match-making and 100-player battle royale games - which make one cheater impact a lot more players.
    - rglullis 5y ago
      > if another player can run faster or fly or has perfect aim, everyone else is basically playing an unwinnable game. Not a gamer, so forgive me if the proposal is stupid, why not just treat cheaters like they do on (li)chess? If I am playing with someone that I believe to be cheating, I flag/blacklist that user and simply don't play with that user afterwards. That by itself is enough for me to play against only honest players, but if you want to be more strict you could even submit the game session for review, and in case it is ruled there was cheating, the cheater is banned and every game you lost to the cheater is awarded to you.
      - michaelt 5y ago
        User reports are indeed a common tranche of anti-cheat systems. But in chess terms "Middling player occasionally made suspiciously good moves" is a pretty weak cheat report. But if you can tell they had stockfish running and changed windows to it several times in the course of the game? Well, now you've got a very clear cheat report. More broadly, many gamers are chasing the dopamine rush of winning, complete with slot-machine-style flashing lights, music and dancing character animations. Being awarded a win by e-mail a day or two later doesn't really compare.
        rglullis 5y ago
        What if the cheater is just running stockfish on a separate laptop, is the anti-cheat system also going to turn on the webcam and track eye movement? > Being awarded a win by e-mail a day That is only half of the story. The other half would be in banning the cheater and making them lose access to their account, i.e, impute a real monetary cost to being caught cheating. Make it expensive for those caught cheating and equally expensive for those making false reports and I'd venture that we would see some sort of equilibrium where cheating is not worth it.
        fuzxi 5y ago
        >Make it expensive for those caught cheating and equally expensive for those making false report Well now you've tipped the scales too far. Nobody is going to make a report, even when it's justified, if they're risking their account to do so.
  - colejohnson66 5y ago
    > Stub the DRM APIs to usefully return nothing If breaking DRM was that simple, DRM companies wouldn’t exist; Games would be cracked on day 1 (or earlier). It’s way more complicated than that, and each DRM system is different. That’s why Wine doesn’t do well with DRM. For example, some systems rely on undocumented behavior in Windows’ APIs that Wine doesn’t implement.
83457 5y ago
Correct me if I'm wrong but my understanding is that those are anti-cheat clients that are required by many games to be able to play online. Not being able to run on Linux means the game will never see Linux adoption.
- junon 5y ago
  The trade-off is that you have literal malware on the machine that is controlled by a third party company that most likely doesn't have their security practices up to snuff.
  - krageon 5y ago
    The malware is there regardless, this is about Linux marketshare. You can dislike it (and I do) without gatekeeping your favourite operating system because people want to run software on it that you don't approve of.
    - feanaro 5y ago
      The trouble is it will be opaque and now I have to worry about one more opaque dystopic thing when installing games over Steam. I'll consider it Valve's transgression against me if they let me install anti-cheat malware without warning me any less strongly than screaming at me.
    - GekkePrutser 5y ago
      The problem with anti-cheat software is that it needs extremely high permissions. It wants to inspect every process, take screenshots etc. It's pretty extreme stuff. And the stupid thing is that a lot of games install this software regardless of whether you actually play online or not! I've even had some games that insisted I enable Valve Anti Cheat and refuse to launch otherwise, even though I just wanted to play single player (I rarely play online). That check should obviously come into play only at the multiplayer menu. But this is actually why I still game on Windows. I just have one Windows box which I use for gaming and gaming alone. I don't want this crap on my Linux and FreeBSD computers I do serious work on. So I won't be one of those Linux users in the stats :) Even though I use it daily.
penagwin 5y ago
As a person who both knows how easy cheats are to make, and what anticheat entails - There's no way I'd play without it. In CSGO for example, many players _want_ a more invasive anticheat solution, and are literally asking or even paying for it through third parties like ESEA and Faceit.
mrinterweb 5y ago
I don't fully trust the vendors of anti-cheat software, but I don't think its fair to classify it as "malware". The "mal" in malware mean "malicious". I don't think most anti-cheat software operates with malicious intent.
- nybble41 5y ago
  Most malware is developed to serve some profit motive, not as a result of actual abstract malice toward the victim. I really don't think that's enough to disqualify it. Merrium-Webster defines malware as "software designed to interfere with a computer's normal functioning"[0]. WebRoot defines it as "any type of software designed to infiltrate or damage a computer system without the owner's informed consent"[1]. Red Hat's definition is a bit broader: "malicious software, including any software that acts against the interest of the user"[2]. Most anti-cheat software would fit all of these criteria, with perhaps some quibbling over what counts as "informed consent". [0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/malware https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/malware [1] https://www.webroot.com/us/en/resources/tips-articles/what-is-malware-protection https://www.webroot.com/us/en/resources/tips-articles/what-i... [2] https://www.redhat.com/en/topics/security/what-is-malware https://www.redhat.com/en/topics/security/what-is-malware
Zhyl 5y ago
If you think of 'great' in the 'big impact' sense rather than 'unequivocally good' sense, then it holds. Most complaints I hear about using Linux for gaming are that it can't run games. With anti-cheat it will be able to run games (all of the top ten and most of the top 100). The principles of allowing Anti-Cheat at all are a valid discussion, but I don't think we should be sabotaging Linux as a viable gaming platform just because some of the trends in software at the moment aren't in line with absolute ideals. After all, if you don't want anti-cheat you can just continue to not play the games that require it.
gizmondo 5y ago
People here are obsessed about it, while I don't understand what the problem is. Just run a separate Linux (with kernel-level anti-cheat and trusted computing validation, whatever) for gaming only, that's all?
samtheDamned 5y ago
Its about choice. You aren't required to run EAC or battleye but you can choose to if you want to play video games with your friends. Also anticheat on linux is easier to work with than anticheat on windows. Running a linux gaming VM / dualboot is going to be much easier than a windows gaming vm / dual boot.

by tl 5y ago

colejohnson66 5y ago

The alternative is requiring publishers to remove their DRM, and use Valve’s, and they (the publishers) most certainly would not do that. I’d bet that if Valve tried that, there’d be an antitrust lawsuit against them real quick. It sucks, but the alternative is getting the DRM to work on Linux, so that’s what they chose.

tl 5y ago
The arms race between game publishers and the small minority of gamers who actually cheat is harmful to everyone else. Stub the DRM APIs to usefully return nothing quickly rather than enabling voyeurs who think scanning and logging the contents of people's hard drives on their servers is acceptable.
- asoneth 5y ago
  > the small minority of gamers who actually cheat The small minority of gamers who cheat impact the experience for a much larger number of customers who don't. So each cheater might cause dozens of lost subscriptions. (Contrast to software piracy, where each pirated copy only represents a probability between 0 and 1 of a lost sale.)
- michaelt 5y ago
  I've heard of some online-only games - such as Fall Guys - being basically killed sales-wise by insufficient anti-cheat protection. After all, if another player can run faster or fly or has perfect aim, everyone else is basically playing an unwinnable game. This isn't helped by the current fashion for automatic match-making and 100-player battle royale games - which make one cheater impact a lot more players.
  - rglullis 5y ago
    > if another player can run faster or fly or has perfect aim, everyone else is basically playing an unwinnable game. Not a gamer, so forgive me if the proposal is stupid, why not just treat cheaters like they do on (li)chess? If I am playing with someone that I believe to be cheating, I flag/blacklist that user and simply don't play with that user afterwards. That by itself is enough for me to play against only honest players, but if you want to be more strict you could even submit the game session for review, and in case it is ruled there was cheating, the cheater is banned and every game you lost to the cheater is awarded to you.
    - michaelt 5y ago
      User reports are indeed a common tranche of anti-cheat systems. But in chess terms "Middling player occasionally made suspiciously good moves" is a pretty weak cheat report. But if you can tell they had stockfish running and changed windows to it several times in the course of the game? Well, now you've got a very clear cheat report. More broadly, many gamers are chasing the dopamine rush of winning, complete with slot-machine-style flashing lights, music and dancing character animations. Being awarded a win by e-mail a day or two later doesn't really compare.
      - rglullis 5y ago
        What if the cheater is just running stockfish on a separate laptop, is the anti-cheat system also going to turn on the webcam and track eye movement? > Being awarded a win by e-mail a day That is only half of the story. The other half would be in banning the cheater and making them lose access to their account, i.e, impute a real monetary cost to being caught cheating. Make it expensive for those caught cheating and equally expensive for those making false reports and I'd venture that we would see some sort of equilibrium where cheating is not worth it.
        fuzxi 5y ago
        >Make it expensive for those caught cheating and equally expensive for those making false report Well now you've tipped the scales too far. Nobody is going to make a report, even when it's justified, if they're risking their account to do so.
- colejohnson66 5y ago
  > Stub the DRM APIs to usefully return nothing If breaking DRM was that simple, DRM companies wouldn’t exist; Games would be cracked on day 1 (or earlier). It’s way more complicated than that, and each DRM system is different. That’s why Wine doesn’t do well with DRM. For example, some systems rely on undocumented behavior in Windows’ APIs that Wine doesn’t implement.

83457 5y ago

Correct me if I'm wrong but my understanding is that those are anti-cheat clients that are required by many games to be able to play online. Not being able to run on Linux means the game will never see Linux adoption.

junon 5y ago
The trade-off is that you have literal malware on the machine that is controlled by a third party company that most likely doesn't have their security practices up to snuff.
- krageon 5y ago
  The malware is there regardless, this is about Linux marketshare. You can dislike it (and I do) without gatekeeping your favourite operating system because people want to run software on it that you don't approve of.
  - feanaro 5y ago
    The trouble is it will be opaque and now I have to worry about one more opaque dystopic thing when installing games over Steam. I'll consider it Valve's transgression against me if they let me install anti-cheat malware without warning me any less strongly than screaming at me.
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
    The problem with anti-cheat software is that it needs extremely high permissions. It wants to inspect every process, take screenshots etc. It's pretty extreme stuff. And the stupid thing is that a lot of games install this software regardless of whether you actually play online or not! I've even had some games that insisted I enable Valve Anti Cheat and refuse to launch otherwise, even though I just wanted to play single player (I rarely play online). That check should obviously come into play only at the multiplayer menu. But this is actually why I still game on Windows. I just have one Windows box which I use for gaming and gaming alone. I don't want this crap on my Linux and FreeBSD computers I do serious work on. So I won't be one of those Linux users in the stats :) Even though I use it daily.

penagwin 5y ago

As a person who both knows how easy cheats are to make, and what anticheat entails - There's no way I'd play without it. In CSGO for example, many players _want_ a more invasive anticheat solution, and are literally asking or even paying for it through third parties like ESEA and Faceit.

mrinterweb 5y ago

I don't fully trust the vendors of anti-cheat software, but I don't think its fair to classify it as "malware". The "mal" in malware mean "malicious". I don't think most anti-cheat software operates with malicious intent.

nybble41 5y ago
Most malware is developed to serve some profit motive, not as a result of actual abstract malice toward the victim. I really don't think that's enough to disqualify it. Merrium-Webster defines malware as "software designed to interfere with a computer's normal functioning"[0]. WebRoot defines it as "any type of software designed to infiltrate or damage a computer system without the owner's informed consent"[1]. Red Hat's definition is a bit broader: "malicious software, including any software that acts against the interest of the user"[2]. Most anti-cheat software would fit all of these criteria, with perhaps some quibbling over what counts as "informed consent". [0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/malware https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/malware [1] https://www.webroot.com/us/en/resources/tips-articles/what-is-malware-protection https://www.webroot.com/us/en/resources/tips-articles/what-i... [2] https://www.redhat.com/en/topics/security/what-is-malware https://www.redhat.com/en/topics/security/what-is-malware

Zhyl 5y ago

If you think of 'great' in the 'big impact' sense rather than 'unequivocally good' sense, then it holds. Most complaints I hear about using Linux for gaming are that it can't run games. With anti-cheat it will be able to run games (all of the top ten and most of the top 100). The principles of allowing Anti-Cheat at all are a valid discussion, but I don't think we should be sabotaging Linux as a viable gaming platform just because some of the trends in software at the moment aren't in line with absolute ideals. After all, if you don't want anti-cheat you can just continue to not play the games that require it.

gizmondo 5y ago

People here are obsessed about it, while I don't understand what the problem is. Just run a separate Linux (with kernel-level anti-cheat and trusted computing validation, whatever) for gaming only, that's all?

samtheDamned 5y ago

Its about choice. You aren't required to run EAC or battleye but you can choose to if you want to play video games with your friends. Also anticheat on linux is easier to work with than anticheat on windows. Running a linux gaming VM / dualboot is going to be much easier than a windows gaming vm / dual boot.