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If I played competitive video games seriously I would absolutely want them to take cheating seriously and take any necessary measure to stop it. At the same tim

by dagw 5y ago

If I played competitive video games seriously I would absolutely want them to take cheating seriously and take any necessary measure to stop it. At the same time I think they should also make the most serious kernel/driver level anti-cheat software optional. If you don't to want to install it you can still play the game, just not on any of the 'pro' servers. Think of it a bit like doping tests in sports. As long as you're just competing in amateur races for fun then take all the steroids you want. Once you want to start competing in serious races be prepared for people demanding blood and urine samples.

sbarre 5y ago
The problem with this logic is that most multiplayer games have post-sale economies with cosmetics and other add-ons, and I would guess that most of those sales comes from casual players. So while anti-cheat helps protect the pro/serious players (who in some ways are community/marketing leaders in this world of Twitch and YouTube), it also creates a fair environment for all the casual and aspiring players who keep spending money on the game in droves.
- 0xedd 5y ago
  Your argument falls short. Pro cheating uses hardware to cheat. It streams the video output and keyboard/mouse input to an AI/ML. Making these kernel anti-cheat useless there. Casual players looking to spend money on cosmetics aren't affected by cheaters because the system influencing the players to buy isn't affected by the cheaters. The way most of these "influence systems" work is by using marketing strategies. It'll augment your match, or otherwise the players you meet, to see cosmetics you don't have. Coupled with gambling mechanics to induce addiction and sheer marketing material ("best offer now!") makes for this whole pro-kernel-anti-cheat industry move highly dubious. Source: i worked at a company that writes such systems. The day I decided to quit was when my naive ass heard the team lead, on a recruitment call, explain to a candidate what we do: "we refine a company's ability to get kids addicted". It's a completely different game (no pun intended) than what news outlets want us to think.
  - jasonwatkinspdx 5y ago
    > Casual players looking to spend money on cosmetics aren't affected by cheaters because the system influencing the players to buy isn't affected by the cheaters. This is a rather confused thing to say. Are there players out there that just grind cosmetics and don't care about win rate, game quality, or wasted time? Probably a handful. But the overwhelming majority of players in a game are there to have fun and cheaters utterly destroy that. Cheaters, smurfs, etc, are a plague on online multiplayer gaming where one troll ruins everything for everyone else match. At the end of the day it's just a game, and if the game disappears or whatever humanity will go on. So let's not lose perspective. But saying casual players aren't affected by cheaters is flat out wrong. I worked in gaming as well, so I'm familiar with the issues you're referencing, but hyperbolic exaggerations don't help us address it.
- nulld3v 5y ago
  Then simply have the anti-cheat option be the default option? Most casual players will not bother opting out.
realusername 5y ago
I agree but it should only be present for pro competitions (and by pro I really mean playing is their job).
- dagw 5y ago
  Why not let the players decide if they want to play on the 'serious' server with serious anti-cheat or on 'fun' server with minimal checks.
- gambiting 5y ago
  I disagree. As someone who plays online shooters only casually once or twice a week, nothing sucks more than having a full session in Apex ruined by an obvious cheater. The fact that I don't spend 8 hours a day doing this makes it far worse for me, the time for gaming is very limited when you have a small child and having it ruined because of some script kiddies is incredibly demoralizing. Let me put it this way - I'd much rather play an online shooter with a hardcore kernel level anticheat than a one without it.
  - rnhmjoj 5y ago
    You used to be able to vote-kick the obvious cheater, not sure why that is not an option anymore, these days.
    - hfourm 5y ago
      Abuse usually...
      - gambiting 5y ago
        Yep, people just spamming cheater reports on someone who killed them, it's worthless without human verification and that's expensive/difficult.
        rnhmjoj 5y ago
        It's already human verified if you require say >50% players to vote, assuming the cheater is not running a Sybil attack too.
busterarm 5y ago
The serious cheats in competitive games these days don't rely on hacking the game anymore. They use a separate computer connected taking your HDMI out as an input and then controls your mouse and keyboard inputs. They use ML models and OpenCV. You watch the second computer's monitor and it draws huge boxes around things you shoot and it assists your aim. It doesn't even have to be a PC game, you can do the same with consoles and a computer. Kernel level anti-cheat is meaningless.
- vasili111 5y ago
  Any links confirming the existence of such systems?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- oblio 5y ago
  Do you have some links for this? It sounds super interesting.
  - dagw 5y ago
    https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/07/cheat-maker-brags-of-computer-vision-auto-aim-that-works-on-any-game/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/07/cheat-maker-brags-of-... There are also videos on Youtube demonstrating it in actions
  - WelcomeShorty 5y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27790723 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27790723 But there is plenty when you google the key words.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- rafale 5y ago
  The setup makes it impractical. You would need a very powerful computer to run it in real time. And it won't tell you about what u can't see. You would need to do the same for audio and game mechanics. Check what a top player can do: https://youtu.be/8Qf5Xlty1Cg https://youtu.be/8Qf5Xlty1Cg I doubt an AI will be anywhere close in the next 10 years.
oauea 5y ago
Never trust the client. Trying to install a rootkit on your users' computers won't change the reality of client-server security.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  I agree, and I think that like DRM anti-cheat is generally a customer-hostile losing battle. The big problem is that companies are trying to solve a social problem (cheating) with a technological solution and, predictably, failing. Partly this is motivated by profit: if you required online gamers to be real verifiable people, with all suspected cheating was judged by a human being, and bans were permanent and landed you on a watch list for other games, cheating would probably drop dramatically but so would sign-ups and your ability to resell the game to the new account of a cheater who's old account was banned. Personally, I'm completely fed up with online competitive multiplayer for other reasons so it doesn't really affect me. I just don't by the games that would use kernel-level anti-cheat to begin with.
  - CaptainZapp 5y ago
    > I agree, and I think that like DRM anti-cheat is generally a customer-hostile losing battle. The big problem is that companies are trying to solve a social problem (cheating) with a technological solution and, predictably, failing. I don't disagree with your general take, but you can't accuse Valve Anti Cheat of being a failure.[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valve_Anti-Cheat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valve_Anti-Cheat
  - vintermann 5y ago
    I think a lot of the prevalence of cheating has to have some economic roots. A certain kind of cheater, the kind who buy new accounts (maybe with new cosmetics) every time they are banned, isn't necessarily someone a company wants to get rid of permanently. The benefits of this sort of income may be high compared to the benefit of being a "serious competitive game". I think Minecraft servers are instructive, because they're often run just as cynically as free to play games, but with less competence, so it's easier to see what's going on. You do see a lot of pay-to-unban there, for instance.
tomc1985 5y ago
> If you don't to want to install it you can still play the game, just not on any of the 'pro' servers. The worst thing gaming has ever done was think it was anything like professional sports. I think that I'm in favor of cheating in games just because it rankles people who take gaming way too seriously.
- qboltz 5y ago
  I'd be interested to hear your opinion defending professional sports taking itself as seriously as it does then. From my perspective, the only thing that makes it serious is the amount of money and advertising involved. Sure the technological barrier is important, but I fail to see how they're categorically different depending on what they require of the participants. I don't have an issue saying they both should not be taken seriously, or that both should be taken seriously, but to draw a line between them in terms of "seriousness" I think needs elaborating to me.
  - tomc1985 5y ago
    > I'd be interested to hear your opinion defending professional sports taking itself as seriously as it does then. Also stupid. Athlete worship is as bad or worse than celebrity worship. The obsession with and tribalism from professional sports has creates some of the most obnoxious bores in the world. All for a bunch of people kicking or throwing a ball around.
- zentiggr 5y ago
  > people who take gaming way too seriously Every activity has its own popularity, and number of fans of various seriousness... Cat and dog shows, caber toss, curling, singing competitions, on and on and on, the list is about infinite, since it encompasses everything within which someone could potentially be more skilled. Singling out video games among all the other things humans do competitively feels like a personal bias. I personally don't care about probably 99% of the 'competitions' out there, but I don't give anyone crap for being obsessed about their own thing. (I don't play games online multiplayer style, so I'm not in the target group anyway.) I don't think there's such a thing as "gaming", as you use the word... everyone involved does their own thing, in infinite variety as well.
alkonaut 5y ago
> Just not on any of the 'pro' servers. No, the other way around. On "pro" servers there is moderation that makes cheating a non-issue. It's in the casual space that cheaters ruin everything, because there isn't any human moderation. I'd phrase it as "you can still play the game, just not against other humans".
- gurkendoktor 5y ago
  "...other humans that you don't trust" I often care about online multiplayer, but only with my friends (who I trust not to cheat). I don't want to install a rootkit for that.
hi_im_miles 5y ago
As someone who does play competitive video games seriously, rather than having anti-cheat, I would prefer to play on servers/ladders where the players are vetted and where getting caught cheating has meaningful social implications. Open-for-all servers with accounts that are trivial to make is the problem to me.

by dagw 5y ago

sbarre 5y ago

The problem with this logic is that most multiplayer games have post-sale economies with cosmetics and other add-ons, and I would guess that most of those sales comes from casual players. So while anti-cheat helps protect the pro/serious players (who in some ways are community/marketing leaders in this world of Twitch and YouTube), it also creates a fair environment for all the casual and aspiring players who keep spending money on the game in droves.

0xedd 5y ago
Your argument falls short. Pro cheating uses hardware to cheat. It streams the video output and keyboard/mouse input to an AI/ML. Making these kernel anti-cheat useless there. Casual players looking to spend money on cosmetics aren't affected by cheaters because the system influencing the players to buy isn't affected by the cheaters. The way most of these "influence systems" work is by using marketing strategies. It'll augment your match, or otherwise the players you meet, to see cosmetics you don't have. Coupled with gambling mechanics to induce addiction and sheer marketing material ("best offer now!") makes for this whole pro-kernel-anti-cheat industry move highly dubious. Source: i worked at a company that writes such systems. The day I decided to quit was when my naive ass heard the team lead, on a recruitment call, explain to a candidate what we do: "we refine a company's ability to get kids addicted". It's a completely different game (no pun intended) than what news outlets want us to think.
- jasonwatkinspdx 5y ago
  > Casual players looking to spend money on cosmetics aren't affected by cheaters because the system influencing the players to buy isn't affected by the cheaters. This is a rather confused thing to say. Are there players out there that just grind cosmetics and don't care about win rate, game quality, or wasted time? Probably a handful. But the overwhelming majority of players in a game are there to have fun and cheaters utterly destroy that. Cheaters, smurfs, etc, are a plague on online multiplayer gaming where one troll ruins everything for everyone else match. At the end of the day it's just a game, and if the game disappears or whatever humanity will go on. So let's not lose perspective. But saying casual players aren't affected by cheaters is flat out wrong. I worked in gaming as well, so I'm familiar with the issues you're referencing, but hyperbolic exaggerations don't help us address it.
nulld3v 5y ago
Then simply have the anti-cheat option be the default option? Most casual players will not bother opting out.

realusername 5y ago

I agree but it should only be present for pro competitions (and by pro I really mean playing is their job).

dagw 5y ago
Why not let the players decide if they want to play on the 'serious' server with serious anti-cheat or on 'fun' server with minimal checks.
gambiting 5y ago
I disagree. As someone who plays online shooters only casually once or twice a week, nothing sucks more than having a full session in Apex ruined by an obvious cheater. The fact that I don't spend 8 hours a day doing this makes it far worse for me, the time for gaming is very limited when you have a small child and having it ruined because of some script kiddies is incredibly demoralizing. Let me put it this way - I'd much rather play an online shooter with a hardcore kernel level anticheat than a one without it.
- rnhmjoj 5y ago
  You used to be able to vote-kick the obvious cheater, not sure why that is not an option anymore, these days.
  - hfourm 5y ago
    Abuse usually...
    - gambiting 5y ago
      Yep, people just spamming cheater reports on someone who killed them, it's worthless without human verification and that's expensive/difficult.
      - rnhmjoj 5y ago
        It's already human verified if you require say >50% players to vote, assuming the cheater is not running a Sybil attack too.

busterarm 5y ago

The serious cheats in competitive games these days don't rely on hacking the game anymore. They use a separate computer connected taking your HDMI out as an input and then controls your mouse and keyboard inputs. They use ML models and OpenCV. You watch the second computer's monitor and it draws huge boxes around things you shoot and it assists your aim. It doesn't even have to be a PC game, you can do the same with consoles and a computer. Kernel level anti-cheat is meaningless.

vasili111 5y ago
Any links confirming the existence of such systems?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
oblio 5y ago
Do you have some links for this? It sounds super interesting.
- dagw 5y ago
  https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/07/cheat-maker-brags-of-computer-vision-auto-aim-that-works-on-any-game/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/07/cheat-maker-brags-of-... There are also videos on Youtube demonstrating it in actions
- WelcomeShorty 5y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27790723 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27790723 But there is plenty when you google the key words.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
rafale 5y ago
The setup makes it impractical. You would need a very powerful computer to run it in real time. And it won't tell you about what u can't see. You would need to do the same for audio and game mechanics. Check what a top player can do: https://youtu.be/8Qf5Xlty1Cg https://youtu.be/8Qf5Xlty1Cg I doubt an AI will be anywhere close in the next 10 years.

oauea 5y ago

Never trust the client. Trying to install a rootkit on your users' computers won't change the reality of client-server security.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
I agree, and I think that like DRM anti-cheat is generally a customer-hostile losing battle. The big problem is that companies are trying to solve a social problem (cheating) with a technological solution and, predictably, failing. Partly this is motivated by profit: if you required online gamers to be real verifiable people, with all suspected cheating was judged by a human being, and bans were permanent and landed you on a watch list for other games, cheating would probably drop dramatically but so would sign-ups and your ability to resell the game to the new account of a cheater who's old account was banned. Personally, I'm completely fed up with online competitive multiplayer for other reasons so it doesn't really affect me. I just don't by the games that would use kernel-level anti-cheat to begin with.
- CaptainZapp 5y ago
  > I agree, and I think that like DRM anti-cheat is generally a customer-hostile losing battle. The big problem is that companies are trying to solve a social problem (cheating) with a technological solution and, predictably, failing. I don't disagree with your general take, but you can't accuse Valve Anti Cheat of being a failure.[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valve_Anti-Cheat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valve_Anti-Cheat
- vintermann 5y ago
  I think a lot of the prevalence of cheating has to have some economic roots. A certain kind of cheater, the kind who buy new accounts (maybe with new cosmetics) every time they are banned, isn't necessarily someone a company wants to get rid of permanently. The benefits of this sort of income may be high compared to the benefit of being a "serious competitive game". I think Minecraft servers are instructive, because they're often run just as cynically as free to play games, but with less competence, so it's easier to see what's going on. You do see a lot of pay-to-unban there, for instance.

tomc1985 5y ago

> If you don't to want to install it you can still play the game, just not on any of the 'pro' servers. The worst thing gaming has ever done was think it was anything like professional sports. I think that I'm in favor of cheating in games just because it rankles people who take gaming way too seriously.

qboltz 5y ago
I'd be interested to hear your opinion defending professional sports taking itself as seriously as it does then. From my perspective, the only thing that makes it serious is the amount of money and advertising involved. Sure the technological barrier is important, but I fail to see how they're categorically different depending on what they require of the participants. I don't have an issue saying they both should not be taken seriously, or that both should be taken seriously, but to draw a line between them in terms of "seriousness" I think needs elaborating to me.
- tomc1985 5y ago
  > I'd be interested to hear your opinion defending professional sports taking itself as seriously as it does then. Also stupid. Athlete worship is as bad or worse than celebrity worship. The obsession with and tribalism from professional sports has creates some of the most obnoxious bores in the world. All for a bunch of people kicking or throwing a ball around.
zentiggr 5y ago
> people who take gaming way too seriously Every activity has its own popularity, and number of fans of various seriousness... Cat and dog shows, caber toss, curling, singing competitions, on and on and on, the list is about infinite, since it encompasses everything within which someone could potentially be more skilled. Singling out video games among all the other things humans do competitively feels like a personal bias. I personally don't care about probably 99% of the 'competitions' out there, but I don't give anyone crap for being obsessed about their own thing. (I don't play games online multiplayer style, so I'm not in the target group anyway.) I don't think there's such a thing as "gaming", as you use the word... everyone involved does their own thing, in infinite variety as well.

alkonaut 5y ago

> Just not on any of the 'pro' servers. No, the other way around. On "pro" servers there is moderation that makes cheating a non-issue. It's in the casual space that cheaters ruin everything, because there isn't any human moderation. I'd phrase it as "you can still play the game, just not against other humans".

gurkendoktor 5y ago
"...other humans that you don't trust" I often care about online multiplayer, but only with my friends (who I trust not to cheat). I don't want to install a rootkit for that.

hi_im_miles 5y ago

As someone who does play competitive video games seriously, rather than having anti-cheat, I would prefer to play on servers/ladders where the players are vetted and where getting caught cheating has meaningful social implications. Open-for-all servers with accounts that are trivial to make is the problem to me.