3 ms·

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 prob

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.

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.