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How is "don't trust the client" an arms race? But now we're moving past the simple empirical fact that for countless games it worked, and still works. > They a

How is "don't trust the client" an arms race? But now we're moving past the simple empirical fact that for countless games it worked, and still works. > They are complaining how much time they wasted on mods You mean their complaint that they wasted time on bug reports coming from modded clients? And instead of using the obvious, dead simple solution of appending a client ID to the bug report to filter out modded clients, they prefer to use this as an excuse to add DRM? Guild Wars had a similar issue of getting bug reports from clients due to hardware errors. Did they ban all PCs not built by an authorized OEM? No - they simply added a hardware health check to their game, and ignored bug reports by clients that failed it.

p1necone 4y ago
> How is "don't trust the client" an arms race? Exactly. You write the game logic, you know what the client is and isn't allowed to do. Just ban/kick if the client tries to do something it isn't supposed to do. The only thing stuff like EAC should be needed for is stopping people from delegating making their game logic legal inputs via an aimbot or some external script instead of their actual fingers, which doesn't seem relevant for VRChat.
- pixl97 4y ago
  >Just ban/kick if the client tries to do something it isn't supposed to do. Of course couple this with a deep understanding of what your client actually can do. Oh, and keep track of updates you'll have a lot of banned users.
- alpaca128 4y ago
  Another reason for EAC would be a kind of cheat people built for a recent Battlefield game: a modded graphics driver that changed colors to make other players more visible. There's just no way to detect this server side.
  - yellowapple 4y ago
    That doesn't seem very relevant for VRChat, either.
etchalon 4y ago
The "dead simple solution of appending a client ID" would completely fail if the modified client sent the Client ID of a supported client.
- nightpool 4y ago
  Correct. The problem is users not mentioning they have modified clients when reporting e.g. avatar rendering issues to individual modders. The users aren't being deceptive, they're just non-technical
  - salawat 4y ago
    Welcome to the fruits of a computing industry that hasn't focused on making computing more accessible cognitive load wise in decades. Specs locked behind paywalls/licensewalls. Closed source API:s, lock in via cryptography... It all comes together to create just what large software platforms want, but what people like Engelbart were trying to avoid. A technically ignorant/illeterate user populace.

p1necone 4y ago

> How is "don't trust the client" an arms race? Exactly. You write the game logic, you know what the client is and isn't allowed to do. Just ban/kick if the client tries to do something it isn't supposed to do. The only thing stuff like EAC should be needed for is stopping people from delegating making their game logic legal inputs via an aimbot or some external script instead of their actual fingers, which doesn't seem relevant for VRChat.

pixl97 4y ago
>Just ban/kick if the client tries to do something it isn't supposed to do. Of course couple this with a deep understanding of what your client actually can do. Oh, and keep track of updates you'll have a lot of banned users.
alpaca128 4y ago
Another reason for EAC would be a kind of cheat people built for a recent Battlefield game: a modded graphics driver that changed colors to make other players more visible. There's just no way to detect this server side.
- yellowapple 4y ago
  That doesn't seem very relevant for VRChat, either.

etchalon 4y ago

The "dead simple solution of appending a client ID" would completely fail if the modified client sent the Client ID of a supported client.

nightpool 4y ago
Correct. The problem is users not mentioning they have modified clients when reporting e.g. avatar rendering issues to individual modders. The users aren't being deceptive, they're just non-technical
- salawat 4y ago
  Welcome to the fruits of a computing industry that hasn't focused on making computing more accessible cognitive load wise in decades. Specs locked behind paywalls/licensewalls. Closed source API:s, lock in via cryptography... It all comes together to create just what large software platforms want, but what people like Engelbart were trying to avoid. A technically ignorant/illeterate user populace.