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While I applaud people being able to use their hardware the way they want to, I know that this inevitably leads to rampant cheating and will ultimately ruin gam

While I applaud people being able to use their hardware the way they want to, I know that this inevitably leads to rampant cheating and will ultimately ruin games across consoles as most of the big games these days support cross play.

rmellow 4y ago
Windows is a gaming platform, as is Linux in a lesser degree. So not more than already happens, and games can require anti-cheat software to be installed.
- tpxl 4y ago
  Anti-cheat is cancer and doesn't do much to prevent cheating anyways. The only way to prevent cheating is moderation, but that doesn't "scale" (even though every time you ban a cheater they have to re-buy the game and is actually a net plus)
  - hhh 4y ago
    I don’t agree. I think anticheat CAN do plenty. Many game companies don’t have the resources or care to build entire divisions around anticheat. Hardware bans are extremely effective when done right. Not many games do invasive hardware bans though.
    - tpxl 4y ago
      > I think anticheat CAN do plenty. It can, but usually doesn't do anything but make your system less secure. I'd have no problem with anti-cheat systems, but they by and large don't work.
  - weberer 4y ago
    Of course it scales if you allow dedicated servers run by a 3rd party admin, like TF2 or Factorio or so many games of the past. But most companies these days don't want to give up that control.
    - tpxl 4y ago
      That's just the thing, it scales very well if you're only running first party servers for a _paid_ game. Escape From Tarkov had a big issue with cheaters because they would farm ingame currency, then sell it for real cash (Real Money Trading - RMT). This was literally a job for these people. Everytime they got banned, they just bought another account (~40$) and kept farming. If a support person bans one such person per two hours (at a generous 20$/hr Russian salary), the company literally makes money off of cheating. I get why Free To Play games have cheater issues (even though for example Fortnite is raking in cash), but for pay to play games, I just don't get it.
  - wyldberry 4y ago
    It depends on the anti-cheat systems. Some games are significantly easier to cheat in than others for rather obvious reasons. Anti-cheat has a very hard problem in that you're shipping your binary to an obviously-hostile environment where people will do anything and then some to get the upper hand. If you attended Kernel and Hardware hacking courses at security trainings, you're likely sitting next to either some cheat developers, or some anti-cheat team members.
- davewritescode 4y ago
  I hope you're right but I suspect the same anti-cheating measures can't work on PS5 and Xbox because I doubt those vendors give the low level of access required to make such tools work. When the xbox360 was jailbroken a lot of games were immediately ruined, at least until Microsoft figured out how to ban modded consoles from online play.
- YurgenJurgensen 4y ago
  Aren't most anti-cheat systems basically rootkits? Mandatory anti-cheat sounds like the greater of two evils compared to walled-garden hardware. At least the latter is upfront about what you're getting.
  - jamesgeck0 4y ago
    Yes. They're intrusive enough that anti-cheat should really be a Windows feature, if anything.
    - YurgenJurgensen 4y ago
      Stadia implies a lot of work into virtualising PC games. I wonder if there's a world where that same tech could be used to deploy games as local VMs, where "anti cheat" is actually a hypervisor feature.
croes 4y ago
With AI and CV they will (do) cheat without hacking the console.
deelly 4y ago
Could you elaborate please? PC players play on jailbroken (in a sense) machine. Why this "rampant cheating that will ultimately ruin games across consoles" did not happened already with jailbroken PS4?
- filoleg 4y ago
  > Could you elaborate please? PC players play on jailbroken (in a sense) machine. Yeah, which is why if you go on subreddits for any major multiplayer game that supports crossplay between PC and consoles (like COD Warzone), you will see a lot of people recommending to turn off crossplay to avoid dealing with cheaters, because pretty much all of them come from PC. I usually have no issues playing with crossplay enabled on release of a new game, but a month or so after, I end up disabling it most of the time for that exact reason.
- fellellor 4y ago
  Is it because in a PC you can have other programs running in parallel that can look into/modify the memory bits of a running game and in the process “hack” it? But in a closed system like a game console you can’t just run your own unapproved software, which drastically reduces the number of ways a game can be “hacked”.
- landr0id 4y ago
  Mostly because PS4 didn't get hardware hacked. All of the hacks were software exploits that could be patched before folks were able to leverage them to bring their consoles online with cheats. iirc it did happen a couple of times though. >PC players play on jailbroken (in a sense) machine. PC games also ship with anti-cheat. Why ship anti-cheat to a console that's supposed to be secure?
- acomjean 4y ago
  PC games have these weird all-powerful anticheet detection software. I'm not sure what its doing, but its trying to catch bad actors. Slightly scary the permissions it uses. (I play a little fornite on my partner's pc occasionally). That game (fort nite) seems to have interesting change in visuals, random NPCs walking around and different looking characters natively. I wonder how much of that is an attempt to tamp down on cheating. eg: https://www.easy.ac/en-us/ https://www.easy.ac/en-us/
Mindwipe 4y ago
TBF it's very unlikely anything running this will be able to connect to PSN at all, given this isn't for the current firmware as it is.
ErneX 4y ago
This has been patched already and newer games will require the latest OS version. It has become increasingly difficult to really hack these consoles.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
weberer 4y ago
The Switch has been hacked since year one, but online cheating isn't a problem I've ever seen.
- LelouBil 4y ago
  Nintendo learned their lesson with the 3DS, where they *could not even detect* if you were playing a pirated game online. You could also directly download any game from the eShop CDN witbout buying it (because the only authorization method was a key per game, not bound to a user, so freely shareable for modded consoles) until like a year before the eshop shut down. Now with the switch they send tons of telemetry and ban at the first suspicious report. I haven't heard about non modded switches being banned though. Switch jailbreak usually involves blocking Nintendo servers when booted into the modded OS to prevent bans (since CFW is not permanent on the switch for now)
kcb 4y ago
Rampant cheating is already happening on consoles through controller adapters and mods.

rmellow 4y ago

Windows is a gaming platform, as is Linux in a lesser degree. So not more than already happens, and games can require anti-cheat software to be installed.

tpxl 4y ago
Anti-cheat is cancer and doesn't do much to prevent cheating anyways. The only way to prevent cheating is moderation, but that doesn't "scale" (even though every time you ban a cheater they have to re-buy the game and is actually a net plus)
- hhh 4y ago
  I don’t agree. I think anticheat CAN do plenty. Many game companies don’t have the resources or care to build entire divisions around anticheat. Hardware bans are extremely effective when done right. Not many games do invasive hardware bans though.
  - tpxl 4y ago
    > I think anticheat CAN do plenty. It can, but usually doesn't do anything but make your system less secure. I'd have no problem with anti-cheat systems, but they by and large don't work.
- weberer 4y ago
  Of course it scales if you allow dedicated servers run by a 3rd party admin, like TF2 or Factorio or so many games of the past. But most companies these days don't want to give up that control.
  - tpxl 4y ago
    That's just the thing, it scales very well if you're only running first party servers for a _paid_ game. Escape From Tarkov had a big issue with cheaters because they would farm ingame currency, then sell it for real cash (Real Money Trading - RMT). This was literally a job for these people. Everytime they got banned, they just bought another account (~40$) and kept farming. If a support person bans one such person per two hours (at a generous 20$/hr Russian salary), the company literally makes money off of cheating. I get why Free To Play games have cheater issues (even though for example Fortnite is raking in cash), but for pay to play games, I just don't get it.
- wyldberry 4y ago
  It depends on the anti-cheat systems. Some games are significantly easier to cheat in than others for rather obvious reasons. Anti-cheat has a very hard problem in that you're shipping your binary to an obviously-hostile environment where people will do anything and then some to get the upper hand. If you attended Kernel and Hardware hacking courses at security trainings, you're likely sitting next to either some cheat developers, or some anti-cheat team members.
davewritescode 4y ago
I hope you're right but I suspect the same anti-cheating measures can't work on PS5 and Xbox because I doubt those vendors give the low level of access required to make such tools work. When the xbox360 was jailbroken a lot of games were immediately ruined, at least until Microsoft figured out how to ban modded consoles from online play.
YurgenJurgensen 4y ago
Aren't most anti-cheat systems basically rootkits? Mandatory anti-cheat sounds like the greater of two evils compared to walled-garden hardware. At least the latter is upfront about what you're getting.
- jamesgeck0 4y ago
  Yes. They're intrusive enough that anti-cheat should really be a Windows feature, if anything.
  - YurgenJurgensen 4y ago
    Stadia implies a lot of work into virtualising PC games. I wonder if there's a world where that same tech could be used to deploy games as local VMs, where "anti cheat" is actually a hypervisor feature.

croes 4y ago

With AI and CV they will (do) cheat without hacking the console.

deelly 4y ago

Could you elaborate please? PC players play on jailbroken (in a sense) machine. Why this "rampant cheating that will ultimately ruin games across consoles" did not happened already with jailbroken PS4?

filoleg 4y ago
> Could you elaborate please? PC players play on jailbroken (in a sense) machine. Yeah, which is why if you go on subreddits for any major multiplayer game that supports crossplay between PC and consoles (like COD Warzone), you will see a lot of people recommending to turn off crossplay to avoid dealing with cheaters, because pretty much all of them come from PC. I usually have no issues playing with crossplay enabled on release of a new game, but a month or so after, I end up disabling it most of the time for that exact reason.
fellellor 4y ago
Is it because in a PC you can have other programs running in parallel that can look into/modify the memory bits of a running game and in the process “hack” it? But in a closed system like a game console you can’t just run your own unapproved software, which drastically reduces the number of ways a game can be “hacked”.
landr0id 4y ago
Mostly because PS4 didn't get hardware hacked. All of the hacks were software exploits that could be patched before folks were able to leverage them to bring their consoles online with cheats. iirc it did happen a couple of times though. >PC players play on jailbroken (in a sense) machine. PC games also ship with anti-cheat. Why ship anti-cheat to a console that's supposed to be secure?
acomjean 4y ago
PC games have these weird all-powerful anticheet detection software. I'm not sure what its doing, but its trying to catch bad actors. Slightly scary the permissions it uses. (I play a little fornite on my partner's pc occasionally). That game (fort nite) seems to have interesting change in visuals, random NPCs walking around and different looking characters natively. I wonder how much of that is an attempt to tamp down on cheating. eg: https://www.easy.ac/en-us/ https://www.easy.ac/en-us/

Mindwipe 4y ago

TBF it's very unlikely anything running this will be able to connect to PSN at all, given this isn't for the current firmware as it is.

ErneX 4y ago

This has been patched already and newer games will require the latest OS version. It has become increasingly difficult to really hack these consoles.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

weberer 4y ago

The Switch has been hacked since year one, but online cheating isn't a problem I've ever seen.

LelouBil 4y ago
Nintendo learned their lesson with the 3DS, where they *could not even detect* if you were playing a pirated game online. You could also directly download any game from the eShop CDN witbout buying it (because the only authorization method was a key per game, not bound to a user, so freely shareable for modded consoles) until like a year before the eshop shut down. Now with the switch they send tons of telemetry and ban at the first suspicious report. I haven't heard about non modded switches being banned though. Switch jailbreak usually involves blocking Nintendo servers when booted into the modded OS to prevent bans (since CFW is not permanent on the switch for now)

kcb 4y ago

Rampant cheating is already happening on consoles through controller adapters and mods.