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Was it Linus himself who said don't take things away from users? The person they quoted from Roblox staff says they have to support a client they release. But

Was it Linus himself who said don't take things away from users? The person they quoted from Roblox staff says they have to support a client they release. But why? Engaging with a community means you don't parent them. Tell the community, “hey we can't support this but if you want to support it yourselves we trust you to be adults about it”. That would be the most positive action to come from this. Instead it's very invasive anti-cheat (usually equivalent to rootkitting) and a full on block of Wine. Horrific behavior.

altairprime 3y ago
"Never trust the client" applies to human beings, too. Roblox can't trust the clients — human beings — to be adults about gaming. This is completely correct. Cheating is attempted by a percentage of all human adults, in all human games, without exception. Linux has no capability to attest to the server that it is enforcing protections against interference by human beings; on memory, on processing, on graphical outputs, and on human interface inputs. Linux, by design, allows human beings to modify anything they wish to do, up to and including cheating. This is by design, and conflicts directly with any efforts to prevent cheating. The entire invasive anti-cheat / rootkit software trend exists solely due to the lack of secure attestation from chip-to-app. macOS has for many years had the ability to boot software in fully-attested "no modifications are present" mode, chained from the hardware TPM chip, to the signed kernel, the signed OS image, and the signed application itself. Gaming consoles have been doing this for years, and Windows 11 — which requires a TPM chip — will support this as well, same as Windows 10 optionally does in little-known enterprise configurations. So, someday, a few years from now, multiplayer games that are interested in preventing cheating will simply will stop accepting connections from clients who are not able to provide chip-to-app attestation that they're running an unmodified environment, with neither debuggers nor DLL injections permitted. I expect that Valve either has, or will, implement TPM-backed secure attestation for their Steam Deck's default boot-up into Proton (which is currently based on Linux). Once they do so, I expect Roblox would then be willing to consider Linux again. Until then, they have no reason to: Linux, by ethical standpoint and code design, trusts the client. (I recognize that HN is generally hostile to considering how secure attestation might end up widely adopted and demanded by games and other applications, but the ship has already sailed. I’m just trying to yell “iceberg” and get the Linux community to face what’s happening and form a useful strategy in response.)
- j-bos 3y ago
  >(I recognize that HN is generally hostile to considering how secure attestation might end up widely adopted and demanded by games and other applications, but the ship has already sailed. I’m just trying to yell “iceberg” and get the Linux community to face what’s happening and form a useful strategy in response.) While I appreciate your thoughtful comment, I don't see you offering much in the way of strategy beyond accept the loss of control over your own machine in the one OS that does not inherently hand itself over to third parties.
  - altairprime 3y ago
    > I don't see you offering much in the way of strategy I'm not offering any strategy at all. I don't have one that can stop Linux from hitting the secure attestation iceberg in a few years. As far as I can determine, no one does.
- 10000truths 3y ago
  You don't need to tamper with the client to cheat. Anything that can scrape a screen and programmatically provide input will get you far and will be difficult for anticheat to reliably detect without hitting false positives. Hell, you might not even need the client, if you can reverse engineer the wire protocol and pretend to be a client.
  - altairprime 3y ago
    > You don't need to tamper with the client to cheat. You do if you're trying to cheat using software alone. Hardware-assisted cheating will continue to occur, but without access to software-only cheats, the total size of the cheating market is considerably less. Anyone could use the Konami code in games that accepted it, because it cost nothing and was easy to remember; someone who doesn't otherwise cheat might do so because it's so easy. But to use a Game Genie cheat, you had to buy a physical object, and look up codes in a manual of cheats, and know that you were cheating, and see that cartridge reminding you each time you play. That awareness stops a lot of people from cheating. Today's cheating opportunity cost is more Konami than Game Genie — no hardware required, just enter your CVV code to enable the cheat.
ryandrake 3y ago
Exactly. It's the typical BS excuse game companies have been trying to use for over a decade, and nobody should believe it. Linux gamers are not looking for "support". They want a binary. And a server that doesn't actively thwart them because of their operating system. That's pretty much it. And thanks to cross platform development getting easier and easier, that binary is in more and more cases trivial to produce.

altairprime 3y ago

"Never trust the client" applies to human beings, too. Roblox can't trust the clients — human beings — to be adults about gaming. This is completely correct. Cheating is attempted by a percentage of all human adults, in all human games, without exception. Linux has no capability to attest to the server that it is enforcing protections against interference by human beings; on memory, on processing, on graphical outputs, and on human interface inputs. Linux, by design, allows human beings to modify anything they wish to do, up to and including cheating. This is by design, and conflicts directly with any efforts to prevent cheating. The entire invasive anti-cheat / rootkit software trend exists solely due to the lack of secure attestation from chip-to-app. macOS has for many years had the ability to boot software in fully-attested "no modifications are present" mode, chained from the hardware TPM chip, to the signed kernel, the signed OS image, and the signed application itself. Gaming consoles have been doing this for years, and Windows 11 — which requires a TPM chip — will support this as well, same as Windows 10 optionally does in little-known enterprise configurations. So, someday, a few years from now, multiplayer games that are interested in preventing cheating will simply will stop accepting connections from clients who are not able to provide chip-to-app attestation that they're running an unmodified environment, with neither debuggers nor DLL injections permitted. I expect that Valve either has, or will, implement TPM-backed secure attestation for their Steam Deck's default boot-up into Proton (which is currently based on Linux). Once they do so, I expect Roblox would then be willing to consider Linux again. Until then, they have no reason to: Linux, by ethical standpoint and code design, trusts the client. (I recognize that HN is generally hostile to considering how secure attestation might end up widely adopted and demanded by games and other applications, but the ship has already sailed. I’m just trying to yell “iceberg” and get the Linux community to face what’s happening and form a useful strategy in response.)

j-bos 3y ago
>(I recognize that HN is generally hostile to considering how secure attestation might end up widely adopted and demanded by games and other applications, but the ship has already sailed. I’m just trying to yell “iceberg” and get the Linux community to face what’s happening and form a useful strategy in response.) While I appreciate your thoughtful comment, I don't see you offering much in the way of strategy beyond accept the loss of control over your own machine in the one OS that does not inherently hand itself over to third parties.
- altairprime 3y ago
  > I don't see you offering much in the way of strategy I'm not offering any strategy at all. I don't have one that can stop Linux from hitting the secure attestation iceberg in a few years. As far as I can determine, no one does.
10000truths 3y ago
You don't need to tamper with the client to cheat. Anything that can scrape a screen and programmatically provide input will get you far and will be difficult for anticheat to reliably detect without hitting false positives. Hell, you might not even need the client, if you can reverse engineer the wire protocol and pretend to be a client.
- altairprime 3y ago
  > You don't need to tamper with the client to cheat. You do if you're trying to cheat using software alone. Hardware-assisted cheating will continue to occur, but without access to software-only cheats, the total size of the cheating market is considerably less. Anyone could use the Konami code in games that accepted it, because it cost nothing and was easy to remember; someone who doesn't otherwise cheat might do so because it's so easy. But to use a Game Genie cheat, you had to buy a physical object, and look up codes in a manual of cheats, and know that you were cheating, and see that cartridge reminding you each time you play. That awareness stops a lot of people from cheating. Today's cheating opportunity cost is more Konami than Game Genie — no hardware required, just enter your CVV code to enable the cheat.

ryandrake 3y ago

Exactly. It's the typical BS excuse game companies have been trying to use for over a decade, and nobody should believe it. Linux gamers are not looking for "support". They want a binary. And a server that doesn't actively thwart them because of their operating system. That's pretty much it. And thanks to cross platform development getting easier and easier, that binary is in more and more cases trivial to produce.