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UltimateAntiCheat
- beeboobaa3 2y agogames are requiring secure boot now? No thanks.
- shdh 2y agoValve Anti-Cheat (VAC) is still running in user space.
- tapoxi 2y agoAnd is universally hated by CS2 and TF2 players. TF2 has been unplayable for years.
- yamazakiwi 2y agoI have 1000+ hrs in CS and I'm glad VAC exists. I've seen tons of hackers get vac banned, thank goodness. I'm confused...like I know VAC isn't perfect but how does it ruin TF2 specifically?
- Hikikomori 2y agoTF2 is overrun by bots farming hats. CS has always been completely infested at higher ranks like global elite. In both cases VAC is practically useless against any non-userspace hack.
- yamazakiwi 2y agoOh and VAC does nothing about it I see, thanks for your response
- episteme 2y agoIt's not right now, there was a huge banwave and it's been bot free for a couple of months now. If you have any nostalgia for TF2, now is the time to indulge.
- NekkoDroid 2y agoIIRC Overwatch's anti-cheat is also entirely user-space and server-side, and I encounter relativly few cheaters in Master to GM lobbies. Not to say there aren't any (there most certainly are), but there are so few that are noticable that it honestly is negligible IMO.
- J_Shelby_J 2y agoGames or esports? Riot’s Valorant used a kernel level anti-cheat that needs to be enabled at boot. It’s super problematic from a security perspective. That being said, I’ve played competitive FPS games my entire life, and valorant is the only game I’ve never ran into a cheater in. So it works, and I’ll say, it should be a hard requirement going forward for the anti-cheat to be a core part of the game architecture. A game getting popular enough to attract cheat developers to make an sdk for a game isn’t “suffering from success.” It’s a death sentence for the game. There are popular streamers and YouTube content creators out there that go through extreme lengths to avoid cheaters, but in the end they always just stop playing the games.
- Hikikomori 2y agoPretty much all anticheat is kernel level because that's where hacks are now, it was not a new thing when vanguard came out either, it had been like this for years already. Not that it matters that much for data privacy if you game on the same user anyway as userspace anticheat can access all your users data.
- nathas 2y agoQuestion for people that build hacks: given how robust this open-source anti-cheat is, does building the cheat give more reward than playing the game? It seems like it would take a ton of hours to be effective..
- Iridescent_ 2y agoWell of course if you sell it
- nathas 2y agoI meant the intangible, personal gratification that comes with pwning noobs as a reward but fair enough :)
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y ago> pwning noobs Who says they're not?
- drdaeman 2y agoI don't get how pwning noobs is gratifying at all. It's just griefing and for a normal sane person there's no fun in seeing other people suffer. It's like wrestling with toddlers. Proper "cheating" is not about wreaking havoc. Although there are plenty of weird people who do weird things - but cheats are not a problem, they just enable those weirdos to do weird things. It's just automation, all about offloading work to a machine - a principle that the whole human civilization is built upon. And developing an aid that actually helps you to improve is - surely - a personally gratifying experience. If someone has difficulties doing something the "intended" way, but can think of and implement an alternative approach to achieve the same effect - that's just humans being humans, it's as fair as life can be.
- Etheryte 2y agoJust like any software, game cheats are build once, sell as many times as you can. If a game is popular, this can be a very lucrative business. The fact that game developers will play the cat and mouse game with you to block you out only adds to this fact, as so long as you can keep up, you can get repeat customers.
- josephcsible 2y agoThis is fundamentally the wrong way to do anti-cheat. Anything you do on the client will fundamentally always be bypassable, and it tends to always have at least some negative side effects. Proper anti-cheat needs to happen on the server.
- shdh 2y agoOnly analyzing client command network frames and entities on the server isn't enough.
- aeonik 2y agoWhy not? What more do you need? Trusting the client is always going to be fraut with failure.
- eddythompson80 2y agoIt's not possible because the client's representation of the information from the server is an important part of the "gameplay". In typical network applications (that are not video games) the client's interpretation/representation of what the server is sending is entirely for the usability of the application. Maybe the client displays an array as text list, a series of cards, different tabs, etc. It's just about what makes sense to a particular client/user and what makes their life easier. It's not "unfair" for me to have an email client that highlights unread emails differently than you. In a video game, different interpretations will give different people different, unfair, advantages. There is an "agreed upon" representation from the developer of the game that's supposed to be "fair" for everyone. Displaying audible ques as visual ques is a "cheat". Highlighting a piece of information or an object is a "cheat". Auto-interpreting information you're supposed to parse yourself is a "cheat". Not every cheat is God-Mode breaking-the-physics-of-the-game cheat. Plenty of cheats are just about having a slight edge over others. For example, your game has a minimap. Part of the "gameplay" is that you scan the minimap every X seconds to check if something is approaching. It's a situational awareness skill that some will be better at than others. A flashing red map when something approaches would give you an edge. Or the server is sending spacial audio information about where a sound is coming from. It's an auditory skill that you develop and some will be better at it than others. An arrow on the screen pointing to where the audio is coming from would defeat that part of the game. Being able to see a moving shadow in the distance, or when to break/turn in a racing game, or an odds-calculator/card-counter in a cards game, a parry/counter attack indicator in a fighting game, etc are all "skills" that you are expected to develop to become "good" at this game. They are what make these games fun/rewarding for people. Having tools to help you with these tasks would be considered "cheats" in these games. At the end of the day, there are "cheats" that no software can catch. Having a friend sit next to you who just watches the minimap, or who calculates stuff for you, or watch a different part of the screen for you are all "cheats" that no software can catch. Obviously there is some stuff to be done to limit the "exploit-ability" of the information. Don't have the server send information that the client doesn't need like the location of all players all the time. Have the server reject invalid moves, like a player flying when there is no flying mechanics/ability for that player. But at the end of the day, the minimal amount of information needed to play the game can be exploited by someone if they find a different way to represent it to themselves that gives them an unfair advantage.
- kstrauser 2y agoProgrammable keyboard macros for the win. No, like, literally.
- qdot76367 2y agoahk, the ultimate cheat tool
- kstrauser 2y agoI'm not actually good enough at anything to be tempted to cheat, even if I were persuaded to become ethically OK with it. But if I were, I think that's where I'd start. Oh, some game is blocking a specific model? A recompile of the firmware says look at me, I'm a Microsoft Ergonomic Keyboard!
- Cieric 2y agoAs someone who has been in the graphics card driver side of things for almost 3 years now, anti-cheat has been the bane of my existence. Some anti-cheat has been strong enough that is has actively stopped me from fixing games, doubly so when we can't get into contact with the game developers. I would not be surprised if in the future some games might just never run on one gpu due to a mix of anti-cheat, legal, and driver signing troubles. While I have a massive disdain for anti-cheat enough that I've built hacks just so I can fix the games my employer pays me to fix, I'm not going to encourage developers to drop them if they truly think it's needed. But please, contact gpu manufactures and provide them the tools or builds needed to fix and debug your game.
- fletchowns 2y agoCheating in online gaming is such a blight on the industry. Such a waste of time & money for every legitimate participant in the market, except for the groups making and profiting of the cheats of course. I still like my idea for a third-party reputation service that has consequences for not just one game but every multiplayer game participating in the program: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28634784 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28634784 I really do think it would make cheating non-existent, and allow developers to focus on building cool games instead of building invasive & ineffective rootkits we have to install just to play games online fairly.
- gxs 2y agoAt first I was optimistic that AI would greatly alleviate the issue here, but no dice. As someone who was super competitive about the games they played (reformed, no longer play), I can tell you online cheating is completely out of hand. There are cheats nowadays that don't even require software to be on your computer. You just put up a camera on your screen and an AI bot helps you by manipulating your controller (e.g., aim) - it really is a cat and mouse game and I don't think the issue in general will be resolved anytime soon. I know there is an entire industry built around gaming and custom PCs so this is a pipe dream, but I'd love it if instead of all the time and effort that goes into supporting these rigs, the business models for consoles were optimized such that consoles could be top of the line rigs with very strict upgrade paths. This is really the only way I can see us actually putting a dent into this problem
- fnfjfk 2y agoDon’t really play multiplayer games anymore, but back when I did a lot there was a “vote kick”/“vote ban” feature that people used to get rid of the cheaters instantly sniping everyone from across the map, it wasn’t like they were very subtle. Does that simpler social approach not work anymore?
- Kerrick 2y agoAs of about a year ago, Team Fortress 2 bots were so pervasive that they would often teamu p to use the "vote kick" functionality to kick non-bot players from public games.
- fnfjfk 2y agoOk that’s pretty hilarious, but what’s the point, is this just like playing battlebots for TF2 bot authors? (But if it was couldn’t they set up a purpose-built server for that?)
- tapoxi 2y agoThey annoy other players and intentionally make them pay for bot protection services.
- floam 2y agoIt’s not that they want a human-free environment or something. It’s all about causing grief. So it’d be targeted at a chosen victim probably to annoy the fuck out of them. Cheater has a button that can kick you out.
- rfl890 2y agoNo. More like a denial of service. The bot hosters do it out of pure hatred for TF2
- NavinF 2y ago>couldn’t they set up a purpose-built server for that? Yes, but the bots have to play on the official servers to get random drops of collectible hats. These items can be sold for a lot of money
- pstrateman 2y agoThis is still playing defense. Anti-cheat needs to be more or less a kernel level remote code executor.
- NotPractical 2y agoNobody wants that running on their computer though. Maybe it's time to just give up on PC gaming and use dedicated game consoles instead, which are locked down by design? The only real alternative seems to be running a cryptographically-verified known-good OS signed by one of the big three OS companies, which is also locked down enough such that cheating becomes impossible, or installing what is essentially kernel-level malware, just to play the latest games.
- pstrateman 2y agoWhy? Modern games all have 10GiB+ updated constantly that you're not disassembling. What's the difference?
- NotPractical 2y agoKernel vs user mode. On most desktop platforms there's barely any difference, but they're all moving towards supporting sandboxing to some extent.
- Hikikomori 2y agoDoes it matter when userspace software can already read all your files and access memory of processes run by your user? This kernel access boogeyman is practically meaningless.
- NotPractical 2y ago> access memory of processes run by your user I don't think this is possible on Windows without administrator. It certainly shouldn't be, if it is. But anyway, the fact that any userspace software can read all your personal files without any user confirmation as soon as you double-click on it is not a good thing, and as I said, all desktop operating systems are attempting to address this problem in some way, including Windows. I imagine the normalization of rootkit-style anticheat has become a pain point for the security team at Microsoft.
- dnos 2y agoI wonder if a statistics-based cheating detection system could work in more of the esports style games? Chess.com seems to have a pretty good method to detect cheaters based on analysis of post-game data: https://www.chess.com/article/view/chess-com-fair-play-and-cheat-detection https://www.chess.com/article/view/chess-com-fair-play-and-c... Even in something like an FPS, if player movements or action patterns could be compared to normal patterns, it would be incredibly obvious who is cheating regardless of HOW the player managed to cheat. Even something as elaborate as a full AI-powered robot that physically hit the keys could be detected when it made a move that was not within the patterns of human players. Of course, the cat and mouse game then becomes more about the cheat algorithms learning to act more human to avoid detection, but they have a long way to go. Plus, each time they have to adjust and become more human, the less and less of an advantage the cheater has!
- eddythompson80 2y agoThat already happens. That's why you see waves of bans in certain games based on evaluating/re-evaluating previous post-game data.
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