5 ms·

As 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 bee

by Cieric 2y ago

As 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 ago
Cheating 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 ago
  At 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
  - Workaccount2 2y ago
    For the longest time I have wanted what is essentially a PC-console where you buy signed parts that essentially work together as a console. It would be a true "gaming pc" in the sense that it would really only be good for gaming with very restrictive hardware and software.
    - paulmd 2y ago
      that’s called a mac
    - ZiiS 2y ago
      This is just called a "console" they literally are just normal PC's with verified hardware.
      - Workaccount2 2y ago
        That you cannot upgrade and are locked in to a single vendor that allows you to lease games from them. Not that.
        ZiiS 2y ago
        You can now upgrade storage, perhepharals, monitor and usually have at least a generation of backwards compatability the lines are blurring. I can also get more then twice as many headshots if I plug in a mouse inplace of a controller when dose that become cheating for people wanting to play from the couch? Not sure if any vendor verified hardware program can avoid lockin due to economics, but it would certainly be nice.
    - gxs 2y ago
      Ah, signed parts. This is a great idea and a good compromise between the what I mentioned and a full blown console. Would be great if they strictly enforced what versions of windows you were allowed to run.
  - squigz 2y ago
    > 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) I haven't paid much attention to that scene in a few years, but I'd be a bit surprised if things had advanced this far already. Do you have any names/links I might search about this?
- mschuster91 2y ago
  > 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 So, essentially China's Social Credit Score, just for gaming... a bad idea IMHO, a really bad one. For one, that centralized reputation service that actually has data linked back to government-issued credentials (ID cards, passports, ...) must be ridiculously secured, because it will be among the juiciest targets on the planet - be it trolls or deranged stalkers of either gender (although most tend to be male [3]), people are willing to go to ridiculous lengths to abuse fellow gamers, especially (large) streamers. Ordering pizza, SWATting, or even cases of rape and murder [1][2], all of that has happened. Give 4chan enough incentive and they will crack open anything. Or they'll just outright infiltrate the company, someone has to run it after all, and whoever has admin access, no matter the audits and internal controls, will find a way to exfiltrate stuff. And even assuming the reputation service doesn't get hacked, the participant games are another target - this time, not for the data that's held by the reputation service, but for reporting "cheating" by the target person. Either technical bugs or infiltrating the customer service, both can yield results - game companies largely crap on code quality, even the biggest ones (remember Rockstar's GTA JSON bug lol), and customer service jobs are low paid and have high attrition, easy targets for infiltrators. And then gamers themselves are also valid targets. Manage to get a piece of malware onto a streamer's computer that gets detected as a cheat, boom. And that's easy to do, RCE vulnerabilities crop up every now and then for major games (Minecraft for example had BleedingPipe and log4j, GTA had one in 2024 and in 2023). [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/11/us/podcast-husband-killed-washington-stalker.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/11/us/podcast-husband-killed... [2] https://thelmaarose.wixsite.com/whattaweek/post/a-female-gamer-was-stalked-and-murdered-by-a-man-she-chatted-online https://thelmaarose.wixsite.com/whattaweek/post/a-female-gam... [3] https://www.businessinsider.com/twitch-streamers-are-being-stalked-and-harassed-online-2020-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/twitch-streamers-are-being-s...
BrianGragg 2y ago
Making some assumptions here but I suspect most game developers outsource their anti cheat to a 3rd party and that is what you are running into. Some of the 3rd party anti cheat rootkit computers. Some are okay and some are just terrible.
- Cieric 2y ago
  You're correct, most companies don't make their own anti-cheat. We have categorized the different anti-cheats and have ways around them where needed. But whether or not the game devs or some 3rd party makes the anti-cheats it still leads to the same problems, I'm blocked from fixing their games on our hardware. I can't/won't share to many details about or internal process.
  - episteme 2y ago
    Can you at least explain what you mean? How does an anti-cheat stop you fixing a game?
    - ChocolateGod 2y ago
      Guess, but GPU drivers have been known to change shaders being sent to the GPU for certain games, to fix things and increase performance, it's possible this could be detected as some kind of cheating by the anti-cheat.
      - Cieric 2y ago
        Good guess, but most games don't actually look for that. The closest I've seen is them saving off the final rendered image and checking for wrong information. I think Vindictus was one that did that (learned about that outside the job so I have no issues sharing that.) I believe they mainly used it to detect cosmetic mods that might cut into their profits. We only really replace shaders to fix issues that the game devs won't fix, and only then when the game isn't updated very often since it has a high chance of breaking our patches. On top of that I don't believe there is a good way to pull the information back from the driver in a reliable way, so it would be very hard to rely on any information that comes back from the driver.
Aurornis 2y ago
> I'm not going to encourage developers to drop them if they truly think it's needed. When I've only got an hour or two to game and my gaming friends can only get everyone together once a week, it's crushing to have a good game ruined by cheaters. Hopefully gamedevs can work with people like you to fix bugs. However, leaving anti-cheat out of multiplayer games is a complete non-starter in today's environment. Even if anti-cheat only slows the cheat devs down and turns into a game of whack-a-mole with cheats, it's still preferable to having every game get crushed by cheaters every time you play.
- Cieric 2y ago
  Don't get me wrong I understand the sentiment there. I'm sadly locked out of most of those games from the get go being on linux though. Most of the games that give me trouble aren't online games to begin with. Most online games we do have good contact with the developers since they're typically actively working on the game.

by Cieric 2y ago

fletchowns 2y ago

Cheating 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 ago
At 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
- Workaccount2 2y ago
  For the longest time I have wanted what is essentially a PC-console where you buy signed parts that essentially work together as a console. It would be a true "gaming pc" in the sense that it would really only be good for gaming with very restrictive hardware and software.
  - paulmd 2y ago
    that’s called a mac
  - ZiiS 2y ago
    This is just called a "console" they literally are just normal PC's with verified hardware.
    - Workaccount2 2y ago
      That you cannot upgrade and are locked in to a single vendor that allows you to lease games from them. Not that.
      - ZiiS 2y ago
        You can now upgrade storage, perhepharals, monitor and usually have at least a generation of backwards compatability the lines are blurring. I can also get more then twice as many headshots if I plug in a mouse inplace of a controller when dose that become cheating for people wanting to play from the couch? Not sure if any vendor verified hardware program can avoid lockin due to economics, but it would certainly be nice.
  - gxs 2y ago
    Ah, signed parts. This is a great idea and a good compromise between the what I mentioned and a full blown console. Would be great if they strictly enforced what versions of windows you were allowed to run.
- squigz 2y ago
  > 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) I haven't paid much attention to that scene in a few years, but I'd be a bit surprised if things had advanced this far already. Do you have any names/links I might search about this?
mschuster91 2y ago
> 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 So, essentially China's Social Credit Score, just for gaming... a bad idea IMHO, a really bad one. For one, that centralized reputation service that actually has data linked back to government-issued credentials (ID cards, passports, ...) must be ridiculously secured, because it will be among the juiciest targets on the planet - be it trolls or deranged stalkers of either gender (although most tend to be male [3]), people are willing to go to ridiculous lengths to abuse fellow gamers, especially (large) streamers. Ordering pizza, SWATting, or even cases of rape and murder [1][2], all of that has happened. Give 4chan enough incentive and they will crack open anything. Or they'll just outright infiltrate the company, someone has to run it after all, and whoever has admin access, no matter the audits and internal controls, will find a way to exfiltrate stuff. And even assuming the reputation service doesn't get hacked, the participant games are another target - this time, not for the data that's held by the reputation service, but for reporting "cheating" by the target person. Either technical bugs or infiltrating the customer service, both can yield results - game companies largely crap on code quality, even the biggest ones (remember Rockstar's GTA JSON bug lol), and customer service jobs are low paid and have high attrition, easy targets for infiltrators. And then gamers themselves are also valid targets. Manage to get a piece of malware onto a streamer's computer that gets detected as a cheat, boom. And that's easy to do, RCE vulnerabilities crop up every now and then for major games (Minecraft for example had BleedingPipe and log4j, GTA had one in 2024 and in 2023). [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/11/us/podcast-husband-killed-washington-stalker.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/11/us/podcast-husband-killed... [2] https://thelmaarose.wixsite.com/whattaweek/post/a-female-gamer-was-stalked-and-murdered-by-a-man-she-chatted-online https://thelmaarose.wixsite.com/whattaweek/post/a-female-gam... [3] https://www.businessinsider.com/twitch-streamers-are-being-stalked-and-harassed-online-2020-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/twitch-streamers-are-being-s...

BrianGragg 2y ago

Making some assumptions here but I suspect most game developers outsource their anti cheat to a 3rd party and that is what you are running into. Some of the 3rd party anti cheat rootkit computers. Some are okay and some are just terrible.

Cieric 2y ago
You're correct, most companies don't make their own anti-cheat. We have categorized the different anti-cheats and have ways around them where needed. But whether or not the game devs or some 3rd party makes the anti-cheats it still leads to the same problems, I'm blocked from fixing their games on our hardware. I can't/won't share to many details about or internal process.
- episteme 2y ago
  Can you at least explain what you mean? How does an anti-cheat stop you fixing a game?
  - ChocolateGod 2y ago
    Guess, but GPU drivers have been known to change shaders being sent to the GPU for certain games, to fix things and increase performance, it's possible this could be detected as some kind of cheating by the anti-cheat.
    - Cieric 2y ago
      Good guess, but most games don't actually look for that. The closest I've seen is them saving off the final rendered image and checking for wrong information. I think Vindictus was one that did that (learned about that outside the job so I have no issues sharing that.) I believe they mainly used it to detect cosmetic mods that might cut into their profits. We only really replace shaders to fix issues that the game devs won't fix, and only then when the game isn't updated very often since it has a high chance of breaking our patches. On top of that I don't believe there is a good way to pull the information back from the driver in a reliable way, so it would be very hard to rely on any information that comes back from the driver.

Aurornis 2y ago

> I'm not going to encourage developers to drop them if they truly think it's needed. When I've only got an hour or two to game and my gaming friends can only get everyone together once a week, it's crushing to have a good game ruined by cheaters. Hopefully gamedevs can work with people like you to fix bugs. However, leaving anti-cheat out of multiplayer games is a complete non-starter in today's environment. Even if anti-cheat only slows the cheat devs down and turns into a game of whack-a-mole with cheats, it's still preferable to having every game get crushed by cheaters every time you play.

Cieric 2y ago
Don't get me wrong I understand the sentiment there. I'm sadly locked out of most of those games from the get go being on linux though. Most of the games that give me trouble aren't online games to begin with. Most online games we do have good contact with the developers since they're typically actively working on the game.