15 ms·

Are We Anti-Cheat Yet?

165 points by iscream26 2y ago

guykroupp 2y ago
Check out Getgud.io, it might surprise you how far along AI anti cheat has come.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
mjevans 2y ago
I don't know enough about 'real time' netcode for games. However I have read several HN articles over the years so I've got at least a basic understanding. Why can't the servers distrust the clients? What should a 'client side anti cheat' actually prevent? The way I think I'd tackle such things is to have multiple copies of each character model moving in different locations and different ways. Such that trying to spy on the state of the game from one client's viewpoint yields mostly false data. New 'threads' would fork off of the existing threads and would only be culled when there are too many or they're about to make a side effect that would be visible if they were real. In that way the server would be responsible for feeding misinformation to clients but maintaining the state of the true game as a secret to itself.
- Iridescent_ 2y ago
  Not trusting the clients and redoing all calculations server-side would require massive processing on the server side. Your idea then multiplies the load on the server.
  - worthless-trash 2y ago
    How much though, i mean you're basically doing vector work, and only when its visible within range, and then when its visible within the player and the player hitbox is.... oh I see.
  - Ekaros 2y ago
    We do have massive processing on all sides. And the actual processing done for the game stuff is not really that big. Mostly it goes to graphics, sounds and so on.
  - kachapopopow 2y ago
    Overwatch does this just fine and deadlock actually.
    - totaa 2y ago
      > deadlock actually how do you know? has there been a technical deep dive published?
      - kachapopopow 2y ago
        Opening the console and seeing rollback net-code pretty much says enough. Also the game itself feels great to play even with 160ms ping which is only really possible when using architecture similar to overwatch.
- claudex 2y ago
  The client need to have more state info than the player to render accurately, for example, to render an opponent passing through a window without lag. And also, there are also cheat that doesn't need to spy on the state, like aim assist tool or HUD improvement.
  - mjevans 2y ago
    * Pass through a window without lag - That's why the server is sending multiple copies of potential movements and paths through the level for each character, but terminating the ones that are about to reveal their effects (no longer be culled by walls / objects) when they'd send false information to non-cheating players. * Aim Assist - what's that supposed to work with for the assist? I guess it might help someone target a player once they're exposed, or once they've locked on. For that I think that extremely top tier players might behave within fuzzing distance of tool assist, at least some of the time. Dodging might have similar issues. I could even see ML assisting inputs just based on frame-grabs off the screen video output. -- So I'm not sure what client side anti-cheat is supposed to do here. * HUD improvements - like what?
    - oerdier 2y ago
      Regarding HUD improvements, this monitor shows where enemies are likely to appear. The monitor does this autonomously; the OS isn't in the loop. https://www.tomshardware.com/monitors/msis-ai-powered-gaming-monitor-helps-you-cheat-at-league-of-legends-looks-great-doing-it https://www.tomshardware.com/monitors/msis-ai-powered-gaming...
      - mjevans 2y ago
        That monitor seems to dynamically do things based on data the game legitimately shows a player. For some data, like the health bars, a skill / accessibility leveling feature might be to just let the user pick HOW the game displays that data, to customize the UI layout to their needs. Enemy position highlight based on the minimap vs present location? Yeah, that crosses a clear line, but it's abusing some data the game probably shouldn't have told the player to begin with. What if the minimap reflected the known shape of the world, but only updated with the visible area (standard 'fog of war' mechanic)? Again, it might be within accessibility features to highlight enemies within sight, so I don't see too much issue if the minimap's render state is restricted to the immediate area + what the camera direction could see.
- Animats 2y ago
  > Why can't the servers distrust the clients? What should a 'client side anti cheat' actually prevent? There are two issues. One is the user seeing things that the server is hiding, such as enemies hidden behind obstacles, by going into "wireframe mode". The other is superhuman performance via computer assistance, or "aimbot hacks". The first is a performance issue. The server can do some occlusion culling to avoid telling the client about invisible enemies, but that adds to the server workload. The second is becoming impossible to fix, since at this point you can have a program looking at the actual video output and helping to aim. (You can now get that in real-world guns.[1]) Attempts to crack down on people whose aim is "too good" result in loud screams from players whose aim really is that good. [1] https://talonprecisionoptics.com/technology/how-it-works/ https://talonprecisionoptics.com/technology/how-it-works/
  - sadeshmukh 2y ago
    The only feasible solution is to have high-level players compete in physical tournaments or at verified centers, where the authenticity of the player is replaced with some authority. At a high enough level, there is no way to distinguish a really good player from a cheater.
    - Xeamek 2y ago
      Disagree. But it's not really feasible to argue since you need to be on such high level in the first place to honestly engage in 'is this player chesting' conversation. And it's on case-by-case basis
      - Draiken 2y ago
        Can you expand on the disagree? I've watched professional games in SC, CS and DOTA for decades and I definitely agree that pros are indistinguishable from a good cheater (not a rage hacker). One of the issues around this is cheating within pros too. People that are actually good at the game, but use cheats to get even further ahead. These players are already statistical anomalies and even from an experienced player's perspective, you can't tell if they have an amazing game sense (many really do) or he's wall hacking, as an example.
- tonyhart7 2y ago
  well because realtime online multiplayer game need to be "FAST", I mean really fast sure if you develop platform today we can check token user now with hashtable we have in database but in games ?? You cant verify calculated damage numbers users gave, not fast enough
  - raincole 2y ago
    Sorry but I don't think you worked for a multiplayer game in the past 15 years. Verifying damage numbers is no-brainer. The programmers won't discuss "should we verify damage numbers" at all. It's the norm today.
  - Xeamek 2y ago
    You absolutely can do that and (almost) all games do that already. This type of cheats are DECADES in the past. Today is all about a) enhancing normal behavior with artificial precision, not making any 'illegal' (from game perspective) actions. b) giving player information he isn't supposed to have but that is passed to client for latency sake
- TheFragenTaken 2y ago
  The first rule in any software backed by a server, but especially multiplayer games is, you never trust the client. You could have a perfectly deterministic game where every action is validated on the server, be defeated by running the game at half speed.
  - DaiPlusPlus 2y ago
    A bullet-time video game, you say?
- raincole 2y ago
  Because the popular cheats aren't "the client says the player shot the enemy". The popular cheats are "the client says the player just clicked at (1030, 534) on the screen", which is a totally valid move, except it's calculated by the cheat instead of the player.
- forrestthewoods 2y ago
  <sarcasm> oh dang you should be a multiplayer engineer. Sounds like with barely even thinking about the problem space you've solved what thousands of extremely talented and knowledgeable engineers never could! </sarcasm> Servers very much distrust the client. Obviously. That's literally rule #1. Don't trust the client! Comments like yours are extremely irritating. Please don't behave this way with your co-workers. Anyhow, there's all kinds of types of cheats for different kinds of games. There's a variety of mitigations for each kind. I don't think there's a multiplayer shooter on the planet that has fully solved aimbots. For however clever you think you are I promise the cheat makers are much, much more clever. :)
  - cabbageicefruit 2y ago
    Touch grass buddy. In their first sentence they openly admit this isn’t their area of expertise. Hence them asking a question to people who know more than them. “Don’t behave this way to your co-workers” is much better advice for your comment than for GP’s.
    - forrestthewoods 2y ago
      Went outside with my dogs and successfully touched grass. It’s growing back in nicely after a week of rain. “Why can’t you just” guys are extremely irritating. I implore OP to not be a “why can’t you just” guy at work. What is a WCYJGuy? Someone who has no knowledge of a domain but proposes solutions under the implication that there is a simple solution that they are oh so clever to have instantly discovered. It takes a lot of time and effort to explain “no you can not just” to someone who doesn’t have the pre-requisite knowledge.
  - deznu 2y ago
    It was an honest and inquisitive question, calm down.
    - forrestthewoods 2y ago
      His arguing bad solutions in other replies suggests otherwise. If you want to inquire then inquire. Don’t propose a bad solution as if it was an easy problem that you solved with nary a thought.
- KK7NIL 2y ago
  > I don't know enough about X. However I have read several HN articles over the years so I've got at least a basic understanding. I'm sorry but this really does read like the start of a troll post.
  - burnished 2y ago
    Its just regular intellectual curiosity.
    - KK7NIL 2y ago
      Sure, but you'll need to do more than "read several HN articles over the years" (presumably completely unrelated to anti-cheats?) to get even a basic understanding of how anti-cheats work, as he went on to demonstrate. I also just thought it was unintentionally funny, like a comedic setup for a stereotypically cocky HN user to comment with great confidence on something way outside of their field of expertise. (not saying that's the case for mjevans)
      - burnished 2y ago
        Yes, that stereotype irritates me because it stigmatizes people asking the obvious questions.
- dijit 2y ago
  Delaying UI interaction until it has been verified by a server that runs at 20fps (60 is uncommon on servers unless theres no AI), with a RTT of 60 ms, means your hitmarker will take 110ms instead of 6ms if rendered locally. Apply that to every interaction that the server has to be authoritative about, movement, reloading. Your game will be unplayable. And if you want to combat aimbotting: your viewport and hit point would have to be server authoritative too. Basically: unless its Stadia or geforce now, this wont work.
  - mjevans 2y ago
    Not delaying UI interaction; though conflict resolution (there are at least two involved clients, each with it's own lagged view of the other, and a server that knows it's own truth) might change the outcome of events. THAT is the part of multiplayer net code I know the least about, mostly because I don't think there is a perfect solution but I am not a subject expert on what works well as an approximation.
    - dijit 2y ago
      Then you have rollbacks and rubberbanding, and UI elements that fired which aren't valid once the physics interactions have resolved serverside. Jt doesn't take much for people to feel like the UI is untrustworthy and “broken”. No game wants to be a jank piece of ass, but theres no good solution here, believe me, we’ve tried.
      - mook 2y ago
        My understanding is that it's popular now to use rollbacks in fighting games (in combination with delays so the rollback doesn't get too far). Perhaps something like that would be useful, though of course that would depend on the game (and how much data it needs to send between players).
        ThatPlayer 2y ago
        I think the difference is fighting games are easier to simulate. Part of rollback is to rewind 6 frames and resimulate those 6 frames again with the new input. This basically requires you to be able to run your game at 6x speed consistently. It's also increased memory requirement, because you need to have the game state from those 6 frames ago in memory. These are also reasons you cannot do too many rollback frames without adding delay. I believe the Nintendo Switch never got the rollback update for BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle because of performance reasons. Fighting games have two (maybe 4 with assists) characters generally at 60fps. That's relatively easy to do. A worse case would be an RTS game: in a fight when each unit's attack needs to be calculated repeatedly. Valorant runs at 128 ticks/second. For the same latency compensation as 6 frames in a fighting game, you would need 13 frames, so you need to be able to simulate the game at 13x speed. And rollback still has janky visuals when conflicts happen. The games I've played will let you choose between smoother visuals with more delay or rollback artifacts with less delay. Generally the default setting is the former.
- psgdev 2y ago
  Sending copies of fake character data isn't a thing because there eventually has to be a flag that tells the client to not render that character that the client hack could simply read. It should be clear that servers already do not trust the client, they do many checks hence you don't see teleportation hacks in games like Counter strike or Valorant. There used to be cheats in the counter strike games like "nospread" where you could have 100% pixel perfect aiming but that was because the the client was trusted however now in most games with some randomness in bullet spray patterns the random seed is different between the client and server so something like "nospread" are no longer possible. You might be stumbling upon "fog of war" that is not sending data to a client unless the enemy player is close to visible which is a thing. It's widely used and I'd say effective in MOBA/MMORPG/RTS games however in FPS games fog of war is many times more computationally expensive which matters at the scale of games these days. It has been a thing for a long time in counter strike with server plugins like "SMAC anti wall hack" or "server side occlusion culling" however the implementations sometimes have not been perfect and require significantly stronger servers. https://github.com/87andrewh/CornerCullingSourceEngine https://github.com/87andrewh/CornerCullingSourceEngine Riot games also implements fog of war at scale in Valorant and has a blog post covering some of the issues they overcame. One thing you can see the gif at the end of the blog post, even though fog of war is effective it is only effective in reducing the effectiveness of wall hacks and wall hacks still provide a significant advantage. https://technology.riotgames.com/news/demolishing-wallhacks-valorants-fog-war https://technology.riotgames.com/news/demolishing-wallhacks-...
  - mjevans 2y ago
    There would be no such flag. The clients would cull the characters that are out of position. Yes that's some client load for the culling, but it's probably less overhead than 'anti cheat'. The important reason I suggested MULTIPLE clones of a character and only forking new paths off of existing characters in the world is that it should eliminate any information oracle about which of those is the real character.
    - psgdev 2y ago
      There is a high level of server load for this as well, not only placing these fake characters but making them move and act like real human players so they are believed and then culling them (server would cull them not the client to be clear because how would the client know to cull them without a flag?) only right before they are visible while taking account of lag (ping), interp, packet loss etc.. I definitely could see someone games doing this as a one-off to just catch specific cheaters they are suspicious of to confirm they are cheating (Many 3rd party anti-cheats in counter strike and the 1st party valorant anti-cheat do manual bans based on replay reviews) but also since they already do fog of war someone with wall hack seeing an enemy player pop in for 1 frame before disappearing would make it not effective on a wide scale.
- Hikikomori 2y ago
  Then all the cheater would need to do is move close to the area of these ghosts and find out which the real player is. Its also going to be very taxing for the server to create realistic ghost players that move around dynamically.
- tumetab1 2y ago
  The reason multiplayer servers implicitly trust clients is because it's a cheaper and proven (less risk) solution. The traditional anti-cheat can be just slapped after the game is developed in most games. If the game is very successful then you can just update the game with extra paid protections provided by the anti-cheat tool. The alternative is local game engine that works with a partial game state which is a challenge on it self. If you still can make it work, you will still have to deal with people "modding" the client to gain an advantage. E.g.: enemies are painted red instead of camouflage.
  - dijit 2y ago
    As someone working in AAA game development, I come across comments like these often, and they never fail to get under my skin. It’s like watching that infamous "Two idiots, one keyboard" scene from CSI—full of confidence, but completely detached from reality. I don’t mean to sound harsh, but it’s tough to tackle this kind of misconception because it’s stated with such certainty that others, who also might not know any better, just take it as fact. Here’s the thing: Multiplayer servers trust clients mainly for performance reasons. In AAA game development, anti-cheat isn’t something we focus on right from the start. It typically becomes a priority post-alpha (and by alpha, I’m talking about an internal milestone that usually spans about a year—not the "alpha" most people think of which is usually closer to an internal "beta", and "public beta" is more like release candidate 1). During that time, the tech team is constantly working on ways to secure the game. (make it work, make it correct*, make it fast). If we were to bake in anti-cheat measures from the very beginning of a project, it would force us to scale back our ambitions. Some might argue that’s a good thing, but the truth is, we’d also risk missing critical milestones like First-Playable or Vertical Slice. You simply can’t tackle everything at once—focus is a measure primarily of what you are not doing, after all. Back when I was working on The Division, we had some deep discussions about using player analytics and even early forms of machine learning to detect "too good" players in real-time. This was in 2014, well before the AI boom. The industry's interest in new anti-cheat methods has only grown since then, I promise you this. At the end of the day, games are all about delivering an experience. That’s the priority, and a solid anti-cheat system is key to ensuring it. Endpoint security is currently the best solution we have because it doesn’t bog down the client with delays or force awkward mechanics like rollbacks or lock-step processing. Plus, it lines up with the (very heavy) optimisations we already do for consoles. Nobody in this industry wants to install a rootkit on your PC if we can avoid it. It’s just the best trade-off (for all parties, especially gamers) given the circumstances. And let's be clear—these solutions are far from cheap. We pay a lot to implement them, even if some marketing material might suggest otherwise.
ChrisArchitect 2y ago
FYI: Anti-Cheat software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheating_in_online_games#Anti-cheating_methods_and_limitations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheating_in_online_games#Anti-...
Cloudef 2y ago
Snake oil of the software world
qalmakka 2y ago
leaving aside that most anticheats are useless and constantly teetering on the thin line between legitimate software and malware, not enabling anti-cheat solutions that support Linux on Linux is really an asshole move that almost definitely stems from an unmotivated or ideological hostility to Linux in general (I'm specifically referring to Tim Sweeney here).
- umbra07 2y ago
  Another offender is Ubisoft, or more specifically the R6 Siege team. Battleye works perfectly fine on Linux - in fact, other Ubisoft teams have enabled Battleye-Linux support for their games (ex: For Honor) - but for whatever reason, the Siege team refuses to do so, even though it's one of the most upvoted issues on the bug tracker [1]. [1] https://r6fix.ubi.com/projects/RAINBOW6-SIEGE-LIVE/issues/LIVE-49179 https://r6fix.ubi.com/projects/RAINBOW6-SIEGE-LIVE/issues/LI...
  - Cortex5936 2y ago
    Doesn't the Battleye build in Linux makes it easier for cheaters to cheat on Linux vs. the windows one ? Just trying to understand their reasoning
    - themoonisachees 2y ago
      BattlEye is generally broken even on windows (though it happens that it is actually working as intended right now). Cheaters generally use windows, and switching to Linux will only be done when the windows anticheat is considerably harder to break, and with proton/wine, you even get to run the same version on both.
- maccard 2y ago
  I agree that they teeter the line, but hard disagree that they’re ineffective. They’re ineffective if you run your own servers and vet your own community because you don’t need them, but that’s not how most popular games are being played these days whether you like it or not. Fall guys was fundamentally broken, they added easy anti cheat and the problem disappeared pretty much.
demaga 2y ago
If only Valorant AC had Linux support, I would ditch Windows for good.
ginko 2y ago
I don’t understand. Why would you actually want anti-cheat rootkits and spyware on linux?
- Ndymium 2y ago
  You may have strong opinions on anti-cheat software and they may be correct, but it is required for playing certain online multi-player games, and people want to play those games on Linux too (especially the Steam Deck, I would presume). Ergo, people want anti-cheat software on Linux.
- 0points 2y ago
  In order to play some online games that requires anti cheat. I avoid these titles myself. In fact, I don't run wine, steam or game console emulators on my Linux workstation. I run Windows VM:s for isolation and security.
15155 2y ago
PCIe DMA says "what anticheat?"
- abigail95 2y ago
  not easy to implement undetected https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GH3CPPHXwAAMR3i?format=png&name=900x900 https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GH3CPPHXwAAMR3i?format=png&name=...
  - stuckkeys 2y ago
    Those idiots replicated the same firmware across all their modules. They are not the brightest bunch…or maybe they are but greed blinded them. Anyway, it blows my mind how people go to such extent to cheat in multiplayer games.
  - 15155 2y ago
    Extremely easy if you aren't using an off-the-shelf bitstream with default Xilinx device identifiers.
- kuschku 2y ago
  HDMI grabber and USB HID emulation concurs. Anti-Cheat is just sparkling DRM.
hexomancer 2y ago
One thing I don't understand and I would really appreciate if someone could explain this to me. Why do we need separate anti-cheat programs? Can't the operating systems simply have an option when creating a process that prevents all operations looking at the memory of the process (and maybe if such a process is about to be launched the user has to explicitly accept that by clicking a button)? Wouldn't that stop almost all the cheats without needing separate anti cheat programs, since I assume those programs have to use OS facilities to mess with the game anyway.
- ale42 2y ago
  Malware will be the first software using that option.
  - hexomancer 2y ago
    That's why I said the user has to explicitly accept that.
    - HexDecOctBin 2y ago
      Who do you think downloads and runs malware? Users.
      - hexomancer 2y ago
        By the same argument we should prevents the users from running any program at all because it might be malware.
        Am4TIfIsER0ppos 2y ago
        That is indeed what many people want! Look at people defending "app stores" as being for the users' own good, and sometimes everyone else's.
        HexDecOctBin 2y ago
        No, but we shouldn't treat user's freedom as an anti-virus mechanism. Pretending that user acceptance will help in preventing malwares is extremely naive.
Starz0r 2y ago
What an interesting day when you see a site you've worked on for the past 2 (3?) years get posted to HN! Except I tried submitting this site years ago when I had just finished it, but it did not seem like HN was that interested at the time, and I don't blame them. It was very niche and video game related, and the site also looked a lot worse. It's come a long way to the point where there where I collaborated with someone else to do a redesign, which I think has done great for the project at large. I originally created the site as a way to track which games would be supported on Linux, since at the time the Steam Deck was releasing, and some games were turning to support it. And it has since blossomed into a larger project, which some other tools even pull from! I would have never even imagined that when I first started making this. I do want to address something I see being talked about in the comments, which is the fact people say that anti-cheats are snake oil, or useless. This is a big misunderstanding, and I feel like those more technically inclined should understand that anti-cheat is a "defense-in-depth" type of approach. Where it is just one of many lines of defense. Some anti-cheats are pretty useless, and don't do much, but some actually do try and protect the game you're playing. But, just like DRM, it can be cracked, and that's why it's more of a constant arms race, rather than a one and done thing. I'm writing out a longer post about this for the future, but just know that without anti-cheat clientside, it would be far too easy for an attacker to cheat in these games. We're still ways out from letting AI (see VACnet [1] and and Anybrain [2]) determine if someone is cheating server-side, so for now we have to rely on heavier client-side techniques and server-side decision making. Also if anyone has questions about the site (or for me), I'll try to answer them here when I see them. If not, have a nice day! [1] https://youtu.be/kTiP0zKF9bc https://youtu.be/kTiP0zKF9bc [2] https://www.anybrain.gg/ https://www.anybrain.gg/
- Cortex5936 2y ago
  To play the devil's advocate here, do you think enabling EC on Linux systems makes it easier for players to cheat ?
  - Starz0r 2y ago
    Yes. But, in practice, it usually doesn't result in any new cheaters. There is a myriad of reasons for this, but I won't go over them here.
roshankhan28 2y ago
the best anti cheat that i have experience is vangaurd by riot games. I was running a python script in background for web crawling, left it on and guess what? my account got banned. the support says the vangaurd found a script running. i explained them patiently that it was a web crawling script , still no use.
- MaxikCZ 2y ago
  How is that "best"? Seems pretty bad, if they dont reverse ban even after being informed of possible false positive. Having anticheat ban everyone doesnt make it good. What makes anticheat good is it banning cheaters while leaving honest players not.
  - Draiken 2y ago
    Unless I'm misunderstanding, they're being ironic...
    - roshankhan28 2y ago
      yes , i am being ironic.
- dncornholio 2y ago
  It also sends screenshots of the websites you have open (if it wants to).
  - EmilyHATFIELD 2y ago
    do you have a source ?
    - dncornholio 2y ago
      I'm not saying it is, I'm saying it could, because this is one of the most intrusive anti-cheats on the market. It can do and see basically anything on your computer.
progx 2y ago
Anti-Cheat will not help, if the games not Update it for more than 8 month. And one thing the devs could do without Anti-Cheat, is to automate analysis of e. g. head shot rate, movement speed, etc. but most games not do that. If average player make 25 Kills per hour in a game and some 150 over longer periods i did not need an anti cheat to do something.
- Hikikomori 2y ago
  Yeah it would be so easy to stop cheaters if they only stopped to think about the problem for a few minutes.
- Reubend 2y ago
  This is a common misconception. Some players are extremely good at video games, and they look like statistic anomalies / outlier when mapped across the full distribution of players. Consider, for example, professional gamers. They spend countless hours practicing, and they can easily outcompete casual gamers who don't have the time to refine their skills daily. Statistical anti cheat is extremely weak in any game where legitimate human players can end up as outliers.
  - blueflow 2y ago
    Its like using APM to identify cheaters in Starcraft 1. Jaedong and Flash will get banned together with the actual cheaters.
  - Strom 2y ago
    Extremely good players have old profiles that they have used for a long time, gradually getting better. Cheaters are either using a new profile, or an old profile with bad stats that then has a sharp uptick.
    - madflame991 2y ago
      I've been playing the same 2 games for many years and I think I got pretty good at them and I've used multiple accounts - under your assumption I look like a cheater.
dangsux 2y ago
[dead]
bob1029 2y ago
I think the real answer is to sidestep all of the direct, deterministic solutions in favor of statistical ones. I am not 100% certain of this, but I believe some there are some games, like EA's Battlefield series, that utilize a degree of statistical modeling to detect cheaters. We reliably use statistical process control to automatically calibrate incredibly precise, nanometric-scale machinery for purposes of semiconductor engineering. Surely, with the extreme amount of data available regarding every player's minute inputs in something like a client-server shooter, you could run similar statistical models to detect outliers in performance. With enough samples you can build an extraordinarily damning case. The only downside is that statistical models will occasionally produce false positives. But, I've personally been "falsely" banned by purely deterministic methods (VAC) for reasons similar to others noted in this thread (i.e. leaving debugging/memory tools running for a separate project while playing a game). So, in practice I feel like statistical models might even provide a better experience around the intent to cheat (i.e. if you aren't effectively causing trouble, we dont care).
- shaokind 2y ago
  > like EA's Battlefield series, that utilize a degree of statistical modeling to detect cheaters Battlefield started out using PunkBuster, one of the earliest kernel-level anti-cheats. With Battlefield 4, they used FairFight, a statistical server-side solution, alongside PB. With Battlefield 1, they dropped PB, and operated with just FairFight. And now, EA have decided to create their own kernel-level AC, called EA AntiCheat, and are implementing it on BF5 and BF1, largely because FairFight was not enough.
  - bob1029 2y ago
    Was FairFight not enough because statistical methods are insufficient, or because their specific approach was flawed?
- therein 2y ago
  You could probably detect 90% of cheaters in Rust by detecting people who press DEL during in game non textual interactions. It probably would also have a relatively low false positive rate. It is however easy to evade once known. But I think collecting all that data and sparingly using it is the best approach. You could combine that with headshot rate, etc. and really narrow down relatively reliably.
sylware 2y ago
In the case of FPS, it is gone: with AI cheats which are morphing average/bad players into god like/very good players, that without being on the player system, (external, and input device man-in-the-middle or custom/modified input devices), FPS games implementing anti-cheats are doing so more to please microsoft than anything else: too be sure it won't run on linux based OSes (like "secure" boot in order to sabotage easy installation of "free" alternative OSes). That said, you "may" have a chance at detecting it using game related metrics on server side. Because an AI will very probably betray itself at some point, "AI"s are usually imperfect like human. Elephant in room, the more you put big brother in your system, the less you will be able to run really free operating systems. So long for your digital freedom. Look at the abominations which are video game consoles. It is obcene to have to pay a lot of money for completely locked/digital jail devices. It should be illegal, period. They should be leased for cheap.
Draiken 2y ago
IMO anti-cheats at this point are more of a PR tool than actual cheat prevention systems. Look at Vanguard: they marketed Valorant specifically focused on the anti-cheat to draw players away from CS:GO where many in the community think cheaters are rampant. The only difference is that maybe you have a few less rage hackers that get caught by it, but anyone that really wants to cheat will still be able to, it's just a lot harder for players to see. All they care about is the public perception. If it looks like it has less cheaters, it's good enough for them. The cost? You basically install malware from a Chinese company in you computer...
snarfy 2y ago
If Apex Legends, CS, and Valorant has taught me anything, it's that anti cheat does not work. Once you start approaching a pro level, cheating becomes rampant. The cheaters don't make them, they buy them. It really needs a multi factor solution. The technical solution is not enough. Trying to buy cheats should be like trying to buy chemical precursors to illicit drugs. There should be a strong social stigma. Most cheaters have no problem with it because 'everyone else is cheating', justifying their behavior. There was a time when 'everyone else smokes' was justification, but now it's mostly defeated. There should be real world implications. Sign in with your phone number and 2 factor auth, which is located to a physical address. Cheating is a form of fraud. There should be legal implications.
- nullc 2y ago
  > Trying to buy cheats should be like trying to buy chemical precursors to illicit drugs. oh my. Seeing your posts makes me sincerely want to lobby to ban video games at least if adding additional liabilities to distributing software or computing devices were actually a direction that the games industry was promoting. We need to stop letting stupid entertainment companies trample our rights to narrowmindedly maximize their profits.
- nurumaik 2y ago
  >Trying to buy cheats should be like trying to buy chemical precursors to illicit drugs Totally agree, both should be absolutely legal and accepted
Kim_Bruning 2y ago
I understand that Anti-Cheat keeps honest people honest. Which, sure if it's your purely-for-gaming box, ok, maybe ok. It's just that I use my machine for more stuff than gaming; and for anything else I'd really rather not have it on there at the same time.
rldjbpin 2y ago
very interesting side-effect of the nature of multiplayer competitive games. to me, competitive video games are far gone like pro cycling in terms of the extent players go to feel "superior" than others. <rant> many of these games remain broken with other things while raking in insane amounts of money, so regularly maintaining anti-cheat inside the game, if at all, is probably very low in their backlog. the third-party ones are then used to not having to think about this, but even these providers are more focused on attracting game publishers than doing something meaningful. </rant> personally, it should be possible for games that can be played in local multiplayer or with friends to have a way to play it without anti-cheat. don't allow competitive modes with it, but having an option will alleviate a lot of these issues.

165 points by iscream26 2y ago

guykroupp 2y ago

Check out Getgud.io, it might surprise you how far along AI anti cheat has come.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

mjevans 2y ago

I don't know enough about 'real time' netcode for games. However I have read several HN articles over the years so I've got at least a basic understanding. Why can't the servers distrust the clients? What should a 'client side anti cheat' actually prevent? The way I think I'd tackle such things is to have multiple copies of each character model moving in different locations and different ways. Such that trying to spy on the state of the game from one client's viewpoint yields mostly false data. New 'threads' would fork off of the existing threads and would only be culled when there are too many or they're about to make a side effect that would be visible if they were real. In that way the server would be responsible for feeding misinformation to clients but maintaining the state of the true game as a secret to itself.

Iridescent_ 2y ago
Not trusting the clients and redoing all calculations server-side would require massive processing on the server side. Your idea then multiplies the load on the server.
- worthless-trash 2y ago
  How much though, i mean you're basically doing vector work, and only when its visible within range, and then when its visible within the player and the player hitbox is.... oh I see.
- Ekaros 2y ago
  We do have massive processing on all sides. And the actual processing done for the game stuff is not really that big. Mostly it goes to graphics, sounds and so on.
- kachapopopow 2y ago
  Overwatch does this just fine and deadlock actually.
  - totaa 2y ago
    > deadlock actually how do you know? has there been a technical deep dive published?
    - kachapopopow 2y ago
      Opening the console and seeing rollback net-code pretty much says enough. Also the game itself feels great to play even with 160ms ping which is only really possible when using architecture similar to overwatch.
claudex 2y ago
The client need to have more state info than the player to render accurately, for example, to render an opponent passing through a window without lag. And also, there are also cheat that doesn't need to spy on the state, like aim assist tool or HUD improvement.
- mjevans 2y ago
  * Pass through a window without lag - That's why the server is sending multiple copies of potential movements and paths through the level for each character, but terminating the ones that are about to reveal their effects (no longer be culled by walls / objects) when they'd send false information to non-cheating players. * Aim Assist - what's that supposed to work with for the assist? I guess it might help someone target a player once they're exposed, or once they've locked on. For that I think that extremely top tier players might behave within fuzzing distance of tool assist, at least some of the time. Dodging might have similar issues. I could even see ML assisting inputs just based on frame-grabs off the screen video output. -- So I'm not sure what client side anti-cheat is supposed to do here. * HUD improvements - like what?
  - oerdier 2y ago
    Regarding HUD improvements, this monitor shows where enemies are likely to appear. The monitor does this autonomously; the OS isn't in the loop. https://www.tomshardware.com/monitors/msis-ai-powered-gaming-monitor-helps-you-cheat-at-league-of-legends-looks-great-doing-it https://www.tomshardware.com/monitors/msis-ai-powered-gaming...
    - mjevans 2y ago
      That monitor seems to dynamically do things based on data the game legitimately shows a player. For some data, like the health bars, a skill / accessibility leveling feature might be to just let the user pick HOW the game displays that data, to customize the UI layout to their needs. Enemy position highlight based on the minimap vs present location? Yeah, that crosses a clear line, but it's abusing some data the game probably shouldn't have told the player to begin with. What if the minimap reflected the known shape of the world, but only updated with the visible area (standard 'fog of war' mechanic)? Again, it might be within accessibility features to highlight enemies within sight, so I don't see too much issue if the minimap's render state is restricted to the immediate area + what the camera direction could see.
Animats 2y ago
> Why can't the servers distrust the clients? What should a 'client side anti cheat' actually prevent? There are two issues. One is the user seeing things that the server is hiding, such as enemies hidden behind obstacles, by going into "wireframe mode". The other is superhuman performance via computer assistance, or "aimbot hacks". The first is a performance issue. The server can do some occlusion culling to avoid telling the client about invisible enemies, but that adds to the server workload. The second is becoming impossible to fix, since at this point you can have a program looking at the actual video output and helping to aim. (You can now get that in real-world guns.[1]) Attempts to crack down on people whose aim is "too good" result in loud screams from players whose aim really is that good. [1] https://talonprecisionoptics.com/technology/how-it-works/ https://talonprecisionoptics.com/technology/how-it-works/
- sadeshmukh 2y ago
  The only feasible solution is to have high-level players compete in physical tournaments or at verified centers, where the authenticity of the player is replaced with some authority. At a high enough level, there is no way to distinguish a really good player from a cheater.
  - Xeamek 2y ago
    Disagree. But it's not really feasible to argue since you need to be on such high level in the first place to honestly engage in 'is this player chesting' conversation. And it's on case-by-case basis
    - Draiken 2y ago
      Can you expand on the disagree? I've watched professional games in SC, CS and DOTA for decades and I definitely agree that pros are indistinguishable from a good cheater (not a rage hacker). One of the issues around this is cheating within pros too. People that are actually good at the game, but use cheats to get even further ahead. These players are already statistical anomalies and even from an experienced player's perspective, you can't tell if they have an amazing game sense (many really do) or he's wall hacking, as an example.
tonyhart7 2y ago
well because realtime online multiplayer game need to be "FAST", I mean really fast sure if you develop platform today we can check token user now with hashtable we have in database but in games ?? You cant verify calculated damage numbers users gave, not fast enough
- raincole 2y ago
  Sorry but I don't think you worked for a multiplayer game in the past 15 years. Verifying damage numbers is no-brainer. The programmers won't discuss "should we verify damage numbers" at all. It's the norm today.
- Xeamek 2y ago
  You absolutely can do that and (almost) all games do that already. This type of cheats are DECADES in the past. Today is all about a) enhancing normal behavior with artificial precision, not making any 'illegal' (from game perspective) actions. b) giving player information he isn't supposed to have but that is passed to client for latency sake
TheFragenTaken 2y ago
The first rule in any software backed by a server, but especially multiplayer games is, you never trust the client. You could have a perfectly deterministic game where every action is validated on the server, be defeated by running the game at half speed.
- DaiPlusPlus 2y ago
  A bullet-time video game, you say?
raincole 2y ago
Because the popular cheats aren't "the client says the player shot the enemy". The popular cheats are "the client says the player just clicked at (1030, 534) on the screen", which is a totally valid move, except it's calculated by the cheat instead of the player.
forrestthewoods 2y ago
<sarcasm> oh dang you should be a multiplayer engineer. Sounds like with barely even thinking about the problem space you've solved what thousands of extremely talented and knowledgeable engineers never could! </sarcasm> Servers very much distrust the client. Obviously. That's literally rule #1. Don't trust the client! Comments like yours are extremely irritating. Please don't behave this way with your co-workers. Anyhow, there's all kinds of types of cheats for different kinds of games. There's a variety of mitigations for each kind. I don't think there's a multiplayer shooter on the planet that has fully solved aimbots. For however clever you think you are I promise the cheat makers are much, much more clever. :)
- cabbageicefruit 2y ago
  Touch grass buddy. In their first sentence they openly admit this isn’t their area of expertise. Hence them asking a question to people who know more than them. “Don’t behave this way to your co-workers” is much better advice for your comment than for GP’s.
  - forrestthewoods 2y ago
    Went outside with my dogs and successfully touched grass. It’s growing back in nicely after a week of rain. “Why can’t you just” guys are extremely irritating. I implore OP to not be a “why can’t you just” guy at work. What is a WCYJGuy? Someone who has no knowledge of a domain but proposes solutions under the implication that there is a simple solution that they are oh so clever to have instantly discovered. It takes a lot of time and effort to explain “no you can not just” to someone who doesn’t have the pre-requisite knowledge.
- deznu 2y ago
  It was an honest and inquisitive question, calm down.
  - forrestthewoods 2y ago
    His arguing bad solutions in other replies suggests otherwise. If you want to inquire then inquire. Don’t propose a bad solution as if it was an easy problem that you solved with nary a thought.
KK7NIL 2y ago
> I don't know enough about X. However I have read several HN articles over the years so I've got at least a basic understanding. I'm sorry but this really does read like the start of a troll post.
- burnished 2y ago
  Its just regular intellectual curiosity.
  - KK7NIL 2y ago
    Sure, but you'll need to do more than "read several HN articles over the years" (presumably completely unrelated to anti-cheats?) to get even a basic understanding of how anti-cheats work, as he went on to demonstrate. I also just thought it was unintentionally funny, like a comedic setup for a stereotypically cocky HN user to comment with great confidence on something way outside of their field of expertise. (not saying that's the case for mjevans)
    - burnished 2y ago
      Yes, that stereotype irritates me because it stigmatizes people asking the obvious questions.
dijit 2y ago
Delaying UI interaction until it has been verified by a server that runs at 20fps (60 is uncommon on servers unless theres no AI), with a RTT of 60 ms, means your hitmarker will take 110ms instead of 6ms if rendered locally. Apply that to every interaction that the server has to be authoritative about, movement, reloading. Your game will be unplayable. And if you want to combat aimbotting: your viewport and hit point would have to be server authoritative too. Basically: unless its Stadia or geforce now, this wont work.
- mjevans 2y ago
  Not delaying UI interaction; though conflict resolution (there are at least two involved clients, each with it's own lagged view of the other, and a server that knows it's own truth) might change the outcome of events. THAT is the part of multiplayer net code I know the least about, mostly because I don't think there is a perfect solution but I am not a subject expert on what works well as an approximation.
  - dijit 2y ago
    Then you have rollbacks and rubberbanding, and UI elements that fired which aren't valid once the physics interactions have resolved serverside. Jt doesn't take much for people to feel like the UI is untrustworthy and “broken”. No game wants to be a jank piece of ass, but theres no good solution here, believe me, we’ve tried.
    - mook 2y ago
      My understanding is that it's popular now to use rollbacks in fighting games (in combination with delays so the rollback doesn't get too far). Perhaps something like that would be useful, though of course that would depend on the game (and how much data it needs to send between players).
      - ThatPlayer 2y ago
        I think the difference is fighting games are easier to simulate. Part of rollback is to rewind 6 frames and resimulate those 6 frames again with the new input. This basically requires you to be able to run your game at 6x speed consistently. It's also increased memory requirement, because you need to have the game state from those 6 frames ago in memory. These are also reasons you cannot do too many rollback frames without adding delay. I believe the Nintendo Switch never got the rollback update for BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle because of performance reasons. Fighting games have two (maybe 4 with assists) characters generally at 60fps. That's relatively easy to do. A worse case would be an RTS game: in a fight when each unit's attack needs to be calculated repeatedly. Valorant runs at 128 ticks/second. For the same latency compensation as 6 frames in a fighting game, you would need 13 frames, so you need to be able to simulate the game at 13x speed. And rollback still has janky visuals when conflicts happen. The games I've played will let you choose between smoother visuals with more delay or rollback artifacts with less delay. Generally the default setting is the former.
psgdev 2y ago
Sending copies of fake character data isn't a thing because there eventually has to be a flag that tells the client to not render that character that the client hack could simply read. It should be clear that servers already do not trust the client, they do many checks hence you don't see teleportation hacks in games like Counter strike or Valorant. There used to be cheats in the counter strike games like "nospread" where you could have 100% pixel perfect aiming but that was because the the client was trusted however now in most games with some randomness in bullet spray patterns the random seed is different between the client and server so something like "nospread" are no longer possible. You might be stumbling upon "fog of war" that is not sending data to a client unless the enemy player is close to visible which is a thing. It's widely used and I'd say effective in MOBA/MMORPG/RTS games however in FPS games fog of war is many times more computationally expensive which matters at the scale of games these days. It has been a thing for a long time in counter strike with server plugins like "SMAC anti wall hack" or "server side occlusion culling" however the implementations sometimes have not been perfect and require significantly stronger servers. https://github.com/87andrewh/CornerCullingSourceEngine https://github.com/87andrewh/CornerCullingSourceEngine Riot games also implements fog of war at scale in Valorant and has a blog post covering some of the issues they overcame. One thing you can see the gif at the end of the blog post, even though fog of war is effective it is only effective in reducing the effectiveness of wall hacks and wall hacks still provide a significant advantage. https://technology.riotgames.com/news/demolishing-wallhacks-valorants-fog-war https://technology.riotgames.com/news/demolishing-wallhacks-...
- mjevans 2y ago
  There would be no such flag. The clients would cull the characters that are out of position. Yes that's some client load for the culling, but it's probably less overhead than 'anti cheat'. The important reason I suggested MULTIPLE clones of a character and only forking new paths off of existing characters in the world is that it should eliminate any information oracle about which of those is the real character.
  - psgdev 2y ago
    There is a high level of server load for this as well, not only placing these fake characters but making them move and act like real human players so they are believed and then culling them (server would cull them not the client to be clear because how would the client know to cull them without a flag?) only right before they are visible while taking account of lag (ping), interp, packet loss etc.. I definitely could see someone games doing this as a one-off to just catch specific cheaters they are suspicious of to confirm they are cheating (Many 3rd party anti-cheats in counter strike and the 1st party valorant anti-cheat do manual bans based on replay reviews) but also since they already do fog of war someone with wall hack seeing an enemy player pop in for 1 frame before disappearing would make it not effective on a wide scale.
Hikikomori 2y ago
Then all the cheater would need to do is move close to the area of these ghosts and find out which the real player is. Its also going to be very taxing for the server to create realistic ghost players that move around dynamically.
tumetab1 2y ago
The reason multiplayer servers implicitly trust clients is because it's a cheaper and proven (less risk) solution. The traditional anti-cheat can be just slapped after the game is developed in most games. If the game is very successful then you can just update the game with extra paid protections provided by the anti-cheat tool. The alternative is local game engine that works with a partial game state which is a challenge on it self. If you still can make it work, you will still have to deal with people "modding" the client to gain an advantage. E.g.: enemies are painted red instead of camouflage.
- dijit 2y ago
  As someone working in AAA game development, I come across comments like these often, and they never fail to get under my skin. It’s like watching that infamous "Two idiots, one keyboard" scene from CSI—full of confidence, but completely detached from reality. I don’t mean to sound harsh, but it’s tough to tackle this kind of misconception because it’s stated with such certainty that others, who also might not know any better, just take it as fact. Here’s the thing: Multiplayer servers trust clients mainly for performance reasons. In AAA game development, anti-cheat isn’t something we focus on right from the start. It typically becomes a priority post-alpha (and by alpha, I’m talking about an internal milestone that usually spans about a year—not the "alpha" most people think of which is usually closer to an internal "beta", and "public beta" is more like release candidate 1). During that time, the tech team is constantly working on ways to secure the game. (make it work, make it correct*, make it fast). If we were to bake in anti-cheat measures from the very beginning of a project, it would force us to scale back our ambitions. Some might argue that’s a good thing, but the truth is, we’d also risk missing critical milestones like First-Playable or Vertical Slice. You simply can’t tackle everything at once—focus is a measure primarily of what you are not doing, after all. Back when I was working on The Division, we had some deep discussions about using player analytics and even early forms of machine learning to detect "too good" players in real-time. This was in 2014, well before the AI boom. The industry's interest in new anti-cheat methods has only grown since then, I promise you this. At the end of the day, games are all about delivering an experience. That’s the priority, and a solid anti-cheat system is key to ensuring it. Endpoint security is currently the best solution we have because it doesn’t bog down the client with delays or force awkward mechanics like rollbacks or lock-step processing. Plus, it lines up with the (very heavy) optimisations we already do for consoles. Nobody in this industry wants to install a rootkit on your PC if we can avoid it. It’s just the best trade-off (for all parties, especially gamers) given the circumstances. And let's be clear—these solutions are far from cheap. We pay a lot to implement them, even if some marketing material might suggest otherwise.

ChrisArchitect 2y ago

FYI: Anti-Cheat software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheating_in_online_games#Anti-cheating_methods_and_limitations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheating_in_online_games#Anti-...

Cloudef 2y ago

Snake oil of the software world

qalmakka 2y ago

leaving aside that most anticheats are useless and constantly teetering on the thin line between legitimate software and malware, not enabling anti-cheat solutions that support Linux on Linux is really an asshole move that almost definitely stems from an unmotivated or ideological hostility to Linux in general (I'm specifically referring to Tim Sweeney here).

umbra07 2y ago
Another offender is Ubisoft, or more specifically the R6 Siege team. Battleye works perfectly fine on Linux - in fact, other Ubisoft teams have enabled Battleye-Linux support for their games (ex: For Honor) - but for whatever reason, the Siege team refuses to do so, even though it's one of the most upvoted issues on the bug tracker [1]. [1] https://r6fix.ubi.com/projects/RAINBOW6-SIEGE-LIVE/issues/LIVE-49179 https://r6fix.ubi.com/projects/RAINBOW6-SIEGE-LIVE/issues/LI...
- Cortex5936 2y ago
  Doesn't the Battleye build in Linux makes it easier for cheaters to cheat on Linux vs. the windows one ? Just trying to understand their reasoning
  - themoonisachees 2y ago
    BattlEye is generally broken even on windows (though it happens that it is actually working as intended right now). Cheaters generally use windows, and switching to Linux will only be done when the windows anticheat is considerably harder to break, and with proton/wine, you even get to run the same version on both.
maccard 2y ago
I agree that they teeter the line, but hard disagree that they’re ineffective. They’re ineffective if you run your own servers and vet your own community because you don’t need them, but that’s not how most popular games are being played these days whether you like it or not. Fall guys was fundamentally broken, they added easy anti cheat and the problem disappeared pretty much.

demaga 2y ago

If only Valorant AC had Linux support, I would ditch Windows for good.

ginko 2y ago

I don’t understand. Why would you actually want anti-cheat rootkits and spyware on linux?

Ndymium 2y ago
You may have strong opinions on anti-cheat software and they may be correct, but it is required for playing certain online multi-player games, and people want to play those games on Linux too (especially the Steam Deck, I would presume). Ergo, people want anti-cheat software on Linux.
0points 2y ago
In order to play some online games that requires anti cheat. I avoid these titles myself. In fact, I don't run wine, steam or game console emulators on my Linux workstation. I run Windows VM:s for isolation and security.

15155 2y ago

PCIe DMA says "what anticheat?"

abigail95 2y ago
not easy to implement undetected https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GH3CPPHXwAAMR3i?format=png&name=900x900 https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GH3CPPHXwAAMR3i?format=png&name=...
- stuckkeys 2y ago
  Those idiots replicated the same firmware across all their modules. They are not the brightest bunch…or maybe they are but greed blinded them. Anyway, it blows my mind how people go to such extent to cheat in multiplayer games.
- 15155 2y ago
  Extremely easy if you aren't using an off-the-shelf bitstream with default Xilinx device identifiers.
kuschku 2y ago
HDMI grabber and USB HID emulation concurs. Anti-Cheat is just sparkling DRM.

hexomancer 2y ago

One thing I don't understand and I would really appreciate if someone could explain this to me. Why do we need separate anti-cheat programs? Can't the operating systems simply have an option when creating a process that prevents all operations looking at the memory of the process (and maybe if such a process is about to be launched the user has to explicitly accept that by clicking a button)? Wouldn't that stop almost all the cheats without needing separate anti cheat programs, since I assume those programs have to use OS facilities to mess with the game anyway.

ale42 2y ago
Malware will be the first software using that option.
- hexomancer 2y ago
  That's why I said the user has to explicitly accept that.
  - HexDecOctBin 2y ago
    Who do you think downloads and runs malware? Users.
    - hexomancer 2y ago
      By the same argument we should prevents the users from running any program at all because it might be malware.
      - Am4TIfIsER0ppos 2y ago
        That is indeed what many people want! Look at people defending "app stores" as being for the users' own good, and sometimes everyone else's.
      - HexDecOctBin 2y ago
        No, but we shouldn't treat user's freedom as an anti-virus mechanism. Pretending that user acceptance will help in preventing malwares is extremely naive.

Starz0r 2y ago

What an interesting day when you see a site you've worked on for the past 2 (3?) years get posted to HN! Except I tried submitting this site years ago when I had just finished it, but it did not seem like HN was that interested at the time, and I don't blame them. It was very niche and video game related, and the site also looked a lot worse. It's come a long way to the point where there where I collaborated with someone else to do a redesign, which I think has done great for the project at large. I originally created the site as a way to track which games would be supported on Linux, since at the time the Steam Deck was releasing, and some games were turning to support it. And it has since blossomed into a larger project, which some other tools even pull from! I would have never even imagined that when I first started making this. I do want to address something I see being talked about in the comments, which is the fact people say that anti-cheats are snake oil, or useless. This is a big misunderstanding, and I feel like those more technically inclined should understand that anti-cheat is a "defense-in-depth" type of approach. Where it is just one of many lines of defense. Some anti-cheats are pretty useless, and don't do much, but some actually do try and protect the game you're playing. But, just like DRM, it can be cracked, and that's why it's more of a constant arms race, rather than a one and done thing. I'm writing out a longer post about this for the future, but just know that without anti-cheat clientside, it would be far too easy for an attacker to cheat in these games. We're still ways out from letting AI (see VACnet [1] and and Anybrain [2]) determine if someone is cheating server-side, so for now we have to rely on heavier client-side techniques and server-side decision making. Also if anyone has questions about the site (or for me), I'll try to answer them here when I see them. If not, have a nice day! [1] https://youtu.be/kTiP0zKF9bc https://youtu.be/kTiP0zKF9bc [2] https://www.anybrain.gg/ https://www.anybrain.gg/

Cortex5936 2y ago
To play the devil's advocate here, do you think enabling EC on Linux systems makes it easier for players to cheat ?
- Starz0r 2y ago
  Yes. But, in practice, it usually doesn't result in any new cheaters. There is a myriad of reasons for this, but I won't go over them here.

roshankhan28 2y ago

the best anti cheat that i have experience is vangaurd by riot games. I was running a python script in background for web crawling, left it on and guess what? my account got banned. the support says the vangaurd found a script running. i explained them patiently that it was a web crawling script , still no use.

MaxikCZ 2y ago
How is that "best"? Seems pretty bad, if they dont reverse ban even after being informed of possible false positive. Having anticheat ban everyone doesnt make it good. What makes anticheat good is it banning cheaters while leaving honest players not.
- Draiken 2y ago
  Unless I'm misunderstanding, they're being ironic...
  - roshankhan28 2y ago
    yes , i am being ironic.
dncornholio 2y ago
It also sends screenshots of the websites you have open (if it wants to).
- EmilyHATFIELD 2y ago
  do you have a source ?
  - dncornholio 2y ago
    I'm not saying it is, I'm saying it could, because this is one of the most intrusive anti-cheats on the market. It can do and see basically anything on your computer.

progx 2y ago

Anti-Cheat will not help, if the games not Update it for more than 8 month. And one thing the devs could do without Anti-Cheat, is to automate analysis of e. g. head shot rate, movement speed, etc. but most games not do that. If average player make 25 Kills per hour in a game and some 150 over longer periods i did not need an anti cheat to do something.

Hikikomori 2y ago
Yeah it would be so easy to stop cheaters if they only stopped to think about the problem for a few minutes.
Reubend 2y ago
This is a common misconception. Some players are extremely good at video games, and they look like statistic anomalies / outlier when mapped across the full distribution of players. Consider, for example, professional gamers. They spend countless hours practicing, and they can easily outcompete casual gamers who don't have the time to refine their skills daily. Statistical anti cheat is extremely weak in any game where legitimate human players can end up as outliers.
- blueflow 2y ago
  Its like using APM to identify cheaters in Starcraft 1. Jaedong and Flash will get banned together with the actual cheaters.
- Strom 2y ago
  Extremely good players have old profiles that they have used for a long time, gradually getting better. Cheaters are either using a new profile, or an old profile with bad stats that then has a sharp uptick.
  - madflame991 2y ago
    I've been playing the same 2 games for many years and I think I got pretty good at them and I've used multiple accounts - under your assumption I look like a cheater.

dangsux 2y ago

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bob1029 2y ago

I think the real answer is to sidestep all of the direct, deterministic solutions in favor of statistical ones. I am not 100% certain of this, but I believe some there are some games, like EA's Battlefield series, that utilize a degree of statistical modeling to detect cheaters. We reliably use statistical process control to automatically calibrate incredibly precise, nanometric-scale machinery for purposes of semiconductor engineering. Surely, with the extreme amount of data available regarding every player's minute inputs in something like a client-server shooter, you could run similar statistical models to detect outliers in performance. With enough samples you can build an extraordinarily damning case. The only downside is that statistical models will occasionally produce false positives. But, I've personally been "falsely" banned by purely deterministic methods (VAC) for reasons similar to others noted in this thread (i.e. leaving debugging/memory tools running for a separate project while playing a game). So, in practice I feel like statistical models might even provide a better experience around the intent to cheat (i.e. if you aren't effectively causing trouble, we dont care).

shaokind 2y ago
> like EA's Battlefield series, that utilize a degree of statistical modeling to detect cheaters Battlefield started out using PunkBuster, one of the earliest kernel-level anti-cheats. With Battlefield 4, they used FairFight, a statistical server-side solution, alongside PB. With Battlefield 1, they dropped PB, and operated with just FairFight. And now, EA have decided to create their own kernel-level AC, called EA AntiCheat, and are implementing it on BF5 and BF1, largely because FairFight was not enough.
- bob1029 2y ago
  Was FairFight not enough because statistical methods are insufficient, or because their specific approach was flawed?
therein 2y ago
You could probably detect 90% of cheaters in Rust by detecting people who press DEL during in game non textual interactions. It probably would also have a relatively low false positive rate. It is however easy to evade once known. But I think collecting all that data and sparingly using it is the best approach. You could combine that with headshot rate, etc. and really narrow down relatively reliably.

sylware 2y ago

In the case of FPS, it is gone: with AI cheats which are morphing average/bad players into god like/very good players, that without being on the player system, (external, and input device man-in-the-middle or custom/modified input devices), FPS games implementing anti-cheats are doing so more to please microsoft than anything else: too be sure it won't run on linux based OSes (like "secure" boot in order to sabotage easy installation of "free" alternative OSes). That said, you "may" have a chance at detecting it using game related metrics on server side. Because an AI will very probably betray itself at some point, "AI"s are usually imperfect like human. Elephant in room, the more you put big brother in your system, the less you will be able to run really free operating systems. So long for your digital freedom. Look at the abominations which are video game consoles. It is obcene to have to pay a lot of money for completely locked/digital jail devices. It should be illegal, period. They should be leased for cheap.

Draiken 2y ago

IMO anti-cheats at this point are more of a PR tool than actual cheat prevention systems. Look at Vanguard: they marketed Valorant specifically focused on the anti-cheat to draw players away from CS:GO where many in the community think cheaters are rampant. The only difference is that maybe you have a few less rage hackers that get caught by it, but anyone that really wants to cheat will still be able to, it's just a lot harder for players to see. All they care about is the public perception. If it looks like it has less cheaters, it's good enough for them. The cost? You basically install malware from a Chinese company in you computer...

snarfy 2y ago

If Apex Legends, CS, and Valorant has taught me anything, it's that anti cheat does not work. Once you start approaching a pro level, cheating becomes rampant. The cheaters don't make them, they buy them. It really needs a multi factor solution. The technical solution is not enough. Trying to buy cheats should be like trying to buy chemical precursors to illicit drugs. There should be a strong social stigma. Most cheaters have no problem with it because 'everyone else is cheating', justifying their behavior. There was a time when 'everyone else smokes' was justification, but now it's mostly defeated. There should be real world implications. Sign in with your phone number and 2 factor auth, which is located to a physical address. Cheating is a form of fraud. There should be legal implications.

nullc 2y ago
> Trying to buy cheats should be like trying to buy chemical precursors to illicit drugs. oh my. Seeing your posts makes me sincerely want to lobby to ban video games at least if adding additional liabilities to distributing software or computing devices were actually a direction that the games industry was promoting. We need to stop letting stupid entertainment companies trample our rights to narrowmindedly maximize their profits.
nurumaik 2y ago
>Trying to buy cheats should be like trying to buy chemical precursors to illicit drugs Totally agree, both should be absolutely legal and accepted

Kim_Bruning 2y ago

I understand that Anti-Cheat keeps honest people honest. Which, sure if it's your purely-for-gaming box, ok, maybe ok. It's just that I use my machine for more stuff than gaming; and for anything else I'd really rather not have it on there at the same time.

rldjbpin 2y ago

very interesting side-effect of the nature of multiplayer competitive games. to me, competitive video games are far gone like pro cycling in terms of the extent players go to feel "superior" than others. <rant> many of these games remain broken with other things while raking in insane amounts of money, so regularly maintaining anti-cheat inside the game, if at all, is probably very low in their backlog. the third-party ones are then used to not having to think about this, but even these providers are more focused on attracting game publishers than doing something meaningful. </rant> personally, it should be possible for games that can be played in local multiplayer or with friends to have a way to play it without anti-cheat. don't allow competitive modes with it, but having an option will alleviate a lot of these issues.