6 ms·

Let me tell you a secret: it's because the gamers are demanding that. The game companies couldn't care less if there are cheaters in the game, but it's the play

Let me tell you a secret: it's because the gamers are demanding that. The game companies couldn't care less if there are cheaters in the game, but it's the players which put huge pressure on the game companies to detect and ban cheaters.

heraldgeezer 2y ago
But it allows Windows 10 without TPM.
- 71bw 2y ago
  If your account gets flagged for ANY sort of irregular behaviour, you immediately get "upgraded" to requiring TPM and Secure Boot. Been there, done that - a crack for VEGAS Pro I used turned on test signing via registry for whatever reason and VALORANT REALLY didn't like that - and because of the PC I was using at the time that was the end of my VALORANT career.
tpxl 2y ago
Gamers arent demanding this. There are tons of ways to detect cheaters, the most effective one being human moderation. But no, companies wont do MaNuAl WoRk because it doesnt sCaLe, even though they have more than enough cash in the bank.
- dgellow 2y ago
  How do you do manual moderation on a massive fast-paced game like Valorant? It’s correct, that doesn’t scale
  - scotty79 2y ago
    maybe not manual ... but ... log behavior, find outliers, make outliers play with outliers only
    - mholm 2y ago
      This absolutely happens already. The problem with finding statistical outliers is that plenty of legitimate players are outliers too. And if you're banning/segregating players for being outliers, you get a very angry player base. Riot has a pretty indepth blogpost about their anti-cheat systems, they've had years to mature them on some of the most demanding competitive gaming platforms ever made. Requiring players install kernel anti-cheat was very far down the list of possible solutions, but that's what it came to. It was either this or stop being free to play.
      - choo-t 2y ago
        The server is all-seeing, if there is no way for the server to discriminate cheater from other player, then no player can possibly know there a cheater on the server, thus cannot complain about cheating is either irrational or the server-side detection is severely flawed.
        mjr00 2y ago
        > The server is all-seeing, if there is no way for the server to discriminate cheater from other player, then no player can possibly know there a cheater on the server, thus cannot complain about cheating is either irrational or the server-side detection is severely flawed. It's impossible to tell in-game if a baseball player is using steroids, yet there's a laundry list of banned substances and players who got banned for taking them because the MLB believes it gives them an unfair advantage. It's called competitive integrity. Since it sounds like you don't play games, at least not competitively, I'll clarify that "cheating" in this case isn't the obvious stuff like "my gun does 100x damage" or "I move around at 100mph" or "I'm using custom player models with big spikes so I know everyone's location" that you would've seen on public Counter-Strike 1.6 servers in 2002. Cheating is aim assistance that nudges your cursor to compensate for spray patterns in CS, it's automatic DPs and throw breaks in Street Fighter 6 that are just at the threshold of human reaction timing, it's firing off skillshots in League of Legends with an overlay that says if it's going to kill the enemy player or not. All of this stuff is doable by a sufficiently skilled/lucky human, but not with the level of consistency you get from cheating.
  - beeboobaa3 2y ago
    You limit the amount of matches you host to those you can actually referee, just like any sport where people care about cheating.
  - tpxl 2y ago
    While there are solutions, I won't comment on Valorant - free to play games are a whole can of worms the companies have nobody but themselves to blame. I will comment on a game I used to play though: Escape from Tarkov. The game costs somewhere between 40$ and 250$+tax, depending on what pack you buy. Banning cheaters for this game is literally a profit center. Every time you ban a cheater and they re-buy the game, you made at least 40$. The majority of cheating in the game was due to real money trading - cheaters would make in-game millions quickly, sell them, get banned, buy the game again at a profit. The solution to this is brain-dead simple - more manual moderation (these cheaters are very obvious to spot). What the developers did instead just killed the game.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
choo-t 2y ago
> Let me tell you a secret: it's because the gamers are demanding that. Citation needed. Whose these gamers ? I surely didn't ask for this neither any of the gamers I know, nor seen any demand about that in gaming forums. > The game companies couldn't care less if there are cheaters in the game, but it's the players which put huge pressure on the game companies to detect and ban cheaters. The jump from this to "requiring TPM" is quite a long one.
- eezurr 2y ago
  Go on steam and look at the recent reviews for older but still popular fps games. Gamers complain about cheaters constantly and will negatively review games cause of it
  - choo-t 2y ago
    They're demanding a way to handle or ban cheater, not requiring TPM, that's a non sequitur.
    - RHSeeger 2y ago
      You're being disingenuous here, or just missing the point. The point being made was the gamers are demanding game developers stop cheaters... and that secure boot (and related ways to lock down the computer) is one of the primary tools they know to use to do that.
      - choo-t 2y ago
        > The point being made was the gamers are demanding game developers stop cheaters... and that secure boot (and related ways to lock down the computer) is one of the primary tools they know to use to do that. That's akin to saying that, as people want security on the street, mandatory strip search as soon as your exit your home is fair game. Asking for a result doesn't give a blank-check for all the measures taken toward this result.
        2y ago
realusername 2y ago
There's cheaters even on consoles which are vastly more locked-down than a PC. Those technical shenanigans clearly aren't working, be ready to be disappointed if you thought that a TPM would help against cheaters. Cheaters always find a way, what those game needs is proper moderation. Yes that does cost money but that's the only known thing that works in the long run.
- brookst 2y ago
  This seems like the old “any imperfect solution is no better than doing nothing” argument. Moderation is expensive, hard to scale, and can only address problems after other users have bad experiences. It’s like saying seatbelts are useless because some people still get hurt, so instead of seatbelts we need a lot more ambulances and hospitals. Like any complex system, games have a funnel. These technical measures reduce (but not to zero) the number of cheaters. Then moderation can be more effective operating against a smaller population with a lower percentage of abuse.
  - realusername 2y ago
    Since the technical measures like TPM are very heavy, there's some better evidence needed that it reduces the number of cheaters, personally I don't buy it. On the other hand, all the games / servers I've seen which are successful against cheater have some very good moderation.
    - vel0city 2y ago
      Just see Valorent vs Counterstrike. Similar levels of popularity, similar kinds of cheat concepts. One has a kernel level anti cheat and has few cheaters, one doesn't and is overrun by cheaters. Look at Counterstrike with regular VAC based matchmaking and then with kernel level anti cheat in FACEIT. One is overrun with cheaters and one isn't. It's the same game.
  - choo-t 2y ago
    > This seems like the old “any imperfect solution is no better than doing nothing” argument. Isn't this the argument used against non-kernel-level anticheat and server-side anticheat in the first place ?
bogwog 2y ago
Gamers don't want cheaters, but gamers also don't want malware. Some people won't care, others will care. The real problem is that publishers don't give anybody a choice on this. They sneak these invasive anti-piracy measures into their games without asking since they don't want to fragment their player base. The reasonable, fair, common-sense pro-consumer thing to do is to split the online play in two: a non-anticheat server and an anti-cheat server. Players can opt-in to installing a rootkit/sharing their SSN/whatever if they want to play on the hardened server. This costs nothing, and makes all types of gamers happy. But doing this has less upside for the publisher than forcing anti-cheat on everyone. The only risk is that they might get dragged through the mud by a handful of influencers peddling impotent rage to viewers who are just looking for background noise while sleepwalking on their Temu dopamine treadmill live service of the month.
- throw10920 2y ago
  > The reasonable, fair, common-sense pro-consumer thing to do is to split the online play in two: a non-anticheat server and an anti-cheat server. Players can opt-in to installing a rootkit/sharing their SSN/whatever if they want to play on the hardened server. This costs nothing, and makes all types of gamers happy. This is a very good point! And I'd like to point out that there is an analogue to the problem of smurfing in online video games, and the corresponding solution, which is to require semi-unique ID to play (e.g. a phone number which can only be tied to one account at a time with a cool-off period when transferring between accounts). Valve does this for Dota 2, and smurfing is far, far less common than it is in League of Legends. Some League players complain that they don't want to give their phone number to Riot (which is entirely reasonable given that it's a subsidiary of Tencent), but if enough people don't want that, then Riot could simply split the ranked queue into two: one where (soft, ie phone #) identity verification is required, and one where it isn't. Riot won't do this, though, not because it wouldn't fix the problem (it would, as demonstrated by Valve), but because they profit from smurf accounts buying skins.
  - 71bw 2y ago
    >but if enough people don't want that, then Riot could simply split the ranked queue into two: one where (soft, ie phone #) identity verification is required, and one where it isn't. The phone number requirement is only there if you want to play Clash. Normal ranked play works flawlessly with no number.

heraldgeezer 2y ago

But it allows Windows 10 without TPM.

71bw 2y ago
If your account gets flagged for ANY sort of irregular behaviour, you immediately get "upgraded" to requiring TPM and Secure Boot. Been there, done that - a crack for VEGAS Pro I used turned on test signing via registry for whatever reason and VALORANT REALLY didn't like that - and because of the PC I was using at the time that was the end of my VALORANT career.

tpxl 2y ago

Gamers arent demanding this. There are tons of ways to detect cheaters, the most effective one being human moderation. But no, companies wont do MaNuAl WoRk because it doesnt sCaLe, even though they have more than enough cash in the bank.

dgellow 2y ago
How do you do manual moderation on a massive fast-paced game like Valorant? It’s correct, that doesn’t scale
- scotty79 2y ago
  maybe not manual ... but ... log behavior, find outliers, make outliers play with outliers only
  - mholm 2y ago
    This absolutely happens already. The problem with finding statistical outliers is that plenty of legitimate players are outliers too. And if you're banning/segregating players for being outliers, you get a very angry player base. Riot has a pretty indepth blogpost about their anti-cheat systems, they've had years to mature them on some of the most demanding competitive gaming platforms ever made. Requiring players install kernel anti-cheat was very far down the list of possible solutions, but that's what it came to. It was either this or stop being free to play.
    - choo-t 2y ago
      The server is all-seeing, if there is no way for the server to discriminate cheater from other player, then no player can possibly know there a cheater on the server, thus cannot complain about cheating is either irrational or the server-side detection is severely flawed.
      - mjr00 2y ago
        > The server is all-seeing, if there is no way for the server to discriminate cheater from other player, then no player can possibly know there a cheater on the server, thus cannot complain about cheating is either irrational or the server-side detection is severely flawed. It's impossible to tell in-game if a baseball player is using steroids, yet there's a laundry list of banned substances and players who got banned for taking them because the MLB believes it gives them an unfair advantage. It's called competitive integrity. Since it sounds like you don't play games, at least not competitively, I'll clarify that "cheating" in this case isn't the obvious stuff like "my gun does 100x damage" or "I move around at 100mph" or "I'm using custom player models with big spikes so I know everyone's location" that you would've seen on public Counter-Strike 1.6 servers in 2002. Cheating is aim assistance that nudges your cursor to compensate for spray patterns in CS, it's automatic DPs and throw breaks in Street Fighter 6 that are just at the threshold of human reaction timing, it's firing off skillshots in League of Legends with an overlay that says if it's going to kill the enemy player or not. All of this stuff is doable by a sufficiently skilled/lucky human, but not with the level of consistency you get from cheating.
- beeboobaa3 2y ago
  You limit the amount of matches you host to those you can actually referee, just like any sport where people care about cheating.
- tpxl 2y ago
  While there are solutions, I won't comment on Valorant - free to play games are a whole can of worms the companies have nobody but themselves to blame. I will comment on a game I used to play though: Escape from Tarkov. The game costs somewhere between 40$ and 250$+tax, depending on what pack you buy. Banning cheaters for this game is literally a profit center. Every time you ban a cheater and they re-buy the game, you made at least 40$. The majority of cheating in the game was due to real money trading - cheaters would make in-game millions quickly, sell them, get banned, buy the game again at a profit. The solution to this is brain-dead simple - more manual moderation (these cheaters are very obvious to spot). What the developers did instead just killed the game.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

choo-t 2y ago

> Let me tell you a secret: it's because the gamers are demanding that. Citation needed. Whose these gamers ? I surely didn't ask for this neither any of the gamers I know, nor seen any demand about that in gaming forums. > The game companies couldn't care less if there are cheaters in the game, but it's the players which put huge pressure on the game companies to detect and ban cheaters. The jump from this to "requiring TPM" is quite a long one.

eezurr 2y ago
Go on steam and look at the recent reviews for older but still popular fps games. Gamers complain about cheaters constantly and will negatively review games cause of it
- choo-t 2y ago
  They're demanding a way to handle or ban cheater, not requiring TPM, that's a non sequitur.
  - RHSeeger 2y ago
    You're being disingenuous here, or just missing the point. The point being made was the gamers are demanding game developers stop cheaters... and that secure boot (and related ways to lock down the computer) is one of the primary tools they know to use to do that.
    - choo-t 2y ago
      > The point being made was the gamers are demanding game developers stop cheaters... and that secure boot (and related ways to lock down the computer) is one of the primary tools they know to use to do that. That's akin to saying that, as people want security on the street, mandatory strip search as soon as your exit your home is fair game. Asking for a result doesn't give a blank-check for all the measures taken toward this result.
      - 2y ago

realusername 2y ago

There's cheaters even on consoles which are vastly more locked-down than a PC. Those technical shenanigans clearly aren't working, be ready to be disappointed if you thought that a TPM would help against cheaters. Cheaters always find a way, what those game needs is proper moderation. Yes that does cost money but that's the only known thing that works in the long run.

brookst 2y ago
This seems like the old “any imperfect solution is no better than doing nothing” argument. Moderation is expensive, hard to scale, and can only address problems after other users have bad experiences. It’s like saying seatbelts are useless because some people still get hurt, so instead of seatbelts we need a lot more ambulances and hospitals. Like any complex system, games have a funnel. These technical measures reduce (but not to zero) the number of cheaters. Then moderation can be more effective operating against a smaller population with a lower percentage of abuse.
- realusername 2y ago
  Since the technical measures like TPM are very heavy, there's some better evidence needed that it reduces the number of cheaters, personally I don't buy it. On the other hand, all the games / servers I've seen which are successful against cheater have some very good moderation.
  - vel0city 2y ago
    Just see Valorent vs Counterstrike. Similar levels of popularity, similar kinds of cheat concepts. One has a kernel level anti cheat and has few cheaters, one doesn't and is overrun by cheaters. Look at Counterstrike with regular VAC based matchmaking and then with kernel level anti cheat in FACEIT. One is overrun with cheaters and one isn't. It's the same game.
- choo-t 2y ago
  > This seems like the old “any imperfect solution is no better than doing nothing” argument. Isn't this the argument used against non-kernel-level anticheat and server-side anticheat in the first place ?

bogwog 2y ago

Gamers don't want cheaters, but gamers also don't want malware. Some people won't care, others will care. The real problem is that publishers don't give anybody a choice on this. They sneak these invasive anti-piracy measures into their games without asking since they don't want to fragment their player base. The reasonable, fair, common-sense pro-consumer thing to do is to split the online play in two: a non-anticheat server and an anti-cheat server. Players can opt-in to installing a rootkit/sharing their SSN/whatever if they want to play on the hardened server. This costs nothing, and makes all types of gamers happy. But doing this has less upside for the publisher than forcing anti-cheat on everyone. The only risk is that they might get dragged through the mud by a handful of influencers peddling impotent rage to viewers who are just looking for background noise while sleepwalking on their Temu dopamine treadmill live service of the month.

throw10920 2y ago
> The reasonable, fair, common-sense pro-consumer thing to do is to split the online play in two: a non-anticheat server and an anti-cheat server. Players can opt-in to installing a rootkit/sharing their SSN/whatever if they want to play on the hardened server. This costs nothing, and makes all types of gamers happy. This is a very good point! And I'd like to point out that there is an analogue to the problem of smurfing in online video games, and the corresponding solution, which is to require semi-unique ID to play (e.g. a phone number which can only be tied to one account at a time with a cool-off period when transferring between accounts). Valve does this for Dota 2, and smurfing is far, far less common than it is in League of Legends. Some League players complain that they don't want to give their phone number to Riot (which is entirely reasonable given that it's a subsidiary of Tencent), but if enough people don't want that, then Riot could simply split the ranked queue into two: one where (soft, ie phone #) identity verification is required, and one where it isn't. Riot won't do this, though, not because it wouldn't fix the problem (it would, as demonstrated by Valve), but because they profit from smurf accounts buying skins.
- 71bw 2y ago
  >but if enough people don't want that, then Riot could simply split the ranked queue into two: one where (soft, ie phone #) identity verification is required, and one where it isn't. The phone number requirement is only there if you want to play Clash. Normal ranked play works flawlessly with no number.