3 ms·

It's just a game. So what if there's cheating? Ban them if they get caught

ChocolateGod 2y ago
The issue is that it's hard to catch it on Linux and it ruins the game for other players.
moomin 2y ago
Doesn’t work that way. Cheaters ruin regular player’s experience, bans are easily circumvented. This is a recipe for “No-one plays your game.” I think kernel-level anti-cheat is a security nightmare, but denying there’s a genuine economic motive here seems naïve.
- imtringued 2y ago
  I'm pretty sure nobody plays a game that actively prevents you from playing it.
- jajko 2y ago
  How do cheaters circumvent bans? I would presume you have some unique copy key which is activated, and once it gets revoked should never ever allow you to connect to their game servers. Company runs entire ecosystem, how apart from hacking their DBs you can ever get back?
  - jlamberts 2y ago
    With free games (which make up a pretty large portion of competitive online games), cheaters who get banned usually just make or buy new accounts.
- Spunkie 2y ago
  Naw this is all bullshit. If apex legends released a real dedicated server tomorrow, within a month there would be a large selection of well moderated community servers and cheaters would be mostly a non-issue. EA doesn't care to actually moderate cheating, because that either takes ongoing money to pay people or a loss of control by releasing dedicated servers. They instead just want to pay 1 time to "automate" their "solution" to cheating... even though that pretty much never works long term.
KeplerBoy 2y ago
That's the funny thing about it. People who are serious about cheating don't get caught and this Linux ban is all for naught. The tech behind is quite fascinating actually. These days people use FPGA boards connected via PCIe to directly stream the memory contents to another PC. There is no cheating software on the gaming machine. Disclaimer: I don't cheat, but these boards are the cheapest pcie fpga dev boards I could find.
- whatshisface 2y ago
  Wow, I'd have thought it would be easier to cheat through a hypervisor.
  - jabroni_salad 2y ago
    It's surprisingly difficult to hide being virtual and a lot of competitive games dont like running in VMs.
aliasxneo 2y ago
The whole reason I stopped playing competitive online games was due to cheaters. The keyword is competitive. At least for me, I was always striving to get better and to move up the ranks. When you're consistently coming across teams that have one or more cheaters in them, the whole match becomes pointless. If that happens enough times, you lose the drive to participate anymore. For non-competitive games, that drive generally isn't there, so it probably matters a lot less.

The issue is that it's hard to catch it on Linux and it ruins the game for other players.

Doesn’t work that way. Cheaters ruin regular player’s experience, bans are easily circumvented. This is a recipe for “No-one plays your game.” I think kernel-level anti-cheat is a security nightmare, but denying there’s a genuine economic motive here seems naïve.

imtringued 2y ago
I'm pretty sure nobody plays a game that actively prevents you from playing it.
jajko 2y ago
How do cheaters circumvent bans? I would presume you have some unique copy key which is activated, and once it gets revoked should never ever allow you to connect to their game servers. Company runs entire ecosystem, how apart from hacking their DBs you can ever get back?
- jlamberts 2y ago
  With free games (which make up a pretty large portion of competitive online games), cheaters who get banned usually just make or buy new accounts.
Spunkie 2y ago
Naw this is all bullshit. If apex legends released a real dedicated server tomorrow, within a month there would be a large selection of well moderated community servers and cheaters would be mostly a non-issue. EA doesn't care to actually moderate cheating, because that either takes ongoing money to pay people or a loss of control by releasing dedicated servers. They instead just want to pay 1 time to "automate" their "solution" to cheating... even though that pretty much never works long term.

KeplerBoy 2y ago

That's the funny thing about it. People who are serious about cheating don't get caught and this Linux ban is all for naught. The tech behind is quite fascinating actually. These days people use FPGA boards connected via PCIe to directly stream the memory contents to another PC. There is no cheating software on the gaming machine. Disclaimer: I don't cheat, but these boards are the cheapest pcie fpga dev boards I could find.

whatshisface 2y ago
Wow, I'd have thought it would be easier to cheat through a hypervisor.
- jabroni_salad 2y ago
  It's surprisingly difficult to hide being virtual and a lot of competitive games dont like running in VMs.

aliasxneo 2y ago

The whole reason I stopped playing competitive online games was due to cheaters. The keyword is competitive. At least for me, I was always striving to get better and to move up the ranks. When you're consistently coming across teams that have one or more cheaters in them, the whole match becomes pointless. If that happens enough times, you lose the drive to participate anymore. For non-competitive games, that drive generally isn't there, so it probably matters a lot less.