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This is great but we must still be careful. Games have come to Linux but so has a lot of the suckiness associated with them. The video games industry wants to

This is great but we must still be careful. Games have come to Linux but so has a lot of the suckiness associated with them. The video games industry wants to own your computer. They don't want you to copy their games or cheat. Taking over your machine is the only way they can possibly hope to accomplish that. Therefore they think nothing of shipping literal rootkits directly to you. This is software whose only distinction from malware is a terms of service buried somewhere that you probably clicked through without reading and technically accepted. There's also the fact they are proprietary software. There's no telling what they are doing. Sometimes there's literal malware in these things. I'm not kidding about this. https://www.vice.com/en/article/fs-labs-flight-simulator-password-malware-drm/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/fs-labs-flight-simulator-pas... https://www.theregister.com/2016/09/23/capcom_street_fighter_v/ https://www.theregister.com/2016/09/23/capcom_street_fighter... https://twitter.com/TheWack0lian/status/779397840762245124 https://twitter.com/TheWack0lian/status/779397840762245124 https://fuzzysecurity.com/tutorials/28.html https://fuzzysecurity.com/tutorials/28.html https://github.com/FuzzySecurity/Capcom-Rootkit https://github.com/FuzzySecurity/Capcom-Rootkit I seriously doubt there's any effective way to sandbox them either, they probably need extensive permissions to even work. I wouldn't want to run these things in my personal computer. For these reasons, you might want to set up a completely separate virtualized Linux system just for this purpose. IOMMU and VFIO technologies allow you to map a discrete graphics card to the virtual machine which enables hardware accelerated graphics at near native performance. You might want to consider a dedicated gaming machine. To me it feels like a waste since the hardware is great and should also be used for other things.

basfo 2y ago
Does steam run on GNU/Hurd?
wqaatwt 2y ago
> They don't want you to cheat Why do you think that is? I’m sure they wouldn’t bother with it if most gamers were fine playing against cheaters.
- matheusmoreira 2y ago
  It's my computer. I am the god of this machine. If something happens, it's because I will it. I get to read and write arbitrary memory if I want to. It's offensive to me that they even think I shouldn't have this power. Couldn't care less what their reasons are. Cheating? I don't care enough about most games to even consider it. I absolutely do consider it to be my prerogative, however. If they don't like it, they better run their "anticheat" nonsense on their computers, where it belongs. If they try to usurp control of my computer, I will do everything in my power to stop it. This is gonna turn into yet another example of illegitimate customers enjoying a superior product while paying customers get treated like dishonest criminals. Legitimate customers get DRM and anticheat rootkits, pirates and cheaters get none of that. Guess which side I want to be on?
  - w0m 2y ago
    The issue w/ competitive gaming (League of Legends, Deadlock, Overwatch) is if you take advantage of your prerogative and cheat, you make the experience worse for everyone else; and it hurts the game itself. The sad state of existence is that if you want to run a multiplayer game, you need to do shitty/controlling things or the game will turn unplayable as soon as it starts to become popular. Games like BG3 however - Who cares if someone is cheating? Just stick to those (great) games if you want more control
    - matheusmoreira 2y ago
      It's unfortunate but at the end of the day they're just video games. They aren't worth sacrificing computer freedom over. We shouldn't end up becoming serfs in the digital fiefdoms of corporations just because people want to play online video games. These companies need to give up and let us play these things on our terms. I'd sooner see multiplayer games disappear than accept this sad state of affairs where our computers come pwned straight off the factory in order to please the so called stakeholders by denying us the freedom to do things that hurt their interests. That's a far more damaging outcome than silly video games becoming unplayable. Cheaters are a small price to pay for freedom and I pay it gladly. Besides, some games should be hurt. Plenty of "free" games out there employing literal gambling and drug dealer tactics to get people addicted to their product. Cheaters are doing us all a huge favor by speeding up their demise.
nottorp 2y ago
> Taking over your machine is the only way they can possibly hope to accomplish that. It's easy. Don't play competitive multiplayer crap. Especially if it's free to play. You get to not waste your time on predatory grindfests, besides not having to install a rootkit. Also stay away from the companies requiring their own account system, like EA, Ubisoft, Rockstar.
- matheusmoreira 2y ago
  Completely agree with you, this is great advice. There are plenty of "competitive multiplayer crap" games which I think actually deserve to be botted to oblivion. If you load a game and you see a timer anywhere, it probably deserves it. The timer exists to delay you rewards and resetting it is probably wired to the credit card button. They do this to create reward schedules in order to get players addicted. They want them logging into the game every single day. Automating those silly "daily tasks" is an absolutely moral thing to do and I will never fault anyone who does it. They are cures for video game addiction and should be prescribed by doctors.
  - nottorp 2y ago
    > Automating those silly "daily tasks" is an absolutely moral thing to do and I will never fault anyone who does it. I would. You should just dump the game then.
    - matheusmoreira 2y ago
      "Just dump the game" is not an easy thing to do when you're addicted. There are people out there who literally wake up at 3 AM to do daily tasks because that's when some idiotic timer resets. It's not something you just "dump". I know because I've been there.
      - nottorp 2y ago
        Hmm I've done my share of wow dailies but even those were boring and i was skipping them. As for free to play games, they're all too expensive. Since you pay for them with your time.

basfo 2y ago

Does steam run on GNU/Hurd?

wqaatwt 2y ago

> They don't want you to cheat Why do you think that is? I’m sure they wouldn’t bother with it if most gamers were fine playing against cheaters.

matheusmoreira 2y ago
It's my computer. I am the god of this machine. If something happens, it's because I will it. I get to read and write arbitrary memory if I want to. It's offensive to me that they even think I shouldn't have this power. Couldn't care less what their reasons are. Cheating? I don't care enough about most games to even consider it. I absolutely do consider it to be my prerogative, however. If they don't like it, they better run their "anticheat" nonsense on their computers, where it belongs. If they try to usurp control of my computer, I will do everything in my power to stop it. This is gonna turn into yet another example of illegitimate customers enjoying a superior product while paying customers get treated like dishonest criminals. Legitimate customers get DRM and anticheat rootkits, pirates and cheaters get none of that. Guess which side I want to be on?
- w0m 2y ago
  The issue w/ competitive gaming (League of Legends, Deadlock, Overwatch) is if you take advantage of your prerogative and cheat, you make the experience worse for everyone else; and it hurts the game itself. The sad state of existence is that if you want to run a multiplayer game, you need to do shitty/controlling things or the game will turn unplayable as soon as it starts to become popular. Games like BG3 however - Who cares if someone is cheating? Just stick to those (great) games if you want more control
  - matheusmoreira 2y ago
    It's unfortunate but at the end of the day they're just video games. They aren't worth sacrificing computer freedom over. We shouldn't end up becoming serfs in the digital fiefdoms of corporations just because people want to play online video games. These companies need to give up and let us play these things on our terms. I'd sooner see multiplayer games disappear than accept this sad state of affairs where our computers come pwned straight off the factory in order to please the so called stakeholders by denying us the freedom to do things that hurt their interests. That's a far more damaging outcome than silly video games becoming unplayable. Cheaters are a small price to pay for freedom and I pay it gladly. Besides, some games should be hurt. Plenty of "free" games out there employing literal gambling and drug dealer tactics to get people addicted to their product. Cheaters are doing us all a huge favor by speeding up their demise.

nottorp 2y ago

> Taking over your machine is the only way they can possibly hope to accomplish that. It's easy. Don't play competitive multiplayer crap. Especially if it's free to play. You get to not waste your time on predatory grindfests, besides not having to install a rootkit. Also stay away from the companies requiring their own account system, like EA, Ubisoft, Rockstar.

matheusmoreira 2y ago
Completely agree with you, this is great advice. There are plenty of "competitive multiplayer crap" games which I think actually deserve to be botted to oblivion. If you load a game and you see a timer anywhere, it probably deserves it. The timer exists to delay you rewards and resetting it is probably wired to the credit card button. They do this to create reward schedules in order to get players addicted. They want them logging into the game every single day. Automating those silly "daily tasks" is an absolutely moral thing to do and I will never fault anyone who does it. They are cures for video game addiction and should be prescribed by doctors.
- nottorp 2y ago
  > Automating those silly "daily tasks" is an absolutely moral thing to do and I will never fault anyone who does it. I would. You should just dump the game then.
  - matheusmoreira 2y ago
    "Just dump the game" is not an easy thing to do when you're addicted. There are people out there who literally wake up at 3 AM to do daily tasks because that's when some idiotic timer resets. It's not something you just "dump". I know because I've been there.
    - nottorp 2y ago
      Hmm I've done my share of wow dailies but even those were boring and i was skipping them. As for free to play games, they're all too expensive. Since you pay for them with your time.