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> I would love to see a modern competitive game with optional anticheat that, when enabled, allows you to queue for a separate matchmaking pool that is exclusiv

by Cyph0n 7mo ago

> I would love to see a modern competitive game with optional anticheat that, when enabled, allows you to queue for a separate matchmaking pool that is exclusive to other anticheat users. For players in the no-anticheat pool, there could be "community moderation" that anti-anticheat players advocate for. This is roughly what Valve does for CS2. But, as far as I understand, it's not very effective and unfortunately still results in higher cheating rates than e.g. Valorant.

throw10920 7mo ago
Huh. When you say that "it's not very effective" do you mean the segmentation between the pools, or the actual anticheat isn't very good? (I'm assuming the latter - I've heard that VAC is pretty bad as far as anticheat goes)
- Cyph0n 7mo ago
  Oh sorry - I misread your suggestion! I thought you were talking about separate matchmaking logic for known cheaters, but you're asking about opt-in matchmaking for those willing to use invasive anticheat. The example still kind of applies. In the CS world, serious players use Faceit for matchmaking, which requires you to install a kernel-level anticheat. This is basically what you're suggesting, but operated by a 3rd party.
  - throw10920 7mo ago
    Hmm, I guess that since VAC is not a kernel-level anticheat, the comparison between it and Faceit for CS is pretty close to my idea. Thanks for pointing that out.
    - phplovesong 7mo ago
      VAC is actually an AI based anticheat. I guess IF (a big if) it ever gets good enough it will be better than any kernel level AC, because it analyzes the gameplay, not the inputs, meaning a DMA cheat would also be caught. But so far that still seems to be miles away.
      - shaokind 7mo ago
        "VAC" is a catch-all term for all of Valve's anti-cheating mechanisms. The primary one is a standard user-mode software module, that does traditional scanning. The AI mechanism you're referring to is these days referred to as "VAC Live" (previously, VACNet). The primary game it is deployed on is Counter-Strike 2. From what we understand, it is a very game-dependent stack, so it is not universally deploy-able.
      - sfn42 7mo ago
        I don't think that's what VAC is. I think VAC just looks for known cheat patterns in memory and such, and if it finds indisputable proof of cheating it marks a player for banning in the next wave. Maybe there is some ML involved in finding these patterns but I think it's very strictly controlled by humans to prevent fase positives. That's why VAC bans are irreversible, false positives are supposed to be impossible.
        not_a9 7mo ago
        Valve has some AI detection stuff for CS2, but it’s remarkably ineffective. VAC itself delivers small DLLs that get manual mapped by Steam service, do some analysis and send that to Valve (at least to the best of my knowledge, there may be more logic implemented in Valve’s games or in Steam/Steam service).
- z0mghii 7mo ago
  Community alternative (faceit) requires kernel level access. The actual anticheat matchmaking is essentially unplayable
  - throw10920 7mo ago
    Wait, so the "community alternative" is also kernel-level anticheat? I think that's different from what I'm proposing - I'm suggesting a comparison between an anticheat and no anticheat (with community policing of lobbies and handing out of penalties).
    - charcircuit 7mo ago
      VAC is essentially no anticheat with how easily it is bypassed.
    - z0mghii 7mo ago
      Why would a player knowingly choose to play on matchmaking that is advertising no anti-cheat? But anyway counterstrike did have community policing of lobbies called overwatch - https://counterstrike.fandom.com/wiki/Overwatch https://counterstrike.fandom.com/wiki/Overwatch It was terrible as it required the community to conclude beyond reasonable doubt the suspect was cheating, and cheats today are sophisticated enough to make that conclusion very difficult to make
      - throw10920 7mo ago
        > Why would a player knowingly choose to play on matchmaking that is advertising no anti-cheat? I guess I didn't exactly make that clear... A few of the arguments advanced by the "anti-anticheat" crowd that inevitably pops up in these threads are "anticheat is ineffective so there's no point to using it" and "anticheat is immoral because players aren't given a choice to use it or not and most of them would choose to not use it". I don't believe that either of these are true (and given the choice I would almost never pick the no-anticheat queue), but there's not a lot of good high-quality data to back that up. Hence, the proposal for a dual-queue system to try to gather that data. Putting in the community review of the no-anticheat pool is just to head off the inevitable goalpost-moving of "well of course no system would be worse than a crappy system (anticheat), you need to compare the best available alternative (community moderation)".
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]

by Cyph0n 7mo ago

throw10920 7mo ago

Huh. When you say that "it's not very effective" do you mean the segmentation between the pools, or the actual anticheat isn't very good? (I'm assuming the latter - I've heard that VAC is pretty bad as far as anticheat goes)

Cyph0n 7mo ago
Oh sorry - I misread your suggestion! I thought you were talking about separate matchmaking logic for known cheaters, but you're asking about opt-in matchmaking for those willing to use invasive anticheat. The example still kind of applies. In the CS world, serious players use Faceit for matchmaking, which requires you to install a kernel-level anticheat. This is basically what you're suggesting, but operated by a 3rd party.
- throw10920 7mo ago
  Hmm, I guess that since VAC is not a kernel-level anticheat, the comparison between it and Faceit for CS is pretty close to my idea. Thanks for pointing that out.
  - phplovesong 7mo ago
    VAC is actually an AI based anticheat. I guess IF (a big if) it ever gets good enough it will be better than any kernel level AC, because it analyzes the gameplay, not the inputs, meaning a DMA cheat would also be caught. But so far that still seems to be miles away.
    - shaokind 7mo ago
      "VAC" is a catch-all term for all of Valve's anti-cheating mechanisms. The primary one is a standard user-mode software module, that does traditional scanning. The AI mechanism you're referring to is these days referred to as "VAC Live" (previously, VACNet). The primary game it is deployed on is Counter-Strike 2. From what we understand, it is a very game-dependent stack, so it is not universally deploy-able.
    - sfn42 7mo ago
      I don't think that's what VAC is. I think VAC just looks for known cheat patterns in memory and such, and if it finds indisputable proof of cheating it marks a player for banning in the next wave. Maybe there is some ML involved in finding these patterns but I think it's very strictly controlled by humans to prevent fase positives. That's why VAC bans are irreversible, false positives are supposed to be impossible.
      - not_a9 7mo ago
        Valve has some AI detection stuff for CS2, but it’s remarkably ineffective. VAC itself delivers small DLLs that get manual mapped by Steam service, do some analysis and send that to Valve (at least to the best of my knowledge, there may be more logic implemented in Valve’s games or in Steam/Steam service).
z0mghii 7mo ago
Community alternative (faceit) requires kernel level access. The actual anticheat matchmaking is essentially unplayable
- throw10920 7mo ago
  Wait, so the "community alternative" is also kernel-level anticheat? I think that's different from what I'm proposing - I'm suggesting a comparison between an anticheat and no anticheat (with community policing of lobbies and handing out of penalties).
  - charcircuit 7mo ago
    VAC is essentially no anticheat with how easily it is bypassed.
  - z0mghii 7mo ago
    Why would a player knowingly choose to play on matchmaking that is advertising no anti-cheat? But anyway counterstrike did have community policing of lobbies called overwatch - https://counterstrike.fandom.com/wiki/Overwatch https://counterstrike.fandom.com/wiki/Overwatch It was terrible as it required the community to conclude beyond reasonable doubt the suspect was cheating, and cheats today are sophisticated enough to make that conclusion very difficult to make
    - throw10920 7mo ago
      > Why would a player knowingly choose to play on matchmaking that is advertising no anti-cheat? I guess I didn't exactly make that clear... A few of the arguments advanced by the "anti-anticheat" crowd that inevitably pops up in these threads are "anticheat is ineffective so there's no point to using it" and "anticheat is immoral because players aren't given a choice to use it or not and most of them would choose to not use it". I don't believe that either of these are true (and given the choice I would almost never pick the no-anticheat queue), but there's not a lot of good high-quality data to back that up. Hence, the proposal for a dual-queue system to try to gather that data. Putting in the community review of the no-anticheat pool is just to head off the inevitable goalpost-moving of "well of course no system would be worse than a crappy system (anticheat), you need to compare the best available alternative (community moderation)".

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]