5 ms·

This isn't surprising in the least. Anti-cheat clients are the worst, ever scummier than anti-virus clients. If anyone here has ever played a game that used In

This isn't surprising in the least. Anti-cheat clients are the worst, ever scummier than anti-virus clients. If anyone here has ever played a game that used Inca GameGuard, you know what I'm talking about. If you open a page in your web browser with a title that seems suspicious to GameGuard, it can fucking REBOOT your computer without warning! And that's not the only client with such problems. From my experience, it has been a problem shared by many anti-cheat clients: they're all a bit too trigger-happy, even though they shouldn't be holding that gun in the first place. And if that wasn't bad enough, these clients are also notoriously buggy. They will corrupt the state of your kernel (they will do things like overwrite entries in your SDT/SSDT, making various system calls fail; in fact, it's very common practice for some of these tools to outright disable the use of functions like NtOpenProcess or ZwWriteVirtualMemory, and then not even bother to reallow them after the anti-cheat client exits), they will litter your Windows folder, and wreak havoc however they want. And here's the kicker: these anti-cheat clients aren't even that effective if you know what you are doing.

leethax0r 13y ago
...did you just imply that anti virus programs are shady?
- stoic 13y ago
  anti-cheat, like cheating-death or punkbuster
- lmm 13y ago
  Isn't that common knowledge? Many antivirus programs have a worse effect on system stability/performance than the things they're supposed to prevent.
yuhong 13y ago
Wonder if this ever caught on: http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3105&cid=1442601 http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3105&cid=14426...
drucken 13y ago
Yup, this is the notorious nProtect Gameguard (http://global.nprotect.com/product/gg.php http://global.nprotect.com/product/gg.php). It is even worse than most anti-cheat clients which "only" monitor and notify. Not only will it actively pre-emptively change the state of your programs, some changes irrecoverably, but in addition it cannot be independently uninstalled, i.e. the game publisher who bundles it has to provide an uninstaller for it or it will not be uninstalled if you remove the game. Gameguard is also believed to contain a keylogger (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NProtect_GameGuard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NProtect_GameGuard). It is basically a commercial rootkit that is relatively easily circumvented by cheaters anyway.
username111 13y ago
The difference here is that ESEA was the most trusted league in America and the majority of competitive cs players have subscribed to it for 7 dollars a month. (The anti-cheat was only one aspect of the client)
username111 13y ago
The difference here is that ESEA was the most trusted league in America and the majority of competitive cs players have subscribed to it for 7 dollars a month. (The anti-cheat was only one aspect of the client)

leethax0r 13y ago

...did you just imply that anti virus programs are shady?

stoic 13y ago
anti-cheat, like cheating-death or punkbuster
lmm 13y ago
Isn't that common knowledge? Many antivirus programs have a worse effect on system stability/performance than the things they're supposed to prevent.

yuhong 13y ago

Wonder if this ever caught on: http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3105&cid=1442601 http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3105&cid=14426...

drucken 13y ago

Yup, this is the notorious nProtect Gameguard (http://global.nprotect.com/product/gg.php http://global.nprotect.com/product/gg.php). It is even worse than most anti-cheat clients which "only" monitor and notify. Not only will it actively pre-emptively change the state of your programs, some changes irrecoverably, but in addition it cannot be independently uninstalled, i.e. the game publisher who bundles it has to provide an uninstaller for it or it will not be uninstalled if you remove the game. Gameguard is also believed to contain a keylogger (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NProtect_GameGuard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NProtect_GameGuard). It is basically a commercial rootkit that is relatively easily circumvented by cheaters anyway.

username111 13y ago

The difference here is that ESEA was the most trusted league in America and the majority of competitive cs players have subscribed to it for 7 dollars a month. (The anti-cheat was only one aspect of the client)

username111 13y ago