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There was news that battlefield one would stop working because they were implementing fairfight(?) but it's still working and someone in game chat told me it wasn't kernel level in battlefield one version of the anti cheat. Any facts to this?
I think FairFight is the old anti-cheat, which at least used to be server side only.
So the best kind of anti cheat? (Does it prevent hackers good?)
It did alright, don't think I saw that many obvious cheaters in BF1. BF5 would occasionally have obvious cheaters, but I would hope they get banned eventually just because it's over the top (shooting people through walls, infinite ammo, perfect aim). Difficult to say with more subtle cheats, but I suppose if they're indistinguishable from players who are just good at the game then I think most people won't ever notice.
On the flip side I got permabanned from multiplayer in BF5 after EA falsely accused me of cheating, though I suppose that could've happened with any kind of anti-cheat, and could've been fixed by having half-competent support.
The problem with EA is that they never bothered to moderate their games. In the end you get spinbotters and shit whilst legit players have to deal with rootkits because they're too stingy to pay for someone to review reports and develop moderation tools.
the Overwatch system in Counterstrike (and a bunch of other tools and policies in tandem with VAC) have been way more effective; I was always more certain that a blatant or suspected cheated would be dealt with in CS than in battlefield.
game developers and publishers are hesitant to enable Linux compatibility,
And I am hesitant to spend money on their games.
I would reply with something like "Arrrr matey" but new games aren't even worth pirating anymore.
Also more than half of games with AC do in fact run on linux right now, and the world hasn't ended.
Hasn't ended yet, as soon as we reach 75% the simulation will end.
The second someone finds a way to hack the simulator it becomes uninteresting. Like when I cheat in GTA SP and then suddenly never play it again.
running linux is a great way to automatically filter out most of the shit games, if it won't even run in proton then you generally have to be doing some bullshit with the code and thus aren't worth my time and certainly not my money.
But us in the VR community is still Windoze.
VR games work just fine in proton, as long as you're on Vive or Index.
It's the the headsets that don't support linux, unfortunately.
I've never got my Vive to work well in Linux, even though I'm using X which supposedly still is better for gaming that Wayland.
There are a lot of kinks around VR on linux. Wayland has been better in my experience, but I still can't believe SteamVR on linux just doesn't have power management for the base stations implemented. Like, it works, there's a fucking python script that can do it! But not via SteamVR.
I use an app on my phone to turn my base stations on and off.
Here's hoping the Deck and whatever Deckard turns out to be means Valve is in the process of improving the situation.
For the Index and 2.0 Basestation it's supposed to work for a while now https://github.com/ValveSoftware/SteamVR-for-Linux/issues/320#issuecomment-1835581128
The VR community is a fairly small niche market
We are small but still exists...
Once there is a way to properly play VR games without too much configuration, I will jump back to Linux. But for now, Windows 11 IOT edition is not too bad. Specifically the IOT edition without all the telemarketing and CoPilot crap.
Could very well be possible. Apple did the same thing with macOS Catalina in 2019. Since then, there are no kernel extensions, meaning no third-party code running at kernel level. This greatly improves the security of macOS, and other desktop operating systems should do the same.
They have a hardcore micro kernel though, windows and Linux are a long way off from that Valhalla, gnu Mach notwithstanding.
I think I need more info. It seems like userspace is very hackable, so thus kernel level anti-cheat was born to control stuff like synthetic inputs and manipulation of memory / frame analysis. This anti-cheat would be held together by the fact that the kernel/drivers are proprietary and not very easy to edit. Obviously still possible because it's on your own computer, but challenging and invasive. Do I have that right?
In which case I don't see how going back to userspace would help. What is the solution? There probably isn't one outside of hardware (buying a hacking chip and soldering it in is annoying for most)
When I was doing game dev we focussed on AI-style analytics of user behavior. Of course a good enough bot could always look human. A real cat and mouse game wasting lots of time
What is the solution?
My guess is that Microsoft wants provide some kind of kernel level anti-cheat, possibly directly integrated with directx, and it will use cryptography which will make it impossible to emulate with Wine/Proton.
The same kernel software cryptography could certainly be marketed for single player games and proprietary applications as a solution to piracy.
Don't like kernel anti cheat in your multiplayer games? here's kernel anticheat for your single player games!
Removing 3rd party kernel access will probably also make cheating harder. Kernel anticheat is necessary largely in part due to cheat software using exploits in the 3rd party extension system to get kernel privileges itself and evade user mode anticheat.
Does there need to be a solution?
Do E-Sports competitions on identical certified hardware and otherwise ban people caught cheating.
Root kits aren't necessary for having fun in a game.
lol, anti-cheat isn’t just about esports, or high level play. It’s not even just about cheating.
It’s broadly about harassment and griefing and just shitty behavior mediated by hacking in online games.
It's probably going to move to hardware attestation similar to what Android and iOS are doing. This may or may not be a good thing.
Can anyone give an ELI5 on how hardware attestation works or is implemented on current OSes?
If it works on Linux, I'm fine with it, since I'm not cheating. Just like hardware attestation works on GrapheneOS, because it doesn't decrease the security of Android, in fact, it greatly improves it.
It's about control. And monopolies love control (governments, too). If we let them, they'll take it and then we're screwed.
Could you elaborate? I don't really see how a hardware attestation feature would take away any of your control? Android phones have had it for a long time, and even Google still allows you to install alternative operating systems on their Pixel phones. GrapheneOS even uses the hardware attestation feature to your benefit, by including the Auditor app, which you can use to verify the integrity of your device.
Yeah, idk why everyone seems to legitimately think devs are going to just quietly revert back to usermode anticheat. I could see Riot patching an actual root kit before that happens.
But yeah, more likely MSFT will lobby for hw that is more annoying than secure boot or TPM to get working with linux, every windows app after that point will rely on it "because turnkey security!", and if you ever manage to disable it none of those apps will work on your machine in any OS (if they even worked through proton at all).
They're integrate a low level security framework in c#. Net that needs it and it will be on by default.
Not Windows centric enough. Visual Basic and Excel macros.
I wouldn't get my hopes up. Them announcing something like this looks good PR-wise, so they'll do it, even if they don't actually expect this effort to lead to anything.
But even if they do implement such an API, companies won't start adopting this API until its capabilities are roughly comparable to the kernel-level solution AND it's available on most Windows systems in the wild. So, we're likely talking more than a decade before this sees sufficient adoption...