Developers will be required to disclose if their game uses kernel anti-cheat. This applies to both new games and existing games. Non-kernel anti-cheat is encouraged to be disclosed as well, but it’s only mandatory for developers to declare if they’re using kernel anti-cheat for the time being.
It’s worth mentioning that many games use kernel anti-cheat on windows, but only use user space anti-cheat on Steam Deck and Linux.
Now punish publishers who try to change the terms of sale after sale. “Want to play the single player game you bought a decade ago? Agree to this new arbitration clause.”
Games that change their terms post-sale should present the customer the option for an automatic no-questions-asked refund. Leaving the customer with the options: Agree, Decline, Refund.
Hmm, you have uncovered a problem with both of our ideas. Steam’s leverage is reduced after they have deposited sales proceeds, and is gone after the publisher isn’t selling games on the platform any longer.
(I’m griping about Rockstar specifically but my point is still flawed in the general case.)
Add a clause to the contract between Steam and the developer requiring the dev to reimburse Steam for refunds due to post-sale changes (ie, from that specific ‘accept, decline, refund’ option). If the dev doesn’t pay the bill, Steam can use the breach of contract as leverage.
It’s horrifying to me that any of these fucking games are running outside userspace. Is anti cheat the only reason why that is necessary? Why is it necessary for anti cheat?
Running in the kernel let’s anti-cheat see everything on your computer, let’s devs take screenshots or videos of your screen, and let’s the anti-cheat reinstall itself if the user tries to remove it. It also lets the developers secretly install additional software if needed for some reason. Overall it’s pretty effective at being able to catch user space cheat programs, the catch is that you’re permanently compromising the security and privacy of your computer, and nothing short of a full disk purge will guarantee it’s actually been uninstalled.
The other catch is it’s can still be defeated by kernel-level cheat programs, which are now widely available thanks to the rise of kernel anti-cheat. It also can’t do anything about cheat programs that run on external hardware, such as aimbots that just look at your video feed and simulate mouse inputs to aim.
So it really comes down to how bothered you are by cheaters in your games, and if you’re willing to give up your privacy and security to make it slightly more inconvenient for those cheaters to cheat.
I should probably mention some notable downsides to kernel anti-cheat as well:
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Because kernel anti-cheat has full access to your PC, if any virus/etc can take advantage of a security vulnerability in the anti-cheat program, it gains absolute access to your PC.
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Kernel anti-cheat needs special signing keys to get access to the kernel, but the more companies that get access to the keys the more likely it is to have compromised keys. Genshin impacts keys were compromised and used to sign ransomware, giving it full kernel access on any computers it was able to get on.
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Devs have used kernel anti-cheat to secretly install Bitcoin miners on users machines
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Kernel anti-cheat can be compromised and used to directly gain control of a users PC. Some apex legends streamers had their PCs compromised and cheats installed remotely through their anti-cheat during a tournament.
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A lot of anti-cheat programs are created by Chinese companies or companies that are mostly owned by Chinese companies. China is well known for spying on users, and there’s a ban on a lot of Chinese hardware due to spying concerns and backdoors that the Chinese government requires to be in their devices. I think the invasive nature of kernel anti-cheat makes it an obvious spying platform, and I think it’s absurd to think that any anti-cheat coming from China isn’t actively spying on you.
The thing I think is left out is that it usually eliminates all of the casual cheaters. For many games this is a massive change in the feel and culture of the online space in the game.
But yeah, no matter what, even when the games are never on our hardware and become just video streams sold to us by the hour, cheating tools will always exist. Even if it’s just a bit of tape on your monitor.
FYI - the owner of this site, gamingonlinux, was a mod on the !linux_gaming@lemmy.ml community until they were caught abusing their moderator powers. Then they deleted their account and complained on mastodon that it’s stupid design that mod logs are public. [Screenshot]
Instead, here’s a link to the official post https://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamworks/announcements/detail/4547038620960934857
I’m interested to hear more. I’ve followed Liam’s work for almost a decade at this point and I haven’t ever seen or heard of him acting unprofessionally, but I’m quite new to Lemmy.
What abuse of their moderator powers? Is there a link to see the mod log somewhere? Sorry, I know I’m being a bit needy, but I’m not really sure what I’m doing.
So I tried looking into it, but all I can find is this same user (go $fsck yourself) had some comments deleted by him about 6 months ago. I didn’t actually comb through the modlog to see what the deleted comments contained, I’m not sure how feasible it is to review the modlog going that far back.
I couldn’t find any actual proof of wrongdoing, the closest thing to evidence is that screenshot of Liam saying he thought it was stupid that modlogs were public. I also didn’t find anyone else complaining about him as a mod, literally just this same guy copy pasting this comment on a ton of different gamingonlinux lemmy posts for the past 6 months.
Liam complaining about public modlog does sound like he got caught abusing mod privledges, but I’m leaning towards it just being between him and this go $fsck yourself user rather than widespread abuse.
Thank you very much for pointing me in the right direction. I was able to dig a bit and I think I found it - it looks like they were being a bit of a pedantic asshole about some spelling/grammar thing, the moderator deleted their comment because… yes, it’s a pedantic spelling/grammar nitpick. Then that user threw a massive tantrum and started yelling mod abuse.
Honestly, it’s a real shame that Liam lost faith in Lemmy over something stupid like this. Yeah, there are downsides of a public mod log - really hateful vile shit will just persist in there forever when realistically it should be just wiped out entirely. I think overall it has more benefits than drawbacks, but I certainly wouldn’t say that being opposed to a public mod log is some sort of smoking gun evidence that he abused his mod powers.
So yeah, this one guy behaving like a self-centred jerk actively contributed towards pushing a well-known and prolific linux gaming journalist off the platform. Great stuff, love to see it.
Screenshot:
I’d like to see it show if there is any third party DRM as well, like the Augmented Steam extension does.
