this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2024

731 points (98.7% liked)

Games

32316 readers

1650 users here now

Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.

Weekly Threads:

What Are You Playing?

The Weekly Discussion Topic

Rules:

Submissions have to be related to games
No bigotry or harassment, be civil
No excessive self-promotion
Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts
Mark Spoilers and NSFW
No linking to piracy

More information about the community rules can be found here.

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

731

Steam games will now need to fully disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages (www.gamingonlinux.com)

submitted 7 hours ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

76 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Now if only they could more clearly communicate when games are playable offline.

top 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] [email protected] 145 points 5 hours ago (6 children)

FYI - the owner of this site, gamingonlinux, was a mod on the [email protected] 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

[–] [email protected] 43 points 4 hours ago

Wow, mad because you can be held accountable. That's sad.

Thanks for the steam link!

[–] [email protected] 26 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

4 likes on him complaining that modlogs being public is something bad, cowards that only want to be shitty in the shadows.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

I'm still fairly new. Where do I go for modlog drama?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 hour ago

There is a sub for sanity checking mod actions, aita-style.
If you keep in mind it is for active unconfirmed situations, and that votes there are not meant to mark the cases of mod abuse, I think it can fill that niche.

[email protected]

[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 hours ago

He used to relentlessly spam the /r/linux_gaming subreddit and argue with people there too until he deleted his reddit account lol

load more comments (3 replies)

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

I do everything important like banking etc on a separate device that isn't my gaming PC. This has been quite liberating since I worry less about invasive anti-cheat, drm etc. I realize not everyone wants to do this but it's been a nice compromise.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 hours ago

That's one way to do it, but I worry less about those things by not supporting them with my time and money.

[–] [email protected] 208 points 7 hours ago (17 children)

Ooh and it's a giant yellow banner you probably won't miss, and not some two-shades-ligher-than-the-background nonsense.

Good job, Valve.

[–] [email protected] 55 points 6 hours ago

They do this with Early Access and people still lose their shit about empty content and unfinished graphics in a game they paid $10 for.

load more comments (16 replies)

[–] [email protected] 79 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (3 children)

However, it's only being forced for kernel-level anti-cheat. If it's only client-side or server-side, it's optional, but Valve say "we generally think that any game that makes use of anti-cheat technology would benefit from letting players know".

I will always love Valve for their ability to use corpospeak against corpos.

Your game has anti-cheat?

Wonderful!

I'm sure that always only results in an improved experience for all gamers, lets let them all know!

load more comments (3 replies)

[–] [email protected] 29 points 6 hours ago (3 children)

Can someone explain like I’m stupid on kernel level anti cheat and why I should watch out for it? Not a dig at all, a genuine question!

[–] [email protected] 21 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

Making it super simple, it runs with full access on your machine, always. It can fuck anything up, and see everything. It can get your browser history, banking details or private messages you enter, activate your webcam or mic without you knowing, or brick your computer even.

And you can't even check what it's really doing on your computer because it's a crime under US law.

Finally, it can get hacked and other people than the creator can do all these to your computer as well,as it already happened once.

[–] [email protected] 69 points 5 hours ago (4 children)

To put it very simply, the 'kernel' has significant control over your OS as it essentially runs above everything else in terms of system privileges.

It runs at startup, so this means if you install a game with kernel-level anticheat, the moment your system turns on, the game's publisher has software running on your system that can restrict the installation of a particular driver, stop certain software from running, or, even insidiously spy on your system's activity if they wished to. (and reverse-engineering the code to figure out if they are spying on you is a felony because of DRM-related laws)

It basically means trusting every single game publisher with kernel-level anticheat in their games to have a full view into your system, and the ability to effectively control it, without any legal recourse or transparency, all to try (and usually fail) to stop cheating in games.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 4 hours ago

More importantly, if traditional anticheat has a bug, your game dies. Oh no.

If kernel level anticheat has a bug, your computer blue screens (that's specifically what the blue screen is: a bug in the kernel, not just an ordinary bug that the system can recover from). Much worse. Sure hope that bug only crashes your computer when the game is running and not just whenever, because remember a kernel-level program can be running the moment your computer boots as above poster said

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 hours ago

Not all anti cheats run at startup. Some only run when you play a game. I think vanguard for valorant ran all the time at first and people were pissed. Meanwhile easy anti cheat runs only with a game. So it depends. It all sucks though.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 hours ago

Thank you! Really clear and appreciate you taking the time to explain!

[–] [email protected] 42 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

And it's worth noting that trusting the game developer isn't really enough. Far too many of them have been hacked, so who's to say it's always your favorite game developer behind the wheel?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 hour ago

Or, even better, when you let a whole bunch of devs have acces to the kernel...

... sometimes they just accidentally fuck up and push a bad update, unintentionally.

This is how CrowdStrike managed to Y2K an absurd number of enterprise computers fairly recently.

Its also why its ... you know, generally bad practice to have your kernel just open to fucking whoever instead of having it be locked down and rigorously tested.

Funnily enough, MSFT now appears to be shifting toward offering much less direct access to its kernel to 3rd party software devs.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 hours ago

Easy, a bug in battle eye forced me to reinstall windows, this kernel access has to go.

[–] [email protected] 45 points 7 hours ago

I feel like they're doing this because they are going so hard with steam deck. Regardless, good on Valve for doing this.

[–] [email protected] 72 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

That’s awesome! GTA V just screwed everyone on Linux! What a rug pull.

[–] [email protected] 99 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (7 children)

Adding kernel malware after the fact should entitle every single owner who requests one to a full refund no matter how long has passed.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

I'd really like Valve to take an official policy on post-release changes that break games, but for what it's worth they have not given me any hassle with refunds in these scenarios.

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] [email protected] 35 points 7 hours ago

Full agree. I do want some kind of policy for games that introduce anti-cheat both during early access and after release. Bricking a game you paid for should offer some sort of recourse.

load more comments (5 replies)

[–] [email protected] 31 points 6 hours ago

Common valve W

load more comments