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Riot Games talk Vanguard anti-cheat for League of Legends and why it's a no for Linux
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this post was submitted on 12 Apr 2024
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Rootkits are dumb because the gaming industry is not trying with their anti-cheat software. It is so easy to cheat in these games even with a rootkit that it’s unbelievable.
Since the industry is moving this direction, I would like it far more if the OS just had a mode that essentially separated your normal OS from one used to play Esports titles. Put a wall between those operating modes, get rid of the desktop, and only boot the game and maybe a control panel.
The OS can then dump whatever it wants to the game without the game having control of my entire PC and file system. This seems like an obvious solution since it’s kind of the best of consoles without the worst of consoles.
That's still not gonna help at all. There are already hardware cheats using an nvidia jetson nuc, an hdmi splitter, and a usb interceptor plugged between mouse, keyboard and computer.
Using just image recognition and slight adjustments to your mouse movement you can already get an impossible to detect aimbot.
Now the real question is: why are cheats bad? If a cheater is flying in godmode, sure, that ruins the game. But if the game forces cheaters to play the same way top human players are playing... If you can't tell the difference, does it matter?
By just running all simulation server side and banning superhuman reactions you can easily ban all superhuman cheats. Matchmaking will just sort players by skill and you'll have a peaceful game again.
If you're playing chess, you don't know if your opponent uses a chess computer or not. And it doesn't matter. The game is still fun.
By the point of 'superhuman' gameplay, it's less about physical reactions and more about mental foresight or gamesense. Ducking, sliding, bhopping and any tech involved to navigate... planning how your opponent will move around your positioning in relation to their own objectives... Individual players have quirks by this point that can be discovered and exploited, and you are both playing a game to discover & exploit; Deceive & switch-up.
When someone is exclusively reacting to you perfectly rather than incorporating the above, you know. It's wildly demotivating because now we're not playing this high-skill game, we're playing a game of endurance since they always know player locations and will almost always get the first shot... The only two winning moves is you leave or the hacker leaves. It's a waste of everyone's time just for some narcissist to feel good (I can say that, I used to do it so I get the power thrill).
It sucks and anyone who's pushed their competitive gameplay to the edge will recognize a hacker when they see one. So yes, players can tell the difference (including chess players!!), it's the anti-cheat that can't. Kind-of like how that one MS guy discovered a backdoor due to a 500ms delay, but a virus protector sees everything hunky-dory.
Source: used to religiously/no-life play competitively
Also, no, matchmaker will not separate these people appropriately. The cheaters will smurf just to dunk on lower-skill players. You can buy game-keys on russian websites for dirt cheap, so it's very worth it if you have the $$$ to burn. Path of least resistance to feeling power.
If you're always reacting perfectly, that too can be discovered and used to ban people.
Also, regarding cheap game keys, those would be useful for one or two matches before they'd be banned.
For reference, all Minecraft PvP anticheat is 100% serverside, and yet a competitive PvP community exists.
I think you're missing the point of why they're buying cheap game keys. In fact, it sounds like you think a 'ban' is something bad to these players or will stop them. If it did, I'd probably be enjoying Rust still.
Not even VAC bans are perfect, although it typically stops the poor unfortunate kids who truly don't know better at least.
Minecraft anticheat won't be perfect either. It is a necessary and functional safe guard as is usually the case with anticheat (minus rootkits, fuck those useless tools), but people will always slip through. Note what other people in this thread are saying.
Sorry, but being a developer I can tell when players are just repeating half-truths they read online.
There's no reason why strategies that work in any other kind of computer science shouldn't work in gaming.
The difference between an attack costing $0.00 and $$0.01 is enough to reduce attack volume by orders of magnitude.
Even just costing the attacker 30 seconds is enough to have a massive effect, which is why captchas exist.
Game keys tend to be in the $1 - $5 range, which makes bans an extremely useful tool.
I apologize as I seem to have made myself unclear. I'm not disagreeing or saying these security measures aren't useful, I was just stating the fact that people can and do get through these systems and players in this case can detect them even when security measures can't.
To your point, as that $$0.01 makes a difference, VAC bans also make a difference by preventing kiddies from jumping back in with their purchased cheat program. That's great. However, there are 'whales' that don't care for the cost, and even though they're a small number they have an influential contribution to the negative experience these people can bring.
I'm not a security researcher or a developer so I don't know what security measures are ever in place or what the hackers do to get through. I mostly play lots of games and once-upon-a-time would dig up free (likely infected) cheat programs that got through anti-cheat and contributed to the cycle that's ongoing today.