I am so fucking tired of this discussion.
https://areweanticheatyet.com/
Go, go, look through this list.
With the exception of a few proprietary ACs, or just ancient ones…
Nearly every single AC has at least one, if not multiple, or even many instances of properly working on a game that runs on linux.
EAC and BattlEye have supported linux for 3 years now.
3 years.
Gonna be 4 in a couple months.
Its part of the liscensing that game studios pay for, they offer and support making builds that work on linux via Proton, offer to help game devs with any tweaks they may need to make.
This is, and has for years, just been as simple as management is telling devs not to bother with the fairly minor effort it would take to do this, at least with EAC and BattleEye.
AC works on linux, it doesn’t need to finger fuck your kernel to do so.
Its just that most game developers (lets be real, their upper management / C Suite), only want to fully go in raw, or not at all, and Windows is giving it up on the reg.
There is no “dilemma” here. There is no solution or compromise to be found here. Kernel level anti-cheat systems are simply not needed. While the games the tout them figure that out I’ll simply play all the other ones that already have figured it out.
Exactly. It’s a “cheap”, hands-off system (with the added benefit of being able to collect massive amounts of data to be sold - surely no one would ever do that clutches pearls) that makes people think the game doesn’t have cheaters because “it’s impossible” (it isn’t). You give deep access to your system and the only thing you get in return is people complaining about smurfs instead of cheaters when they get absolutely wrecked.
This is the truth right here.
Which games are those ?
tetrio and osu are competitive games that don’t have kernel anticheat
Off the top of my head: Anything Valve (CS2, Dota 2, Deadlock, TF2), the entire Civilization series and Arma 3. Last time I played them Starcraft, Overwatch 2 and Valorant worked fine as well, though it has been a while and I don’t know if they’ve gone the way of Apex Legends since then.
On windows at least, Arma 3 uses battleye which is absolutely kernel level anticheat. It may be different on a Linux install, but I wouldn’t expect it.
On windows at least, Arma 3 uses battleye which is absolutely kernel level anticheat. It may be different on a Linux install, but I wouldn’t expect it.
You get to choose whether to use it or not.
Aah I see. And then each server chooses whether or not to require it. Makes a lot of sense for a game that has private servers, adds choice. Nice.
I guess people don’t know this anymore but uh…
A server browser, where you can pick between official servers, and private, community servers… with their own mods or game modes or AC on or off…
This was the norm for multiplayer fps games for like 20 to 30 years.
Only fairly recently has everything become ‘streamlined’ by removing the server browser, just giving you access to various matchmaking queues, and oh AC is kernel level now also, even though it doesn’t fucking work, as a quick websearch can find you…
Hacks and trainers that only work on Windows, that defeat all kinds of KnlAC, all the time.
Nobody makes or sells game hack trainer suites that properly work on linux, ironically you yourself would have to hack the hack to even try.
Or, you just basically plug your mouse/kb into a tiny raspberry pi type device that functionally middlemans your own pc, and the hacks run on that thing.
The only AC that could possibly catch that is a rigorous and well implemented serverside AC…
But netcode is too hard for modern devs, who just subcontract out as much work of all kinds as possible these days.
Or I guess you can uh, mandate that in addition to full access to your kernel, you also have to consent to having 3 webcams in your gaming zone at all times, or a fucking manual, in person contraband check/gaming zone inspection.
… and yes, if you get hired to dev a game and then fired after release, come on now, functionally, you are a contract worker, no matter whatever insane nonsense legal classification your job technically is.
Yes, but CS2 is cheater riddled and deadlock announced an AC that to my knowledge we don’t know much yet.
Sc2 is also cheater riddled. Valorant has kernel AC.
There really aren’t that many cheaters in SC2. I’ve really only ran into 3 that I know of in 14 years. The funny thing is I still beat them too! Cheaters in SC2 are usually just bad at the game even with their cheats because they don’t understand the fundamentals, they can’t multitask, they can’t do a clean build, they can’t watch the minimap. Here’s the last one I hit a year ago with timestamped evidence: https://youtu.be/KNo1xsnRAXI?t
I just don’t play the that won’t work on Linux + they are most of the time made by greedy companies
No game needs access to my kernel. The games that require it are usually mtx farms and not worth playing in the first place.
Fuck off with kernel level anti cheat, its just spyware anyway.
There has never been a game I wanted to play so much that I would allow this. I did play SW:TOR for a while (on windows) when I had the UAC disabled. One I reenabled it I realized it was selling C admin level privileges each time it launched. I uninstalled it that day.
I think what they’re suggesting is literally just kernel anti-cheat itself. Am I missing something?
I think the only part missing is the proposal to limit it to a specialised, isolated distribution, that people would dual-boot specifically just for those titles. That’s how I understood the idea.
If I wanted to reboot to play a particular game, I can do that now without anyone bringing KAC to Linux. I have found that I won’t reboot just to do a single activity, I will avoid that activity.
Which in this case is fine, because I avoid kernal level anti-cheat like the plague in principle. It doesn’t actually work and gives far more access to my system than I am willing to some random game dev/publisher just so they can claim the game doesn’t have cheaters (and the playerbase complains about smurfs instead of hackers because they drink the KAC koolaid).
You can always do that though since you can dualboot to whatever other system you want. I thought their idea was to have a mode you turn on and off in your main system, but I think that’s just how kernel anti-cheat would already work.
I’m not sure that would actually appease the kernal anti-cheat people - I thought part of the reason they want kernal access is so they are loaded before most everything else and can therefore monitor for anything running that “shouldn’t be”. That’s hard to do if it loads while the system is already up because it would have to be further down the chain.
At least, that is my understanding, I’m not an engineer and might be wrong.
I absolutely would use a “trusted gaming mode,” even if that meant a separate partition just for those few games that need it.
I’m not familiar enough with the technical aspects of how kernels and bootloaders handle the various launch procedures to ensure they haven’t or aren’t being tampered with, but I think your idea sounds like a good compromise between, “It’s my Linux to modify,” and, “It’s my Linux to use.” There’s not exactly a ton of games that require anti-cheat, so I think giving up a little freedom for those few games (which you would be anyway, due to anti-cheat) with a separate mode/system is justifiable.
its all one kernel having a seperate partition wont work i think itd just be game files that are seperate but its loading drivers into your kernel its the same kernel everywhere
I think they might have meant a separate partition with it’s own install
That is what I meant. An entirely separate system, as you would do with a Windows dual boot.
I have hope for running games on Linux that are currently blocked by anti-cheat… but zero hope for client-side anti-cheat to stop cheating. It’s not as if Windows has stopped cheating. A win eventually becomes a loss as the cheat-makers adapt.
