Are We Anti-Cheat Yet?

What an interesting day when you see a site you've worked on for the past 2 (3?) years get posted to HN! Except I tried submitting this site years ago when I had just finished it, but it did not seem like HN was that interested at the time, and I don't blame them. It was very niche and video game related, and the site also looked a lot worse. It's come a long way to the point where there where I collaborated with someone else to do a redesign, which I think has done great for the project at large.

I originally created the site as a way to track which games would be supported on Linux, since at the time the Steam Deck was releasing, and some games were turning to support it. And it has since blossomed into a larger project, which some other tools even pull from! I would have never even imagined that when I first started making this.

I do want to address something I see being talked about in the comments, which is the fact people say that anti-cheats are snake oil, or useless. This is a big misunderstanding, and I feel like those more technically inclined should understand that anti-cheat is a "defense-in-depth" type of approach. Where it is just one of many lines of defense. Some anti-cheats are pretty useless, and don't do much, but some actually do try and protect the game you're playing. But, just like DRM, it can be cracked, and that's why it's more of a constant arms race, rather than a one and done thing.

I'm writing out a longer post about this for the future, but just know that without anti-cheat clientside, it would be far too easy for an attacker to cheat in these games. We're still ways out from letting AI (see VACnet [1] and and Anybrain [2]) determine if someone is cheating server-side, so for now we have to rely on heavier client-side techniques and server-side decision making.

Also if anyone has questions about the site (or for me), I'll try to answer them here when I see them. If not, have a nice day!

[1] https://youtu.be/kTiP0zKF9bc

[2] https://www.anybrain.gg/

One thing I don't understand and I would really appreciate if someone could explain this to me.

Why do we need separate anti-cheat programs? Can't the operating systems simply have an option when creating a process that prevents all operations looking at the memory of the process (and maybe if such a process is about to be launched the user has to explicitly accept that by clicking a button)? Wouldn't that stop almost all the cheats without needing separate anti cheat programs, since I assume those programs have to use OS facilities to mess with the game anyway.

leaving aside that most anticheats are useless and constantly teetering on the thin line between legitimate software and malware, not enabling anti-cheat solutions that support Linux on Linux is really an asshole move that almost definitely stems from an unmotivated or ideological hostility to Linux in general (I'm specifically referring to Tim Sweeney here).

the best anti cheat that i have experience is vangaurd by riot games. I was running a python script in background for web crawling, left it on and guess what? my account got banned. the support says the vangaurd found a script running. i explained them patiently that it was a web crawling script , still no use.

Anti-Cheat will not help, if the games not Update it for more than 8 month.

And one thing the devs could do without Anti-Cheat, is to automate analysis of e. g. head shot rate, movement speed, etc. but most games not do that. If average player make 25 Kills per hour in a game and some 150 over longer periods i did not need an anti cheat to do something.

FYI:

Anti-Cheat software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheating_in_online_games#Anti-...

I think the real answer is to sidestep all of the direct, deterministic solutions in favor of statistical ones. I am not 100% certain of this, but I believe some there are some games, like EA's Battlefield series, that utilize a degree of statistical modeling to detect cheaters.

We reliably use statistical process control to automatically calibrate incredibly precise, nanometric-scale machinery for purposes of semiconductor engineering. Surely, with the extreme amount of data available regarding every player's minute inputs in something like a client-server shooter, you could run similar statistical models to detect outliers in performance. With enough samples you can build an extraordinarily damning case.

The only downside is that statistical models will occasionally produce false positives. But, I've personally been "falsely" banned by purely deterministic methods (VAC) for reasons similar to others noted in this thread (i.e. leaving debugging/memory tools running for a separate project while playing a game). So, in practice I feel like statistical models might even provide a better experience around the intent to cheat (i.e. if you aren't effectively causing trouble, we dont care).

I don’t understand. Why would you actually want anti-cheat rootkits and spyware on linux?

If Apex Legends, CS, and Valorant has taught me anything, it's that anti cheat does not work. Once you start approaching a pro level, cheating becomes rampant.

The cheaters don't make them, they buy them. It really needs a multi factor solution. The technical solution is not enough. Trying to buy cheats should be like trying to buy chemical precursors to illicit drugs. There should be a strong social stigma. Most cheaters have no problem with it because 'everyone else is cheating', justifying their behavior. There was a time when 'everyone else smokes' was justification, but now it's mostly defeated. There should be real world implications. Sign in with your phone number and 2 factor auth, which is located to a physical address. Cheating is a form of fraud. There should be legal implications.

I understand that Anti-Cheat keeps honest people honest. Which, sure if it's your purely-for-gaming box, ok, maybe ok.

It's just that I use my machine for more stuff than gaming; and for anything else I'd really rather not have it on there at the same time.

IMO anti-cheats at this point are more of a PR tool than actual cheat prevention systems. Look at Vanguard: they marketed Valorant specifically focused on the anti-cheat to draw players away from CS:GO where many in the community think cheaters are rampant.

The only difference is that maybe you have a few less rage hackers that get caught by it, but anyone that really wants to cheat will still be able to, it's just a lot harder for players to see. All they care about is the public perception. If it looks like it has less cheaters, it's good enough for them.

The cost? You basically install malware from a Chinese company in you computer...

very interesting side-effect of the nature of multiplayer competitive games.

to me, competitive video games are far gone like pro cycling in terms of the extent players go to feel "superior" than others.

<rant> many of these games remain broken with other things while raking in insane amounts of money, so regularly maintaining anti-cheat inside the game, if at all, is probably very low in their backlog.

the third-party ones are then used to not having to think about this, but even these providers are more focused on attracting game publishers than doing something meaningful. </rant>

personally, it should be possible for games that can be played in local multiplayer or with friends to have a way to play it without anti-cheat. don't allow competitive modes with it, but having an option will alleviate a lot of these issues.

PCIe DMA says "what anticheat?"

In the case of FPS, it is gone: with AI cheats which are morphing average/bad players into god like/very good players, that without being on the player system, (external, and input device man-in-the-middle or custom/modified input devices), FPS games implementing anti-cheats are doing so more to please microsoft than anything else: too be sure it won't run on linux based OSes (like "secure" boot in order to sabotage easy installation of "free" alternative OSes).

That said, you "may" have a chance at detecting it using game related metrics on server side. Because an AI will very probably betray itself at some point, "AI"s are usually imperfect like human.

Elephant in room, the more you put big brother in your system, the less you will be able to run really free operating systems. So long for your digital freedom.

Look at the abominations which are video game consoles.

It is obcene to have to pay a lot of money for completely locked/digital jail devices. It should be illegal, period. They should be leased for cheap.

Snake oil of the software world

Check out Getgud.io, it might surprise you how far along AI anti cheat has come.

I don't know enough about 'real time' netcode for games. However I have read several HN articles over the years so I've got at least a basic understanding.

Why can't the servers distrust the clients? What should a 'client side anti cheat' actually prevent?

The way I think I'd tackle such things is to have multiple copies of each character model moving in different locations and different ways. Such that trying to spy on the state of the game from one client's viewpoint yields mostly false data. New 'threads' would fork off of the existing threads and would only be culled when there are too many or they're about to make a side effect that would be visible if they were real. In that way the server would be responsible for feeding misinformation to clients but maintaining the state of the true game as a secret to itself.

If only Valorant AC had Linux support, I would ditch Windows for good.