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Easy Anti Cheat - requires manual removal
Wait, so this sketchy, privacy-invading stuff remains even after a game is uninstalled?! I had no idea.
How is this stuff not classed as malware at this point?
W steam/valve
Any program having kernel level access is spyware. This is getting ridiculous.
Vanguard anticheat...
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
Wow, mad because you can be held accountable. That's sad.
Thanks for the steam link!
4 likes on him complaining that modlogs being public is something bad, cowards that only want to be shitty in the shadows.
I'm still fairly new. Where do I go for modlog drama?
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.
He used to relentlessly spam the /r/linux_gaming subreddit and argue with people there too until he deleted his reddit account lol
He's still on Reddit
He would make another account account
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.
If only they let you filter out games from being seen on your store page or showing up in recommendations using this as a criteria.
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.
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!
=D
That’s awesome! GTA V just screwed everyone on Linux! What a rug pull.
Adding kernel malware after the fact should entitle every single owner who requests one to a full refund no matter how long has passed.
That’s exactly what Valve did. The automated refund system wasn’t available, but you could request a manual review and cite the added anti cheat; Valve was refunding those who did so.
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!
Also, the most games that don't work in linux is for this reason (and steamdeck works in linux)
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.
And you can't even check what it's really doing on your computer because it's a crime under US law.
Is this specifically for kernel level anticheat? Because this isn't a thing for software in general right??
It's a thing for any measure said to enforce copyright under the DMCA.
So it's a thing for most proprietary software.
If anything reverse engineering is more permissible in the USA than many other places, IIRC
Not if you're running afoul of the DMCA.
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 can (but not always) run at startup, so this means if you install a game with kernel-level anticheat, the moment your system turns on, the game's publisher can have 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.
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
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?
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.
I feel like they're doing this because they are going so hard with steam deck. Regardless, good on Valve for doing this.
