Kernal level anti-cheat means I ain't gonna play it
I don't care where the company is based no game should be requiring kernal level access, that's just opening the door for security concerns
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Kernal level anti-cheat means I ain't gonna play it
I don't care where the company is based no game should be requiring kernal level access, that's just opening the door for security concerns
I'm wondering if there's a way we can even know they're installing it. Windows just gives that generic admin prompt, I imagine? Tells you nothing of what's happening.
Well if you get asked for sudo, then that's a risk.
Installing almost anything* on Windows requires the equivalent of sudo, same as Linux.
Determining if it's a normal install or adding a kernel driver wouldn't be feasible just by watching the installation. (On either OS if they are not showing terminal output)
EDIT:
My context here (which I should have been explicit about sooner) is: "ordinary user is installing a closed source commercial large game" (with its own installer) and doesn't know if they are also getting a free rootkit.
They are going to just click Next without changing defaults, and are not going to extract and inspect anything.
Most user software should NOT need sudo.
Typically you need "sudo" to use the package installer though, if that's where you're getting confused. But that's because most Linux package managers are built to install software to be available for all users. However once installed that does NOT mean the package always has sudo access. And the way Linux software is typically installed is just putting the executable in a certain folder, unlike Windows where you run a software's custom installer which asks for admin access and then does who knows what.
We totally won't harvest your data.
Ignore the fact that we have political, state, and financial interest to do so, and that you would have no way of verifying or detecting if we did harvest your data, but you can trust us.
Just trust us.
It's not only interests of the chinese government, they HAVE to oblige legally if they are asked to. So even if the company has the best intentions, the government overrules.
And don't make that a chinese bad guy argument, as if western companies aren't doing the same, they just don't do that officially, which one is shadier is yours to decide.
All you can do as a company or anyone is to stop harvesting data and don't plant blackboxes/backdoors in customers systems
If you ask me, it's best to treat any program requiring kernel level access that isn't part of your base operating system or something you created and have full control over as malware. All it takes is one exploit or something of similar nature and some bad actors taking advantage of it before it can be patched for your computer to become fucked.
Well base operating system or hardware driver. There are exceptions, the pps driver for timekeeping makes sense to be kernel level too.
But games developers? No, they have no right to ring 0. I understand they want to protect from cheats, but they're just moving the battleground to a part of the system that results in blue screens/panics when it fails. And cheat developers will follow them there and even move to the hypervisor if needed, trust me on that.
Is this the death of LoL on Linux, then? It was possible to get it working pretty well a few days after every patch, but this will change all that.
For the forseeable future, unless someone is committed enough to making Darling work.
(Mac layer instead of Windowz, the mac version does not and will not have vanguard.)
Different software purposes and all, but it vaguely puts me in the mind of the Sony compact disc DRM scandal.
Here's the summary for the wikipedia article you mentioned in your comment:
The Sony BMG CD copy protection scandal concerns the copy protection measures included by Sony BMG on compact discs in 2005. When inserted into a computer, the CDs installed one of two pieces of software that provided a form of digital rights management (DRM) by modifying the operating system to interfere with CD copying. Neither program could easily be uninstalled, and they created vulnerabilities that were exploited by unrelated malware. One of the programs would install and "phone home" with reports on the user's private listening habits, even if the user refused its end-user license agreement (EULA), while the other was not mentioned in the EULA at all. Both programs contained code from several pieces of copylefted free software in an apparent infringement of copyright, and configured the operating system to hide the software's existence, leading to both programs being classified as rootkits.
^to^ ^opt^ ^out^^,^ ^pm^ ^me^ ^'optout'.^ ^article^ ^|^ ^about^
Good bot, if this is how you earn your keep.
That's gonna be an uninstall for me, Tencent.
Nope. Take your rootkit and go fuck yourself with it.
There's absolutely 0 reason a game should ever have kernel access. Ie unrestricted access to every piece of data on the system.
Another game I'll never play 👍🏻
Eh, probably for the best, everything I've heard about LoL is that it turns you into a toxic hateful shell of a human.
I was gonna care until I read league of legends. Clearly people already hate themselves and despise sensible choices and alternatives. Otherwise they wouldn't play lol.
Yep, a lot of recent anti-cheat is looking a lot like DRM.
more like intentionally installed malware but yes, 100 % this
Not just looking like DRM, I would say it IS DRM.
Another reason not to play LoL.
This won’t change much for me considering i already have a dozen reasons not to play this shit ass game
Is there an open source MOBA? Players need an alternative, even if it's not as good to begin with.
I mean Dota exists. I guess I'll switch to that. Or maybe I'll just take a shower.
Dota was the OG anyway, LOL coined the term MOBA to shift focus that they stole their gameplay mechanic from one dude, icefrog.
Dota has always been a drastically better game, I see this as an absolute win for Linux. League is cancer.
It really confuses me why people would want to play a competitive video game that is balanced around profit. Riot openly admits to buffing and nerfing based on skin sales and champion releases.
Addiction, I suppose.
If you uninstall is there any guarantee that the kernel level anticheat gets removed, too, or are they in there forever?
And today we read from the Book of Sony, Chapter 2005, verses 10-11: Sony BMG quickly released software to remove the rootkit component of XCP from affected Microsoft Windows computers, but after Russinovich analyzed the utility, he reported in his blog that it only exacerbated the security problems and raised further concerns about privacy. Russinovich noted that the removal program merely unmasked the hidden files installed by the rootkit but did not actually remove the rootkit. He also reported that it installed additional software that could not be uninstalled. In order to download the uninstaller, he found that it was necessary to provide an e-mail address (which the Sony BMG Privacy Policy implied was added to various bulk e-mail lists) and to install an ActiveX control containing backdoor methods (marked as "safe for scripting" and thus prone to exploits). Microsoft later issued a killbit for the ActiveX control.
On November 18, 2005, Sony BMG provided a "new and improved" removal tool to remove the rootkit component of XCP from affected Microsoft Windows computers.
courtesy wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal#XCP_rootkit
I've been playing League casually from time to time on Linux, and it's just a shame that they're adding Vanguard to the game since that kills any compatibility it had under wine. Though, knowing League community, a lot of players on Linux are so addicted to the game, they'll switch their operating systems for it or buy a second computer just to play.
This really saddens me. LoL is a game that will forever connect me to some of my best friends, I played hundreds if not thousands of hours, even through I have not played nearly as much over recent years. We even did go to public viewing of the world's finals.
If they force this on us, then it will mean that my last game of lol was played months ago.
I guess the shame and expense Sony learned the hard way in 2005 has faded and now kernel invasion has become acceptable.
They can fuck all the way off.
Edward Snowden showed that the US is spying on their citicens but nobody seems to care. But when China is doing it, everybody seems to lose their mind.
If the group doing the spying is ideologically in the same "tribe", people don't seem concerned. It's both a survival mechanism and our Achilles heel.
The Chinese government wants to install a root kit on your PC
If you meet someone playing these games then they are the dumbest people you have run into