[unaindz]

It's been a long time coming. I wonder if the overhead of user space interacting with the kernel api is gonna be noticeable.

>Another big area of Windows that uses kernel-level drivers is anti-cheating engines for games. Microsoft has been speaking with game developers about how to reduce the amount of kernel usage, but it’s a more complicated use case as cheaters often have to purposefully tamper with their machine to disable protections and get cheating engines running.

>“A lot of [game developers] would love to not have to maintain kernel stuff, and they are very interested in how they do that,” Weston says. “We’ve been talking about the requirements there, and I think we’ll have more to say on that in the near future.” Riot Games told me last year that it’s willing to follow potential Windows security changes and “recede from the kernel space.”

I hope it spreads to anti cheats as well.

[jchw]

With anti-cheat the obvious (lazy, stupid) future is remote attestation. It's another way to kick the can down the road of actually going to "real" approaches to anti-cheat like less client trust, behavioral analysis, and statistics that you would have to do if you had no choice, like for online Chess games or something like that. Of course even for fast-paced games like FPS games, you can now cheat using a capture card, ML models and a fake HID keyboard/mouse device so I'm sure the arms race will evolve to include forced HDCP and signed, encrypted HID devices and other dumb bullshit before there is finally some realization that there is no longer any possible, reasonable way to shortcut anti-cheat anymore. The shortcuts are just too much cheaper and easier. (I'm sure we'll keep remote attestation anyways afterwards, because it's impossible to have nice things.)

[reginald78]

I think a lot of these problems are exacerbated by the developers themselves. Dedicated servers were removed (so that games could be sunset-ed to avoid competing with sequels) erasing community and human moderation leaving players entirely dependent upon algorithms and spotty reporting. F2P games are pushed to get people on the micro-transaction treadmill which makes the cost of being cause nothing but also can create a financial incentive to cheat for items. Now everyone has to jump through a bunch of extra hoops because the control they demanded isn't enough to solve the problem they made worse with it. The answer is always to add more hoops.

[steelbrain]

> forced HDCP

Fly-by, but HDCP is already cracked. There's no shortage of HDCP strippers from AliExpress; although they use clever marketing terms to avoid spelling out the fact (presumably to avoid legal troubles)

[dontlaugh]

Less client trust means some game designs are impossible. The latency caused by the speed of light leads to unacceptably bad player experiences if you don't trust the client, at least for shots from their p.o.v.

Personally I don't mind if fast-paced adversarial multiplayer FPS games stop existing, but that's a minority opinion.

[hypercube33]

Game clients need to have zero trust. there has never been a truly working anticheat that doesn't punish the user in some way.

Be it you can't game on Linux (steam deck) or if you have some specific software installed you're flagged as a cheater (autohotkey) or other dumb things.

That said even in some AAA games it feels like the game cheats anyway either intentionally or unintentionally (read about how modern warfare basically decides the outcome of an encounter before it happens to keep your k/d ratio close to 1)

[Razengan]

I guess the ultimate "anticheat" would be to have a camera pointed at the user and their screen, and have some kind of super AI watch it.

And the ultimate "cheat" would be an android hooked up to the computer and indistinguishable from a meat-based person :)

[anton-c]

Wait how does using a capture card let you cheat? Not disputing, very curious. Like a bot sits inbetween and makes the correct moves?

I don't play fps anymore not trying to cheat lol

[Someone]

> I wonder if the overhead of user space interacting with the kernel api is gonna be noticeable.

‘Luckily’, the overhead of antivirus software already can be quite high at times [1]. So, if this API can keep the number of kernel-userspace transitions down, I think the relative impact could be barely noticeable.

[1] https://www.tomsguide.com/us/av-software-least-system-impact...:

“For example, McAfee Total Protection had a relatively light background impact, slowing down the Lenovo laptop by only 9% after installation”

[mysterydip]

Anecdotally, for some gaming friends of mine, the only reason they maintain a Windows install is for games that don't run on linux/proton due to anti-cheat kernel integration. So for that portion of the population, it seems in Microsoft's interests to keep it going.

[cyborgx7]

It's really the last thing that keeps any trustworthy source from recommending switching to linux for gaming without reservation. As soon as you want to play any competitive online multiplayer games, which to my understanding is the vast majority of people, you're going to have problems with some anti-cheat not working on Linux sooner or later.

I'm not saying it's the only thing that stops mass adoption of Linux for gaming, but I think we'd see a massive uptick very quickly, if this problem went away.

[Toritori12]

I wonder how long until those anti-cheats start fighting and false?-positiving each other due on how they operate.

[nkrisc]

I’ve mostly just stopped playing online games with the public as anti-social sociopath cheaters have ruined the fun.

There’s one “solution” to cheating that publishes seem loathe to offer these days: server executables so people can host their own servers.

When I played BF1942, we just banned anyone we thought was cheating. Having a reputation for being actively moderated and typically cheater-free meant the server was popular and often full. When I ran a Minecraft server, I used a whitelist so it was a complete non-issue.

The only online game I still occasionally play is WoW where cheating is mostly non-existent and what cheating that does exist doesn’t typically affect the gameplay experience of normal players.