[super256]

Some thoughts

- secure kernel WILL get hijacked and be completely invisible to anti cheats. Which would be funny.

- Microsoft won't port back the attestation process to win 10 (although secure kernel exists there too), forcing all gamers, where the AC adopts this attestation, to install win11

- trying to lock out Linux for sure, which is a funny coincidence given that Valve is partnering with anti cheat developers (eg EAC and Battleye) to support Linux

[altairprime]

Win10 only supports this in specific high-sec enterprise configurations and, as indicated, Microsoft will not be porting that back to Windows 10. One can reasonably expect that Windows 10 support will be killed in favor of this new API, specifically because it means game studios can stop paying for soon-irrelevant development effort into Windows anti-modding. And I bet TF2 starts blocking unattested (and, so, Windows 10) players within one year of Valve enabling the new attestation API on Steam hardware in Windows/Linux.

Linux is and has for years been capable of supporting all of this at any time, and when-not-if Valve enables attestation of a clean sealed-booted Steam Linux environment for their hardware, AAA multiplayer games will begin allowing only sealed-attested Steam Linux players to join multiplayer games from Linux.

Microsoft isn’t doing this to screw Linux. Microsoft is doing this to avoid losing the secured PC gaming market to Valve. They already lost the (secured) console gaming market, after all.

[literallywho]

Valve let bots infest and ruin TF2 servers for 8 (eight) years straight before doing anything. There's no way they'd add anything like that to TF2 within one year.

[c0balt]

> EAC and Battleye

They may be partnering with them but support for competitve titles is rather limited. For example, the most prominent Battleye title (iirc), Rainbow Six Siege, is not support on Linux via Steam due to Battleye blocking it. Valorant, LoL, BF6 or CoD also don't work ime.

[Alupis]

Particularly frustrating, because Rainbow Six Siege runs spectacularly on linux, but the moment you join a multiplayer session the anticheat forces a crash-to-desktop.

For many of these games it's a choice. They choose not to support linux. Perhaps one day that will change.

I've been playing online multiplayer games, including competitive FPS and more, for nearly 3 decades. Cheating has never been such a problem that it made me quit a game. So much of this is way overplayed by wannabe-super-sweat try-hards, thinking they're competing in high-stakes games.

So we cede more and more control of our computer over to video game(!!) companies, going deep down the rabbit hole of kernel-level anti-cheat and worse to come.

It's a freaking video game... have fun. If someone cheats, find a new server. It's really that simple.

[napkinartist]

They will need to sooner or later. Linux has more momentum than ever, and saying "players on steam deck/steam machine/bazzite can't play our game" seems like a losing long term strategy.

[charcircuit]

>trying to lock out Linux

Only because desktop Linux will be behind on security.

Macs already got this ability in 2023 which allowed for a user mode anticheat for Riot Games to be made that successfully prevented cheating. Now Windows is getting attestation that is the game running on a secure system.

If desktop Linux ever gets around to this then a anticheats can add support for it and it will be much easier then them needing to make a kernel anticheat for a platform that few people use.

[raincole]

I absolutely won't call client side anti-cheat a "security" feature and I find the framing very questionable.

[eddythompson80]

> If desktop Linux ever gets around to this

I don’t really understand what that means. Are you, or anyone, expecting a signed Linux kernel by some organization (say Valve or Debian or whatever) that will be the “Gaming Kernel”? If not, no Linux kernel feature is safe from 1 patch and a custom build.

[esseph]

Kernel anti cheat in windows has already been used to deploy malware.

It was inevitable when this even started.

[beeflet]

it will be behind on security gimmicks