Games

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.

Oh it was initially classed as insanely intrusive malware when kernel level AC was introduced about a decade ago, by anyone with a modicum of actual technical knowledge about computers.

Unfortunately, a whole lot of corpo shills ran propaganda explaining how actually its fine, don't worry, its actually the best way to stop cheaters!

Then the vast, vast majority of idiot gamers believed that, or threw their hands up and went oh well its the new norm, trying to fight it is futile and actually if you are against this that means you are some kind of paranoid privacy freak who hates other people having fun.

Do you remember when Sony released cds that when inserted into Windows computer auto ran an installer that installed a rootkit that made it impossible for Windows to see any processes or files that started with a certain sequence of characters instantly turning any malware that named its files or processes similarly powerful rootkit. Oh and it installed a cd driver that made it impossible to copy their music.

Suggested removal was a full reinstall of windows.

Cup my balls? Go on...

i dONt hAVe anYThinG To HIdE

Adding kernel malware after the fact should entitle every single owner who requests one to a full refund no matter how long has passed.

Lots of games with anti cheat auto work under wine/proton. The most on top of my head example is Elden ring. Runs fine on my desktop with arch, as well as my steam deck.

The steam deck is also amazing, such a nice piece of hardware. I've been gaming on Linux for years and I'm surprised how well it works. Feels like a console.

Well... kernel level software can access everything on your computer. That includes other partitions and unmounted drives

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.

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.