I'd probably be okay with kernel level anti-cheats if they actually stopped cheaters. But they don't. Hell, the best anti-cheat I've ever seen that actually works isn't even made by the developers of the game; it's a mod! Blue Sentinel for Dark Souls 3. All it does is check if the files a player you're connecting to has deviate at all from your own, then prevents the connection if they are not 1:1 identical.
this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2025
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Steam Deck
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Basic anti-cheat already does this, but also with memory, because most cheats are reading/modifying what is in memory. I think the only ethical solution for anti-cheat is on the server side, with machine learning perhaps, kind of like VACnet.
The problem is that, with a good enough cheat, it can be impossible to distinguish from a very good player.
The best cheats use a secondary device emulating human input and reactions, which is practically undetectable.
A secondary device can't be identified by kernel level anti-cheat either. If you have a standalone device that identifies as a USB keyboard and mouse and then generates inputs that give you a 100% headshot count, there's nothing you could detect through the kernel, since all it detects are keystrokes and clicks.
I never understood kernel level anti-cheat. People STILL cheat. lol
Yes,
but game companies also want to spy on you and potentially sell your data. Even if they aren't selling it, the ability to do so increases the value to investors. This is the way tech companies talk about invasive software in general, FWIW.
Can you name an instance of a game company doing that?
Data brokers do exist... Who they buy from is the only privacy they respect. You know, capitalism.
So by that logic we shouldn't be downloading any precompiled binaries from the net - they could all be spying on us!
a binary and a kernel module are not the same. And I was talking about business practices that are known. But nevermind, that was before I understood you are just trolling. Now I'll simply wish you a wonderful reddit experience.
Not trolling at all. I'm a game developer, so I was curious to hear about instances of game devs using kernel level anticheat to harvest people's personal (and identifiable) data to sell to data brokers.
Glad to know there aren't any examples of it outside of people screaming about capitalism - which is, let's be honest, quite indicative of the Lemmy experience these days.