Comment by charcircuit
3 days ago
>We had fun in online games without kernel level nonsense.
You might of. But there was a percentage of players turned away by cheaters or even just had a bad experience one day because of one. At scale this can cause a bad experience for a ton of players so trying to stop as many cheaters as possible does matter.
>Why do I need to compromise my hardware
You don't have to compromise anything. In fact it is optimal to have the system be as secure as possible that way cheats can't mess with the game.
>How do old boomershooter communities tackle cheaters?
By limiting the rate of new players. This goes against the wishes of games who want to achieve massive growth.
>When and why do methods that work on a social graph fail or necessitate anticheat?
If people provided IDs that could work too instead of anticheat, but usually people do not want to do that just to play a game. It adds friction to the onboarding process.
> You don't have to compromise anything.
So… I don’t have to compromise the ability to run any program I want on my machine, and I don’t have to compromise the ability to be root on my machine. Right? And of course, when I say "me", I’m talking about everyone, including cheaters. Meaning, we don’t have to compromise the cheater’s ability to run any program they want (that would include cheats), nor their ability to be root on their machine.
> In fact it is optimal to have the system be as secure as possible that way cheats can't mess with the game.
Secure for the game company you mean. I want a computer that’s secure for me, that responds to my commands. And again, "me" includes everyone and cheaters too.
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The online gaming industry is not worth sacrificing individual ownership of computers.
>So… I don’t have to compromise the ability to run any program I want on my machine, and I don’t have to compromise the ability to be root on my machine. Right?
Yes. You are free to do whatever you want on your machine.
>Meaning, we don’t have to compromise the cheater’s ability to run any program they want (that would include cheats), nor their ability to be root on their machine.
Yep. The only thing the cheater is unable to do is prove to the server that they aren't using cheats.
>Secure for the game company you mean.
No I mean that the operating system protects applications from messing with each other. The operating system should isolate each app for security purposes.
> No I mean that the operating system protects applications from messing with each other. The operating system should isolate each app for security purposes.
Oh but that is far incomplete a specification. What security purposes? Who are we protecting, from whom? On whose behalf does the OS isolates applications from each other? If it’s on mine, then you bet I absolutely want the ability to lift that isolation in specific cases. It’s my computer, I decide when and how the rules are broken.
But the moment I have that (a computer and OS that really work for me), I lose the ability to prove that I don’t. If I play an online game, being in control means the game company is not, and I can’t prove to them I’m not cheating.
I’m not aware of any third alternative.
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