If they worked to any acceptable level of efficacy then they could be tolerated. They're only tolerated by people who think they work as well as they claim to work (security theater) but anyone who knows about the performance impacts and/or are tech-savvy enough to understand it is a rootkit and potential exploit (that would fully pwn your device) hates them.
Some cheats are getting rather sophisticated now. There's an ever-increasing number of Pi-devices where the cheating is done externally.
They're also chosen by users when the game is filled with cheater. Counterstrike 2 is an example of this with players moving to FaceIT and ESEA (with kernel anti cheat) as the higher ranks of official competitive matchmaking are filled with cheaters.
Proven by who and what proof? Because Denuvo is the only one outspoken about how it doesn't impact performance despite all evidence to the contrary and they provide no evidence of their own beyond claiming it doesnt. Then saying they'll prove it doesn't and then backing out of proving it.
DRM and anti-cheat aren't the same though. That link is talking about denuvo DRM, not denuvo anti-cheat. Also, just because one implementation impacts performance doesn't mean they all have to.
I'll believe it when Irdeto manages to provide any evidence amounting to more than "Just believe us".
Both the anti-tamper and anti-cheat affect performance and it's incredibly noticeable to anyone who isn't building a new bleeding-edge hardware PC every year or two.
Look at what Apple has done in recent years. kexts (kernel-level drivers) are basically all but unsupported today, and both DriverKit and IOKit are fully userland.
Is it fun to be a non-cheater, and join a multi-player game where there are other players using software cheats that let them easily beat you every single time?
I'm pretty sure I would quickly stop playing that game, and demand the publisher refund my money. That's just not fun.
And that's just as a casual gamer. For people who compete and win prizes, endorsements, etc., the stakes are a bit higher.
I'm not saying kernel-level rootkits installed on everyone's machine is the answer, but letting people cheat isn't going to work either.
Community-run and moderated servers easily fixed this issue decades ago. Maybe video games should be fun centers of community again instead of maximally isolating and atomizing skinner boxes designed to make children addicted to endlessly practicing and competing at worthless skills so the sunk cost keeps them buying loot boxes
Well, the problem is eventual consistency and these games have a hell to consolidate properly.
One user is on a connection with 10ms latency, the other user is on 50 ms latency. Now, if first user does something, and second user can either do something to evade or can do something that actually prevents the first user from acting, how do you consolidate that?
The actual timestamp of when exactly what happened helps immensely, but you have to trust the timestamp. And how can you know that is not manipulated?
But... that's just the surface. Consider: one client uses a rendering that takes 25ms longer to show up and another client does not render textures/shadows etc. That client is faster and the sender can even send "official" response times, but would still give an advantage.
So, I am not sure this can be solved serverside. But... I don't play these games anymore and would never opt for a rootkit to be installed just so I can play. I can imagine plenty of people, though, who would.
Remember that you don't need perfection: you need people to believe that they're likely enough to get caught that they don't want to use a pre-canned cheat, and you need just enough cheat detection mechanisms to make it hard for people to make new cheats. Not all of that has to be technological: you can spread rumours that your cheater ban waves are bigger than they actually are, for example, and that'll keep more people from even trying in the first place.
You don't have to trust the timestamp - and you shouldn't. You can use a bunch of methods to go from untrusted to grudgingly accepted: requiring monotonicity means cheating clients have to be permanently slower rather than selectively slower. Having tolerances for out of order packet rates or accepted deltas before discarding player actions will have some false positives for players on terrible networks, but will also reduce the impact of any possible timestamp-related cheats.
It can't be fully solved server side, not without sacrificing acceptable performance. I reckon it can probably be dealt with enough on server side to keep cheating to a tolerably low level. It's probably cheaper to just license a windows rootkit though.
You might be able to match-make between clients with similar latency and then "enforce" that latency server side by delaying things that "happen faster" then the previously measured latency
No, this implies that actions are in response to something. This is not true. I can shoot my gun at any time, and even randomly. It does not depend on an opponent starting to move.
> (I’d still lean towards expecting game houses to find another way, kernel drivers are still client side trust mechanisms).
Well, this problem simply can't be solved server-side only. Client-side can't be validated without rootkit (and even then it's not enough, but enough to deter majority of cheaters).
Keeping cheating to a low enough level that players don't quit in frustration (or never start playing due to bad press) is critical. Eliminating it entirely is not.
Valve added vote kicks to CS to help keep cheating (and other antisocial behaviours) under control - it seems pretty important to them.
I think the point is that competitive multiplayer games are not critical. Scripting in e.g. league of legends probably doesn't register on 99% of humanities "top 100 most critical things in my life" radar.
One could argue that a game isn't critical but one could say it's critical to stop hackers.
If you were to take the stance that gaming isn't critical than with that logic you're then claiming multiplayer hacking is a feature of the game.
Doesn't do well for the community or the company. But nor do the rootkits do good for the consumer.