Kraiden

Just to be clear, I’m not arguing against 3rd party ac entirely, JUST the heavy handed kernel access ac solutions. I believe that if the less insane options were the only ones, the overhead on developers would be present, certainly, but not insurmountable, even for small indie studios.

To slightly exaggerate my earlier example: If you give the gardener access to your security cameras, there’s no reason for them to walk around the back and check if the sprinklers are on. It might be easier, but that does NOT mean your gardener needs access to the security cameras.

The way things are now, developers lean on that insane system as a crutch, and build their games without any regard for client integrity whatsoever. Because why should they? THAT is the laziness I’m complaining about.

there probably should be a middle ground where the layer of security that is now being offloaded to a third party service having kernel-level access should instead be handled by the OS

I don’t believe kernel access should be required at all. 3rd party, OS, whatever! It’s NOT necessary.

Having said that, If you’re arguing for a system service that can verify client integrity and pass that back to user space, sure, I could live with that. In that case though:

you’re at best going to get from Microsoft. Linux being what it is that isn’t an option

I grant you that Microsoft at least acknowledge the problem, but they are dragging their feet on a solution, and they’ve said they’re not going to enforce it, once it becomes an option.

Linux being what is is, and Valve investing what they have, I’d be surprised if something like this wasn’t already in the works

deleted by creator

I’m saying the use of 3rd party anticheat is a crutch that developers use to avoid thinking about cheating in the first place. If they put some proper thought into their architecture, you wouldn’t need such heavy handed anticheat in the first place.

There is nothing inherently more secure about kernel level ac, it just gives you so much access to the underlying system that you can tell if the client is being manipulated.

I’m saying that’s a lazy approach, and you should instead be building your game to be resistant to client manipulation in the first place, rather than asking the user for a stupid level of privilege.

You DON’T need kernel access to achieve that.

Developers that go down this route are substituting good architectural design for god tier access to your machine. Kernel access is the proverbial keys to the kingdom, there is literally nothing they cannot do with it.

It’s like a gardener saying they need access to water, so you give them the alarm codes, a copy of every single door key, the safe code, the wifi password, a silicon mold of your fingerprint, and a urine sample for good measure.

It is WAY beyond overkill, and any developer that claims to need that level of access to prevent cheating is lying. There is NO justification for it. They. Are. Being. LAZY and they are putting you at risk in the process.

there is nothing close to kernel-level anticheat from Windows

Long may this continue. Fuck kernel level anticheat malware, and fuck the developers that use it.