[SpaceManNabs]

I skimmed, but it seems none of this addressed why the service (edit) runs at boot-time? Also, expecting a service to not not look at your data if they have access is not security.

If Valve can mitigate hacking in CSGO without such an intrusive service, I am sure Riot can. I, myself, did a very, very, very poor job with an autoencoder to detect anomalous matches in Dota and caught a large amount of players abusing the system. As far as I know, CSGO anti cheat does involve an ML component.

My point is that a non-intrusive anti cheat, advanced analytics, and tracking of user feedback goes a long way.

Ofc, none of this matters. If the playerbase actually cared, they'd boycott or stay away. And I cannot remember the last time gamers ran a successful boycott campaign.

edit: Also read that uninstalling the game will not always uninstall the ring 0 anti cheat. I can't verify since I would never install this on my system, but for what it is worth: That is terrible IF true.

[houzi]

Hackers in standard CSGO games are rampant from what I understand.

Serious players pay extra to queue up in a dedicated service for high tickrate servers and anti-cheats which I believe are rootkits as well.. not sure about any of this though.

[blattimwind]

It's not a solved problem for CSGO, but surprisingly the situation now, as a F2P game, is much better than what it was before F2P. It's really quite rare to run into cheaters, most people are just smurfing.

[SpaceManNabs]

rampant years ago. It took a long time to get where it is now. There are still cheaters here and there, but that is to be expected, and relatively rare in my experience.

[Draiken]

It is absolutely still rampant. I could count at least 5 cheater encounters in the last 30 days (blatant cheaters, btw).

They try their best to isolate cheaters with a "trust factor" system but the reality is, unless you pay an external service with their own anti-cheat software (that's probably as bad as Valorant's) you will get a high amount of cheaters.

Given they have zero transparency on the trust factor system, I could have a lower factor than you (I definitely rage too much), so because of it I see them more often. But there's no way to know if I'm in the cheater bubble, or you're in the no-cheater bubble.

[SpaceManNabs]

I agree that it could be more transparent. I haven't faced a single suspicious player in quite some time (and similar with my friends that I talked to about this since this came up). Sorry that your experience is worse. Player "toxicity" should not be involved in this since it might be used as a proxy.

[cptroot]

To be clear, that's not because there are no cheaters. They've just finally implemented a behavior score and shadowbanned suspected cheaters and toxic players that way, with some help from the player- trained ML mentioned upthread.

[SpaceManNabs]

If non cheaters do not play with cheaters, mission accomplished.

[judge2020]

It actually doesn't look like the service is always running (although the kernel driver is). I haven't played Valorant since I started my PC, so the `vgc` service for vanguard has no status (and is in "manual" mode).

[SpaceManNabs]

edited to be more careful with my words. thanks. Some users have reported it as always running, but I haven't seen any confirmation.

[Kaveren]

I think a Riot employee stated that cheaters would try to start cheats before the anticheat starts, so the anticheat running at all times is trying to prevent this.

CS:GO has a lot more hackers than games with more intrusive anticheats like Overwatch in my experience. Only solution is an invasive anticheat, machine learning, and trust factor systems.

[SpaceManNabs]

I have not seen anything conclusive on CSGO having more trusted players playing with cheaters than overwatch. My anecdotal evidence for both games also goes along with this.