[CircleSpokes]

I honestly don't understand why people act like this. Wanting to be able to ensure firmware isn't maliciously modified is a good thing. Open firmware is also a good idea obviously but there has to be a way to ensure firmware is signed either by OEM or your own keys like secure boot.

As for games, lots of people play games and want good anticheat. If you don't like that you don't have to play those games but no need to act like the way you are because other people want decent anticheat.

[kortilla]

>honestly don't understand why people act like this.

Because it’s social pressure to compromise your computer to a gaming company to get to play a game.

People don’t care about the anticheat on their computer, they want it foisted on everyone else who plays, which is a sucky proposition for privacy and security minded people.

It’s like advocating for the TSA to be controlling access to the grocery store because you want to feel safe there and don’t mind the privacy violation.

[CircleSpokes]

>People don’t care about the anticheat on their computer, they want it foisted on everyone else who plays, which is a sucky proposition for privacy and security minded people.

No they want games without hackers. Which kernel based anticheats helps with. Can it also impact privacy and security? Yes no doubt but so can any program running on the computer even in userspace. Remember we are talking about kernel anticheats on windows lol.

If you are really worried about it you could dual boot like many people. Either way this whole argument seems silly to me.

[kortilla]

You say “no” but then repeat what I said worded differently. When the current market for “games without hackers” is filled with kernel modules, it sucks.

[account42]

It's worth reminding that we already had a solution to the games with hackers problem: smaller community-run servers where people can get to know each other. But game companies want the centralized model so that they can stay in control of how the game is used to continuously monetize it and to forcefully retire it once they want to push a newer one.

Hackers are mainly only problem for anonymous ranked matchmaking. That's not to say cheaters don't exist without it but they are a) much less disruptive b) have much smaller reach and therefore c) are less motivated.

Like most ills being used to push anti-user technology, cheating is primarily a problem created by the industry itself.

[1827163]

It's a bit of a stretch, but maybe we as a society should be considering the social pressure as being the problem. Why do we allow ourselves to be 'controlled' in this way by others? Especially young people? If we could learn to move past this?

[charcircuit]

>to compromise your computer

What do you mean by this? As the user you are intending to have the game and its anticheat run. Having to download and run a game on your computer isn't compromising your computer either. Maybe the only thing which doesn't give the game company power to run potentially malicious code on your machine is cloud gaming. That also solves the cheating problem at least.

[takeda]

You're advocating for installing a kernel module that you don't even know what it does exactly when running a random game.

Would you also support a full cavity search each time you decide to fly a plane?

The kernel module has full access to your hardware, you don't know what it does exactly. You don't even know if it does something more than anticheat.

People got so complacent in recent years, and this is on a technology forum no less. I guess today the Sony rootkit[1] would be totally acceptable.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...

[charcircuit]

>You're advocating for installing a kernel module that you don't even know what it does exactly when running a random game.

You don't know what the game will do either. It requires trusting Riot even if there isn't an anticheat.

Also most users will never know what the other kernel level drivers do.

>Would you also support a full cavity search each time you decide to fly a plane?

I don't see how this is related?

>The kernel module has full access to your hardware, you don't know what it does exactly.

The same can be said about any other kernel level driver and even about Windows itself.

>People got so complacent in recent years, and this is on a technology forum no less.

What Riot wants to do is not possible with a user level anticheat. Once Windows eventually gets its security improved such that apps can query the integrity of the system Riot would likely be able to get away with a less privileged anticheat.

>I guess today the Sony rootkit[1] would be totally acceptable.

If it didn't try and hide itself I would agree with you.

[kortilla]

Do you think the 30+ years of user-space isolation improvements that have gone into modern OSes are not undone by a kernel module?

[charcircuit]

The whole point of a kernel level anticheat in that it can bypass the isolation to find cheats.

The isolation still exists for normal programs when the anticheat is present.

[takeda]

Sure, isolation exists except for Riot Games (and any other company that adds similar mandatory modules, which eventually will be all). Oh yeah, assuming there also won't be any vulnerabilities, but that's impossible, because we all know about the high quality software coming from gaming industry.

[thomastjeffery]

1. It doesn't actually work.

2. All it actually does is keep users trapped in Windows. God forbid anyone actually use Linux, or even a VM!

The only actually effective anti-cheat is the original: moderation.

Now that users aren't able to host their own servers, they can't do moderation. Game studios don't want to do moderation themselves, so they keep trying (and failing) to replace it with automated anticheat systems.

[Cloudef]

This here. Cheaters will always find ways to cheat. Theres already cheats that run on completely separate machine so they cant be detected. Legimate customers keep getting screwed.

[selestify]

Why did hosting your own server stop being a thing?

[account42]

Game companies want the centralized model so that they can stay in control of how the game is used to continuously monetize it and to forcefully retire it once they want to push a newer one.

[dexterdog]

Because people prefer to pay 10x as much to have apple/google/etc host it for them. It's still a thing for people who know what they're doing and the experience is vastly better and more private and secure.

[codedokode]

> As for games, lots of people play games and want good anticheat

Great, let's install a backdoor in every computer so that some people can play games and watch movies. No. Computer is a thing for computing numbers not a replacement for a TV.

[CircleSpokes]

I can't take people like you seriously. The anticheat isn't a backdoor. It doesn't ship with the operating system or come preinstalled in anyway. You opt into it when you play the game. Literally nothing is forcing you to use it or have it installed on your computer.

I understand this is the internet and being super dramatic is part of it but can we please be for real for one moment?

[chaps]

What's wrong with people being upset that in order to play the game they have to install low level kernel modules? It's flawed software that hits an ant with a sledgehammer. Adding to injury, tons of reports online of people getting BSODs and other security features not working while the module is enabled. It's invasive and it's silly to be as dismissive as you are around peoples' concerns.

https://www.reddit.com/r/riotgames/comments/12wr2hz/kernelmo...

https://www.reddit.com/r/ValorantTechSupport/comments/kfxy9a...

[codedokode]

I meant things like Microsoft's signing keys embedded inside BIOS, Microsoft Pluton CPU, secure enclaves inside CPU (now deprecated though) and things made for Secure Boot and DRM.

[makeitdouble]

> Wanting to be able to ensure firmware isn't maliciously modified is a good thing.

I'm not sure it's a good thing at its core. The intent seems legit on the surface, but digging into the implementation you'll always end up having an adversarial relation with your user's security and device ownership.

On games, I kinda see this as an argument for preserving a special status for consoles, where the maker keep a right to secure everything to insane levels. Doing the same on general purpose computing platform isn't acceptable. Banking and digital currencies are morr of a blurry line, but games definitely shouldn't be accessing the utter most secure system of the platform.

If anything, opening the door to a whole community to hack the base security of your computing life when litteral life and death applications also rely on those shouldn't be allowed.

[ekianjo]

> I honestly don't understand why people act like this.

Good anticheat? Just play with people you know instead of random strangers. Thats your anticheat right there.

[account42]

But how will this provide the game company with continous revenue streams from selling you database entries that you can show of to complete strangers.