[NoPicklez]

I wouldn't say these anti-cheat tools that come with Valorant or LoL are from dubious origins. eSports has grown, real money is on the table and cheating is rampant in many games and it's not always obvious cheating, it's often slight improvements.

People complain, but there are a ton of games that use a kernel based anti cheat system that people haven't been flapping their arms around. Valve anti-cheat, EasyCheat etc.

Edit: Valve isn't kernel based, my mistake

[troad]

> eSports has grown

It's not really clear it has, or is. [0] People, at least in the West, don't seem to think watching video games be played is equivalent to watching sport, which is honestly the least surprising thing ever to me, but I guess I'm not a bombastic YouTube 'content creator'.

I think the main problem has nothing to do with eSports, it's simply that average people don't enjoy games that are rigged against them. Ergo, a profit incentive arises to prevent cheating in multiplayer games. And since a separate profit incentive dictates that all games must be online these days, we end up in a situation where I can't play a single-player game of Madden on Linux because it explicitly blocks Wine, [1] presumably to protect the fairness of multiplayer. (Or more cynically, the integrity of the Madden MUT loot pack casino. Profit motives everywhere!)

[0] https://www.pcgamer.com/the-streamer-who-spent-dollar1m-on-a...

[1] https://www.protondb.com/app/2140330

[esdf]

I've never heard of a kernel-based anti-cheat from Valve. Can you provide a source for that

[devrand]

This is get first that I’m hearing that VAC is kernel level. Do you have a source for that?

[dkarras]

>I wouldn't say these anti-cheat tools that come with Valorant or LoL are from dubious origins.

You are talking about Vanguard, developed by Riot which is owned by Tencent which is a Chinese company? China has demonstrated enough grip on companies over the years that anything China can directly influence is dubious. China can decide to do something with the installations and has the power to do it in secret. It is significantly harder in western democracies. The relationship between the state and the private enterprises is entirely different.

Valve's VAC is not in the same league with Vanguard from a technical point of view (it is not even kernel based if I'm not mistaken). I would not let that slide either if it was though.

[Hawxy]

At least in terms of video games investment, Tencent is known to be very hands-off of the western companies it owns and is often seen to be a better option vs some western conglomerates. Ubisoft turning to Tencent to help it fight off a takeover attempt from Vivendi is a pretty good example.

Vanguard itself is developed by a US-based team and they've stated that they have very little to do with Tencent's anti-cheat team (Tencent uses its own solution for the CN region, including for Riots game) beyond sharing cheat samples.