[Quarrel]

Recent keyboard cheats (ie minimising the learning curve in seamlessly changing direction when strafing) are nothing, and not really what anyone means by hardware cheats.

What is meant are PCIe hardware devices that can use DMA to read and write data without being detected by software processes at all.

They've been around for quite a while (5+ years?), but I doubt they'll ever get mainstream adoption.

They're also used in malware analysis at times.

[mschuster91]

If these things get mainstream adoption their PCI IDs just get blacklisted (they do need to register with the system first), or IOMMU configuration will be yet another thing to fingerprint. IIRC, the host CPU has to allow the "evil" PCIe device access to memory, or is that just something that Thunderbolt chips implemented after malware authors used this for insta-unlocks?

[Hikikomori]

They come with custom firmware and pretend to be other hardware like an usb controller or sound card.

[mschuster91]

So what, as soon as these things become mainstream cheating targets, anticheat vendors will force (or "strongly suggest") to hardware manufacturers that every piece of hardware has to have some sort of uncloneable TPM-style module to verify authenticity.

[Hikikomori]

They already are in many games where good undetectable cheats are 100$ monthly subscriptions. Anticheat vendors don't have enough pull to pull that off, Microsoft maybe could but most of their effort goes into protections against advesaries other than the computers owner.

[Nevermark]

Why not simply build in fast strafe direction switching into the game and level the field?

Seems like removing an opportunity for cheating is a better strategy for game design than policing cheating.

Balancing a game doesn't depending on specific challenges, just ensuring there are enough challenges.

Or as a non-avid gamer, am I missing something?