[jakebasile]

We had the best alternative decades ago. Let the community run the servers and ban cheaters while allowing individual servers to form their own culture and community. The obsession with matchmaking and games as a service (requiring publisher run servers) is what painted the industry into this corner.

Note that I like matchmaking, specifically skill based matchmaking, in some games and at some times but completely ending server browsers and community run dedicated servers was a mistake.

[xvinci]

I was pretty good at CS:S, semi-professional level. I nevertheless still enjoyed hanging out on public servers with friends. I cannot tell you how often I have just been banned.

Another example: I was an anti-cheat admin in a major league about 20 years ago. I am quite confident a lower double digit percentage of banned players were innocent - it was simply too hard to get enough competent people for doing manual checks (you'd have to be really good at the game yourself to confidently tell what might be intuition and what cant while evaluating pro players with money-prizes on the line).

So while I appreciate that sentiment, and maybe you found THE one community where all that really worked out for you, but it was by no means the "best alternative" from where I am standing.

[jakebasile]

As I said, offering both is the ideal. I'd rather have some false positives if it means a way forward without kernel rootkits becoming the new normal.

[notabee]

But then it's harder to shim in the money-makers like microtransactions, loot boxes, and all the other recent "innovations" in the gaming industry.