| Hear me out: Containers. Or even just go full VM. AFAIK we have all the pieces to make those approaches work _just fine_ - GPU virtualization, ways to dynamically share memory etc. It's a bit nuts, sure, and a bit wasteful - but it'd let you have a predictable binary environment for basically forever, as well as a fairly well defined "interface" layer between the actual hardware and the machine context. You could even accommodate shenanigans such as Aurora 4X's demand to have a specific decimal separator. We could even achieve a degree of middle-ground with the kernel anti-cheat secure boot crowd - running a minimal (and thus easy to independently audit) VM host at boot. I'd still kinda hate it, but less than having actual rootkits in the "main" kernel. It would still need some sort of "confirmation of non-tampering" from the compositor, but it _should_ be possible, especially if the companies wanting that sort of stuff were willing to foot the bill (haha). And, on top of that, a VM would make it less likely for vulnerabilities of the anti-cheat to spread into the OS I care about (a'la the Dark Souls exploit). So kinda like Flatpak, I guess, but more. |
Running the anti-cheat in a VM completely defeats the point. That's actually what cheaters would prefer because they can manipulate the VM from the host without the anti-cheat detecting it.