[CuriouslyC]

You don't need a full distro, you can just run the game in a VM sandbox with trusted computing extensions alongside whatever distro you want. That breaks cheats that rely on network/memory inspection, you can still cheat using the raw pixel output to drive faked input, but I don't think the loop is closeable there.

[Mindwipe]

That wouldn't be sufficient. You'd need a hardware component to verify the OS signature of the specific distro with a trusted (by the game company) asymmetric key, and that enforced driver signing.

Those things are all possible, but really the only entity that has the power to realistically do them is the OEM - Valve could do it for SteamOS, but only on it's own hardware.

[keyringlight]

Has anyone produced a proof of concept for such a system, for gaming or otherwise?

Given that a certain amount of windows gamers have been having issues making sure their PCs complied with the config requirements for the latest COD/Battlefield, it would seem an even higher bar for a consumer targeted bit of software that needs to do more to be running securely (or add a different mode to your distro install and reboot to it), alongside the wider variety of distros/configs. Distros advertising themselves for gaming or getting people to migrate from windows are also trying to keep barriers to entry low or to appear simple.

[surajrmal]

Running in a VM is not secure by itself. You need something similar to what Android is building via protected VMs.

[Mindwipe]

Indeed running a VM is an exploiter's dream, unless the VM is essentially run by a hardware hypervisor (akin to Android's system).