[b1temy]

> they should provide built-in anti-cheat support in the OS.

As much as I dislike anti-cheat in general (why incorporate it instead of just having proper moderation and/or private servers? Do you need a sketchy third-party kernel level driver to police you to make sure you're "browsing the internet properly in a way that is compliant with company XYZ's policies", or even when running other software like a photo editor, word processor, or anything else? It's _your_ software that you bought.) something similar is already happening with, e.g, Widevine bundled in browsers for DRM-ed video streaming.

I agree that having some first-party or reputable anti-cheat driver or system, is probably preferable than having different studios roll out their own anticheat drivers. (I am aware there are studio-level or common third party common anti-cheat solutions already, such as Denuvo or Vanguard. But I would prefer something better)

[ThatPlayer]

> why incorporate it instead of just having proper moderation and/or private servers?

No one wants to become a moderator, they do it out of necessity. So it's pretty much the other way around: a lot of anticheats were, and are, originally developed by community members for private servers (because you're not deploying a 3rd party anti-cheat onto first party servers). BattleEye was originally for Battlefield games. Punkbuster for Team Fortress. EasyAntiCheat for Counter Strike. I even remember Starcraft Brood War 3rd party server ICCUP with a custom 'anti-hack' client requirement.

You still see this today with Counter Strike 2 private servers Face-IT: they have additional anti-cheat not less. Same with GTA V modded private server, FiveM have anti-cheat they call adhesive.

And then game developer saw that players are doing that, so they integrate the anti-cheat so that players do not have to go downloading/installing the anti-cheat separately. Quake 3 Arena added Punkbuster in an update for example.

[stackghost]

>why incorporate it instead of just having proper moderation and/or private servers?

Because game studios these days are all about global matchmaking. Private servers aren't really a thing any more except in more niche games. Instead you (optionally with a party) queue for matchmaking. Every game has to have a ranked ladder these days, it seems.

I miss the days of Tribes 2 or CS1.6 when games had server browsers

[b1temy]

> Because game studios these days are all about global matchmaking

Why not have moderation then? When participating in an online forum, you are essentially "matchmaking" to a topic or corner of the internet with similar interests. Have some moderators (be it members of the community, or staff) ban players on obvious hacking/cheating or rule-breaking behaviour, and allow members to report any instances of this (I believe this is already a thing in modern video games, I have seen videos of "influencers" getting enraged when losing and reporting players for "stream sniping").

Sure, this might cause the usual issues of creating an echo chamber where mods and admins might unfairly ban members of the community. But you could always just join a different server in that case.

I believe Minecraft has a system similar to what I described; you enter the URL of a server to join, each hosted on its own independent instance (not necessarily hosted by Mojang, the studio behind Minecraft) each with their own unique sets of rules and culture, and being banned in one server does not ban you from every other server. Incidentally, Minecraft also does not have kernel level anticheat, and still very successfully manages to be one of the most popular games around (By some accounts, the top-selling game of all time).

> I miss the days of Tribes 2 or CS1.6 when games had server browsers

I do too.

[charcircuit]

>I believe Minecraft has a system similar to what I described

Except every big server has to run an anticheat. Some servers required clients with client side anticheats even. Some servers required you to screen share with a moderator and they would go through the files on your computer to look for cheats. Exploiting people for free labor to moderate servers was never enough to stop the issues cheating had. Even with these volunteers anticheat was essential for see what players were flagging checks to know who to watch over.

[b1temy]

> Except every big server has to run an anticheat. Some servers required clients with client side anticheats even.

I am fine with anticheat on the server-side to help volunteers/moderators find issues, since it does not force the user to install any sketchy kernel-level software. As for the servers that require client-side anticheats, I was unaware there are Minecraft servers that do this (though I do not doubt you, and believe you when you say they exist), and can't speak to it.

> Some servers required you to screen share with a moderator and they would go through the files on your computer to look for cheats.

I was not aware this is a practice that some servers do. It is beyond ridiculous to ask to screen share just to verify no cheats were involved imo, and is a major invasion of privacy. The only scenario I can see this being okay, is in a physically hosted event, where players are playing on devices provided by the event organisers, so there would be no expectation of privacy in any case, in the same way you do not have an expectation of privacy on a work device.

In both cases, you could always find a different server that does not run anticheat, or even start your own server (if you were willing to do that). This isn't something that can even be done in other modern games that employ anticheat drivers and only allow connecting to their single official server.

Re: exploiting people for free labor to moderate servers

Nobody is forcing them to do it, I imagine they do it because they enjoy it and want to give back to the community, the same way someone would contribute to open source or moderate a forum in their spare time. In any case, is it always "free labor"? I have heard of paid-transactions and/or donations, sponsors, or servers being hosted by streamers who have other sources of income to pay for moderators. Though admittedly, I am not familiar with Minecraft in particular and if this is actually the case in most servers.

[charcircuit]

>the same way someone would contribute to open source or moderate a forum in their spare time

It would be like open source business where the owner makes millions of dollars a month off the software and then tries to get people to work for him for free to make him even more money. The volunteers do all the work and the owner makes all of the money.

[ronsor]

> I agree that having some first-party or reputable anti-cheat driver or system, is probably preferable than having different studios roll out their own anticheat drivers. (I am aware there are studio-level or common third party common anti-cheat solutions already, such as Denuvo or Vanguard. But I would prefer something better)

Only Apple really has enough platform lockdown to achieve that. Whatever Microsoft ships would have more holes than swiss cheese (not that I'm opposed to that or anything).

[15155]

> Whatever Microsoft ships would have more holes than swiss cheese

The current execution environment with IOMMU and TPM requirements is changing this rapidly.

Try disabling Windows Defender - good luck.

[direwolf20]

This is done for the benefit of Hollywood.

[user34283]

Would that not create the issue that you would only need to find one bypass for said official anti-cheat that then works for all games out there?

I heard with Denuvo reverse engineering work needs to be done for each individual target to unprotect it, but I'm not sure how this will be the case with a first party anti-cheat driver.