[Grimblewald]

Kernel access is related to privacy though, and its the most well documented abuse of such things. Kernel level access can help obfuscate the fact that it'a happening. However, it is also useful for significantly worse, and given track records, must be assumed to be true. The problem is kernel level AC hasnt even solved the problem, so the entire thing is risky, uneccesary and unfit for purpose making an entierly unneccesary risk to force onto unsuspecting users. The average user does not understand the risks and is not made aware of them either.

There are far better ways to detect cheating, such as calculating statistics on performance and behaviour and simply binning players with those of similar competency. This way, if cheating gives god-like behaviour, you play with other godlike folks. No banning required. Detecting the thing cheating allows is much easier than detecting ways in which people gain that thing, it creates a single point of detection that is hard to avoid and can be done entierly server side, with multiple teirs how mucb server side calculation a given player consumes. Milling around in bronze levels? Why check? If you aren't performing so well that yoh can leave low ranks, perhaps we need cheats as a handicap, unless co sistently performing well out of distribution, at which point you catch smurfing as well.

point is focusing on detecting the thing people care about rather than one of the myriad of ways people may gain that unfair edge, is going to be easier and more robust while asking for less ergregious things of users.

[salamanteri]

Counter Strike is a pretty good example that the statistical analysis alone doesn't work at all...at least not now. Valve has been collecting data since at least 2017 for their VAC Live system and it still doesn't work well enough to prevent or decrease the amount of cheating. The model only gives a cooldown of 20 hours if it flags your gameplay as irregular, and that cooldown resets over time.

It usually takes months, if not years for cheaters to get banned, but it takes a couple of dollars for a cheater to get a new account and start cheating again. Every time Valve fine tunes their models, they end up accidentally banning more innocent players in the process, so nobody has trust in that system anyways. There's too many datapoints to handle in competitive games, and there is no way to set a threshold that doesn't end up hurting innocent people in the process.

[nawgz]

> kernel level AC hasnt even solved the problem

> There are far better ways to detect cheating, such as calculating statistics on performance

Ask any CS player how VAC’s statistical approach compares to Valorant’s Vanguard and you will stop asserting such foolishness

The problem with what you are saying is that cheaters are extremely determined and skilled, and so the cheating itself falls on a spectrum, as do the success of various anticheat approaches. There is absolutely no doubt that cheating still occurs with kernel level anticheats, so you’re right it didn’t “solve” the problem in the strictest sense. But as a skilled player in both games, only one of them is meaningfully playable while trusting your opponents aren’t cheating - it’s well over an order of magnitude in difference of frequency.

[Grimblewald]

i searched "hacking in valorant" and found hella complaints about aimbotting and wallhacking. I can give you a simple way to make that work right now in a way that completely bypasses KLAC. Vanguard hasn't meaningfully solved the problem, and so my point stands. Something as simple as a webcam, a virtual controller, and a cnn can be used to construct a fully isolated aimbot. No memory inspecting anticheat will get that, klac or otherwise. Don't need to go that far though, since streaming means you can simply capture video output realtime, and better than realtime vision/action models exist. Its a project a skilled and motivated highschool student could easily finish in a weekend, in fact, im sure if you search something along these lines you'll find someone doing a video series on exactly this.

[nawgz]

What an analysis, “hella complaints”

[Grimblewald]

As opposed to your more high brow verbiage equally low brow take? Come now, engage with the core critique.

[nemothekid]

>This way, if cheating gives god-like behaviour, you play with other godlike folks.

Anti-cheat is not used to "protect" bronze level games. FACEIT uses a kernel level anti cheat, and FACEIT is primarily used by the top 1% of CS2 players.

A lot of the "just do something else" crowd neglects to realize that anticheat is designed to protect the integrity of the game at the highest levels of play. If the methods you described were adequate, the best players wouldn't willingly install FACEIT - they would just stick with VAC which is user-level.

[Grimblewald]

I dunno man, at least give me the option? Like at least give me the option to play without klac with the exception i can join klac'd lobbies or something.

[nemothekid]

I mean, thats what Valve did. You are free to play on Valve's ranked ladder without KLAC. All the pros, semi-pros, and the people who want a cleaner ranked experience play on ESEA or FACEIT.

I doubt for other newer games the option would ever be worth it. Why host to servers and matchmaking pools for a tiny player base, who is will probably already be prone to complaining?