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Valve hopes the Steam Machine will make devs pay more attention to Linux anti-cheat support (www.pcguide.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/linux@programming.dev
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Steam Machine’s upcoming release means more people will be playing games on Linux, specifically SteamOS. The idea of ditching Windows for gaming is becoming more attractive, as the Steam Machine is first-party desktop-level hardware that’s optimized for Linux-based SteamOS. The biggest hurdle for Linux gamers right now is a lack of support for many anti-cheats – particular those that require kernel-level access. But with the release of the Machine, Valve hopes game devs take notice.

Steam Machine seems to getting the most attention out of Valve’s latest hardware launches. The Steam creators announced the new console-like mini PC alongside the Steam Frame VR headset and new Steam Controller. Even the Frame runs on SteamOS, which means Valve now has a trio of first-party hardware on Linux (including the Steam Deck handheld).

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[–] 22 points 1 year ago (4 children)

“Never trust the client” renders entire genres of games inaccessible for a big corporation.

No it doesn't. It makes certain engine implementations inaccessible. You can make a game in any genre that doesn't require trusting the client.

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  • [–] -5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

    Ultimately you either have basically google stadia (with all its technical problems) or you are trusting the client to render the game.

    Even if the client only has exactly the absolute minimum amount of information needed to draw all the things that are visible, that still allows a cheat to see the player coordinates and the coordinates of visible entities, which usually makes eg. an aimbot trivial to make.

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  • [–] 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Rendering is not what you are doing server side.

    Servers would just be checking to make sure a player can actually do something and if they can't don't let the client do it. Then any changes made client side would only affect the player making the changes.

    It boggles my mind Riot would rather use a hacky method like kernel level anti-cheat instead of just having the servers mirror the game logic and confirm everything. Its all about saving money at our expense.

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  • [–] -2 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    Rendering is not what you are doing server side.

    No shit sherlock. Rendering requires information about the game, and that information is enough to allow cheating. Aimbots don't need to perform "invalid actions" in order to wreck a game. They just need to be faster and more accurate than most human players. Trying to heuristically detect aimbots is also commonly used alongside other anticheat methods, it just doesn't work (unless you have people manually reviewing individual reported cheaters, but companies try to avoid that because it's expensive and risks false positives).

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago*

    Right. Nice to find someone here who actually understands some of the problems that make kernel level anticheat important. In modern FPS, server authoiritative everything is just not feasible. No gamer is going to accept the latency that would cause. Or when you look and suddenly you momentarily desynced and now your camera jerks back because the sever decided you tried to look around too quickly? People are so willfully ignorant about this topic.

    maybe we could get away from needing it as badly if valve would provide a strong attestation that the kernel running is unmodified with a secure tpm solution, but they haven't, so here we are.

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