What a bizarre take. If people consent to installing these invasive anti-cheat systems, then it doesn't matter if anyone has a "right" to a business model or not; in that case their business model is working.
> They can do plenty enough server-side.
No, they can't. The amount of responses in these threads by people who have no idea what they're talking about is... well, probably not surprising, unfortunately.
This is the same (correct) argument against the effectiveness of DRM: if you put things in the hands of a user and client you don't control, then it is a cat-and-mouse game to try to maintain control of those things.
Sure, a naive cheat program of 20 years ago will today obviously look like a cheater. But if you have a cheat that statistically makes you look like a skilled non-cheating player (these things exist today!), the server isn't going to be able to catch you.
I'm not saying that justifies letting another party install what is effectively a rootkit on your hardware. I personally won't do it; I just live without games that require it, and that's fine. Maybe there is some middle ground where some form of client-side anti-cheat can reliably run without kernel-level permissions. But it's a lazy, ignorant argument to just say that game companies haven't come up with it yet because it's "easier" to write a kernel-level system.
The bizarre take is granting a shred of validity to anyone who says "I need the keys to your house and bank account and a webcam in your bath room to protect the marketable value of my game service so that other platers will rent server access from me."
Not all types of games require this kind of anticheat. But this competitive type like CS/Valorant/MOBA games that use skill based matchmaking and rankings does require something that approaches fair play to even work as a produc. So the user must make some sacrifices to get there due how open and easy it is to manipulate things on x86/Windows for the PCs administrator.
Would it be reasonable to only sell this kind of game on console like hardware? Sure, but people have and use PCs and will have to make this choice themselves. And its not like user space software is not bad for privacy as any process your user runs can read all your files and even memory of other processes.
> They can do plenty enough server-side.
No, they can't. The amount of responses in these threads by people who have no idea what they're talking about is... well, probably not surprising, unfortunately.
This is the same (correct) argument against the effectiveness of DRM: if you put things in the hands of a user and client you don't control, then it is a cat-and-mouse game to try to maintain control of those things.
Sure, a naive cheat program of 20 years ago will today obviously look like a cheater. But if you have a cheat that statistically makes you look like a skilled non-cheating player (these things exist today!), the server isn't going to be able to catch you.
I'm not saying that justifies letting another party install what is effectively a rootkit on your hardware. I personally won't do it; I just live without games that require it, and that's fine. Maybe there is some middle ground where some form of client-side anti-cheat can reliably run without kernel-level permissions. But it's a lazy, ignorant argument to just say that game companies haven't come up with it yet because it's "easier" to write a kernel-level system.