While I would still prefer no anti-cheat, this also means we probably won’t have to worry about a non-compatible anticheat getting added later.
Anti-cheats are only small hurdles for cheaters and invasive software for regular consumers.
That is why they keep getting more and more invasive. When they run at kernel level all the time, like Vanguard, it’s almost impossible to prevent detection and they can then ban you at a literal hardware level based on your motherboard & CPU identifiers.
You still encounter cheaters every once in a while because they don’t immediately ban them, as that would give hints as to what exactly was detected and when.
Literally makes no difference, its cat and mouse. Still rampant cheating on Valorant. BattlEye, EAC all the same.
Prevention has proven pointless. In my opinion the best way to combat cheaters is machine learning, non-intrusive and can get increasingly effective.
Oh the days when anyone could download wall hacks and aimbots from a random forum and run them, those were truly great times. It was really nice starting a match in CS and getting shot every time you showed a pixel of your head anywhere. The TF2 sniper bot thing few years back really brought a nostalgic tear to my eye as well.
Anticheat sure sucks, but without them any game with global matchmaking and not a tightly knit set of community run servers with a very active moderation ready to wield the banhammer would literally be unplayable, as people are assholes.
Yeah, but we are well passed that.
Some games now restrict certain legitimate programs in the name of “anti cheat”, which is stepping well over the line. Kernel level AC needs to go aswell. Server side AC and ML is the proper path we should be taking instead of adding attack vectors, privacy invading software to our PCs.
There’s other solutions that can be developed to minimise cheater impact in games, such as trust factor from Valve. We are never going to get rid of cheaters, people are scum, but we can try to minimise their impact.
While I would still prefer no anti-cheat
I’m curious, why’s that? For me, cheaters are extremely detrimental to enjoying online games.
Yeah sorry, I should have explained better. I think anticheat has a valid place in multiplayer experiences, but I think most games should offer anti-cheat free experiences for solo play or playing with friends.
Sea of Thieves has friend only modes, so I would like to see those remain anti-cheat free where people have the option to use mods/etc if they want.
That’s true, though notably even the solo and friends-only options in SoT are still entirely online and share their progression with the main online mode. I agree that it would be cool to have a modding-friendly option that’s completely separate.
Yeah, and shared progression is a decent reason for them to have anticheat as well.
For the mod side of things, Deep Rock Galactic has a pretty good approach. They have 3-categories of mods, verified, approved, and sandbox. Verified is client only (usually cosmetic) and is allowed in all games, approved mods require all players to have the mod installed but otherwise can be used in any game. However sandboxed mods are considered too disruptive to the game experience and require a separate save file. Players can create a “sandbox” copy of their save file at any time, so it’s extremely easy to play around with the extreme mods without losing any of your base game progression.
While this approach to mods is great though, it’s important to note that DRG doesn’t really have anti-cheat to keep people from bypassing the mod system and cheating in public games. But hopefully by providing easy ways for people to “properly” have that experience, they can avoid most cheaters (similar to the idea that the best way to fight piracy is through good convenient options to be a legal customer). It works pretty well, but I do imagine it won’t work as well in a game with a more PVP focus.
There’s no place for anti-cheat or other restrictions in co-op games. Sea of Thieves is PvPvE though, so anti-cheat does make sense, even if it won’t stop cheating.
I wish user controlled servers were more of a thing so individuals in charge could kick out suspected cheaters.
Feels like client side anticheat is a perpetual game of cat and mouse either way. EGS certainly doesnt prevent cheaters from spoiling apex (impossible aim & recoils control, impossible aim snapping & prefiring on target location, impossible movement etc).
Server side would be great but extremely costly in terms of performance from what little I understand.
I think VAC is the best. It will be interesting to see how VACnet develops with the AI boom now.
Neat! I wasn’t aware of this. Has there been any press or indication of its efficacy so far?
Valve are very mouth shut about AC, which is for the best. They also have trust factor, which is a rating given to your account based on many factors across Steam, to try and predict if you are trustworthy, so it will match you with other trusted accounts.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Sea of Thieves just got a big upgrade and with it Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC) is now online.
Thankfully the developers have ensured it’s enabled for Steam Deck / Linux players using Proton.
Anti-cheat can be a big issue for Steam Deck / Linux gamers, often blocking games from working, but EAC does support Linux developers just need to enable that support.
Speaking in a previous developer video announcing the change, they clearly said they would ensure it was enabled for Proton.
Virtual Keyboard Support - Players summoning the Virtual Keyboard inside the game will now find that a range of new languages are supported: Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Thai, Japanese, Korean and Russian.
Message of the Day - Players will now experience a Message of the Day when arriving in the front end menu, highlighting current Season features, upcoming content and other exciting news within the world of Sea of Thieves.
The original article contains 281 words, the summary contains 151 words. Saved 46%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Better than paying for some random company to slap some unknown solution onto your game and pretending the problem is solved.
