EA needed a scapegoat it seems
Seems like my “fuck EA I’m not giving them money ever again” policy is beginning to pay off :)
As someone on Mastodon wisely pointed out: There aren’t enough Linux gamers to invest resources in supporting them properly, but there are enough using it to cheat to actively block them?
It seems like BS eh. Other folks I’ve seen are suggesting its just because they want to ditch easy anti-cheat to go with EA anti-cheat which (apparently) is windows only with no plans to develop for linux.
While I appreciate that cheating is a problem in most games, I still think these Linux ban waves are just the companies trying to appear to the complaining playerbase that they’re putting effort into a solution even though it won’t make a big difference.
Apex was one or the earliest games to support competitive multiplayer on Linux. While I hate EA for a lot of reasons, I couldn’t have fully switched to Linux years ago if Apex wasn’t playable because all the other games I played were and still aren’t.
FYI - the owner of this site, gamingonlinux, was a mod on the [email protected] community until they were caught abusing their moderator powers. Then they deleted their account and complained on mastodon that it’s stupid design that mod logs are public. [Screenshot]
Ceterum autem censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
Anti-cheat is an arms race. We just find ourselves at a point where the arms race has progressed to the point where the best known strategy for securing a play session means ostracising custom hw/kernel configurations.
But I have to think it’s only a matter of time before even that’s not enough, (since there already exist ways around kernel level anticheat, including AI-based techniques that are entirely undetectable).
My guess is the logical conclusion involves a universal reputation based system, where you have an account with some 3rd party system (maybe VAC) that persists across all games you play. It will watch your gameplay, and maintain a (probably hidden) “risk of cheating” score. Then matchmaking for each game will use this score to always pair you against other accounts with a similar score.
Actually, it might not be a “risk of cheating” score so much as a “fun to play with” score. From a gameplay perspective, it’s just as fun to play against a highly skilled non-cheating human, as it is a bot that plays identically. But it’s less fun to play against a bot that uses info or exploits that even the best non-cheating players don’t have access to (ex. wallhacks). So really, the system could basically maintain some playstyle-profile for each player, and matchmaking wouldn’t be skill-based, but rather it would attempt to maximize the “fun” of the match-up. If a player is constantly killing people unrealistically fast, or people who play with them tend to drop early, this would degrade their “fun” score and they would tend to be matched only with other unfun players.
I think this would be the only practical way to fight cheating without even more invasive methods that will involve just deanonymizing players (which I think some studio will inevitably try in the near future).
maybe VAC
This is the easiest anticheat to crack.
!The easiest ACs to crack are Ricochet (let’s hope that Microsoft will replace this train wreck of AC with something standard like EAC) and VAC. !<
My post was talking about where I thought anti-cheat would need to end up in order to be effective without being invasive, not about the state of anti-cheat now. I gave VAC as an example of a cross-game platform for cheat detection, and thus where valve would most likely stick something like this.
But its detection rates are questionable at best. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Td_Ce1fiL0
Sounds like a mini social score IMO. Can companies invest into reporting tools and hire more people to monitor for cheating by reviewing reporta?
I was originally going to compare it to a social score, yes, but it differs in that it wouldn’t be a rating that other players would have direct influence over.
If by “hire more people” you mean “train an AI”, then yes, definitely!
well shiet 😂 seems i got unexpected +80gb storage space again, let’s see which indie studio will get a new customer. bye EA
If you can’t accept business plans that make a little less profit to include sufficient human moderation to avoid heavyhanded kernel level anti cheat - you shouldn’t be in the fucking publishing business, you greedy weasels.
Wait… You want us to pay humans? - Every triple A gaming company since 2010.
At the very least they need to invest in server side anti cheat. If that’s not viable they should be obliged to adequately moderate their game.
I’m so torn about stories like this and GTA online. Because on one hand, people play these games, and people won’t switch to Linux if they can’t play them.
But on the other hand, I just cannot give a single fuck about live service trash like this. I struggle to understand how people play
gamesproducts like these, and I absolutely don’t understand why anyone would waste their time cheating in them. And yet they’re absurdly popular.Despite gaming being such a big hobby for me, I feel so disconnected from what the average gamer values.
I occasionally think back to Rocket League, which I loved in its earlier days. I put close to 100 hours into it, which is a lot for one game for me. Then they added lootboxes, leaned harder into the competitive space, and just completely sucked the soul out of it. And yet it’s still hugely popular.
I just don’t get it.
Funny you mention that, I just installed it on my Steam Deck a few days ago to give it another try. Casual is not casual anymore, everyone’s a competitive try hard now. I remember when it was fun :(
Used to play Apex Legends a lot, so could give some reasons why.
A core part of Apex’s monetization is “keep the core gameplay F2P accessible and make super expensive skins for those who can pay”. The game would put items worth around 300$ multiple times in a single season. After that as long as the gameplay’s solid; F2P players wouldn’t find a reason to not play; and whales could flex their 300$ death box to all these players interacting with them. Hell, give F2P players tasks that take too long to unlock new skins; and maybe they’ll toss a few bucks in too. You’ve got yourself a neat money loop, and players are happy.
As for cheating; most people i see cheating does it as a way of doing the unexpected in a video game. Cheating is not enjoyable to most if you do it all the time; but the cheat providers offer cheats with shorter time spans to hook the people that want to do just that. I recall an interview done with a cheat developer for a different yet similarly popular game, and they’ve said most of their sales come through these.
I have never played that game or intended to.
But:
fuck you
fuck you
Well…it is EA…this is the appropriate sentiment.
Ever since they ruined Westwood.
Ugh… sometimes I forget they did that…and when I’m reminded or remember it cuts just as bad as the first time
That would’ve hit hard if they didn’t got my EA Account stolen via fraudulent support tickets a few months ago.
