The fact that companies think client side anti cheat is a good idea is so insane. Maybe try designing your server better instead of blaming the operating system for not letting you control your users
Aside from better server side detection, which is I agree is severely underdeveloped, I’d say that the next big step should be a much bigger reliance on reputation-based matchmaking, ideally across games. It would need to be built in a way that’s not abusable by devs or trolls and should be as privacy-respecting as much as possible (as in, not having to validate with your ID South-Korean style), which isn’t an easy task. Working properly however, it would keep honest players from seeing any cheaters at all with no client-side anticheat required at all, which would be nice.
Genuinely curious, because this isn’t my area of expertise, but how do you design a server to be “better” if it has to trust data from a remote client?
Example, if the client is compromised - because as they’ve said, they have no way to “attest” that the kernel is not compromised - how would the server know any better?
If my Apex client tells the server I got a perfect headshot, how would the server know I didn’t fake the data? Is there a real answer to this problem or are we just wishing they come up with an impossible solution?
My general understanding is that EA is 100% correct. Now, on the other hand, maybe the should just limit plays between Linux <-> Linux so people can at least still enjoy the game (I’m moving to Linux soon so I’ll basically no longer be able to play the game, which is, as my primary gaming addiction, a huge loss I’m willing to take).
There’s compromises EA could take, but I think the Linux market share is just too small for them to care to spend any resources - even though they’re raking in billions (~$3.4 Billion) and could spare a few resources to find a good middle ground. Capitalism at it’s finest.
How do they know you haven’t trained an AI to get headshots? The cheats often break the bounds of what is realistic in games, whether it is allowing you to see through walls (server shouldn’t be sending enemy positions that aren’t in view), going too fast (server should speed check pplayer positions), getting items they shouldn’t have (server should do inventory sanity checks), etc. Other than that, look for signs of automated movement/things unrealistically precise for a human to do. Eventually the cheating will just be moved to a separate air gapped computer running AI on the video feed. Client side is an invasive, broken, and malicious concept.
Just tracking trended data in general would be sufficient to defeat a LARGE number of common cheats. One of the very few use cases “AI” might actually work for in a positive way. But that puts the burden on the developers and server hosters, and it’s much easier to just burden the players directly instead.
I’m fairly confident that developers already do this. When the “ban hammer” comes down it is probably after analysing data trends for players.
Servers often don’t send player data that is outside of the immediate area of the player, but they have to for enemies that are nearby. If they walk around the corner and your client didn’t know about it, then you’ll be waiting for your ping time to even render the enemy. I.e. they walk around the corner and already shot you, then you see them suddenly appear a full players width away from the corner, and you die. Aka peekers advantage amplified.
Same deal with footstep sounds, bullet tracers, a player’s shadow, etc. Your client needs to know where all this is coming from and it can’t do that if it doesn’t know the enemy exists and where. And that is a buffer zone for hackers to derive wall hacks from.
So basically, the overwhelming majority of servers do do all those things, since the late 90’s. Hacks tend to work within those bounds. The most common, impactful and hard to detect cheats are based on providing perfect mechanical inputs. Aka aim hacks. Nothing about limiting info from the server can prevent that unless you also want the legitimate player to be unable to see their enemies.
Well thank god this computer genius is on the scene. Don’t worry, EA can solve everything as soon as they hear about these great and very original ideas.
Because the actual calculations aren’t done by the client but the server, or they should be
Right, but the server is still receiving data from the client. If the client sends a plausible head shot, even though it was actually a miss, how would the server know? You still need client-side “police”, AKA anti-cheat software to mitigate a significant type of software-based hacks.
Now that I’ve typed it out, cops are actually a great analogy to anti-cheat software. Cops play the exact same role. Nobody wants them around until a crime has been committed. Cops/anti-cheat software don’t catch everyone, but the threat of being caught mitigates some crime/hacks, and for the cases where criminals/hackers are caught, society/gamers are better off for it.
In closing ACAB - I completely understand why we don’t want anti-cheat software on our computers, but there really is no better way; or if there is, I still haven’t heard it.
Your core premise is broken. Relying on trusting anything from a remote client cannot possibly result in a fair game.
Too bad the server at least needs the player input data.
Yes, people can still cheat with a camera and manipulating inputs. There will never be a way around that.
But that’s entirely unchanged by adding malware, that, even if it could theoretically work, should be a literal crime with serious jail time attached. Client side validation is never security and cannot resemble security.
There are ways to detect and stop that, but they can and should happen on the server, not on the client.
Only if you’re OK banning real people.
There are lots of options such that you can tune your false positive/negative rate. 🤷♂️ Tons of ways you can structure this depending on your game’s tech.
If my Apex client tells the server I got a perfect headshot, how would the server know I didn’t fake the data?
Any game that works like that is fundamentally flawed and AC is nothing but an attempt at a cheap bandaid at best.
The client should be doing nothing but rendering and sending player actions to the server and the server should be managing the game state as well as running its checks on those actions. And when one client sends actuons that are weird and doesn’t line up with it’s internal game state it should kick the client immediately always deferring to what ITS game state is telling it, not the client.
And when one client sends actuons that are weird and doesn’t line up with it’s internal game state
What if my hacked client sends actions that are not weird, completely plausible, but didn’t happen and instead were faked? E.g. I take a headshot and would have missed, but my client sends data that I actually shot them dead center, because I wasn’t completely off? How would the server know it wasn’t me?
Someone did the math on Twitter.
There is about 2900 Linux gamers playing Apex.
So even if 100% of Linux gamers cheated it could in no way be the majority.
What I think happened is the dev team struggled to solve the problem so they used Linux as a scapegoat when leadership came down on them.
This sounds likely. Unfortunately, when the problem doesn’t go away a few months from now, it’s not like they’ll reenable Linux support…
Just a reminder you can add a publisher to your steam ignore list such as EA or Ubisoft.
Edit: This video shows how
Fuck EA
I’ve been praying for an Open source Apex clone that can be self-hosted. A man can dream.
GET THAT REFUND!
NO TUX, NO BUX
you gotta contact EA about it, and something’s telling me they’re just going to quote some part of their ToC telling us to get fucked.
alright then flood them CC charge backs, let them explaining to their payment processor why everybody decided to do this all at the same time ;)
Its a free to play game
It’s free to play.
Uh, I’m losing access to everything I bought with apex coins though…
Yeah, but your first mistake was buying apex coins.
Counterpoint - Devs need to eat. Especially devs that are thoughtful enough to enable their anti-cheat to work on Linux. So yeah, they had my attention, my support, and my money. In return I got to play a fun game and rock some cool skins and accessories - it certainly seemed like a win-win. Now they’ve retroactively backed out of their support, and I’d like to back out mine as well.
You are not paying devs… you are paying a corpo parasite who fucks you over every few months.
Agreed to a point. I don’t care so much that “the devs need to eat” because these are AAA corporations, not indie devs. The moderate gains and losses aren’t directly affecting the people that actually made the game, they’re just affecting the bonuses the CEOs get. What does matter though is that if we as Linux gamers want them to care, they need to see that Linux users are generating revenue. They’re greedy corpos and revenue is all they give a shit about. I’m OK contributing a small amount to games that continue to support Linux. I’m OK spending $5 every few months to buy the Overwatch 2 battle pass if it means Blizzard sees that someone who only plays on Linux is generating income. I’m certain they looked at the money coming in from Linux players more than the actual number of said players when making this decision. The only way to make corporate monsters care about you is to feed their greed. Sometimes, feeding them a small amount can potentially help your cause.
I’m not sure what your point is? Perhaps I incorrectly assumed this was obvious but yes - if players do not financially support a game, even “free to play” games, those games disappear. There is not a single company on the planet that is going to continue investing in a negative revenue project for funsies. The teams working on the game are relocated to other projects or laid off, and the game shuts down.
If you believe I’m in the wrong for supporting a game that, until this point, was friendly to linux - then so be it.
I think you’re wrong for supporting EA, regardless of any other variables.
If you accidentally ban linux users in three[1] different[2] banwaves[3], then linux was only halfway supported in the first place, even if they overturned (almost) all of those bans.
I think the real reason they did it was EA’s financial situation. Since money is tight, the amount of resources they were willing to put into real linux anti-cheat probably dropped to “none at all,” and now we’re here. Otherwise other cheater-prone games like Counter Strike, Overwatch, Halo, The Finals, DayZ, Hunt Showdown, etc would have probably dropped/blocked linux by now too.
This is really going to validate the anti-Steamdeck/anti-Linux gamers. It shouldn’t.
“You can’t play shitty MMO Battle Royale games if you’re on a Linux PC!”
Fucking good. That’s a feature.
Is this not the game I saw an article about like yesterday saying EA had missed revenue forecasts and EA stated a major overhaul is needed?
I guess step one is to restrict the player base more.
Classic “the beatings will continue until morale improves” corporate energy.
They’re probably adding EA anti-cheat and that’s why they say they’re removing the Steam Deck support
And they ask their users to use Microsoft spyware os,this is really bad for privacy.
People still play Apex?
Not people on Linux.
Yes* unfortunately. It’s very popular.
I’ll never understand why people enjoy P2W games.
It’s not P2W though, right? I thought they only sell cosmetics w/o competitive advantage (outside a mistake here and there), everything that actually impacts competitiveness is provided equally to everyone.
If that’s not the case, could you link something that indicates that?
I would say you are right, because all the playable legends are able to be bought with the free currency you can get by just playing the game.
I guess some people could make the argument that paying players have faster access to new legends and legendary finishers, etc. I would say this is more like “pay to skip some grinding” than “pay to win”.
Yeah, if it’s unlockable in a reasonable amount of time (say, 5-10 hours per hero), then it’s basically the same as those stupid F2P mobile games where you can pay to “speed up time” or whatever. Or if there’s a rapid churn where you lose access to heroes after some amount of time (i.e. even if you pay, they’d disappear).
But if you can grind for a few hours to get the hero you want, then yeah, not P2W.
