Great article, but the one thing you don't seem to touch on is the fact that anti-cheat just plain doesn't work. From Roblox to Tarkov, Call of Duty to Helldivers 2, GTA V to Diablo 4, there are always going to be cheaters. Most anti-cheat solutions don't even reduce the frequency of the cheaters that much, because it only takes one smar…
Great article, but the one thing you don't seem to touch on is the fact that anti-cheat just plain doesn't work. From Roblox to Tarkov, Call of Duty to Helldivers 2, GTA V to Diablo 4, there are always going to be cheaters. Most anti-cheat solutions don't even reduce the frequency of the cheaters that much, because it only takes one smart hacker to break the anti-cheat and then distribute their knowledge or software to thousands of users, who can all exploit the hole.
Folks like Koskinas might compare anti-cheat to whack-a-mole, but hey, isn't that exactly what they'd be doing if they *didn't* have an invasive kernel module loaded onto my system? And by not shipping said kernel module, they would be allowing their game to run on Mac and Linux through Wine, and eliminating any possibility that their anti-cheat kernel module might be crashing peoples' systems, which is a widely reported issue; or that the anti-cheat kernel module exposes vulnerabilities of its own and gives programs (or even servers online) low-level access to your system through an unintended backdoor.
If kernel anti-cheat actually worked, I might even accept it as a useful tool in the toolbox. But other than Valorant, which just appears to be significantly ahead of the cheaters' technology right now (but I guarantee that will change in a few months) -- most kernel anti-cheats are useless.
They're even more useless when they don't evolve and constantly improve, stepping up their anti-cheat game in the never-ending cat and mouse. nProtect is especially poor in that area, as we're about 2 weeks into Helldivers 2, and nProtect is already losing the battle against the cheaters. Cheating by memory editing is becoming very pervasive already.
Kernel anti-cheat is a solution looking for a problem, but in the end, it just ends up creating more problems. User trust problems, technical glitches, unintended vulnerabilities, Mac and Linux compatibility showstoppers, and in the end, for what? Most people with 40+ hours in Helldivers 2 at this point have seen at least one cheater; if they haven't, they're not paying attention. No, you and your team didn't manage to loot 99 rare samples on that mission.
Great article, but the one thing you don't seem to touch on is the fact that anti-cheat just plain doesn't work. From Roblox to Tarkov, Call of Duty to Helldivers 2, GTA V to Diablo 4, there are always going to be cheaters. Most anti-cheat solutions don't even reduce the frequency of the cheaters that much, because it only takes one smart hacker to break the anti-cheat and then distribute their knowledge or software to thousands of users, who can all exploit the hole.
Folks like Koskinas might compare anti-cheat to whack-a-mole, but hey, isn't that exactly what they'd be doing if they *didn't* have an invasive kernel module loaded onto my system? And by not shipping said kernel module, they would be allowing their game to run on Mac and Linux through Wine, and eliminating any possibility that their anti-cheat kernel module might be crashing peoples' systems, which is a widely reported issue; or that the anti-cheat kernel module exposes vulnerabilities of its own and gives programs (or even servers online) low-level access to your system through an unintended backdoor.
If kernel anti-cheat actually worked, I might even accept it as a useful tool in the toolbox. But other than Valorant, which just appears to be significantly ahead of the cheaters' technology right now (but I guarantee that will change in a few months) -- most kernel anti-cheats are useless.
They're even more useless when they don't evolve and constantly improve, stepping up their anti-cheat game in the never-ending cat and mouse. nProtect is especially poor in that area, as we're about 2 weeks into Helldivers 2, and nProtect is already losing the battle against the cheaters. Cheating by memory editing is becoming very pervasive already.
Kernel anti-cheat is a solution looking for a problem, but in the end, it just ends up creating more problems. User trust problems, technical glitches, unintended vulnerabilities, Mac and Linux compatibility showstoppers, and in the end, for what? Most people with 40+ hours in Helldivers 2 at this point have seen at least one cheater; if they haven't, they're not paying attention. No, you and your team didn't manage to loot 99 rare samples on that mission.