KLISHDFSDF

if it was pure theater my friends and family who pay for all their streaming services would be able to share the content without permission from Netflix, Hulu, etc. That this is not the case disproves your claim that it's pure theater. It does exactly what it aims to do and that's raising the barrier to entry for piracy.

It doesn’t meaningfully impact the rate of cheating at all

So EA and every other anti-cheat software is paying developers to make software that does nothing? I don't follow.

yeah, someone dumb it down for us plebs

I believe uBlock will continue to work, just not as well.

No, it doesn’t. Cheating is still incredibly common on games that install malware

I never claimed it's flawless or that it works in all cases. Think of it like antivirus software. Does it catch every and any malware that has and will ever exist? No. Does it still work to minimize all kinds of "bad shit" for normal end users? Yes.

If people care enough to cheat, they will cheat whether you have kernel access or not.

Lets rephrase that: If people care enough to commit crimes, they will commit crimes whether you have cops in your city or not - Your statements logical conclusion would be to get rid of police and crime investigators. Does that sound reasonable? It shouldn't, and it doesn't make sense against anti-cheat software for the exact same reason.

They use it for the exact same reason they use DRM. Because they can.

They use it because it solves a real-world problem that's unsolvable by other means. There's no real alternative because you have to trust the end-user, who, although may not be very likely to cheat, makes it extremely easy for a bad person to spoil the fun for everyone else.

I would love to live in a fantasy world where we don't need cops, a government, rules, regulations, and anti-cheat software, but there are bad apples that will spoil the fun for everyone.

It also can’t possibly theoretically “reduce harm” when every single installation on every individual computer is many orders of magnitude more harm than all cheating in every game ever made.

I mean "reduce harm" in the strict sense of spoiling the fun in gaming. vulnerabilities happen with all software, this isn't unique to anti-cheat.

Client side validation cannot possibly provide any actual security

Except it already does.

but even if that wasn’t the case and it was actually flawless

Nobody is claiming its flawless. This is the same anti-seat belt, anti-air bag, anti-mask, anti-vax argument. It "DoEsn'T WoRk iN eVeRy CaSe!" - that was never the intent. It's about harm reduction.

it would still be unconditionally unacceptable for a game to ever have kernel level access.

Anyone with a technical background would agree with you, as do I, but the reality is anti-cheat software with kernel level access already exists and it works specifically because it has kernel level access.

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.

If this works on Linux this is probably what I'll switch to. I've played it and liked it, the pace is a bit too fast for my taste, but I can get used to it.

and if you're technically capable, self host and share with friends/family. fuck corporate greed

Thanks for the reminder! I'll have to revisit. I wonder if that can be tweaked to play more like Apex.

I completely agree with you, there's always ways to bypass the system. But at the end of the day its about raising the barrier to entry for everyone to be hacking. In the example you're giving, someone who wants to hack the system now needs to configure to separate systems to work AND have the technical skills to set it up. Without any local anti-cheat software, all someone needs to do is run software written by one person and run by thousands.

My overall point is that the current anti-cheat systems do work, not in every case, just like spam or antivirus software, but raise the barrier to entry so that you see less hackers while gaming vs without.

Yeah it didn't occur to me that I'd be relegated to playing with cheaters until after I posted. Best to just let the game go.