Should VAC Be More Invasive?
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Would VAC be better if it had more access to your system? If it was always on? I ATTEMPT a reasoned look at a topic that I'm sure everybody is all sith about...

I would never play a game that has this feature, and it seems that many people feel the same way. But when I say "many people," I really mean just people on niche internet forums. I really don't think the general population gives a shit at all otherwise all these popular games would already be history.

But it does make the case of VAC interesting. So many people including pro players are complaining about how Valve is basically useless when it comes to anti-cheat, and they're correct, primarily because they don't use kernel level detection. I recently watched this video that suggests Valve has some long term vision for their unintrusive software lol. I just can't believe it because e-celebs draw in views, money, interest, etc. and pissing them off as well as the players buying your shit seems counterintuitive. They gotta be cooking up something rightr?

It seems to me that the players who do want a stronger anti-cheat don't care whether or not the studio is watching them whereas those who are adverse to kernel-level anti-cheat will likely not complain about a game being full of cheaters much.

I'm curious if an open-source anti-cheat consortium would be successful, or if this is one of the few cases where security through obfuscation might be the only way to protect anti-cheat software.

Also found out that the high level CS league ESEA has kernel level anti cheat and was caught mining bitcoin lol.

  • buckykat [none/use name]12•2 months ago

    stop ranking competitive games and there won't be any reason to cheat beyond trolling individual matches, and therefore no need for anticheat

    • RyanGosling [none/use name]24•2 months ago

      I don't think that's true. A lot of cheaters get their stats and accounts wiped and there is a huge market for subtle cheats that simply "assist" rather than going full aimbot. As long as someone stands to win and lose, someone will cheat.

    • @lorty@lemmygrad.ml9•2 months ago

      People have been cheating in online games for way longer than ranked matchmaking has existed.

    • alexandra_kollontai [she/her]1•2 months ago

      I went onto unranked TF2 yesterday and every other game was populated by bots playing offensive audio. They somehow corrupting the audio chat UI so I couldn't mute them either.