So yeah, I want to discuss or point out why I think Valve needs to fix Anti-Cheat issues.
They have VAC but apparently its doing jackshit, be it Counter Strike 2 (any previous iterations) or something like Hunt: Showdown the prevalence of cheating players is non deniable.
For me personally it has come to a point that I am not enjoying playing those games anymore, although they are great games by itself. But the amount of occurrences being killed or playing against cheaters is at a height, where I don't see the point anymore.
- Why I think Valve is the only company able to something against cheaters?
Because they have the tools with VAC already aiming to prevent cheaters. Valve has got the resources to actually invest into something more profound which could be used for any game where anti-cheat protection needs to be implemented. And lastly Valve is the company which is interested in furthering the ability to gaming on Linux, the anti-cheat solution needs to work on both operating systems. Only Valve has the motivation and means to achieve that with their knowledge and resources.
What do you guys think about the topic? Is the fight against cheaters hopeless? Do you think some other entity should provide anti-cheat protection, why? I skimmed over "anti cheat in linux kernel" posts in the net, but I have very little knowledge about the topic, what is your stance on it?
Edited:
Mixed EAC with VAC. EAC seems to be part of Epic Company. Both of these tools seem unable to prevent cheating like mentioned above.
My only issue with VAC and Valve's policy on dealing with cheaters isn't that their anti-cheat isn't good; it's that even when a player is flagged for using cheats, it doesn't instantly remove them. It waits, sometimes months after flagging them before it actually doles out punishment.
Their reasoning is that it slows down new cheats being made; but what the hell does that matter if the existing cheats it flags are still allowed to be used for months at a time?
That said, it's rare I encounter cheaters in CS. Plenty of other games I play where there are constant, obvious cheaters that aren't even being detected by the anti-cheats in use, since they ban instantly on detection.
This is for paid cheats. If you ban in waves the companies selling cheats lose a larger sum of money all at once. This also hits right at the time when they need to put in the most work.
The problem is that for detection of identical programs, vac relies on program signatures. You could make slight changes to to program to change the signature and recompile it, or use something that changes the signature every time you compile it. That means even though those running the cheats are using essentially the same program sold to them by the same person, if one gets banned then VAC sees the other program and goes, "I've never seen this program in my life"
Other anti cheats will try to identify programs by their functionality (e.g modifying or reading memory of other programs) and using heuristics but that is both more invasive and requires higher level of privilege which many people aren't willing to give.
The other alternative valve is experimenting with is AI to detect aimbot, which could work in some instances, but is prone to false positives, and isn't able to as easily identify behavior such as walling
And you can schedule it around things like tournaments
Giving cheat authors instant feedback in terms of detection results in cheats getting better at evading detection more quickly.
This is standard practice in anti-cheat methodology, and is generally agreed upon to result in much more positive long-term outcomes.