Linux Gaming

Posted something on Reddit, posting here as well:

As a Linux user and dual booter, it's a shame to see this happen.

Kernel level anti-cheat always felt like those security measures at airports. Where they've granted themselves invasive and intrusive powers in order to "protect people", but it's just smoke and mirrors designed to avoid giving people the resources required to actually do their job properly.

I trust Riot, but I'm not sure I trust them when they've given themselves permission to constantly watch my webcam, microphone, monitor and all my files. Given that they've specifically gone out of their way to avoid OS safeguards to grant themselves that permission, I'm not sure how much I trust "Trust me bro" and contracts that can be changed arbitrarily and unilaterally.

Anyway, rant over. Since there are Rioters apparently responding to things, figured I'd ask: Is there a requirement for Secure Boot in LoL's implementation? For context, Secure Boot is a system to prevent software not approved by Microsoft from running on computers. I know you can enroll your own certificates, but firstly that seems like a hassle, and secondly that seems to remove the main benefit Riot has for requiring it. Obviously, as a Linux user this would block me from running LoL entirely, even if I dual booted into my Windows 10 install (I got curious and tried it, and apparently my motherboard doesn't even include Microsoft's certificate for some reason. :D).

I have a more technical question as well; I'm not familiar with TPM enough to know this. If you don't use your TPM module for bitlocker encryption on Windows, isn't it trivial to just reset it to get a new identifier thingie? If they're using it to ensure that there is one Riot Account per physical computer, I'm not sure how harder this is to work around than when games were using MAC addresses in the olden days.

I'd continue on and say "you've lost a paying customer whose spent probably hundreds of pounds on this game" and whine about how I've been softbanned from the game because Riot assumes that all Linux users are filthy cheaters, but that's probably not worth it. This almost certainly was done by management looking at the books and thinking this was profitable, rather than a compassionate decision by those passionate about the game and wanting to see it succeed.

Instead, I extend my sympathies to the poor Riot developers and PR people reading this thread and having to deal with the fallout of their management's decisions.