Video games are a hobby for 99% of people out there, including myself. I can do without a plaything if it means not handing over the keys of the computer I built with my own hands to nefarious actors. That is FAR AND AWAY more important to me, and I'd hope most people.
But you are correct in saying that it's a personal choice for everyone to make for themselves, based on how much they value fair play in their hobby of choice.
Particularly for anyone who puts hundreds (thousands?) of hours into getting good at their competitive multiplayer game of choice, the trade between installing an anti-cheat, suffering cheaters, or giving up on their hobby, is probably not the same math you're doing.
Fair criticism. I used Tencent as the example as they are one of the most prominent offenders. I don't trust any company to install these drivers, period, Chinese or otherwise.
> You lost me there to be honest, if you think the "true" purpose of anti-cheat drivers is for a foreign power to spy on us boring ordinary uninteresting people.
That's fine, but I definitely don't think keeping your "gaming experience" as hacker free as possible is the primary goal of these programs. I've worked in software too long to not know better.
What is it about games that makes you particularly worried about this? Why is that an industry that is more susceptible to this kind of "nefarious" activity as you put it?
Wouldn't it make more sense for business-related products to do this, since the odds of being on a computer that has actual useful information to steal would be much, much higher?
Why would a company invest in this kind of tech, in a highly visible field, full of people who will go over it with a fine-toothed comb (gamers are obsessive), for what seems like a very low-percentage hit rate on obtaining information?
Curious about your viewpoint on this..
Because it targets a younger, more ignorant user base that is much more likely than a company with security audits to blindly install. I certainly was at that age.
> Wouldn't it make more sense for business-related products to do this, since the odds of being on a computer that has actual useful information to steal would be much, much higher?
It does happen, but its less successful due to folks that work in operational security. If I suggested installing software with this type of driver at any job I've ever worked at with a security professional halfway worth their salt, I'd instantly be rejected.
> full of people who will go over it with a fine-toothed comb (gamers are obsessive)
Show me a gamer that has seen the code of one of these drivers. Name a single person. Those programs are black box by design.
You forgot to tell them it’s a state-of-the-art antivirus solution.
> Show me a gamer that has seen the code of one of these drivers.
They don’t want to see the code, they just want to know it works and allows them to play games with a much lower chance of playing against a cheater. The ban waves that end up on Reddit every year[0] are good enough for them.
0: https://reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/52mj1m/untrust...
Not necessarily. That gaming machine has good odds of being in a local network with other, more important and interesting machines. It can also scan local Wi-Fi area and scoop up even more information that can be used later.
Thought these were obvious.
> Why would a company invest in this kind of tech, in a highly visible field, full of people who will go over it with a fine-toothed comb (gamers are obsessive), for what seems like a very low-percentage hit rate on obtaining information?
1. They invest nothing out of the ordinary. They already have programmers on the payroll. Not like they spend 200 million on this alone. (Although there are companies like Google and Facebook who absolutely would and have invested much more than this just to be able to scoop up as much private info as possible -- not sure why this seems so unlikely to you, today, in 2022.)
2. The field is EVERYTHING BUT VISIBLE. Nobody has ever seen the source of these programs (outside of the authoring companies). Nobody. Ever.
3. Games are obsessive but most of them are technically illiterate. They install these things without a flicker of doubt.
4. The low-percentage is how it seems to you. Do it on a few hundred million machines and you are bound to find something very interesting in a good volume. It's statistics.
Tencent anticheat has a hard baked logger that prints out every network call it makes, which believe it or not was intended to create trust.
You can see in the disassembled code that it can’t make outbound calls without that function that prints the payload.
We can’t be open because it’s too risky. We can’t be closed because people think we’re scum.
Why not just make console games? This thread has me depressed.
Certainly was not my aim, and I sympathize. I've said many times I'd never move into game dev because of the workload and sheer work-to-flame ratio, and this thread isn't an exception. Likewise, thank you for providing some light from within the industry, it is appreciated.
I'd sign that NDA in a heartbeat if it didn't anonymize me, but I don't want my name floating around in databases I know nothing about. It's mighty tempting to see how the sausage is made, though.
I will ask this: Does the decision to include such an anti-cheat come from the studio usually, or the publisher?
Some studios might have some bean counter at the publisher asking about things they think are good ("You gotta have anti-cheat/DRM!")
Other studios might be coerced to "if you're going to use anti-cheat, why not use this one we have a good deal with".
But ultimately it has been a studio decision.
I'm even swapping my current anti-cheat due to this kind of Sinophobia.
Ironically, we had to specifically ask Tencent for their anti-cheat (because it was the best available..) but.. people thought it was spyware[0]. To the point that you literally see nothing else about my game it seems.
Double ironically: we still had cheaters on the platform[1]... it will probably be worse with EAC (as it was in the division days[2], some people even blamed the state of cheating on "not enough anti-cheat"[3])
But, to answer your question: in my experience it's the studio's choice, but some people in the publishing chain might try to coerce a decision.
[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/BloodHunt/comments/pkpr1t/so_whats_...
[1]: https://futuregaming.io/gaming-news/bloodhunt-cheating-probl...
[2]: https://kotaku.com/race-to-clear-the-division-2s-new-raid-ma...
[3]: https://www.reddit.com/r/thedivision/comments/4k17n8/confess...
And immediately land in a list of potential suspects the moment those cheats are broken by somebody else but not me? No, thanks. :( We live in a world where such an intellectual curiosity flags you as a criminal so I am never going to risk it.
If you want to demonstrate good will then maybe posting these files somewhere and making a "Show HN" thread is going to work better in showing the world that you're normal hardworking people?
> We can’t be open because it’s too risky. We can’t be closed because people think we’re scum.
I understand your position and I am not blaming you. But you are not the executive team of the company and you don't know their intentions and strategic plans.
People said the same thing about NSA spying, until the Snowden leaks.
You probably need to be reminded that before the Snowden revelations people who were saying the same as him were laughed at? Ridiculed?
Nothing stops this to be a part of a bigger scheme, you know? Sweep as many machines as you can with whatever means possible.
You over-fixate on gaming and are IMO missing a potential bigger picture. Plus China has proven that it is hostile to privacy many times, including a recent story here on HN where a laptop ordered from China came with preloaded spyware on a pretty deep / low level.
And even if you ignore all that, I still don't want a random rootkit to be able to take control of my machine any time somebody figures they'll flip a remote switch. Doesn't matter what their motivations are, at all, doesn't matter if we are "boring uninteresting people". They still have no business being able to control my machine THAT well remotely.
Convince me that won't happen...