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this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2026
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I am not excited to have Linux-kernel anti cheat spyware on my machine, but I guess it's good to free gamers from Microslop monopoly.
As long as it's not kernel level, good with me
I hope we get a commen solution for it. So not every game company needs a Linux kernel module.
I hope we get absolutely no solution for it.
We don't need kernel level anti-cheat.
We never have. We never will. We didnt need it on windows, and we dont need it on Linux
The fact that there are wildly popular games out there, that don't use it, that successfully control cheating to a level that you barely experience/see it, is proof of that.. its not only proof of it, it should be the absolute entropic death of the goddamn topic.
The only reason to want a kernel level anticheat is so they can poke around in everything you do and send it all home.They get to police their game... They don't get to police and monitor my whole fucking life and everything I do on my computer.
If I wanted big brother monitoring everything I do and sending it all back home, I'd be using Windows 11.
Any company that says they need this for their game is lying, and deserves bankruptcy and death.
I do agree that best solution is that we don’t need it.
Sadly bassed on what i hear, users are willing do Things on kernel level to cheat. Ie read/Write memory from a different program.
Youtube: Core dumped: can a gamer company really sabotage your PC? made a good video summarizing the issue.
I hope that a solution in some sense does not need to send more than som checksums that failed if there is a debug enabled, sign kernel modules that not trusted (ie. self sign), notify the program that hi there is a other program trying read your program’s memory or provided some restrictions memory space that even with debug enable you can’t read that space.
Yes, this is because the average user is dumb and content with guzzling down whatever bullshit gets thrown at them. This is a big part of why we really do not want to see the masses shift to Linux - they'll bring the cooperate interest and the enshitification they love.
It also doesn't even work. There are so many DMA cheats out there that make kernel AC systems a joke. Meanwhile, Basicallyhomeless built a physical aimbot mousepad that can't be detected because it doesn't even hook into the computer. It moves the mousepad to correct your aim. It's extreme, I know, but the point is that motivated cheaters will always find ways to make AC systems completely useless. Kernel AC has already been defeated, and it's too high of a cost for something that is already defeated.
Yeah, at the physical aimbot mousepad level, the only thing that can detect that would be utilizing something like machine learning techniques for detecting/flagging accounts.
I fail to see how ML would be able to distinguish between that and a really skilled player aiming normally.
You wouldn't necessarily need machine learning, but you would need some sort of heuristics algorithm that checks a player's inputs to ensure they look like real human inputs. I'm sure the auto-aim mouse pad makes microadjustments or sudden changes that aren't feasible for a human to make, and that sort of stuff is readily detectable.
until you use machine learning to collect all the game footage of pros mouseflicks so you have data for a "human-like" flicks between any 2 mouse positions, which becomes how your aimbot moves your mouse. Now the aimbot can't catch you without also getting false positives from those pros
I have always been a believer that the best anti-cheat is a proper way to measure player skill for your SBMM, with that cheaters will naturally only be matched against other cheaters.
Lol you're really underselling how difficult it is to write cheats.
There's still quite a few ways to detect that kind of thing though, both automatically and manually. At the end of the day, if enough people report the 3 day old account for hitting flicks like Carpe, it's gonna get banned pretty quick. And if a few escape through the cracks, well, like I told the other person, I'd rather lose to a cheater occasionally than install malware on my computer.
SBMM can be a good solution as well, but I believe that should be a separate, opt-in thing. Matchmade games always tend to lean more competitive/sweaty/sometimes toxic, whereas games without matchmaking are usually more casual-friendly. I think it's nice when games give you the choice.
The difficulty kind of doesn't matter, because what we want here is recognizing the ceiling of cheat capabilities, and my point is that in this cat and mouse game, in the end when we approach the ceiling, the cheaters will win in the end.
All because they control their own hardware, they have the final say of what 0s and 1s they send to you in the end.
Not feasible for most humans to make, sure. I just wonder where the line gets drawn between ML and MLG, or even if it's a bright line at all.
The line is gonna be fuzzy, and based on multiple systems, both automated and manual, and none of it will be perfect. But at the end of the day, it's a fucking video game. I'd rather lose occasionally to a cheater than install malware on my computer.
What are those wildly popular games that don't use it?
counter strike for example... ring0 AC is only available via other matchmaking platforms like faceit
Counter strike is literally one of the single most cheated in fps on earth. Only tarkov has more cheaters... Lol
Counterstrike is overrun with bots
You couldn't have chosen a worse example even if you tried.
Edit: The downvotes just show how disconnected the userbase here is. I'll bet none of you have touched cs in a decade.
So you're just going to conveniently forget the giant wave of bans in CS2 a few months back when Valve updated VAC?
W ragebait. I'll give that to you.
VAC doesnt immediately ban when a cheat is detected, It delays the ban to make it harder for cheat makers to figure out what, when, how, and why it was detected.
And? It still detects the cheats and bans the users. And it does it without kernel-level anti-cheat.
The delay isn't a limitation, it's a design decision to prevent reverse engineering, as you've point out. Yet that didn't stop you from falsely alluding that it's not capable
Why the fuck you going at me with both guns drawn when all I did was explain, factually and neutrally, about how VAC works and why you see bans happen in waves instead of in the moment?
Iv never in my life seen a game that controls it with or with out kernel anti cheat. The only time I've ever seen gamers claim a game has cheating under control is because the avg gamer has no fucking idea what cheating actually looks like or how it works.
Functionally if it isn't as obvious as a spin bot in a counter strike lobby or someone flying around with no clip. 99.99% of gamers are too ignorant to even make the claim if a game has a cheating problem or not.
Kernel anti cheat doesn't work, never had and never will. You can't beat cheaters full stop so long as they have access to the hardware the game is running in.
Especially when it comes to Epic. Tim Swiney can't stand not being able to control everything