I'm wondering if there's a way we can even know they're installing it. Windows just gives that generic admin prompt, I imagine? Tells you nothing of what's happening.

It's not only interests of the chinese government, they HAVE to oblige legally if they are asked to. So even if the company has the best intentions, the government overrules.

And don't make that a chinese bad guy argument, as if western companies aren't doing the same, they just don't do that officially, which one is shadier is yours to decide.

All you can do as a company or anyone is to stop harvesting data and don't plant blackboxes/backdoors in customers systems

Well base operating system or hardware driver. There are exceptions, the pps driver for timekeeping makes sense to be kernel level too.

But games developers? No, they have no right to ring 0. I understand they want to protect from cheats, but they're just moving the battleground to a part of the system that results in blue screens/panics when it fails. And cheat developers will follow them there and even move to the hypervisor if needed, trust me on that.

For the forseeable future, unless someone is committed enough to making Darling work.
(Mac layer instead of Windowz, the mac version does not and will not have vanguard.)

Here's the summary for the wikipedia article you mentioned in your comment:

The Sony BMG CD copy protection scandal concerns the copy protection measures included by Sony BMG on compact discs in 2005. When inserted into a computer, the CDs installed one of two pieces of software that provided a form of digital rights management (DRM) by modifying the operating system to interfere with CD copying. Neither program could easily be uninstalled, and they created vulnerabilities that were exploited by unrelated malware. One of the programs would install and "phone home" with reports on the user's private listening habits, even if the user refused its end-user license agreement (EULA), while the other was not mentioned in the EULA at all. Both programs contained code from several pieces of copylefted free software in an apparent infringement of copyright, and configured the operating system to hide the software's existence, leading to both programs being classified as rootkits.

^to^ ^opt^ ^out^^,^ ^pm^ ^me^ ^'optout'.^ ^article^ ^|^ ^about^

Eh, probably for the best, everything I've heard about LoL is that it turns you into a toxic hateful shell of a human.

more like intentionally installed malware but yes, 100 % this

Not just looking like DRM, I would say it IS DRM.

I mean Dota exists. I guess I'll switch to that. Or maybe I'll just take a shower.

Dota has always been a drastically better game, I see this as an absolute win for Linux. League is cancer.

Addiction, I suppose.

And today we read from the Book of Sony, Chapter 2005, verses 10-11: Sony BMG quickly released software to remove the rootkit component of XCP from affected Microsoft Windows computers, but after Russinovich analyzed the utility, he reported in his blog that it only exacerbated the security problems and raised further concerns about privacy. Russinovich noted that the removal program merely unmasked the hidden files installed by the rootkit but did not actually remove the rootkit. He also reported that it installed additional software that could not be uninstalled. In order to download the uninstaller, he found that it was necessary to provide an e-mail address (which the Sony BMG Privacy Policy implied was added to various bulk e-mail lists) and to install an ActiveX control containing backdoor methods (marked as "safe for scripting" and thus prone to exploits). Microsoft later issued a killbit for the ActiveX control.

On November 18, 2005, Sony BMG provided a "new and improved" removal tool to remove the rootkit component of XCP from affected Microsoft Windows computers.

courtesy wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal#XCP_rootkit