Anti-cheat software is an absolute shit show of cat-and-mouse tactics. It’s often difficult to distinguish anti-cheat software from rootkits or spyware. They’re invasive and user hostile, and they frequently cause collateral damage that is swept under the rug and that support tacitly refuses to acknowledge.<p>This has happened on multiple occasions with Blizzard:<p>- <a href="https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Blizzard-Banning-DXVK-Wine" rel="nofollow">https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Blizzard...</a><p>- <a href="https://m.slashdot.org/story/75350" rel="nofollow">https://m.slashdot.org/story/75350</a><p>Of course, although Blizzards initial response was to claim that the users cheated and were lying, they did eventually fix the problem the first time (although IIRC they never reversed all of the bans for the very first WoW Wine ban wave.) Now they have a bit more experience with the issue so it seems it is getting more attention.<p>However with EA I don’t really have utmost confidence they will pay any attention to this, so I’d guess it’s time to get loud if you want any hope of this being fixed.
Some context. This is running through Wine (and DXVK, a DX9-11 → Vulkan layer) on Linux.<p>Seems EA is doing —like a lot of very lazy anti-cheats— balls-simple stack inspection. They determine whether people are cheating by looking for known signed drivers, known hardware, known bad processes and input drivers. It's cheap and scales well but it's brainless. They have to know about a hack to detect it in the future. Version checks are constantly slackened off because legitimate updates come out all the time.<p>Battlefield is seeing Wine and the drivers Wine reports (which are a mix of real and fake) and baulking out. It's to be expected from such plastic anti-cheat software. Many games do this.<p>There are better options.<p>CSGO's overwatch allows the community to self-moderate by <i>replaying</i> a player's gameplay. They literally record the player's input and rebuild what the player could see in the reviewer's client. Reviewer determines whether or not their gameplay was possible. It sounds hardcore but it's simple, and adds no latency because it's done after-the-fact. Makes it super-simple to detect most wall-hacks and aim helpers.<p>So why isn't it everywhere? Logging data costs money. And EA, for all their moneybags are cheapskates.<p>And you could automate this. You could do a server-side render to determine whether or not a user is tracking players that are not physically visible to the player, or tracking impossibly tight hitboxes, or is triggering massive killcounts far too regularly (ie exploiting a bug). But that's more money.<p>But I'd expect a better response shouting into the wind than asking EA to be better. They're a trash company.
I'm part of a Battlefield V community and the state of anticheat on this game is absolutely horrific. We see players blatantly cheating for weeks, sometimes even months without getting banned. This has made one of the game modes (Firestorm) almost unplayable and drove most players away from this mode.<p>The shocking part is that we've compiled a list[1][2] of 380+ cheaters with video proofs and we've transmitted this list to some DICE community managers and employees. For a few months they checked this list from time to time and banned the offending people but they stopped looking at it entirely since around summer. We've tried to get in touch with other people but without any success.<p>The whole community is outraged by the apparent lack of care given to the cheating issues, and the fact that they seem to ignore all the reports made by the players through the platform Origin.<p>[1] <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/172J_dqCTZpDpOBbhgvtTi_cC6I_c0IHJVkfkdwmREgo/edit?usp=sharing" rel="nofollow">https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/172J_dqCTZpDpOBbhgvtT...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScmXAY-Q-QrfflsHrFX-pyfy1eCINCx9RCuuEOuFsYgEd1Lcg/viewform" rel="nofollow">https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScmXAY-Q-QrfflsHrFX...</a>
I can only comment on this from the perspective of a very active Battlefield 1 and 5 player, the current use of cheats is pretty much an epidemic right now on all of the PC servers. There are cheat programs that you can use on the Windows clients, carpet banning based on what OS you are using is totally the wrong approach here and continues to show EA & DICE have no handle on this.<p>Instead of doing this, they should just add a vote to kick feature on the servers which would solve a lot of the frustration.
I think the title is misleading. They are not permanently banning Linux players. Some Linux players with a certain set of software installed are being banned. They’re opening cases with EA. One person confirmed their was case was not overturned and their ban stands.<p>The players banned are using Lutris, a third party game launcher which is likely against the TOS. I most certainly it don’t agree with EA, but there’s more color than flat out Linux bans.<p>EDIT: it also looks like they’re using dkvs, the vulkan gl implementation which allows users to swap shaders which would obviously constitute cheating. Probably they caught some cheaters using dkvs, added it to the list of disallowed software without fully understanding what it was and now it’s flagging a lot of false positives.
Just reading through these comments, I had no idea the current state of PC gaming. Just so I have this right, you pay for a game, but you are running the entire thing locally, so your machine knows everything. Like, people behind walls, it can auto aim at people who aren't, etc. So, now you are also forced to install these spyware-like sidecars to the game that monitor you and try to figure out if you are doing any of this?<p>What a nightmare. I have huge cleanliness issues with my machines. I don't even like using anything that needs an installer to run, and tend to run things I don't totally understand and trust in VMs. I don't think I could do this.
I'll never understand why people still buy EA products. They're easily among the most anti-consumer of all companies. Between their Origin client, microtransactions in AAA games, yearly releases with no appreciable changes and now shit like this I could never buy a product from them.
Is there any more details than a couple people being banned complaining in a forum post? Cause this looks like textbook posts by people who were caught cheating.
Rant ahead:<p>I gave up gaming on a PC in 2013 and decided to get a PS3 instead. I did this because I got fed up with the constant upgrades (OS, drivers, game patches, etc..) that sometimes required me to spend a few hours of maintenance to play games. The only game I owned in that PS3 system was BF3! I played BF3 in the PC up until the level 70s so you probably have an idea how much fed up I felt to give up.<p>I feel like BF3 is the peak of the franchise. It was executed nicely in the PC as well as other console platforms. I was afraid the graphics quality would dip too much in the PS3 comparing to the PC but realize the decline is justified giving the fact that I don't have to constantly upgrade sh<i>t.<p>BF4 on the PS4 was a-okay. BF1 is just meh. BF5 is an abomination. Having played BF since 1942 in the early 2000s I am not a BF novice. But, BF5 is the worst of all.<p>Then, I switched to Modern Warfare 2019. Sure, the maps are smaller with 6v6 multiplayer. But, comparing to BF5 I don't have to wait 5 minutes in the lobby to play a game. And when I want to leave the game, it doesn't take another 5 minutes. The most important thing is with MW2019, I feel fun playing with my limited time available for gaming. With BF5 I feel like f</i>ing work and not playing game.
As long as DXVK allows people to replace shaders, EA has to treat DXVK like a cheat tool.<p>Replacing shaders is what people use to do shady things like wallhacks, outlining moving enemies, or providing targeting data for aimbots.
The Battlefield series is a fantastic lesson in product development, especially BFV the most recent edition.<p>[1]: Despite being a very popular franchise and BF5 being a very popular theme (WW2) the game was received negatively from its very first trailer, in part due to a sudden focus on cosmetics and shirking of historical accuracy.<p>[2]: Vitriol over the trailer lead to twitter drama where the executives among other things told players not to buy the game if they didn't like it.<p>[3]: The development team defined a release schedule of drip feeding content over the next few years for free, instead of paid DLC. This sounds great to the user until you realize funding for future content will be predicated on launch success.<p>[4]: BF5 announced Firestorm, a battle-royale game mode which would be embedded inside the BF5 game. This would be the first BR mode in the series and would have the largest map ever made for a battlefield game. This mode and map would be developed by an additional studio and not eat into the development time of the original game<p>[5]: The game flopped at launch, EA was already having a horrific Q3 that year. The game launched with a large number of bugs, server crashes, and very few initial multiplayer maps.<p>[6]: Immediately after launch there was a large number of game balancing issues which the community and the game developers disagreed as to its cause. Eventually they got it right a few months later.<p>[7]: 5 months after launch Firestorm (the BR mode) released. It was a pretty interesting experience but guffawed in several key categories for a Battle-royale game, including horrific user interfaces and looting systems.<p>[8]: In order to fix issues with the initial launch of firestorm, Dice diverts resources from the main development team to work on the BR game mode.<p>[9]: Firestorm begins to lose player count, leading to very long queue times for players trying to play a game.<p>[10]: The rate of post-launch content (especially new maps) was slower than any battlefield game ever.<p>[11]: Unsolicited, the game developers rebalance many key weapons leading to the same large game balancing issues which has been "fixed" a year ago<p>[12]: Cheating issues, huge thematic settings of WW2 left out of the game, a near dead Firestorm mode, and now we can have a thread like this<p>-------<p>My final take away is that this game could have been a 10/10 but was a 5/10 and a sign that publishers like EA really suck the life out of every product line they touch.
Having working in the anti-cheat field, lot of people here have no ideas how it really works and the implications of banning people.<p>I can tell you that DICE ( Shield ~~ ) have a dedicated team of people and it's not an easy problem to solve.
Game community is needing a KYC-type solution. That would require tying accounts to real identities, and if someone performs way above the field, his account is temporarily suspended, until he/she visits the authorized verification center where gaming skill can be verified by a neutral party. If a gamer can prove his skill, an account is unsuspended.
I genuinely do not understand why cheating in video games is not taken more seriously. If you go and disrupt 200 paying customers at a movie, you'll be kicked out and everyone will get refunded if your behavior is bad enough.<p>But if you cheat in a video game and ruin the experience for potentially <i>millions</i> of paying customers? You might, MAYBE, get banned in a few months as part of a ban wave, but not after making thousands of dollars.
I wish I understood better how anti-cheat works. When anti-cheat software gets flagged while running on linux, is the cause of the flag a viable route for other cheats? I'm so unfamiliar with the mechanics of anti-cheat that I'm not even sure if I'm asking a proper question.
Vulkan being around to compete with DirectX was supposed to break down the last big barrier stopping Linux from being able to game as well as Windows. I guess that only works if game companies are willing to code up the Linux version to begin with, though.
Doesn’t surprise me. Back in 2006 I was playing counterstrike through wine and i got banned. VAC bans are permanent so that account was gone, despite appeals. I learned my lesson, now I don’t run multiplayer games through wine.
Any context would be nice. This is a modified/wrapped client, right?<p>edit: any forums software I ever write is going to use a 'fallback to static rendering' circuit breaker setup in the case of slashdotting.
Did EA ever officially support running on Linux? Shitty customer treatment aside, running a game on an unknown graphics stack isn’t really viable to allow if you want to e.g ensure users can’t replace shaders etc.<p>I don’t think this kind of anticheat is a good idea to begin with but if you want to use it, it means that when you detect a shady stack you have to assume a user is a potential cheater.<p>What EA should do is just reverse the bans if players want to run them on Windows, or refund the games (Origin credit) for those that aren’t interested if they can’t run on Linux.
Honest but perhaps naive question: why is it that anti-cheat needs to be conducted through technology only? Back in the day, online communities had admins with near unlimited power (I'm thinking IRC and community Counter-Strike servers) and they solved that problem proactively.<p>EA could have a few employees do this work but also let such employees appoint long-standing, well known community members have a limited set of powers to act upon the most blatant offenders in real time. Similar to how IRC had network and channel OPs
Yeah? And? Battlefield V multiplayer is an online service. You either use the configuration supported by the service provider or expect to get btfo'd.
Apex Legends, a property from Respawn Entertainment though technically under the EA/Origin umbrella, has a different approach on cheating by using a combination of deep learning from previous matches and shadow-banning cheaters to play among themselves. I've yet to encounter identifiable cheating since the start of the second season (mid 2019)
I don't think that Linux is the problem. Companies don't like banning players, that's lost revenue and bad press.<p>I suspect that a lot of cheaters use Linux as a cover up. In fact, if I wanted to cheat, I would do exactly that. Not only the more open nature of Linux makes it harder to detect cheats but it also gives me a reason to complain.<p>So I'm sure there are false positives for Linux gamers (it has happened), but I wouldn't be surprised if the vast majority were actual cheaters.<p>And BTW, why play Battlefield V on Linux? Maybe I am wrong but from a technical perspective, it is a lot of hassle just to avoid running Windows, and performance is likely to be worse. And from a philosophical perspective, Battlefield V and EA are not exactly in line with the ideals of free software, so if that's your reason for not using Windows, why are you giving your money to EA?
I'd love them to switch to a paid subscription model, like WoW.<p>Would help them justify the long tail of updates, patches, etc. and make a ban easier to enforce - block the cheater's credit card.<p>Make it a premium service for all I care, with premium only servers. Origin Premium doesn't do crap.
It's been a really really long time since EA last made a game I enjoyed. Like the Command and Conquer series, even Generals and Zero Hour, as much as they were a departure from the "real" C&C series.<p>I wonder if there'll ever be such a time as the nineties when it comes to new interesting game genres.<p>Nowadays it's just same FPS games with different graphics. Monorail with quick time events or battlefields of some sort. And of course same golden goose EA sports games every year. Cookie cutter.<p>Or maybe new interesting games come out all the time and I'm just too old.
Are there any cases of games banning people using virtual machines with videocard passthrough?<p>I was strongly considering going this route but kinda worried game developers will start cracking down on it.
Talking about Battlefield V cheaters on consoles...<p>Now there's a ridiculous amount of players using those chronusmax/titan two/strikepack devices that modify the input of real controllers and do things like anti-recoil, rapid fire, auto burst, drop shoot, quickscope, etc.<p>Wallhacks and autoaim are obvious (and, luckly, not common on consoles), but those devices are getting very popular and they provide subtle ways of cheating that are harder to detect.
That their anti-cheat software is able to detect this is a good thing. So many games are ruined by cheaters and bots. In this case, I don't think the intent was to ban Linux players; rather their anti-cheat software detects any sort of virtualization of video or input devices, because that could facilitate cheating software. It likely can't tell the difference between harmless virtualization and the injection of cheating software.<p>I sympathize with Linux gamers, as I wish I could game from Linux. I'm typing this from Windows right now, and the only reason I ever run Windows is to play games. I don't like dual booting—and Linux runs so amazingly-well in Hyper-V—that I'm fine having Windows as my primary OS (at home, anyway).<p>That EA's software can't tell the difference is annoying. Their PR response and lack of clarity is annoying. If, for technical reasons, they can't secure the Linux-emulated version, they should make it clear that Linux isn't supported, and offer refunds to the (surely tiny number of) people who bought it for Linux play. If the number of Linux users is large enough, they should create a proper Linux port themselves.<p>In summary, I sympathize with their goals regarding cheat prevention. It's not like someone at EA said "I hate Linux, let's accuse them of cheating and ban their accounts!" This is a technical problem and a minor PR failure. A reasoned response is atypical from gamers who feel slighted, though, so I don't expect one.
Do these same customers intend on buying the next EA product? I bet they probably will. Regardless of how loud they protest now. I feel that the game playing public doesn't find EA reprehensible <i>enough</i> to let it impact their future sales.<p>Other industries have customers drop them for a decade or permanently. "I'll never shop here again" is something people actually say.<p>So strange.
I'm getting the feeling reading this thread that gaming may have replaced porn as the internet use spurring the most rapid innovation. Is this an accurate assessment? I'm not involved with either, but in the very early days it was the adult industry that solved problems of massive use and payments etc.
:D only multi player games u should play is where players are admin on their own server. :') companies don't give a shit as long as sales are up. stop playing if it's so horrific and move to a proper game. then maybe battlefield XVIII will be playable.
Challenge for Linux users, make an open source better anti-cheat for Linux than in Windows that connects to the Linux kernel through a kmod to inspect the whole stack.<p>Then Linux would be a better gaming platform than Windows. In many ways it is already better.
I visited major bank websites on Linux but I couldn’t login and got the error “agent not supported”. Why do banks prevent logins from Linus even though I am using Google Chrome. Can someone please tell why this happens.
After the flop that was BF5 I don't expect EA to be putting much effort into anything other than keeping some servers up so they can pump and dump BF6 on whoever is dumb enough to buy it.
I see no information on this 10 post thread that they are "banning Linux players". I just see a few people saying they weren't cheating who got banned.<p>A little Occam's razor here implies it's just a few people who got caught cheating and won't admit it.
I'm not buying, playing, pirating or otherwise touching EA products on any platform since 2011 (or 2012) and recommend you do the same. This is truly anti-consumer company and it deserves to die forgotten in a ditch.
Start disputing credit card charges involving EA and watch how fast they start talking to the player base.<p>They cannot easily outsource employees to deal with that.
PSA: the original, Battlefield 1942, is still alive and well, and Linux players are welcome.<p>About 20 players/night at 7PM PST join on EA117 server. It plays the “desert combat” mod — the makers of that mod were acquihired by DICE to make BF2.
ea117.com/access<p>It’s also really easy to reinstall... <a href="http://www.mediafire.com/file/v2dj55nwoxz84o8/BF1942DCF_setup.exe" rel="nofollow">http://www.mediafire.com/file/v2dj55nwoxz84o8/BF1942DCF_setu...</a>
If you’re lazy.