I can't believe people are willingly installing rootkits of dubious origin on their computers to play games (and paying for the privilege). I know cheating is an issue, but still.
What's the point of a rootkit anticheat for a game which:<p>1. does not do clientside prediction, instead relies on full server-roundtrip for visual confirmation of your own actions (and therefore cannot "wallhack"/maphack enemy positions)<p>2. where machine-assisted actions cannot provide mechanical advantage beyond what is already regularly achievable by a normal human (at most only providing improvement in executional repeatability/consistency)<p>3. where execution depends predominantly on seat-of-the-pants split-second decision-making from high-level experience, as opposed to unambiguously "correct" responses that can be short-circuted without player intervention?<p>(League runs with a 30Hz tickrate, all actions and movements are first-order continuous, and visible state is fully serverside-obfuscated)
Cheating in Lol is rampant enough that the most popular cheating champions (that are easier to cheat with) have had large win rate drops since Vanguard was required, which is quite impressive in a 5v5 game.
Vanguard has been out for Valorant for a while, and it appears to be the same system for Lol. Im not saying that these complaints are a few rare examples by haters, except that is what I am saying, and I do think its much better than this article implies.<p>RIOT said 0.03% of players eeported and issue, the majority of which are probably the incredibly common case of Vanguard requiring TMP 2.0 on Windows 11, which doesn’t brick ones PC<p>Im sympathetic to the security issues, but the outright blue-screening in this article are probably not issues.
Take these reports with a mountain of salt. Riot monitors online cheater communities[1] and has no shortage of player activity data. Right now:<p>1. There's definitely an ongoing, coordinated disinformation effort from cheaters. Some media and real users with poor information hygiene are magnifying it, which is of course the cheaters' goal.<p>2. Riot's activity metrics are normal, meaning there's no statistically detectable technical issue keeping players out of the game. The actual players are going about their business as usual.<p>1. See e.g. <a href="https://twitter.com/itsgamerdoc/status/1786113515670962505" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/itsgamerdoc/status/1786113515670962505</a>
Seems like the issue is that anticheat strategies are not part of the game core but being added as a tack-on. If the games engine itself is safegaurding/disallowing things breaking laws of physics/human limits, then most of the non-sense would evaporate. Not knowledgeable enough about game dev to know why this is already not being done.
im sure its because riot and moderators are cleaning up any mentions of vangaurd in a negative light. but im sure its also because people just really dont care but the amount a push back, complaining, whining etc about vangaurd from the lol community is interesting in how quite its been. just because that community are master complainers and do it almost as sport. limit testing on how insignificant something can be and have the whole community up and arms. especially about skins or balance.
Anticheat software will always get beaten, eventually. It’s a game of cat and mouse.<p>Anti cheat should just go away completely. High stakes tournaments never held over the network. Always have a physical presence. The likelihood of a cheater being able to cheat in LAN play is very very low. You have it streamed live and referees looking over your shoulder at all times. PCs often not owned by teams.<p>For online play, rely on community reports and moderation.
Cheaters are just a part of the game IMHO. Back when I played CS with a competitive bent it was fun to play against and beat honest cheaters. Skill building, as it were. Those I despised and wished a special place in hell with mint flavored turds to smoke, were the lying cheaters.
lol players never complain about cheaters and they complain about everything. like every little thing. they complain a lot about smurfs though. actually they do complain about some botting which iv seen as well. not sure if bot or human bot but they are there at the lowest levels trying to speed level to 30 and sell accounts. but i mean everyone at that level are people starting a new alt account and just play/afk fun modes til level 30
I have a simple non invasive anti cheat that would prevent the worst stuff.<p>Simulate the game world, I know expensive, scale it down and simulate it.<p>Gun can fire six rounds and has a 2 second reload? How did thay guy fire 30 rounds in the last 4 seconds?<p>How did that guy travel 2000 meters while floating 100 feet in the air, level over the terrain?<p>No gpu, could do it with data models and statistics. Simple stuff.<p>Honestly you don't even need your own servers, have clients report impossible behavior they observe.