Recently a game called “The Finals” has released and after their beta was over they stopped supporting Linux, and a lot of people are clearly pissed and have sparked a ton of debates within their Discord server but I constantly and constantly see an argument brought up by Windows users in the community saying that they dont want Linux support and argue that enabling Linux support is only going to add more cheaters into the game. (as its a pretty big problem right now even though they’re using EAC.)
I don’t believe it, I haven’t seen any proof of it, but I wanted to ask you guys what your thoughts are on it. And, if you have some sort of source proving whether or not this is the case, please do share.
Yes and no.
While I take issue with oversimplification on this, the ship has sailed: Generally speaking, many/most PC anti-cheat solutions are “rootkits” in that they require elevated, often kernel level, permissions to detect running processes and the like.
The linux implementation, while it varies, generally has drastically reduced permissions and is more or less restricted to the wine/whatever container as far as the higher level permissions. But many still have user level permissions and that is pretty much sufficient. At a high level: It can basically run
ps -elfand all the fun stuff like that.So yes, a linux version of an anti-cheat can potentially create more cheaters. Imagine that I run my aimbot/maphack process as a privileged user (because random ass hackers are totally who I want to give root on my machine…) and it either finds a way to overlay on my screen (ha, good luck with the mess that is x11 and wayland) or outputs to a device over the network so I can glance at a laptop or tablet. Without sufficiently elevated permissions, this can’t be detected.
But… I am not aware of any indications of this ever happening. And, for funsies, me and a few buddies used a webcam, off the (github) shelf computer vision libraries, and a bit of off the (github) shelf ML to set up predictive aiming that more or less replicates the idea of “pre-firing” and learning how to watch corners with a near real-time overlay (when we can be bothered to run it on a GPU box). Which does absolutely nothing on the player computer so…
Which is why we are seeing an increasing push for server side anti-cheat solutions. It increases the cost of the server (which can be amortized by server farms) but basically lets “anomalies” be detected. So it doesn’t matter if they can detect you are running a Tarkov map hack. All they need to do is detect that you are tracking enemies you should not be able to see. And we already see suspicions of similar tools being used for things like MOBAs.
So to answer the question: Yes. But there is no actionable data saying it has ever occurred. Although, grain of salt, that also wouldn’t be widely shared.
Okay. All the fanboys please stop reading. I am just going to talk about… uhm… Eternalism and Warframe and the implication on taxation in the Origin System. Yeah, you don’t want to hear that. So please leave.
Seriously. Please leave.
Okay, are they gone? Good.
Yeah, it actually very much can. Not because more linux players are cheaters. But because it increases the support burden. I am not aware of the resources behind The Finals, but adding linux support means you add a LOT more SKUs to have to deal with. And even if your policy is “Linux, go fuck yourself” you still have to deal with the negative PR of “I tried to play this on my nvidia wayland machine using open source drivers and the framerate was low. FUCKING LAZY DEVS!! YOU LIVE AT <insert address here> AND I AM GOING TO HUNT YOU DOWN AND <insert horrifying threats here>” and so forth. You know, Gamer shit.
Which means there is now less time and resources to go around to preemptively test and fix potential vulnerabilities. Because if EAC or Battleye or whatever spots a massive vulnerability, it is only a matter of time until a sufficiently different process exploits the same vulnerability.
Which is the story of everything. Linux adds a support burden (and “improved bug reports” only go so far and are also incredibly subjective) and that means a development burden. Wine/proton goes a long way toward not making that a big one. But if you are trying to push The Next Big Thing in multiplayer gaming, even those first few hours after launch matter a lot for your survival. The moment your game is “dead”, it is pretty much guaranteed to die.
And that also ignores stuff like (maybe?) FUD being spread. The best example is probably that Chinese battle royale game that everyone and their mother accused of being a crypto miner or whatever it was. Not sure if anyone ever conclusively decided, but the game basically was radioactive during the mad rush to find the next ApeLegs.
So if a studio decides they don’t think the improved sales to us linux gamers is worth the potential headaches at a vital time? I don’t like it, but I am not going to blame them.