cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/10958052
Vanguard, the controversial anti-cheat software initially attached to Valorant, is now also coming to League of Legends.
Summary:
The article discusses Riot Games’ requirement for players to install their Vanguard anti-cheat software, which runs at the kernel level, in order to play their games such as League of Legends and Valorant. The software aims to combat cheating by scanning for known vulnerabilities and blocking them, as well as monitoring for suspicious activity while the game is being played. However, the use of kernel-level software raises concerns about privacy and security, as it grants the company complete access to users’ devices.
The article highlights that Riot Games is owned by Tencent, a Chinese tech giant that has been involved in censorship and surveillance activities in China. This raises concerns that Vanguard could potentially be used for similar purposes, such as monitoring players’ activity and restricting free speech in-game.
Ultimately, the decision to install Vanguard rests with players, but the article urges caution and encourages players to consider the potential risks and implications before doing so.
You know, Valve once considered making an entire OS to prevent cheating. I’d assume something like SteamOS, but incredibly locked down and designed for playing Valve games. Obviously that never got past the idea stage, but disregarding the truckload of issues with that idea, one big one is that you could use either physical cheating tools, by messing with the direct hardware inputs, or run it in a VM. Basically, unless you have a player in a locked-off room, with a pc, keyboard, and mouse provided by you, and the pc running your own locked-down OS… well, someone’s gonna figure out a way to cheat.
That’s not to say that anticheat can be ignored entirely, but since there is no remotely reasonable state which could eradicate cheating entirely, you need to find a happy medium of not “infecting” the player’s pc with a new backdoor, because even if you’re not malicious, someone else will be, and nothing at all. Something that has a minimum level of invasiveness with a maximum level of cheating prevention, at least filtering out basic script kiddies.
The problem with that is, nobody cares. Basically nobody even knows what a “Kernel” is and what “Kernel-level” means and implies, so it’s just some weird anticheat for them. Also, as long as DRM doesn’t interfere with their playing experience, they don’t care either. Barely anyone will even notice if a few frames are missing, because Denuvo is chilling in the background, keeping the game “safe”.
We are a subset of privacy-minded people in a subset of somewhat knowledgeable gamers. Losing us as customers doesn’t matter in the slightest to the devs/publishers, and nobody else will make a fuss, or at least they’ll not stop spending money.
Yeah, computer illiteracy is pretty bad. Those who don’t care make the most money to companies, and they don’t even care how the companies invade their privacy and or security.