Valve has spoken about potential anti-cheat issues on the Steam Machine which uses SteamOS and is not compatible with certain anti-cheats
An article from this weekend that seemingly got buried by soundbites about the Steam Machine price in the same interview, but given that we have no information on price, this seems way more interesting to me. I mean…I basically self-select games that don’t use these kinds of anti-cheat at all, but this is important information for a lot of people, especially if you’re looking for an off-ramp from Windows and still want to play some of the most popular live service titles.
Oh. That’s smart. Basically if the TPM validates the integrity, cheats cannot be installed/run on a Steam Machine. Let’s hope devs all over the world integrate this Steam Machine exception.
What exactly do you think a TPM does because it certainly doesnt have the processing power to validate anything. It just stores keys, potentially without you being able to access them (which is a heinous abuse of your autonomy but we live in a dystopia where people just somehow don’t care).
Steam machines aren’t unique in having TPM modules. Most computers do. Even Apple computers have their secure enclave.
Cheats can always be ran on a second pc, and there isn’t a way to thwart this. The ever invasive anti cheat options all trying to avoid writing proper server side validation and fog of war schemes just lose you privacy while not working, but blood thirsty gamers will lose their minds and accept anything if they think it slows down cheaters.
There is nothing worse than playing multiplayer and having somebody who is cheating. Viable and promising games have been ruined by people cheating.
But I don’t see an easy way around the issue but these are the usual solutions:
Reporting mechanism and admins able to observe cheaters and impose heavy penalties / permabans
Add anticheat on server side that detect for cheating (e.g. measuring % hit rates / headshots)
Anti cheat software on client that looks for common cheat hacks
Stream everything. It’s all hosted on the server, nobody installs anything, limiting ways to cheat.
Disincentivize cheating by not acknowledging people doing it in any way - no rare loot, no leaderboards, no material gain
Make it a 3rd party problem - release the server or sell hosting and make it somebody else’s problem to police the servers (e.g. Rust / Minecraft servers)
Personally I’d prefer that multiplayer games obtain consent to install anti cheat and should certify through auditing that the anticheat software is inactive and nonintrusive when the game is not running. Perhaps operating systems could even provide hooks and hard guarantees that this is the case.
Covered on steam with game bans, which can be handed by server admins
Would be nice to see ngl. Whats not humanly possible should result in a game ban.
Covered on steam by VAC, automated system checking for cheat signatures in user memory space
Hard to do and not realistically feasible for the majority of people, screen capture with per pixel analysis tools would still work but thats not that big of an issue
VAC and game bans also ban you from community features including trading your inventory, afaik you phone number and all accounts associated with it are banned
They mean the game is streamed from a server to the player, rather than running on the player’s hardware. This might not be feasible for every game studio to do, but would actually open up the game for more players to be able to play (since local hardware requirements would be lower).
I think this is a terrible idea for other reasons, but accessibility and anti-cheat aspects of it are not some of those reasons.
The fix is to not use local anti cheat at all which is proven time and time again to be the wrong strategy. It’s stupid and anyone who makes local anti cheat is either stupid or cheap or both.
It affects only the most cancerous type of anticheat that’s been bypassed for a decade and introduces huge risks to your PC - Kernel level anticheat. People should stop playing any game that has such anticheat.
Umm, actually. All proprietary software is unethical and introduces huge risks to your PC. People should stop playing any game that has such closed closed source.
Having a third party updater attached to a kernel that could be hacked or tampered by malicious worker at any time (see Crowdstrike) seems riskier than just running teams, but fair point
Lots of games that ship with kernel level anticheat have an android port that doesn’t have that feature because android (also linux) similarly doesn’t hand out root access, let alone kernel access to anything in userland.
Huge example being Fortnite.
Already ignoring the fact that kernel level anticheats have well known bypasses, cheaters can also just use the Android version to make cheating easier if that was really an obstacle.
Anyone peddling kernel anticheat as a requirement is just using it to cut costs in running moderation staff. Epic Games specifically is just being a dick to linux because they know they have zero leverage in that market, and don’t want to give Steam more traffic.
All Valve really has to do is sell enough units to tip the percent of linux users that these publishers would not want to miss out on. That’s how so many updated and expanded with the steam deck. Currently the estimate is about 4 million monthly active users on a linux platform. I think if they can reach 10 million (I think 6-7%), it would be enough to incentivize the change.
I never would have thought Microsoft would allow Halo Infinite or MCC on linux 5 years ago, but they actually changed their minds because they knew people wanted to play on the steam deck. I would even take a guess that the new CoD stuff will shortly follow since MSFT is taking a more open platform approach anyway.
When Linux market share hits 20% it would be a monumental achievement, and developers would probably still avoid it.
Don’t get me wrong, I moved to Linux this year. I want to see it gain traction in the gaming space.
It’s just not likely to happen any time soon. Loads of very basic use cases are a fucking shitshow because of a lot of reasons.
Just getting sunshine setup with a virtual display is a nightmare on Wayland without scripts to enable/disable displays and without being in front of the computer you want to remote to, because the simple logic of “if this display =off, then other display =on” is not a thing.
2 years ago, I would have agreed with you. But so much progress has been made and lots of devs have already enabled multiplayer support, it’s really just a handful that need to be convinced, so I don’t think 20% will be necessary to get there.
You just need to convince developers of a handful of titles, like fortnite, apex, valorant, BF2042, bf6, rust, R6 siege, league of legends, call of duty 2025… should be easy right?
It’ll never happen. The ones who are fanatical about it like the rust guy believe carte blanche that linux support will only make cheating worse and not positively improve the community. He doesn’t care about linux sales, the windows ones throw so much dosh at him that there’s no “market force” incentivizing him otherwise.
I wouldn’t expect the Machine to be any more popular than the Deck, which already wasn’t enough to convince holdouts. In fact I would bet the Machine will sell much less than the Deck, since that had a more unique niche carved out for it.
I think the hope isn’t that “maybe this will be big enough”, but “maybe together they’ll be big enough”. Who knows, though. It got a lot of hype on reveal but people are fickle sometimes.
I would not be surprised if the work they’re doing here would be compatible with the Deck. It was just less of a priority for a handheld than a living room machine.
If devs want to support one, it’ll be no problem to support the other. But I doubt devs who already refused to support one will suddenly change their minds.
They refused to support the user space anti cheat. The work they’re talking about doing here is aiming to be the same sort of security they get on Windows. Low level. I have no idea how that works with Linux’s software licenses, but they said in the interview that this might be an exception made only for SteamOS.
They have been investing in proton heavily to make games work on Linux, most of my library just work out of the box, some with parameters and a very small amount of my 300+ games do not work.
So when are you going to get your GabeCube?
In the mean time you can check on protondb how much of your steam library is compatible with Linux using this link https://www.protondb.com/profile
You can either link via the Steam api, or if your profile is public paste your profile link into the input.
Then select the “By ProtonDB rating” and see how much of your current library is compatible.
Of the 474 games I have most are Gold or higher. 2 are Bronze (crashes often), 2 are Borked and 13 are awaiting more data to be rated. 60 even have native clients.
And I’m hoping for them to be flatpacks so they still run five years later. I’ve had to resort to running Windows builds via Proton for games that have native Linux builds because they don’t work anymore.
They said they aren’t going to announce the price until closer to launch, so just chill. They only announced the product so they could get developers working on game support early.
If you’re trying to make a PC that has similar features and similar performance, I think the Steam Machine is going to be a really competitive price to that and provide really good value to it
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: [email protected]
Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.
Rules
1. Submissions have to be related to games
Video games, tabletop, or otherwise. Posts not related to games will be deleted.
This community is focused on games, of all kinds. Any news item or discussion should be related to gaming in some way.
2. No bigotry or harassment, be civil
No bigotry, hardline stance. Try not to get too heated when entering into a discussion or debate.
We are here to talk and discuss about one of our passions, not fight or be exposed to hate. Posts or responses that are hateful will be deleted to keep the atmosphere good. If repeatedly violated, not only will the comment be deleted but a ban will be handed out as well. We judge each case individually.
3. No excessive self-promotion
Try to keep it to 10% self-promotion / 90% other stuff in your post history.
This is to prevent people from posting for the sole purpose of promoting their own website or social media account.
4. Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts
This community is mostly for discussion and news. Remember to search for the thing you’re submitting before posting to see if it’s already been posted.
We want to keep the quality of posts high. Therefore, memes, funny videos, low-effort posts and reposts are not allowed. We prohibit giveaways because we cannot be sure that the person holding the giveaway will actually do what they promise.
5. Mark Spoilers and NSFW
Make sure to mark your stuff or it may be removed.
No one wants to be spoiled. Therefore, always mark spoilers. Similarly mark NSFW, in case anyone is browsing in a public space or at work.
6. No linking to piracy
Don’t share it here, there are other places to find it. Discussion of piracy is fine.
We don’t want us moderators or the admins of lemmy.world to get in trouble for linking to piracy. Therefore, any link to piracy will be removed. Discussion of it is of course allowed.
Oh. That’s smart. Basically if the TPM validates the integrity, cheats cannot be installed/run on a Steam Machine. Let’s hope devs all over the world integrate this Steam Machine exception.
This… doesnt make any sense… For so many reasons.
What exactly do you think a TPM does because it certainly doesnt have the processing power to validate anything. It just stores keys, potentially without you being able to access them (which is a heinous abuse of your autonomy but we live in a dystopia where people just somehow don’t care).
Steam machines aren’t unique in having TPM modules. Most computers do. Even Apple computers have their secure enclave.
Cheats can always be ran on a second pc, and there isn’t a way to thwart this. The ever invasive anti cheat options all trying to avoid writing proper server side validation and fog of war schemes just lose you privacy while not working, but blood thirsty gamers will lose their minds and accept anything if they think it slows down cheaters.
Ewww.
This is a huge deal for Linux gaming.
There is nothing worse than playing multiplayer and having somebody who is cheating. Viable and promising games have been ruined by people cheating.
But I don’t see an easy way around the issue but these are the usual solutions:
Personally I’d prefer that multiplayer games obtain consent to install anti cheat and should certify through auditing that the anticheat software is inactive and nonintrusive when the game is not running. Perhaps operating systems could even provide hooks and hard guarantees that this is the case.
They mean the game is streamed from a server to the player, rather than running on the player’s hardware. This might not be feasible for every game studio to do, but would actually open up the game for more players to be able to play (since local hardware requirements would be lower).
I think this is a terrible idea for other reasons, but accessibility and anti-cheat aspects of it are not some of those reasons.
The fix is to not use local anti cheat at all which is proven time and time again to be the wrong strategy. It’s stupid and anyone who makes local anti cheat is either stupid or cheap or both.
Oh this might be what pushes larger companies to drop kernel level anticheat! That would remove the main reason that keeps my gaming on Windows.
It affects only the most cancerous type of anticheat that’s been bypassed for a decade and introduces huge risks to your PC - Kernel level anticheat. People should stop playing any game that has such anticheat.
Umm, actually. All proprietary software is unethical and introduces huge risks to your PC. People should stop playing any game that has such closed closed source.
Dude. This is such a dumb argument. Kernel level anti cheat means you got code running at kernel level. See the whole crowd strike fiasco.
Having a third party updater attached to a kernel that could be hacked or tampered by malicious worker at any time (see Crowdstrike) seems riskier than just running teams, but fair point
Yes, it is riskier. That’s not my point, though. It is that telling people “just don’t do that” isn’t helpful.
Another reminder that markets don’t self regulate.
I’m with you, but you’ve got a lot of people to convince. A lot. The people playing those games make up the majority of the market.
This just reads like a bunch of nonsense. What are they actually doing?
Any idea or hints how Epic will handle this?
Sit back and let Valve sort it out.
Lots of games that ship with kernel level anticheat have an android port that doesn’t have that feature because android (also linux) similarly doesn’t hand out root access, let alone kernel access to anything in userland.
Huge example being Fortnite.
Already ignoring the fact that kernel level anticheats have well known bypasses, cheaters can also just use the Android version to make cheating easier if that was really an obstacle.
Anyone peddling kernel anticheat as a requirement is just using it to cut costs in running moderation staff. Epic Games specifically is just being a dick to linux because they know they have zero leverage in that market, and don’t want to give Steam more traffic.
All Valve really has to do is sell enough units to tip the percent of linux users that these publishers would not want to miss out on. That’s how so many updated and expanded with the steam deck. Currently the estimate is about 4 million monthly active users on a linux platform. I think if they can reach 10 million (I think 6-7%), it would be enough to incentivize the change.
I never would have thought Microsoft would allow Halo Infinite or MCC on linux 5 years ago, but they actually changed their minds because they knew people wanted to play on the steam deck. I would even take a guess that the new CoD stuff will shortly follow since MSFT is taking a more open platform approach anyway.
EDIT:
Still not going to convince some stubborn hold outs like the rust guy. Nothing will ever convince them.
The market will - and it’d be foolish to underestimate the market forces valve will spark by making viable alternatives mass market.
When Linux market share hits 20% it would be a monumental achievement, and developers would probably still avoid it.
Don’t get me wrong, I moved to Linux this year. I want to see it gain traction in the gaming space.
It’s just not likely to happen any time soon. Loads of very basic use cases are a fucking shitshow because of a lot of reasons.
Just getting sunshine setup with a virtual display is a nightmare on Wayland without scripts to enable/disable displays and without being in front of the computer you want to remote to, because the simple logic of “if this display =off, then other display =on” is not a thing.
2 years ago, I would have agreed with you. But so much progress has been made and lots of devs have already enabled multiplayer support, it’s really just a handful that need to be convinced, so I don’t think 20% will be necessary to get there.
60% of anticheat implementations need to be fixed. 682 total titles. https://areweanticheatyet.com/
You just need to convince developers of a handful of titles, like fortnite, apex, valorant, BF2042, bf6, rust, R6 siege, league of legends, call of duty 2025… should be easy right?
It’ll never happen. The ones who are fanatical about it like the rust guy believe carte blanche that linux support will only make cheating worse and not positively improve the community. He doesn’t care about linux sales, the windows ones throw so much dosh at him that there’s no “market force” incentivizing him otherwise.
I wouldn’t expect the Machine to be any more popular than the Deck, which already wasn’t enough to convince holdouts. In fact I would bet the Machine will sell much less than the Deck, since that had a more unique niche carved out for it.
I think the hope isn’t that “maybe this will be big enough”, but “maybe together they’ll be big enough”. Who knows, though. It got a lot of hype on reveal but people are fickle sometimes.
I would not be surprised if the work they’re doing here would be compatible with the Deck. It was just less of a priority for a handheld than a living room machine.
If devs want to support one, it’ll be no problem to support the other. But I doubt devs who already refused to support one will suddenly change their minds.
They refused to support the user space anti cheat. The work they’re talking about doing here is aiming to be the same sort of security they get on Windows. Low level. I have no idea how that works with Linux’s software licenses, but they said in the interview that this might be an exception made only for SteamOS.
I will buy one of these if valve fixes gaming on Linux. I don’t even want one
They have been investing in proton heavily to make games work on Linux, most of my library just work out of the box, some with parameters and a very small amount of my 300+ games do not work. So when are you going to get your GabeCube?
I don’t know because they haven’t announced a release date
In the mean time you can check on protondb how much of your steam library is compatible with Linux using this link https://www.protondb.com/profile
Of the 474 games I have most are Gold or higher. 2 are Bronze (crashes often), 2 are Borked and 13 are awaiting more data to be rated. 60 even have native clients.
my hope is for native Linux releases like it used to happen with id software in the quake 3 days
And I’m hoping for them to be flatpacks so they still run five years later. I’ve had to resort to running Windows builds via Proton for games that have native Linux builds because they don’t work anymore.
Can they address the price concerns?
They said they aren’t going to announce the price until closer to launch, so just chill. They only announced the product so they could get developers working on game support early.
I think they want to play this close to the vest because of potentially having to navigate tariffs.
I wonder how much money the Switch 2 lost on release due to tariff fuckery, at least in the US and Canada.
They have:
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/how-much-will-steam-machine-cost-heres-what-valve-had-to-say-about-pricing/1100-6536161/
Surprised they (Denuvo, etc - not Valve) don’t just hard require SELinux.
SELinux protects systems from bugs in software. Not against users with full root privileges using their own hardware.
But anti-cheat is mostly about false sense of security anyway.
I really hope it won’t be a case of requiring a Steam Machine with SteamOS on there for this to work.