I had just come off of FFX while running through all the FF games that I could. With FF12, I got to a point where I had a solid amount of freedom and did a bunch of side quests and stuff. Then the next portion of the story takes you to this mountain, and I thought, ah cool, this looks like “new base” material. They lay out new information about the plot and then the next stop is to assault an air ship.
Kick ass, I think. This is probably roughly the story equivalent of the assault on Bevelle from FFX, you go in, fight your way through, a cinematic happens and the thrust of the story changes, new info drops, motivations change and are renewed just like in FFX.
Nope. You get to the boss on that ship, it’s some dude you have little to no investment in fighting. You kick his ass, he transforms, easy fight, and the game just ends.
I sat in actual open mouthed disbelief. There was no way the game ended there, at what I felt was dramatically and game time wise to be the obvious mid point. And yet, there the credits rolled.
I haven’t played since the original release, but I vaguely remember feeling the same way. If I remember correctly you get to the boss and he is practically like who are you guys. I felt so let down there was no build up between the boss and your characters.
And then Square repeated it with FFXV. Whole time I was like why do I care about this villain? Apparently you had to play some side game or read a story to understand why you were meant to care.
With the decision that we needed to play the Kingdom Hearts mobile game to fully understand KH3, I’m starting to not like Square telling us we need to play so many different games to get how KH plot was
If you like the cheesy story, Saints Row the Third is wacky awesome fun. It’s not 100 hours so you’d have to replay it, but you could do that co-op with a couple of friends. There’s nothing quite like bailing out of your fighter jet wearing a hotdog costume and then blowing up half a city block with your rocket launcher on the way down.
Vampire Survivors is a good candidate too, regularly introducing new characters and weapon combos and weird secrets for pretty non-stop dopamine. Maybe you could get 100 hours with the expansions but that seems like a stretch.
Honorable mention to Forza Horizon 4, it’s everything Burnout Paradise wished it could be and had a smile on my face nearly the entire time. Although there were a few spots where I set the difficulty too high and/or didn’t tune up my car and lost races, so that was less fun, but kind of my own fault. Well over 100 hours on this one, but the base game has only come down to $12 and won’t be sold after today!
Was always wary of getting into the Saints Row series because I always like to start with part 1, no matter how different it is and if it was a different set of people making it. But doing this on PC is not as simple as meeting a steam purchase and I already have had plenty to play, so I was reluctant to get into yet another series with more than 2 installments. I’ll see what I feel like later. I’m fairly used to configuring games to work, but I take a lot of time with it.
I’ve already decided to check vampire survivors…
I’m extremely wary of what the state of Forza horizon 4 will be if servers go down—I usually, almost entirely rather, avoid live service and anything with needless dependencies for that reason. It seems the FH4 servers will still be on for years, but even then it is possible that when servers are taken offline, it’ll be before I play it… or play it adequately.
Example: I wanted to start Divinity Original Sin 1 in late 2021. I instead started it in 2024, and have done about a quarter of it only before leaving it alone for a bit. This happens a lot depending on what I’m occupied with in general—and doing all of the classic Divinity games, and not really liking most of them aside from Beyond Divinity which I found decent and Act 1 only of Divinity 2 (the action game) very good, also played a part in that. While there’s no matter of playing the earlier entries, I am going to get a lot busier soon so it seems to be a problem.
For SR3, just do it, it’s a really well-made game and runs great and you don’t need any prior knowledge except to know that it’s kind of a GTA parody. I don’t think SR1 was even ported to PC, and SR2 is pretty buggy and unstable on modern machines (though fun aside from that). SR4 supposed to be pretty great (same engine as 3 I think) but I haven’t played it.
FH4 has a healthy playerbase and I’m pretty confident it’ll still be worth playing over the next year. However beyond that as the community slowly dwindles it will eventually become less fun with fewer people doing Forzathons or seasonal co-ops or using the auctions, even if the servers are still running.
Drag picked up Helldivers recently, which uses a KLA. Drag’s had no problems with it. But drag’s dragon also downloaded it, and it completely borked its computer. The voltage regulator chip for the CPU failed, and its computer started crashing on completely different games, even after uninstalling Helldivers.
Drag uses person-independent pronouns, which are conjugated and inflected the same way in all grammatical persons. When drag uses drag’s pronouns, they’re first person. And to answer your question, drag has a pet dragon. We’re engaged to be married. It’s @HonouraryDragon
Thanks. A lot of people lived through the “singular they” controversy, where conjugation was a big issue, yet they never fully understood the conclusion that conjugation in English depends on the pronoun, not on the inflection. Latin has different rules, of course, but we’re not speaking Latin. A lot of people are still upset about that fact after all these centuries. They’re usually the kind of people who think the Romans were the good guys, and the Goths who spoke a precursor to English were evil. Fun fact: Adolf Hitler hated Gothic script. He called it “Jewish letters”. It’s funny how Germany changed sides over the whole issue. One minute Germany is sacking Rome, and the next they’re the home of the Holy Roman Empire. The whole “Third Reich” thing was an attempt at claiming a lineage descended from Rome. And of course England and the US spent a long time establishing themselves as the inheritors of Rome too. That’s probably why there’s so many old people who want English to be Latin.
Maybe you’re not coming across them regularly but they’re well known outside the corporate world - not to the extent of Microsoft but it’s not the last time they’ll be in the spotlight.
Indeed, not regularly. I only had the pleasure of hearing about them when I had a job that mandated it. They are explicitly targeted at business users.
They literally just urgently requested that everyone update windows 10 and 11 the other day because they found a zero day. Cloudstrike is only unknown if you don’t pay attention to anything privacy related.
I have been an avid gamer since Atari 2600 and IBM PCjr, I have played RPG, shoot-em ups, arcades, stories and FPS.
I had no idea what it was and how to play it, but I opened up my, on sale, US$7.50, new game from a small developer I'd read about named Concerned Ape. Stardew Valley. I have only been playing for 2 years and have 6 different setups i keep going back to for tweaking, and have just started a 7th. The gameplay is straightforward, and oddly addictive. I just added up the hours played on all the games, comes to 1200 hours. Don't know if this fits your bill, but I have been surprised that it is my go to even with the AAA games like Zelda taking a back seat.
Totally agree. Went all-in on Linux earlier this year and it was all working pretty good but there is really no solution when all your buddies are playing fortnite.
The multiple “game streaming” services our there wasn’t really cutting it either. I recall reading that Microsoft was going to be more strict with allowing kernel level anticheat but I don’t remember exactly where in saw that and I’m too lazy to Google. I hope with all the new PC handhelds coming out (steam deck, etc), that major companies start pushing for this or figuring out a workaround.
In the wake of Crowdstrike, Microsoft was going to allow for additional avenues for hooks into the OS that don’t reach as deep into the kernel level, but they never said they were removing the hooks that Crowdstrike or anti-cheat use, as far as I can tell. One solution for PC handhelds is to run whatever modified version of Windows that Microsoft is cooking up, so that you get the console-like interface without compromising on the anti-cheat compatibility. The solution Valve is seemingly hoping for is that, by disclosing kernel-level anti-cheat on the store page, such a solution becomes poison in the marketplace and developers choose a different one.
Steam is a good platform, but if this strategy works and it kills off kernel level anticheat and gets more Linux support, those would be next level contributions to gaming.
The solution Valve is seemingly hoping for is that, by disclosing kernel-level anti-cheat on the store page, such a solution becomes poison in the marketplace and developers choose a different one.
Honestly, I wish they were more aggressive with it. Make the warning banners about kernel-level anti-cheat bright red and put it right above the purchase button like the “needs VR headset” warning.
Previously, my Apex Legends account with hundreds of hours and unlocks got banned for no reason, but I made a new account and played on. Then they banned Linux and I’ve never looked back.
Now I’m looking forward to not being able to play 2XKO as well.
I’m not a target for these hacks (I mostly play like commandos 1.5, Red alert and Diablo II) but I have my main PC on Linux and then a sort of franken-PC on windows where I don’t share sensitive data, or anything meaningful except game-related data I guess.
It is going to be hard to potentially have to make GTA 6 the first one I skip entirely (minus II and London I guess, I never got around to playing those. Or the stories).
I had 2000 hours in SA:MP in the ~one year I actively used xFire. I am an absolute GTA nerd.
I’ll survive it, maybe borrow the console version off a friend who ends up buying it or something. But I know for sure I’ll hate myself for having principles. Or I’ll cave in and hate myself for having principles and caving in.
I plan on waiting until they just make it free 12 times like they did GTA 5,I haven’t enjoyed GTA 5 anyway, they scrapped what made single player good and had a super buggy multiplayer if you had a slower internet, the amount of times it froze and hot stuck in the multiplayer tutorial at my parents because they had a 5/5 so it struggled internet side was insane for something that was already on the system and was still SP
Now that Stop Killing Games is actually being taken seriously
It is? They're still at 39%. Let's not call victory before reaching the start of the race. Getting to 100% will just be the beginning.
Also, kernel level anti-cheat seems like an easy thing to fix: don't buy the game. Be a little bit more principled and selective in your purchasing choices.
It’s a very recent development, but the consumer actually does have enough information just from the store page these days to know that a game uses kernel level software. The thing that still sucks is that it can be retroactive. In those cases, I suppose we just ask for a refund.
“Don’t buy a game that ships with malware” is a perfectly correct decision, but it doesn’t address the fact that games are shipping with fucking malware.
Let me assure you, if you’re not actually an EU citizen, signing would be a decidedly bad idea. All that would accomplish is pumped numbers that will be disregarded in the end, so it can only serve to hurt the campaign.
I’ve seen the Government in America ignore more than one petition they claimed was tampered with and I wouldn’t want that to be the result here (The EU seems to be more on the up and up than the US government, but still).
This issue would be solved / non existent if matchmaking was not the only option for playing online game, which wouldn’t be an issue if publishers stopped being so greedy and predatory when it comes to player retention, which wouldn’t be an issue if the economic system we live in didn’t promote this toxic behaviour.
So yeah, kernel based anticheats are mostly just a symptom of a larger problem, the rotten video games industry
This issue would be solved / non existent if matchmaking was not the only option for playing online game
This is incredibly false.
Back in the day? Counterstrike 1.6 was SO good that we played through it with rampant hackers everywhere. Finding the rare server where people weren’t using aimbots and wallhacks was a bigger find than a hyper attractive alien asking you to teach it what love is. Same with UT and Quake.
I think it should also be noted that the games industry is not audited for security to the same degree as a lot of other industries. So vulnerabilities may not be found until years after launch and then go unpatched indefinitely because the company has already moved on to the next thing.
Hell, one of the older CoD games had an RCE vulnerability that as far as I’m aware is still not patched.
Plus, major publishers like EA are now pushing to create their own kernel-level anticheat in-house. Why should anyone trust them to create a secure piece of software that runs with the highest permissions possible when they can’t even be trusted to create stable, functional games?
Someone discovered Dark Souls games had a RCE but they never responded to the person that kept emailing them about it for months. The security guy then started invading streamers and crashing the game while doing fun stuff like showing text on the screen. Only then did Fromsoft take down the servers and patch things up - which took a few months.
Yes, game companies really don’t take security seriously.
With you on this, regardless of the method used, no app has any business running or snooping outside of the container that it was set up in. And this doesn’t just apply to desktop operating systems, mobile and entertainment consoles too.
I’d even take it a step further, that nonsense shouldn’t be on my machine in the first place.
Want to run anticheat stuff? Run it on your own crappy servers at your own cost and processing power. Live detect it through packets that are sent to you and are being processed, be it voice or input.
Whatever happens on my machine is none of your business.
It should be said that I’m not against games detecting cheaters and banning them from online play. It’s very specifically kernel-level anticheats that I can’t stand on principle.
I’m against them being able to ban you from playing online in its entirety, which is something they can do because most online games don’t let you run the servers yourself anymore. Sure, if someone cheats on official servers, ban them from the official servers. They should still be able to play, cheating or not, on the server they run themselves, but that’s not an option we even have most of the time.
This one is such an overlooked part of this whole dilemma. The problem is NOT THAT the official servers not allowing clients without kernel level anti cheat. It’s just we don’t have an option to host our own servers anymore and we’re confined to following the rules.
Nobody wants to play with all the cheaters and the people who got banned because they couldn’t stop talking about how much they love CSAM in the lobbies.
I mean, look at twitter. After the recent mass exodus to bluesky there is anger because they are realizing their quarantine zone is REAL shitty.
I do wish more games would provide player run servers as an option. but I am under no illusion that that is going to be good for anything other than “Hey, remember when we all played Chivalry 2 for a few years? What say we play that on Friday night and then ignore it for another decade?”
That is a perfectly valid use case for a video game that I paid for though. I do exactly that with games like 007: Agent Under Fire (in split-screen), and I played games like Rainbow Six 3 long after the official servers weren’t there anymore. Agent Under Fire in particular is a lot of fun with all of the modifiers on, like moon gravity, and I wouldn’t mind playing some multiplayer games with friends with cheats like that one on; things that you wouldn’t want on in a ranked queue, but things that I should 100% be able to do with the product that I paid for.
That’s a strawman argument. First of all, plenty of people would be happy to self-host a game for their friends, if they were still allowed the option. Second, even people who want to run a public server would still be free to ban people (for whatever reason they wanted). We’re not talking about being forced to tolerate antisocial fuckwads.
As something nice to have? I fully agree (and said as much)
As an alternative to anti-cheat solutions/“solutions” as was being presented?
No, it is not an answer. Because it would indeed be forcing people to tolerate “antisocial fuckwads” or forcing people ti find private servers to play with each other like in the good old days.
First of all, plenty of people would be happy to self-host a game for their friends, if they were still allowed the option.
Exactly! Me and my friends often play on modded Factorio servers that one of us hosts. This is only possible because the developer doesn’t lock things down to only the first-party (official) servers.
We don’t play with cheaters either (you aren’t getting invited to our server if you are). We play with our friends because it is fun, in a way no official server could hope to work.
In my experience with TF2, many popular community servers have common-sense rules like no slurs, cheats, etc. The great thing about a player-run server is that, if you want, it can be stricter than official guidelines, as Valve for example is pretty hands-off beyond the obvious in-game cheats. It allows pockets of the community to shape the experience they want to have more adeptly than official servers ever could.
Back in the day, I LOVED Unreal Tournament (… I still do actually). And a lot of that is because I found servers with people who became friends I still chat with (hell, one of them is even in the same Warframe clan as I am).
But that is INCREDIBLY unapproachable and I know plenty of people who never “got int” UT or Quake or TF2 because they never found those communities and instead got stuck with random pubs full of assholes.
That said: That is not about anti-cheat. That is about matchmaking versus player run servers. Which is a very different discussion with nuances in all directions.
Yes, that’s part of the StopKillingGames agenda as well. Allow us to control our own servers! For fuck’s sake, it’s CHEAPER for them, because WE’RE paying for hosting. A dedicated server costs money! And it keeps people buying into the ecosystem after the initial sales high because you form communities and then tell people IRL how awesome the game is. Assuming you have time for real life friends of course.
I’m not against the existence of a matchmaking system, or even against it being the default. Just give us a tiny menu item “Dedicated Servers” somewhere and keep that one around forever, even when the publisher is long bankrupt because the CEO blew all their profit on sculptures of oddly shaped penises or something.
They see it as a threat to their business model. Without any other option, you have to be on the latest version, seeing the latest skins, and you’re unable to bypass their store and mod them in yourself. If I can help it, not giving me the option to run the server myself will be a threat to their business model.
“Butbutbutbut server side anticheat is haaaaaaard and requires us to actually think about what values are actually valid and understand our own internal game states. Kernel level anticheat lets us be lazy costs us less and requires less development time!”
Unless they deviate substantially from how they build games in genres like shooters, server side anti-cheat isn’t going to catch everything that kernel level anti cheat does. However, kernel level anti cheat doesn’t catch hardware cheating anyway, so if cheating is always going to be imperfect, we ought to stop short of the kernel.
That’s the thing, you’re never going to catch everything. But anything important can be sanity checked by the server when the client checks in, all without opening a vulnerability in your customers’ systems.
So much kernel level anticheat is about offloading the processing power to the customer, and unreasonable desires for control over the systems involved and overall game environment (and probably a decent amount of data mining).
A lot of cheats send completely legitimate information back to the server, and that’s what they’re seeking to stop with the client side implementation; I don’t think it has anything to do with costs. I haven’t heard of any data mining happening, and surely someone would have caught it with wire shark by now, but there are enough things that we know for sure about kernel level anti cheats to make it offensive.
I think the way to go about detecting cheats server-side would be primarily driven by statistics. For example, to counter wallhacks one might track how often a player is already targeting an enemy before they become visible. Or to counter aimbots one could check for humanly impossible amounts of changes in the direction of mouse movement, somewhat similar to how the community found out a bunch of cheaters using slowmo in Trackmania.
Add in a reputation system that actually requires a good amount of playtime to be put into the highest tier of trust for matchmaking and I think one could have a pretty solid system that wouldn’t have to rely on client-side anticheat at all.
That’s the thing, you’re never going to catch everything
The problem is that the things that aren’t caught? People don’t say “Ugh. Easy Anti-Cheat suck”. they say “Ugh, fucking Battlefield is un fucking playable. BOYCOTT IT!!!”
There are alternative methods that may be even more effective (I personally think this is a genuinely great use case for “AI” to detect things like tracking players through walls and head snapping). They also have drawbacks (training and inference would get real expensive real fast since it needs to be fairly game specific).
Whereas kernel level bullshit? It clearly works well enough that the people who have the data (devs and publishers) are willing to pay for it.
And if it reduces the risk of a particularly bad exploit hurting the reputation of the game and tanking it harder than Concord?
Which is why “fighting back” is so difficult. We, as players, are asking for the devs/publishers to trust us. But we have also demonstrated, at every fucking step, that we won’t extend even an iota of trust back and will instead watch thousands of hours of video essays on why this game sucks because of a bad beta.
Was it Delta Force that made everyone lose their shit because it “accidentally” warned people would be banned for usb thumb drives?
Because… that is coming. No, not the thumbdrive. But scanning your various devices to detect hardware based cheats. Which… is likely also going to be pushed by logitech and razer to get ahead of the crowd that are sick and tired of needing their bullshit software to properly use mice and are looking toward alternatives.
Look if companies could implement successful anticheat without kernel access they sure as hell would, regardless of cost or effort. There is a TON of money to be made in competitive fps games alone, and they’re pretty much all overrun by hackers
Here, step into this 200GB repo with about 50 third party plugins and someone else’s game engine and find all the states that aren’t exactly like they are on the design docs, and do it at scale, across a cluster of servers that all have to interact.
20 years ago, i’d be right there with you.
It’s actually hard for a big game to do those things. The people making the cheats are as good as the developers and only need to find one nick it the armor every time.
FWIW, I’m against kernel-level anticheat, and I didn’t downvote you :)
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