I haven’t played in years. Hopped on again when they brought wow classic in just to try it bcz I started around the time of the cataclysm expansion. But once they banned that Hong Kong player from a tournament back in 2019 over the protest crap, I haven’t been back.
I can’t believe the game is still going. The expansions just got worse as time went on. How they’re still churning out content people want to play is beyond me.
Off topic. Is the anti cheat as invasive as people make it out to be? I'm no computer wiz but I've stopped playing pvp games with root kits but don't actually know enough. Also anti cheat in a pve game lol.
No, it doesn’t, and you’re betraying your ignorance of the topic by making the suggestion.
First of all, when we refer to rootkits, we’re talking about the fact that NProtect, by design, gains an absolutely staggering amount of access to the kernel space of your computer. VAC, by comparison, does not demand anything like the same level of access. You’re making an apples to oranges comparison, and when questioned on it responding with “But they’re both citrus fruit, right?”
No, they’re not, and the fact that you think they are means you don’t know nearly as much about this subject as you think.
But putting that aside for a moment, suppose one day you went hang gliding. Then, upon telling me about how much you enjoyed it, I immediately demanded that you play Russian roulette with me, and got seriously offended when you refused. That would be insane, right?
So you see how a person consenting to one risk doesn’t obligate them to consent to others? It’s not an all or nothing state between “My computer is exposed to exactly zero vulnerabilities” and “My computer is exposed to literally every vulnerability ever”.
Every single program you install on your computer brings some potential amount of risk, but a) that risk is MUCH higher when the program demands the kind of kernel level access to resources like your memory that NProtect wants, and b) that risk has to be commensurate to the benefits offered, and it’s hard to see what benefit I’m being offered by a notably cheaply made kernel level anti-cheat in a purely cooperative gameplay experience.
I gave a concrete example of an exploit using Steam, and you’ve provided a hypothetical while arguing that your hypothetical example is much more risky (and compared it to hang gliding vs Russian roulette).
Specifically how much more of a risk is it to have kernel level anti-cheat installed than it is to install software like Steam and games on your system? Since you are claiming in-depth knowledge I would actually like to know more specifics for future reference. I don’t find the hang-gliding/russian-roulette example super helpful personally.
…it’s hard to see what benefit I’m being offered by a notably cheaply made kernel level anti-cheat in a purely cooperative gameplay experience.
You don’t see how it would affect your enjoyment of the game to have someone insta-killing all the enemies in a match, or generating 1000x more rewards than you would normally receive, breaking the progression permanently?
For some reason FOSS bros don’t have any issues with capitalism or security when it comes to Steam, they think Gaben shits gold or something idk. It’s weird. Steam is virtually a monopoly and has had security vulnerabilities in the past but they just plug their ears and ignore it.
Yes it is. Its literally a free for all rootkit on your system. Anything you run can exploit it. Its an open invitation to take over your system. The only way I'd run this, would be under linux with proton emulation layer.
Setting aside that there really shouldn’t even be an anticheat in a PvE game (unless progression allows you to unlock items that are real world currency based on which I could see why they’d want to stop people from accessing it without one of their two methods) the concept of a rootkit doesn’t equal “software with admin privileges.”
A rootkit is a package of different (specifically malicious) programs that are designed to hide themselves from your system.
Is the anticheat designed to be invisible when installed or running? No. Is it designed to specifically be malicious? No. Therefore it’s not a rootkit.
There’s a difference between software designed for malicious purposes and software that has the ability to be hijacked for a malicious purpose. These two aren’t the same and everyone with even a smidgeon of actual IT security knowledge would acknowledge that at the bare minimum which no one in this thread seems to have done yet.
This isn’t just semantics, rootkits are defined by their purpose not their permissions. Bunch of script kiddies in this website pretending their ability to install Arch makes them professional Comp Sci degree holders.
unless progression allows you to unlock items that are real world currency based on which I could see why they’d want to stop people from accessing it without one of their two methods
This is the reason I believe. There’s a premium season pass that has some later game unlocks which they probably want to incentivize. That, and there’s a meta-game that depends on the community making concerted efforts to progress the story. I’m assuming that they don’t want a modder to unbalance that.
Yeah, it’s definitely getting difficult to identify the difference in PvE and PvP from a security and financial standpoint in the modern live service landscape. Games that don’t include direct competition still have aspects of them which can be messed up by other people with cheats.
A somewhat similar concept is how easy it is to stop at the space anomaly in NMS and get handed a stack of Starship AI valves that will immediately skip you past early-mid game progression in a lot of gameplay loops. It has nothing to do with paid currency which is why they don’t stop it but the idea is similar I guess.
Setting aside that there really shouldn’t even be an anticheat in a PvE game (unless progression allows you to unlock items that are real world currency based on which I could see why they’d want to stop people from accessing it without one of their two methods)
I can think of another reason. It’s a live service game where it’s the community vs the game masters. They want to tell a story within the game and direct us with community challenges. Right now there’s a challenge to protect planets from automaton invasions. We lost the first planet, won a few but it’s not looking as much of a clearcut victory like the first challenge was. There’s a real chance we fail this challenge and maybe that part of their plan?
So what would happen if you let cheaters run amok? Now you can’t tell a story where the community fails, because cheaters can guarantee wins. If you make it so hard cheaters can’t win you’re going to make it completely impossible for the community and that’s just not fun. So what can you do to make it fun for the community? Crack down on cheaters.
I just don’t see another rational reason to have anticheat. Even the real world currency isn’t that useful because it’s mostly for buying armors for cosmetic purposes. There’s really not much to gain from circumventing the real world currency.
Off topic to the off topic. OS masterminds out there, does rootkit anti-cheat translates to Linux over Proton? I assume not? If Proton is not originally run as root, it shouldn’t be able to elevate its privileges, correct?
While we really dug the game (you can check out our review for more on that), there’s one odd detail that stuck out we can’t help but give its own article: one of the game’s minor NPCs will be voiced by a text-to-speech program at launch, seemingly because someone — probably Ubisoft — forgot to record and add a human being’s voice for the role.
what a… weird thing to have happen. i’m not sure what the utility of it would be for one minor NPC but this being an accident honestly strains charitability, i think
Now, on a scale from 1 to 10, please tell us how strongly you feel about this. And, hypothetically, whether you’d mind if a few dozens more NPC were like that too.”
“On a scale from 0% to 500%, how much more would you pay for a game where main characters used [insert your favorite actors/people]'s AI cloned voices?”
Yep, looks really suspect. Even if it’s true that they forgot to get someone to record the lines, it does seem implausible that they couldn’t source any voice actor (or even someone on their own staff) to record the dialogue and get it added to the game, even at short notice.
Not saying this was a honest mistake, but I do see how that could happen:
Game story gets written
Dialogs are worked on
TTS versions of all dialogs are generated
Once they get approved, talent is cast
Talent is scheduled to record the dialogs and get paid
Final dialogs get included in the game
Knowing how game studios love to push everyone into “rush mode” the months before launch, I can see how, for a minor NPC, someone could have forgotten to cast and/or book a recording of some dialogs… while everyone is getting pressured to release NOW OR ELSE!!1!
Honestly, I wonder how many minor NPCs in games have been TTS all along, and nobody noticed or cared.
reportedly enforcing uncompensated overtime, allegedly trying to pay staff below minimum wage, and a toxic work environment cultivated by an alleged abusive leadership
it includes how much they spent on making the DLC and marketing for it. Around 2/3rds of the money still went into fixing/reworking the game from what I can tell
Why do you think it didn’t go into devs? Maybe you are being cynical, but managers and CEOs are definitely devs too, they need their extra motivation to convince themselves the game is gooder.
headline number is only the equivalent of ~200-300 tech employee salaries for 3 years, less for junior, more for senior, less for designers, marketers, more for Directors, VPs, Execs…
Marketing isn’t cheap either. Can’t rely on word of mouth when that word is “shite”. Fixing the code would have been relatively cheap compared to fixing their reputation.
CS2 feels like a downgrade from CSGO in a lot of ways, but CSGO at launch and CSGO at end of life were two completely different games, the same is probably true for CS2. Long term support is what keeps games going.
One of the really fun details about this fiasco is a few years back, after they had made a big PR fuck up like this, Unity stated they would make their Terms of Service version-bound. If you had Unity 2019 and continued to use it forever, you would only have to abide by the ToS for that version. Put simply, they could not retroactively apply new changes to you.
...Guess which segment got quietly removed last year!
I would think their public statements would significantly hurt the ability to do this, even if developers "agreed" to the terms without that clause.
I straight up don't think they could legally do it either way. But if they made public statements specifically addressing this particular thing, it has to significantly weaken their case.
That's the part I don't get. If I bought it in 2020 or whenever that was in the license, how can they decide to violate the license on the software you bought?
It's one thing of you go into the agreement knowing about the fees, but enforcing them retroactively against your own license agreement sounds like you're asking for a lawsuit.
Put simply, they could not retroactively apply new changes to you.
Sounds like they could though?
Jokes aside, this is another in a recent string of "let's pretend our ToS are legally binding documents as fool-proof as the law" actions by major companies because ... well, who's stopping them?
your customers retroactively owe you money just because you unilaterally said so?
John Riccitiello is Unity's CEO, you may remember him from being EA's CEO or for being the guy who said the devs who don't monetize (you know adding microtransactions, loot boxes and all that greedy stuff) their videogames are "fucking idiots". I think that explains all
Only monetized games have to pay. If they stop selling the game, they shouldn't be affected anymore.
Also
Does the Unity Runtime Fee apply to pirated copies of games?
We are happy to work with any developer who has been the victim of piracy so that they are not unfairly hurt by unwanted installs. (source)
As far as I understand (someone correct me if I'm wrong) games that are free / non-commercial and have zero revenue are not affected at all by this, they still don't have to pay anything regardless of the number of installs.
If the game is no longer being sold (and thus no longer commercial / having revenue), then I expect that even under those new rules Unity would also not charge the dev.
“Will games made with Unity phone-home to track installs?
We will refine how we collect install data over time with a goal of accurately understanding the number of times the Unity runtime is distributed. Any install data will be collected in accordance with our Privacy Policy and applicable privacy laws.”
Sounds like they’re gonna add tracking data to the game, so probably pirated installs won’t count
“Will games made with Unity phone-home to track installs?
We will refine how we collect install data over time with a goal of accurately understanding the number of times the Unity runtime is distributed. Any install data will be collected in accordance with our Privacy Policy and applicable privacy laws.” They already do, and fuck you for asking.
I’m confused. I’ve never licensed a game engine, but I figure you’d write what charges you pay into the contract, and as far as I know, you can’t just add additional charges in later without renegotiating the contract. At least, you’d have no way to enforce those. So I’m sort of at a loss how this is even supposed to work.
The game engine is licensed as a subscription. When January 1st rolls around and the dev’s meed to renew their subscription it will have these new terms. Their options are to accept this or to never update their games again.
Makes sense. I hope the unity guys come to their senses. This whole thing seems rather self-destructive on the company’s part. Unity is far from being a monopoly, with one competitor being free and open source (Godot). And pulling stunts like these, even if you walk them back later, does not engender trust.
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