I agree, except I’m hesitant to include hell divers because of the kernel level anticheat. I don’t need to give a video game of all things access to my kernel. But the general idea is right, I am playing so many fire video games all made by indie devs right now.
the game’s anti cheat has access to literally everything in your computer. every file, every memory address, every input, every network packet, etc. How that info is stored and used is entirely up to them
Yes, it’s a pretty big privacy concern, unfortunately Riot kinda already boiled that frog with Valorant. Not that Valorant was the first, but it was kinda the first one that people seemed to be okay with. Weirdly, Valorant only really got popular because CS:GO and Overwatch were getting stale, and neither Valve or Blizzard were doing much to keep their games fresh.
That’s because the anti cheat is running in a fake kernel with Proton. Developers have ways of detecting when the kernel isn’t real… Sometimes… But the Helldivers devs don’t seem to mind for now.
I don’t know where the hell you got that information but that’s not how proton works. There is no “fake kernel” it’s not a virtual machine or an emulator it’s just a translation layer that translates Windows syscalls into linux syscalls
None of the things needed for a true kernel level anti cheat are in a translation layer, some of them just can’t be. It’s why games with actual kernel level anti cheat have never worked in proton and never will. Historically the only way to play those games is either be on windows or use a vfio virtual machine (which also probably won’t work even with tons of vm hiding techniques depends on just how sensitive the ac is) . Wine/proton simply can’t translate the upper parts of the nt kernel needed for it.
If the anti cheat is working in wine/proton it’s not kernel level
The syscall translations that would go to the nt kernel, can be seen as a “fake kernel”, no?
Wine has a process that works as a substitute for the Windows NT Kernel. How that works in detail, which calls are abstracted with an internal model, and which are mapped on to Linux kernel calls, is a bit silly to get hung up on, no?
I think it’s perfectly fine to call that concept a “fake kernel”. I don’t know what you’d need in order to qualify more?
just a translation layer that translates Windows syscalls into linux syscalls
“Just”?. No. It also has an internal model. Which system calls end up as Linux syscalls, and how, is not a stateless translation. The NT kernel is modeled. And although you are right in your straw man argument that it isn’t a “virtual machine”, or an “emulator”. Neither of those are a requirement for the concept of a “fake kernel” either. Seems a bit rude to go so balls out hard against it, as you did.
None of the things needed for a true kernel level anti cheat are in a translation layer, some of them just can’t be. It’s why games with actual kernel level anti cheat have never worked in proton and never will. Historically the only way to play those games is either be on windows or use a vfio virtual machine (which also probably won’t work even with tons of vm hiding techniques depends on just how sensitive the ac is). Wine/proton simply can’t translate the upper parts of the nt kernel needed for it.
It’s why games with actual kernel level anti cheat have never worked in proton and never will
Some games that use EAC, BattlEye and GameGuard, work fine in proton. Afaik, whatever these do and are abstracted to, or is offhanded to some linux native process, it’s still all running in userspace. I’m sure this relies on individual game developers playing along with it, and not 100% “proton emulating the nt kernel” in order to “fool them”. Is this the point you’re arguing? That it won’t be possible by a purely proton/wine translation layer?
If you know details on how exactly this works, or want to point to some resource on this, I’d be happy to read more about it.
My guess is that there is nothing technically impossible about fooling a rootkit by faking whatever syscalls from the game, but that it becomes a impossible task to maintain, as the AC developers can make minor changes that would require a lot of hard work to “emulate”. I’d love to learn more, but it was hard to find good resources on this.
EAC has an explicit linux support that valve worked on them with, it’s not full kernel AC. same with battleye and GG those are not full kernel root anti cheat implementations. I can’t point at any specific documents unfortunately but the wine/proton irc channels are public and lurking let’s you learn a lot as they talk through issues with games and anticheat.
In order for linux to support kernel level AC a module for the Linux kernel would be needed. And i doubt Linus will ever allow that lol
In order for linux to support kernel level AC a module for the Linux kernel would be needed. And i doubt Linus will ever allow that lol
This is… correct. That in order to support kernel level anti-cheat on Linux, you need a kernel module. But that statement is a tautology.
An NT kernel AC running through Wine, and whether or not it “works” doesn’t predicate on a Linux kernel module being loaded. All it needs is the correct handling of whatever the NT kernel would communicate to the running game, and handle whatever that callback is through some other mechanism that passes the checks.
Most AC software have Linux native clients, and that’s what this “some other mechanism”. And whatever that is in practice, should, with enough reverse engineering, be technically possible for proton/wine to do as well. It’s all running on userland after all. I assume that this is not an easy task to do at all, which is why the only realistic approach is for AC developers to actually be on board, and instead just compromise on the weaker level of anti-cheat protection, compared to what you’d get with a kernel module. As far as I understand, this is the case for GG, BattlEye and EAC. Not all games work, because it depends on the developers “allowing it”.
And as for what the future might bring. I expect that with Linux gaming becoming more popular, it’s only a matter of time before a Linux AC is implemented as a kernel module. Also, neither Linus, nor anyone, need to whitelist a kernel module for it to be loaded. The only one that has an ultimate say there is you, the user.
I mean sure they could make it a dkms module and have the user install it along with the headers but it’s never going to be out of the box supported on linux was what I meant by that
As for the rest, there is a limit to what can be emulated within user space. There are are certain calls in NT ring -1 that would require similar privilege on the Linux side to translate which i doubt wine would ever do for a vast multitude of reasons
There are are certain calls in NT ring -1 that would require similar privilege on the Linux side to translate
Why would that be the case? I have to look this up and read more about it, because I don’t see why that needs to be the case. I’m also not sure if this is still in the context of AC “rootkits”. Because if so, I imagine the security model goes something like this
AC RootKit: Can observe app processes and all memory usage, and modify anything at any time. It observers processes for known cheats, and reports this to the game, either with a callback the game registers, or by directly modifying the game memory.
Wine: Runs in userland. Syscalls are “intercepted” as with all other windows API calls. The NT kernel doesn’t exist here. Wine just tries to answer those calls as if it did.
Game executable: Has some mechanism to talk to-from the rootkit. Likely that the RK itself, since it monitors processes, hooks straight into the game exectuable by either manipulating the memory required for the game to say “ait, RK said you’re cool”, or something like that.
Game executable running in Wine: Runs in userland, and wine has already talked to the Linux kernel and allocated memory. To the loaded game executable running through wine, the memory can be manipulated the same as a rootkit could, because after all, the wine process is the parent process of that memory range.
So, what mechanism is it that an AC RK does, that, from the perspective of a user process running on Wine, cannot be done unless actually coming from the Linux kernel? I honestly cannot think of anything.
Or rather… only possible way I can think of is a “cryptographic guarantee”, in some secureboot based signature and communicating with a remote service in order to authenticate the RK , which the game executable also confirms. Something like that. But this isn’t the case for any of the AC RKs afaik
I did it once, on my first play through in like 2012. As I recall, everything about it is super awkward, and combined with the robotic NPC animations, it just made me feel embarrassed to be going through with it lol.
Then it felt like every other line from her had “my husband” shoved in. It got really annoying before too long.
Also never adopted a child in the game because Bethesda’s child NPCs are always dog shit (IMO). Actually the ones in Fallout 3 had an interesting thing going on with their commune, but they are still insufferable.
I fail to see why I would want to in the first place.
If you marry the right person you get an extra shop to sell to, occasional free septims and a food item that makes stamina, magica, and health regen 25% faster once a day. Oh, and they constantly get in your way in whatever home you store them in.
You being downvoted is puzzling. Romance was by far the most popular thing in baldur’s gate 3 after all, this was the best thing at the time, both skyrim and mass effect were awkward compared to today.
It was definitely ahead of its time! Not really sure why it faded away, I guess pressure from Steam (pun intended), and games moving to private in-game server browsers? Along with many other options for voice chat.
It was very feature-rich. Literally everything discord offeres, but better implemented, and every feature was customizable - the in-game overlay being the one I remember most fondly. In addition to a VOIP indicator like discord has, it had a text-chat overlay too that my guild used a lot. We were spread out over multiple games, but we all had one unified in-game guild chat thanks to Xfire. You could resize and reposition everything in the overlay, and could set a keybind to toggle whether your mouse and such could interact with the chat windows or just click through it to interact with the game. It was clean as fuck.
VOIP quality was outstanding. UI in general was customizable and also clean as fuck.
It had a built in screen recorder.
Everything was intuitive to use and easy to use.
It was just really, REALLY high quality all around.
Agreed. Cutesy emotes are great when you aren't trying to concentrate on multiple other things at the same time. When I'm mid-game the only chat I read needs to be static and non-moving.
HL3 and TES VI will never release. Those are pipe dreams. I’m going with GTA VI, because I think Take Two Interactive disclosed in their Form 10-K that they had a major IP releasing at the end of calendar 2024. For context, the SEC really doesn’t like it when firms fuck around on those forms.
We more or less got HL3 in Half Life: Alyx. People can deride it for "not being a real Half Life game" because they personally don't like VR or something, but it's pretty much HL3
And this is the company wallstreetbets wanted so bad to defend. It should have died. It DESERVED to die but Reddit wanted it alive because if there’s anything Reddit hates more, it is short sellers. But the reality is that most of the time the companies that get taken down by short selling aren’t healthy to begin with. After all, why push a strong company off the cliff when you can push a weak one that is overvalued?
Watching that all was a bit like watching a sped up version of the crypto boom.
It started off with a bunch of well-meaning weirdos that were sticking it to the man. Then a few people made a whole bunch of money and from there it got super popular and turned into a weird libertarian cult.
It got me interested in stocks. I blew a few bucks on their wacky schemes, but for the most part I put in some long term investments that are slowly climbing.
I think there was more to it than that. It seemed more like a situation where they could kill two birds with one stone. They could destroy, or at least severely damage the stock market by ensuring the hedgefunds couldn’t buy back the shorted stock, and even if they didn’t, they had the chance to become extremely wealthy while trying.
It probably would have worked too if it weren’t for those meddling kids stock brokers like Robin Hood working with hedgefunds to claw back stocks and the SEC towering over them with potential charges of market manipulation.
Destroy or severely damage the stock market? It was just one stock, some people lost money but it didn’t affect 99%+ of the stock market or its traders… Just a little meme blip on the scale of things.
I think you are right, at the start they had noble intentions hidden behind a get rich quick scheme.
But then they all became GME holders, they had a vested interest. So now they act like the shitty video game store in the mall is actually cool and innovative and soon some management changes and NFT nonsense will turn the company around.
In some small way, they became what they sought to destroy.
So now they act like the shitty video game store in the mall is actually cool and innovative and soon some management changes and NFT nonsense will turn the company around.
Outside of people clearly being facetious on WSB, I literally never see anybody genuinely have this attitude toward GameStop.
The act is very important in the event of an SEC investigation. Since I don’t hold stock in the company, I’m safe to say this, but basically if they wrote “Yeah, I don’t have any faith in the company itself, I just caught Wall Street tycoons making an insane short sell” then that comment could become a major exhibit in an exchange fraud case that makes them forfeit their shares.
First playthrough I didn’t use a guide, shot Wrex, stuck with Ashley until I could ditch her in ME3, and lost almost everyone in the ending of ME2. Next playthrough much better!
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