Unfortunately it inevitable. If a publicly traded company exists, it will have to extract more and more and more until this kind of rent-seeking model happens. And if a company is private, it will eventually go public. And even if you truly believe in a company's owner to not sell out, eventually they will die and the company will go public or get sold. Eventually, money always wins.
Epic can suck a fat cock. So can apple but at least I can choose not to buy their stuff. Epic just buys games and now I have to drop it because fuck epic or continue playing a game they’re activly destroying.
In the past, Ayaneo has been somewhat reticent to discuss its plans concerning SteamOS and as this new venture is not a direct collaboration with Valve, I should imagine that they want to test the waters first.
If this is not a collaboration with Valve, then I assume it's not SteamOS. Maybe HoloISO that is created by "fans" with the aim of installing an operating system that is extracted and rebuild from the final installation on the Deck (if I understand the project right). The goal is to have HoloISO be able to install on systems other than the Deck itself, to get a similar experience. Maybe the Ayaneo will make use of HoloISO instead?
The project still needs funding and time to be build, so nothing is set in stone. Valve also works "hard" to bring SteamOS to other systems, so maybe there is a plan to do this. Now the Deck OLED is out, Valve probably have more time to do this (SteamOS 4.0?). Either way, I am very happy and curious what will happen next.
This is only using on-screen information, but making it more visible? Why is this a cheat, exactly? Was that one guy cheating in the shooter game where his cat would paw at the screen when it noticed invisible people moving with a Predator-like shimmer effect?
I think products like this are inevitable, although I’m surprised that MSI is trying to be at the forefront of it. It’s weird that a company that sells esports equipment is also going to sell equipment for cheating.
I think the course of action is clear. Ban it from tournaments/official events. Since I'm not in the LoL scene I don't know if that might already be the case. Now, regular players will know that playing with this enhanced hardware will disqualify them from tournament play anyway. So now you simply create two modes of gameplay: tournament-legal, and casual. People who aren't aspiring to play in a tournament will play the casual game and it'll be acceptable there to use enhanced hardware. People who wish to play with people using tournament-legal hardware will play in the tournament-legal mode. There is little to no incentive to cheat in the tournament-legal game because you won't be able to cheat your way into an actual tournament that way.
Except cheaters would flock to the tournament-legal game mode because there’s less cheaters. Why would they bother to try and win against other cheaters if there’s a better chance to win against easier opponents?
Cheaters cheat so they win easier. They don’t care about fairness.
I mean, they get their arses handed to them by people better than them anyway. I understand the ranking system is something of a dark magic fudge, but it should roughly put you with/against people who have a similar chance of winning as you, right? If people play with cheats, they get to pretend they’re better than they are (ooh, look at me up here in silver, ooh), but then they fit in with others who, with or without cheats, match a similar level.
AFAIK competitive gaming events always happen on hardware that is provided by the organizers so everyone has the same. In some games players are allowed to bring their own mouse and/or keyboard/controller but imo that’s already a pretty big “vector of attack” for hacks
You can’t just give everyone the same mouse and kb if you want it to actually be fair tbh, different people have different kbs and mice for preference and ergonomic reasons. Different switches, maybe tolerable. Different kb size, very awkward and will lead to misclicks. Different mouse size? Even different sensor position? You will lose some precision until you’re used to it.
Though organizers could provide a specified model, and ban peripherials with features that are deemed unfair.
Yeah that’s why most games’ competitive events allow players to bring their own, but given the fuckton of dependencies some of the “gamer” peripherals install I’m kinda surprised I haven’t seen anyone exploiting a vulnerability to use some cheats yet.
For example I have a gaming mouse with onboard memory, and I don’t really trust Razer to secure that shit correctly (given the fact that their driver updating software doesn’t even bother not downloading the previous versions when not necessary nor cleaning up downloads after installation. Fun fact : I recently discovered I had 10+ GB of download cache after barely a year of usage, for a mouse)
MSI says that this game tracking won’t just be limited to League of Legends, as it’ll be releasing an application that’ll allow you to train these features to recognise and react to enemies and other on-screen elements in any game you like.
The whole unfair advantage thing aside, this is a really cool feature that might have a bigger range of application than just gaming.
Yeah like reading MRIs and X-rays, it’s already been proven that those reading medical images tend to have blinders on looking only for what they regularly see and never see the gorilla. With AI they might see the more weird things.
But it’s your hardware doing this? Are 3D-headphones illegal then, because of the massive benefit to aurally locating your enemy? Are hall-effect analogue keyboards illegal, due to the configurable much much shorter actuation distance? Etc, etc. Once it’s in hardware, it is a really interesting discussion where you place the cut-off.
You can’t even go "Once it has to actually know which game you’re playing, as profiles already work similar in gaming drivers, plus importantly most 3D audio is per-game optimized.
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And come to think of it, DLSS or FSR are also AI-powered frame-per-frame image analysis to add output to the existing image.
There really isn’t a complicated discussion to be had unless you needlessly complicate things. There’s a big difference between having, say, better monitor or headphones in terms of resolution or sound quality vs having a monitor or headphones that add extra features.
It’s like saying that AR glasses that visualize a ball’s trajectory should be allowed in tennis or football because players can already invest in better rackets or shoes.
The detection problem is not unsolvable. First, you can forbid people that are using that monitor from matchmaking. You can find your monitor’s model number using software so that would be trivial. For a more nuanced approach, you can examine players’ reaction times and ban people that got too good too fast.
There are plenty of EDID blockers and emulators already on the market. Unfortunately, no, “find[ing] […] the monitor’s model number” is not as trivial as you may think, if somebody really wants to evade. It is quite trivial nowadays to spoof the EDID in hardware, without the software able to do anything.
I think the difference is that hardware, like a 144 hz monitor, isn’t really making you better at the game, it’s just that what you had before was making you worse. If you get a 144 hz monitor and your aiming gets better, that’s not because the monitor made you better but because the 60 hz monitor, you had before, was holding you down.
This pushes games further toward kernel level software that has complete control over your computer so it can scan your hardware to make sure you aren’t using a cheating tool like this monitor.
I always just left trigger spammed to either center the camera or lock onto the monster. The claw always seemed a great way to give yourself some kind of RSI.
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