I play games mostly on my Steam Deck after migrating from Xbox. Didn’t want to pay for Internet access to use the Internet I already pay for (Xbox Live).
Battlefield games like BF1 and BF4 used to run on the Deck about a year ago, but then EA toggled something and disallowed any and all Linux distros. Can’t remember their reasoning, but something something anti-cheat.
Now me, a paying customer, was fucking pissed. I purchased these games on my Steam Deck to avoid corporate walled gardens like the Xbox, and then EA lock me out of my purchase after the refund period had elapsed. What the fuck???
So I started dual booting Windows 10 on the Deck to regain access to a product I had paid for. Fucking shit I had to do this in the first place.
But now I need to enable Secure Boot to play the new shit, and I have no clue how to do this without bricking my Deck. I’m an engineer, but not the software type. I don’t want to fuck around with my gear just to play games.
Client-side AC is a poor solution to cheating that can be solved with server-side AC.
Fuck EA. Fuck M$. Fuck all the corporations that want to run spyware on my devices
Hm, yeah, it’s something every developer should know; client-side validation of input still needs server-side validation, because client-side is not reliable, no mather what you force on them.
Server side anticheats need to be considered. Clientside has been annoying users far too much, and can be bypassed. A combination of both (and I’d like a less intrusive clientside one) would be better
Anyone with half a brain could see this coming from a mile away. My conspiracy brain almost thinks this is some concerted and calculated effort by Microsoft to artificially lock games to Windows through anti cheat. It’s disgusting, isn’t needed, and just plain isn’t effective. They can spew all the metrics out of their ass, we all know that it’s just not effective.
a year ago on Mastodon when EA started locking out games like Apex Legends, BF1, V, 2042, etc from Linux I said “I bet you Microsoft is about to launch a handheld and since they have a deal with EA and Gamepass they want EA Exclusivity on their handheld and to lockout Steamdeck/Valve” sure enough a few months later Microsoft announces their Xbox handheld with Asus.
And what’s the one thing they are getting fucking torched over even by Xbox loyalists? The price (Steam Deck has a cheaper SKU)
I am not sure about this conspiracy theory of yours: Microsoft does not want third party applications in the kernel space anymore.
https://www.theverge.com/news/692637/microsoft-windows-kernel-antivirus-changes
Not entirely;
https://github.com/microsoft/ebpf-for-windows
Microsoft just want that 3rd party code to interact in a more predictable way with the kernel
Your anti-cheat doesn’t work anyway so let me play in linux you cowards.
More proof that anti-cheat and bans just isn’t a working approach.
Almost every cheater I’ve talked to or seen interviewed has said they do it because they like winning. If thats the case, pushing them away isnt getting rid of them, its making them try to win harder, and they are literally spending money to make that happen.
This means, there is a market for cheaters, one that publishers and devs simply assault instead of realizing they could replace it entirely.
Create a marketplace in your game for cheats. When a player buys a cheat in game, they can turn it on but only in a specific playlist that cheaters get to play in. You dont need to own or turn on cheats to play in that playlist, in case you feel like challenging yourself, but cheaters can use them as much as they want in that playlist. If a cheater wants to go into cheat free playlist, their cheats get turned off by the game and they have to play like everyone else. Cheat free playlists can have cheat detection, and if you are caught cheating then you get banned from cheat free playlists permanently, but you arent banned from the game or the cheat playlist.
This deters cheaters from paying third parties for cheats, gives them a space to experiment in, makes money for the company running the game, and reduces the amount of cheaters in regular public lobbies. It also creates a space of challenge for people who don’t cheat, sorta like how people will do no death runs in souls games.
Sure, it isnt a perfect solution, but its far better than punishing every player with invasive tech, while simultaneously letting a market of cheat sellers thrive. For a bunch of capitalists, its wild they haven’t realized they are missing out on money with cheats.
…alternatively just shadow ban all the cheaters into cheater only lobbies.
Nullsec
I suspect that if you’re now playing where everyone else gets the same advantages, that ruins the fun of having cheats
If not and the cheats themselves are just that fun to use, sure, add it in as another gamemode
And yet they have the audacity to block Linux players
at this point i just wanna cheat the hell out of these crappy games out of spite.
That’s punishing legit players, not the developers. Not playing this shit is the correct spiteful choice.
i already don’t, feels like they need more spite.
if the players have a bad time they will leave. show them kernel level anticheat doesn’t work and its pointlessly invasive.
Why are people like this. How does this make gaming enjoyable?
Honestly, if I had the skills I’d be doing that as an explicit fuck you to the draconian anticheat bullshit they force on everyone, because what better fuck you than showing all that effort was for naught, especially close to launch.
EA can go fuck themselves with the world’s biggest cactus.
I prefer “fuck you with an anchor”
I love that track, but have to skip it regularly with my kid in the car lol
There’s a kid friendly version. Flipped with a sausage.
And one for dogs as well.
I have ‘for dogs’ on my radio already, but I might put the sausage one on too, that’s great
A lot of hacking in valorant is about this tbf (and to more efficiently sell boosts)
For some people the only things that brings them joy are 1) winning 2) making other people suffer
Or developing cheats. It sounds really fun and you get to grow by keeping on top of the anticheat.
It’s fun to cheat in games, that’s why we have cheat codes.
Also there’s the competitive side of it where not getting caught is a skill and glitching is just game knowledge.
I only found out about this today from someone whose computer got bricked from trying to enable secure boot.
My machine went into a boot loop and I had to clear CMOS to boot again.
I wonder how many people without the resources to fix a problem like that easily are going to end up without computers for an extended period of time because of this.
I am still baffled that anyone thinks that Kernel AC is any kind of effective at stopping hacks, people have been literally making a living off of defeating it, and selling those hacks / methods for almost a decade now…
But nope, still got hordes of idiot gamers who think they work, think they’re necessary, think they can’t be spoofed.
It’s crazy to me that people cheat in online games. You really have to be a huge fucking loser to do this.
Small pp energy.
Sadly, I think the financial incentive is too great these days. People make decent money off this shit
The cheat developers, yes. Because there is demand. The question though was, why there is demand.
There’s demand because there’s supply.
Build it and they will come.
We have to ask the question if cheat developing wasn’t profitable, and even if developers actually operated at a loss, would there be as many cheats on the market as there are now?
Small pp energy.
I don’t know what energy this is, but not good either.
deleted by creator
Not sure how you could read this and come away with the idea that I do believe that…
I am talking about the subset of gamers that go on internet forums and discord servers and make false, unsupported claims as to the effectiveness or necessity or Kernel AC over other forms of AC, tell people this just is how it is now, get with the program,
eat the bugs, play the spyware game, its fine, everyone is doing it.Indirectly buyers are making a decision on anticheat. If someone buys a game with anticheat, they’ve made the decision to reward the developer for making the decision to include anticheat.
I love the Battlefield series but I’m not turning on Secure Boot for them. If it remains a hard requirement, I’ll simply be passing altogether.
I was able to get around secure boot by installing the beta on my PS5. From then, I had the pleasure of being unable to enter due to broken menus! Can’t complain for having spent nothing and having little trust in the franchise.
You paid for Ps+ though
Actually, right now I’m not. Maybe that was the issue? The UI was a bad missed up so I can’t tell.
There’s nothing wrong with Secure Boot and enabling it can prevent a small subset of attack vectors with no real downsides. That being said, the things Secure Boot does protect against aren’t likely to be an issue for most users but it’s nothing to be afraid of.
If you want to install Linux, secure boot limits the distributions you can use. If you don’t then it’s whatever.
Zero issues on the mighty gecko distro. Not sure why’d you use anything else /s
I’ve tested the beta yesterday and only had to enable SB and leave it in custom mode - no need to sign & enroll the linux kernel(s) too
So I can’t play battlefield without TPM? I hate tech these days. My Ryzen board doesnt have it. Hence why I’m not on windows 11
you will own nothing and be happy
I just refuse to enable it. It makes changing things a hassle.
Same. Keeps things simple with Linux, and Windows doesn’t even complain about it being disabled, so long as it’s present. I’ll never understand why it’s even required if you don’t even have to enable it.
So they can have an excuse to force you to upgrade to Windows 11 beyond “whoops, turns out making an operating system as a ‘buy once’ product is a bad idea.”
Joke’s on them; I already upgraded to Windows 11. I was among the first. It’s actually a solid OS once you disable all the ads and telemetry with O&O Shut Up 10.
Yeah I did the same using WinUtil. Still, I only fire up windows when I need to use software without native Linux support.
Might be a requirement in some companies for security reasons…?
It’s understandable for companies. But for a home user…reasoning is pretty minimal.
You can still get win 11 without TPM by using Rufus and bypassing TPM which will have to be done for a lot of old PCs and we will have to do it by October this year.
Why would you install Windows 11on a computer? What happens if you don’t do it before October?
Microsoft will be releasing custom viruses that only infect 10.
Your computer will gradually get more and more filled with security holes that will be problematic to patch. Eventually, programs will stop supporting it as well.
Does this disable updates though? My wife somehow had Win11 installed on her pc without enabling secure boot, and her updates got so far behind that now it refuses to update and needs to be reinstalled.
No it doesn’t, but I’ll try putting it on one of my older PCs again and report back I only use Linux
