
Riot Games newest title “Valorant” installs kernel driver to run anti-cheat - kawsper
https://old.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/fzxdl7/anticheat_starts_upon_computer_boot/fn6yqbe/
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floatingatoll
Previously on HN (2 months ago, 111 comments):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22230168](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22230168)

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fulafel
Why do consumers allow games to install these kind of kernel drivers? Are they
aware they are giving away keys to the kindom wrt the OS/computing environment
integrity just so game studios can take part in an unwinnable cat and mouse
chase with cheaters? Also why does Microsoft or AV products allow this without
giant "you are giving away root on your box" warning signs?

~~~
hombre_fatal
People don't know what a kernel driver is nor what root access is nor what it
entails. I don't think the installer even mentions it, either. They just want
to play the dang game. Remember when Vista launched with that UAC prompt and
people just googled how to perma-disable it?

Also, cheating really is so bad that most people will accept it anyways.

Unfortunately we don't have a software nor user culture of, for example,
having an isolated partition for our important files and an isolated partition
for "I just want to play some games" \-- You can imagine how streamlined and
effortless and by-default this could be in an alternate universe where it was
a top priority.

So people can really get hosed under catastrophic conditions like the anti-
cheat becoming a remote backdoor for an attacker. I think this is really where
people are let down by modern computing.

~~~
GuB-42
That isolated environment is called a game console.

We are in a weird situation with PC gaming. PCs have always been a hackers
friendly platform. Both Counterstrike and DOTA started as mods. Skyrim is more
of a platform than a game now. Of course, it also means cheating, but it
wasn't a big deal back then. Cheaters were just shunned, or sometimes
encouraged, depending on the context. No big money at stake, no big deal.

But now, we want a standardized platform for high stakes competitive play, so
why not bring back consoles. They are more than powerful enough for this, and
you can hook up a keyboard and mouse if you want.

~~~
leetcrew
people that play cs for real money target ~144 fps as the 99th percentile
minimum. consoles aren't really designed for this use case.

~~~
falcolas
Not sure why this has been downvoted, it’s strictly true. The console is not a
reasonable platform for a competitive game which is cross-platform.

~~~
leetcrew
I think GP was suggesting that competitive titles should only be released on
consoles, so that everyone would have a sandboxed environment with intrusive
anticheat. my point is more that the hardware in current consoles isn't really
suited for esports titles. consoles are mainly designed to run AAA games
without dropping below 60 fps too often. this means selecting a relatively
weak CPU so you can allocate more of the budget towards the GPU, which will
usually be the bottleneck in this sort of game. you usually want the opposite
tradeoff for esports; the graphics are not particularly fancy so you can get
by with a middling GPU, but you care a lot more about fps, so you want a
faster CPU. counterstrike in particular is almost completely bottlenecked by
singlethread performance. even with a 9900k, a discrete gpu is barely above
idle.

~~~
falcolas
> consoles are mainly designed to run AAA games without dropping below 60 fps
> too often

This is not actually the case. It's part of what makes Doom's aiming for (and,
with Doom eternal actually hitting) 60fps an exception. Most AAA games
(including competitive games like COD) prioritize visuals over frame rate, and
so they are typically aiming for 25-30 FPS.

Also, a number of graphical workloads are still bound by the CPU - such as
occlusion culling.

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invokestatic
I work in game anti-cheat, kernel drivers are a necessary evil. If I had a
choice, I would stick to usermode or even server-side only. But you would be
shocked how advanced some cheating software is, exploiting every aspect of the
CPU. Now it is commonplace for a cheat to use a custom-made VM hypervisor or
even a UEFI bootkit — crazy! Good luck stopping that from usermode.

~~~
grawprog
>kernel drivers are a necessary evil.

No they're not. Not for cheating in a video game. The reason why cheat makers
have advanced to shady rootkit level exploits is because game publishers
started doing it first. Stopping cheating in your games is not more important
than the security of my computer period. I don't care. Find better ways to
manage your game or i'll play something else. I have no interest in your anti-
cheat spyware being on my computer.

~~~
invokestatic
I would disagree with your reason cheats went kernel, speaking as someone
wrote cheats for over 10 years before “switching sides”. It’s because cheat
software always wants to hide from the anti-cheat, and kernel mode provides a
perfect place to do that.

But if you don’t want to have anti-cheat software installed, that’s OK! I’m a
big proponent of informed-consent, and if you don’t consent, nobody is forcing
you to. You just won’t be able to enjoy online multiplayer.

~~~
grawprog
>You just won’t be able to enjoy online multiplayer

No, i'll be able to enjoy online multiplayer in one of the many, many games
whose devs don't feel like they need to monitor and control my computer to
provide a quality game.

~~~
volkk
It's a naive viewpoint. Prime example: Counter strike. Even with VAC(valve
anti cheat) measures, the game is full of cheaters. Those aren't super
intrusive, and the game simply isn't fun for anybody who cares at all about
competitive gameplay. So people move onto other platforms that support more
intrusive anticheats. I'm not really sure what the solution is, but given your
stance, that would just mean every FPS game will be rendered borderline
unplayable because of all of the cheaters on it. And I mean, if that's your
point--to just not play competitive FPS games, then I'm not really sure what
we're even arguing here.

~~~
thu2111
Right. The vast majority of players moved to the platforms with the most
intrusive anti-cheat of all years ago: games consoles.

The market spoke. A few geeks with hangups about kernel drivers are irrelevant
next to the masses of people who will happily buy entire dedicated gaming
computers designed from the ground up to be physically tamperproof.

~~~
volkk
I should have been more explicit, but by other platforms, I meant ESEA/Faceit
that provide their own anti cheat systems that run independently of VAC. I'm
not sure I'm really seeing many people go to ps4/xbox simply because of some
cheaters on PC?

~~~
thu2111
Well, most gamers went to consoles over time and there was certainly a
thriving cheating scene there, that the console makers (at least Microsoft)
were able to push back and destroy. Multi-player is pretty popular everywhere
so it's probably a factor, though I'm not enough of a gamer to care. My skillz
are so weak it feels like everyone is cheating all the time :)

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aeyes
If this driver is so minimal that it is nothing more but an interface to
userspace, opening the source would benefit everybody.

It really means nothing when a company audits itself.

~~~
invokestatic
If they open-sourced it, cheaters could fork it and completely neuter the
anti-cheat functionality.

~~~
mabbo
Security through obscurity isn't good security. The cheat writers won't be
stopped just because they don't have the source. And with open source, the
vulnerabilities it has can be found and fixed by everyone.

~~~
swinglock
It's all about obscurity when dealing with this type of malware. They are
advanced rootkits used by malicious users tampering with distributed systems
that must trust the client to a high degree or they simply will not work. As
soon as obscurity is used by either side it inevitably becomes the tool both
sides are forced to use.

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brianwawok
As long as they tell you, great.

Cheating really ruins online games for many of us.

~~~
izzydata
I agree that they should definitely inform you of the extent of the anti-cheat
system. I have never been able to take online gaming seriously due to how easy
it is to cheat and how many people there are in the world that simply don't
care about ruining others experience.

Until it is impossible to cheat it will always be a casual experience only.
Maybe this is what it takes to actually prevent cheaters, but I doubt it. It's
an arms race and they will always find a way around it.

~~~
brianwawok
It's better to try vs do nothing. The solutions to all arms races is not just
do nothing.

~~~
izzydata
I'm not suggesting not trying. I'm just saying this won't be the final nail in
the coffin for cheating.

~~~
xboxnolifes
There will never be a final nail. It's a game of cat and mouse.

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wayneftw
How long before cheaters can buy a specialized robot/deep learning machine
that has a high speed camera and servos that they can point at their computer
screen where it can watch the screen and work the keyboard and mouse for them?
(Or, better yet, the robot plugs into USB providing it's own
keyboard/mouse/controller input and video output is recorded via a simple VGA
or HDMI...)

I think these physical types of cheating systems already exist for
smartphones. Last time I mentioned it, some people hinted at systems you can
setup for phones -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21991775](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21991775).

Perhaps we're just waiting on the right software for this type of revolution
to occur in PC gaming. I can't think of what's lacking right now though - all
the pieces seem to be in place.

~~~
rasz
Would be trivial for less graphically cluttered games. Your external cheat
could run a copy of a game engine constantly matching player
position/orientation and comparing rendering of empty map to video feed from
low latency capture card. Simple visual diff is all it takes to identify even
1 pixel of enemy peeking from around the corner. You could inject visual
overlay on top of external video signal and auto trigger mouse click when
crosshair points at potential differences. No fancy AI/deep learning required.

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rndmize
I saw one of the threads on reddit about this yesterday with the usual litany
of privacy/security complaints and had a random idea - make it optional. Put
people that decide to remove it in an alternate queue with server-side anti-
cheat mechanisms only, maybe disable competitive/ranked game types for them.

~~~
floatingatoll
They would use cheats to tell the server that they aren't cheating, to get
placed into the "not cheating" queue.

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3fe9a03ccd14ca5
This is unfortunately why I switch to console exclusively for gaming. I
personally prefer a powerful PC especially with keyboard and mouse, but it’s
just so much harder to cheat on a console nowadays, and I don’t want to
install this stuff.

~~~
plopz
You don't even need to cheat on consoles, most games come built in with it, I
think they call it aim assist. Or you can just use a keyboard and mouse and
suddenly your better than all the controller users.

~~~
recursive
"Cheating" in video games is generally understood to mean using a technical
means to gain an advantage not intended by the developers. So it's not that.

~~~
plopz
The console players I know seem to consider mouse and keyboard cheating.

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dx87
There's also a thread on /r/pcgaming about the anti-cheat causing performance
issues in other games, even though Riot says it only runs when Valorant is
running.

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mbesto
Did anyone in this HN comment section actually read the discussion on Reddit?
According to the devs you can delete the executable if you're really that
worried.

They also talk about in more detail here:

[https://na.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/news/dev/dev-null-
anti-...](https://na.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/news/dev/dev-null-anti-cheat-
kernel-driver/)

~~~
davrosthedalek
This is straight up funny, and I think well written, with good detail for the
target demographic.

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lordleft
Didn't the infamous SecurOM also do this?

~~~
aeyes
You can find a lot of examples in the copy protection space, other examples
are Starforce or the Sony rootkit.

None of that came without problems for the users...

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chaostheory
This is why I have a PC dedicated only to gaming and other machines dedicated
only for casual web browsing. There's too much maintenance for a PC if it's
multi-use.

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twomoretime
Doesn't Player Unknown's Battlegrounds (aka pubg) do the same, but as a
Chinese company?

I stopped playing when they started forcing you to install something so
intrusive.

~~~
ssimpson
Riot is owned by Tencent, a Chinese company.

~~~
qppo
A minority stake. Disney has one too. Doesn't mean Mickey Mouse is backdooring
overwatch.

~~~
ssimpson
> Tencent paid $400 million for a 93 percent stake in Riot Games.[2][9]
> Tencent bought the remaining 7 percent in December 16, 2015; the price was
> not disclosed.[2][10]

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riot_Games](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riot_Games)

