Get your anticheat code off my fucking cpu and onto your servers where it belongs.

Garbage games do this, simple as.

It's almost like client side anti cheat doesn't work and if proper server side anti cheat is made it wouldn't matter what platform the client is on.

That .01% number is out of line with the overall share of Steam users in 2018 by literally an order of magnitude. I can understand some deviation within a particular game, but that figure is so far off that I kind of suspect he just made it up on the spot.

Let's do some math here, they said:

More cheaters using Linux than legit users (...) .01% of all players base

Let's do a quick math. The maximum peak users for Rust was 259,646 concurrent users according to https://steamcharts.com/app/252490 . Let's assume 60% (more than half) of all the .01% users were cheaters, congratulations, you got rid of all those 16 cheaters... I haven't played much Rust, but I'm fairly confident that there's a bit more than 16 cheaters there.

And that's without getting into the whole client side anti-cheat doesn't work.

Image Text:

From linux_gaming community on Reddit

Posted by: Alistair_Mc

There are no plans to support Proton or Linux. It's a vector for cheat developers, and one that would be poorly maintained by both us and EAC due to the low user base. When we stopped support for Linux, we saw more cheat users exploiting Linux, than actual legitimate users.

When monitoring cheats for Rust, we keep a close eye on wider cheat communities across several major games. We look at what cheat developers are doing, and how other studios are responding.

From that experience, I'm very comfortable saying that if a game supports Proton or Linux, they're not serious about anti-cheat. The only exception would be if they have a fully mature, dedicated in-house anti-cheat team, even then, I'm not seeing anyone handle Proton and Linux well.

Apex Legends also dropped Proton support in October 2024 for the same reasons as we did several years ago.

Could we limit Proton to Premium servers? yes, but I think it's total bullshit asking Proton users to buy the game and then $15 worth of DLC. I'd be pissed if I were forced to do that.

When we stopped supporting Linux, users made up less than .01% of the total player base, even if that number has doubled, or tripled, it's not worth it.

I know that every time I post something like this, some Proton and Linux users call us lazy or dismissive. The reality is that fighting cheaters on one front (Windows), is already a never-ending battle. Adding more fronts multiplies that challenge without adding meaningful benefit to the wider player base.

Server side anti-cheat should be the focus of every game company with an MMO game in their catalog. Relying on kernel access is madness.

If Valve's expanding hardware lineup helps increase SteamOS adoption, they'll change their tune.

I would bet that the claim of more than half of Linux players cheating is false positives due to shitty anti cheat. Like the anti cheat relying on some windows process or trying to initiate some process and linux is structured differently so it fails.

This guy is from the UK and former military. I think there must be some kind of weird haywire thing where the military experience made him irrationally upset about people who do not follow rigid rules and structure or something.

No doubt he spends most nights stalking cheater forums and dreaming about the day he finally wins his war lol

Hardware level cheat detection has always been a losing game. I'm a professional in similar area (not games) but it's fundamentally impossible to do when you dont control physical hardware, it's stupid. The only way to detect cheaters is machine learning based behavior analysis, period.

TL;DR: skill issue

So many games that work flawlessly on Linux, so I just skip those that don't:]

They're on that lie still?

Cool, cool. I've got plenty of games to choose from to care about lazy lying assholes who can't be bothered to come up with a better excuse than that for why they irrationally hate Linux

Developer of game 'Rust' talks about ~~anticheat~~ rootkits on Linux

This whole anticheat thing is so stupid. Remember when Sony got sued bigtime for including rootkits on their audio CDs? Why are game developers getting away with it no problem? Society is regressing and it's frustrating to watch.

It's not even real Rust unless it's coded in the real Rust language of Rustlandia.

Otherwise it's just sparkling oxidation

These comments are a real Dunning-Kruger festival.

This is the same BS CrowdStrike uses to sell their rootkit EDR. I mean, by all means it is a very solid EDR, but it's being used exclusively to cover gaping holes in discrete security as a cop out for not properly composing enterprise infrastructure.

A kernel space agent should only really be running in an environment where every process must be heavily scrutinized and the design of the kernel module is tightly controlled and itself under constant review, like in a proper data center with thousands of critical nodes. Not your laptop or the shitty windows box used to display ads in the screens at the airport.

Crowdstrike keeps spamming new features and techniques without serious consideration to keep their enterprise customers happy, similar to crappy solutions like Vanguard.

Covering obvious blatant logic flaws should be included in your server software, it's the same as sanity checking your inputs because there is always the possibility in may not match what you expect.

From that experience, I'm very comfortable saying that if a game supports Proton or Linux, they're not serious about anti-cheat

This statement is especially insulting to the massive library of games that successfully added Linux support without so much as a hint of issue relating to cheating. Even crappy outsourced dev War Thunder doesn't need to do anything after enabling EAC/BattilEye because they actually spend the .000001% extra cash from their whale revenue to run a service moderation team.

Hell even Valve's VAC system is mostly just about automating moderation tasks so that hackers can be taken down ASAP instead of a lengthy review process.

Or you know, the thousands of games that have better game logic than Rust's anticheat.

Explain something to me. It’s a multiplayer game anything that affects all players should be handled on the server side, not the client. So if I make a cheat it can only be installed client side, not server side.

So if my hypothetical cheat looks at object placement and any time I sees a small object approaching at a high velocity it can say “I’m going to assume that’s a bullet based on what the server told me about it.” Then my cheat would say “your character moves from here to here until the bullet passes by, then moves back. I will tell the server you moved to the left 20 inches in the blink of an eye then moved back”

This works because the server just trusts what it’s told in this example.

So there are two options here to resolve this. Either the server sets thresholds and denies any placement changes look like the Flash is playing rust, or the server evaluates suspicious placement changes later when the cpu load it’s under is lower. The first approach stops much of this instantly but is computationally expensive and could not scale well for lots of players. The second would work well enough. You need to catch cheaters but it’s doesn’t have to be within the same exact cpu cycle.

In either case, these work because the server is taught to look for something that shouldn’t be possible. The enforcement happens server side. The client doesn’t fucking matter.

There is zero reason to put anti cheat on the client side when it’s not a P2P instance. Target a few servers, not thousands of players.

If your cheat detection runs on the client side only, you don't have cheat protection.

People who play games to cheat are the problem with the world. Born losers.

I gave up Rust when I moved to Linux.

They are changing the game from building a cozy PvP Minecraft, to a clan based wargame.

Cozy players, don't cheat, clans do (Not all, of course).

one that would be poorly maintained by both us and EAC due to the low user base.

I'm sure I've been playing a lot of games with EAC, because it's actually one of the few ones that support Linux.

If I'm not mistaken (judging entirely by the RAC popup/loading), from the games I'm playing, Hell Let Loose, Fellowship, Helldivers 2, I think even The Finals used it.

Hell Let Loose wasn't working at first, because you have to check a checkbox and enable Linux support when building, which did take them a while.

So, unless I'm misremembering/confusing it with another anticheat, this is bullshit.

Also "unless you have an in-house anti-cheat team"

You made millions out of your player base. You can afford it. You're just lazy.

Referencing my comment in the other thread, Facepunch employees keep being disingenuous about this claim. Even if it is true, due to how unplayable Facepunch made the Linux build a short while before they axed it for "a rampant cheating problem", this claim does not have enough evidence. The linked comment goes into some more detail, but it is insane how much the developers keep doubling down on their disinformation.

On Windows the cheating program it's a simple exe that will get kernel access with a simple uac request.

Everyone, especially 12 years olds, are able to run it. (And maybe get malware/ransomware disguised as a cheating program)

None of the losers that need a cheating program to feel validated in online multiplayer games will have the skills to recompile the kernel in Linux to add support for that

TBF, you'd have to pay me to play most of these "anti-cheat" games anyhow.