I'm against them being able to ban you from playing online in its entirety, which is something they can do because most online games don't let you run the servers yourself anymore. Sure, if someone cheats on official servers, ban them from the official servers. They should still be able to play, cheating or not, on the server they run themselves, but that's not an option we even have most of the time.

"Butbutbutbut server side anticheat is haaaaaaard and requires us to actually think about what values are actually valid and understand our own internal game states. Kernel level anticheat ~~lets us be lazy~~ costs us less and requires less development time!"

Apple has already done the same with macOS 10.15 Catalina in 2019. No more kernel extensions = much better kernel-level security

This will become the industry standard

https://www.pcgamer.com/ransomware-abuses-genshin-impacts-kernel-mode-anti-cheat-to-bypass-antivirus-protection/

Someone discovered Dark Souls games had a RCE but they never responded to the person that kept emailing them about it for months. The security guy then started invading streamers and crashing the game while doing fun stuff like showing text on the screen. Only then did Fromsoft take down the servers and patch things up - which took a few months.

Yes, game companies really don't take security seriously.

This doesn't work. It will never work. You can't shame conscious consumers into voting with their wallets while the other 99% keeps buying the bad practices.

Thing is, if nobody on Lemmy, and literally nobody in general who cares about anticheat, buys GTA 6, you know what effect that would have on the company's bottom line? None, they'll make record profits.

Absolute dogshit strategy. 99% of people will always buy the game so you not buying won't matter in the slightest. Unfortunate but true.

Money mumbles. Don’t buy the game, and also actively notify the company of your decision and why. Twitter, feedback form, steam review, whatever channel lets you get that message across.

This is not a matter for the government, just don’t buy shitty games.

This IS a matter for the goverment. "just don’t buy shitty X" is "just use magic" argument.

You agree to that in the EULA/TOS of the game you want to play (and how legally binding that is is anyone's guess). You just never read it (because nobody does).

The reality is that it is just another layer of risk. You are or are not choosing to install software on your personal computer that may or may not increase your risk level. It is no different than going to that website that makes your GPU spin up real hard or grabbing something from itch that is actually malware and so forth. Its why people increasingly suggest having a dedicated device for taxes and anything else private.

Personally? I understand the benefits to kernel level anti-cheat and, while we have no data as consumers, it is clearly effective considering the state of games today versus games in the 00s and publishers are willing to allocate funds for it. I still firmly believe that there are better methods that involve analysis of player behavior but I also understand the compute costs of that will be insane.

But also? I don't want that shit on my computer (not that it would work because... Linux). So I choose not to play the games that require it. It means I miss out on some games but the good news is that there are way more games out there than I can ever play.

All that said: I increasingly think the end state is going to be competitive multiplayer games being console exclusive due to a mix of exclusivity rights and having a walled garden ecosystem that actually CAN be controlled.