Dev reponse "Helldivers 2 & nProtect GameGuard (anti-cheat)"

[Kraze]

Originally posted by ArrowheadGS:

Hi everyone,

My name is Peter Lindgren and I'm the Technical Director of HELLDIVERS 2. I've been making games at Arrowhead since the Magicka-days and I've been involved in every game we've released to date.

I will do my best in this post to address the concerns and confusion that's come up recently regarding the choice of Anti-Cheat software in HELLDIVERS 2.

So, let's start off with the more urgent questions:

Is GameGuard a kernel-level / administrator-priviledge anti-cheat?

Yes, GameGuard is a "kernel-level", aka rootkit, anti-cheat. Most anti-cheat run at "kernel-level", especially all of the popular ones. It's unfortunately one of the more effective ways to combat cheating.

There are some anti-cheat that can run in "user-mode", but they are much less effective and tend to be cracked very quickly, resulting in widespread cheating.

Will GameGuard stay installed on my system after I've uninstalled HELLDIVERS 2?

No, GameGuard is removed at the same time as the game is uninstalled.

The installer and uninstaller for GameGuard is visibly included with the game in <install-dir>/tools/GGSetup.exe and <install-dir>/tools/gguninst.exe.

I'm worried about my privacy, will GameGuard collect sensitive information about me?

No, GameGuard does not collect any personally identifiable information (PII). And doing so would be a GDPR/ADPPA nightmare as well. I can speak from experience that we're all bending over backwards to be compliant with these regulations.

On a more technical note, GameGuard is scanning the running processes (applications) for malicious software and attempts to block such software from manipulating the game client.

Will GameGuard reduce the performance of my PC?

GameGuard is only active while the game is running and after thousands of hours of testing we’ve not noticed any noteworthy degradations of performance on our developer and QA workstations.

And the big one that needs plenty of context:

HELLDIVERS 2 is a co-op/PvE game, why do we even need Anti-Cheat?

That's a great question, and there's two related but separate points to it:

First, we want everyone to have a great time playing HELLDIVERS 2, with friends, ex-friends or randoms. What we've seen in some of our and others' games is that rampant cheating tends to have a very negative effect on players openness to playing, especially with randoms.

There's an anecdote from HELLDIVERS 1 I'd like to share:

When we released HELLDIVERS 1 on PC there was effectively no anti-cheat implemented. Additionally HELLDIVERS 1 uses a peer-to-peer networking model, and that means, from a security perspective, each game client will blindly trust each other.

Shortly after release we noticed there was a cheat going around which granted 9999 research samples. Unfortunately any non-cheaters in the same mission would also be granted 9999 research samples. These non-cheating players now had their entire progression ruined through no fault of their own.

We were able to deal with a lot of these early issues without using a third party solution, but it took a lot of work, and most of it was done reactively.

Incidentally HELLDIVERS 2 also uses a peer-to-peer networking model, but this time around we're trying to be more proactive and make sure everyone can play the intended experience.

Second is the Galactic War. There's this huge metagame going in the cloud which all players (and game clients) participate in. Even though we have other countermeasures in place, a cracked game client could make it easier to disrupt the Galactic War, which would sour everyone’s experience.

As a final note, on an open platform like PC it's not possible to stop cheating from ever happening. Someone with the skills, dedication and resources will ultimately succeed. The point of anti-cheat is to make it more difficult and time consuming to develop cheats.

Needless to say we will be keeping a very close eye for any issues that may be encountered at release.

See you on the battlefield ;)

https://reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/19dp2qw/helldivers_2_nprotect_gameguard_anticheat/

Now you can piss off if you're still unhappy.

[Amaranth]

Please look at the forum before posting. This answer was posted several times, including in another dedicated thread.

[Kraze]

Originally posted by Amaranth:

Please look at the forum before posting. This answer was posted several times, including in another dedicated thread.

More times the merrier

[punchobastardo]

you would expect them posting the response here considering it will be the game's launch platform for the PC but apparently they feel safe in their Discord protective bubble right?

[McDinglefart]

So they confirmed its rootkit with access to whole PC. And? Should that make things better somehow?

They say "trust me bro", but another game uncharted waters using same game guard reported to give bsod even after unistall because of this anticheat.

[Waldherz]

Originally posted by punchobastardo:

you would expect them posting the response here considering it will be the game's launch platform for the PC but apparently they feel safe in their Discord protective bubble right?

The post was made on REDDIT...not Discord.

Also why would anyone waste their time on this steam forum.
Its populated by people who will hate on the game no matter what. Even if they removed the DRM entirely. Its a waste of time.

[punchobastardo]

Originally posted by Waldherz彡:

Originally posted by punchobastardo:

you would expect them posting the response here considering it will be the game's launch platform for the PC but apparently they feel safe in their Discord protective bubble right?

The post was made on REDDIT...not Discord.

The elephant in that sentence is Steam, the game's launch platform and their complete absence from here in case you didn't notice... If you ever visited their Discord (I'm sure you are a native there) you would see how they are living in their sugar-sweet bubble there with all their zealots and fanbois without much personality to insist about things that really matter like privacy and security.

[Hoodlum]

Originally posted by Kakas69:

So they confirmed its rootkit with access to whole PC. And? Should that make things better somehow?

They say "trust me bro", but another game uncharted waters using same game guard reported to give bsod even after unistall because of this anticheat.

blah blah blah get out of here troll

[Waldherz]

Originally posted by punchobastardo:

Originally posted by Waldherz彡:

The post was made on REDDIT...not Discord.

The elephant in that sentence is Steam, the game's launch platform and their complete absence from here in case you didn't notice... If you ever visited their Discord (I'm sure you are a native there) you would see how they are living in their sugar-sweet bubble there with all their zealots and fanbois without much personality to insist about things that really matter like privacy and security.

I actually have been on their discord some months ago and left. Quit discord entirely last year. Not a huge fan of the 5 billion messages per second thing of these servers.

Not posting community related things has been a trend on steam for quite some time now.
Some devs and publishers are entirely silent, others state that they dont want to post here due to the 99% negative feedback, no matter what it is that they are posting. Steam forums and feedback sites are mostly filled with negativity these days.

[punchobastardo]

Originally posted by Waldherz彡:

I actually have been on their discord some months ago and left. Quit discord entirely last year. Not a huge fan of the 5 billion messages per second thing of these servers.

Not posting community related things has been a trend on steam for quite some time now.
Some devs and publishers are entirely silent, others state that they dont want to post here due to the 99% negative feedback, no matter what it is that they are posting. Steam forums and feedback sites are mostly filled with negativity these days.

yet this is the place that matters the more because things like the unacceptable, anti-fan, anti-user, anti-consumer rootkit injected into everyone's Personal Computer (PC) are being exposed here and can be picked up by journalists and gaming sites to protect people and reconnect unethical devs and their masters (in this case Sony with not the best record in privacy and scandals) with reality. "Official" Discords are rotten places, I've seen many discord hubs where "uncomfortable " questions led to attacks from the zealot crowd and quick-bans to protect the pre-sales, showing how much they really care about fans and users.

PR "GameTechnical Director" stated they have tested the performance of the rootkit "thousands of hours", yet people believed this was only added recently, they added that info to the Steam Store just 5 days ago, why didn't they add it in the first place when people were preordering this, where had these thousand hours been?

Imo AH has gone from a respected "family"-valued company to a very shady one. It's typical for "indie" studios that suddenly reach their goal of becoming rich I guess. Their tactics are not accepted in my book, nor should be by anyone with some personality left.

[Waldherz]

Well, we will see how it goes once the game goes live.
I expect some people to trace every single bit the DRM handles and there are probably also going to be people who use...methods (cant mention it openly on a steam store hub) to compare the games performance with and without the DRM.

[punchobastardo]

They don't have to trace anything, the rootkit officially states it plainly reads all your memory, that's more than enough. Imagine you have 2 monitors and you have a browser open, this can read all the pr0n urls you have visited -to give an example-. You don't even have to have it open, it can read the Cached Memory. Or if you have some other application loaded to talk with someone else like another family member, this could be killed or the contents be intercepted without the user knowing it. And everything is being transmited encrypted via a system service that uses listening ports that can be used if some hackers find an exploit in the rootkit. Imagine this game is good and you keep it for 5 years in your "Personal" Computer, at some point in-between there can be very likely an exploit from which you are basically unprotected. Also, this type of controversy attracts usually and naturally more hackers.

In general, you don't want rootkits with admin controls in your Personal Computer. What's next, some rootkit that will be controlled by some government that would allow you to play only certain hours? Rootkits should not be endorsed or taken with light heart. You don't want the death of the Personal Computer because that would mean terminals accessing mainframes, like Google Stadia for example, with whatever that means about losing your freedom. (dystopian examples: government says Google Stadia is online only for 4 hours/ goverment shuts down "gaming services" in your PC).

My recommendation is :
a) boycott these companies no matter how it hurts, because of the above.
b) if you still can't do that, use a separate PC dedicated just to gaming, effectively having a "PC" console. (Maybe that's what they want? To ditch the PC and buy their PS5?)

[McDinglefart]

Helldivers 2 devs are trying to make you think like it's not a big deal and this is a really bad tendency.

What rootkit software can do when you give full access to your computer?

read memory of every application in your system
access information about other running applications and services
restrict users from running applications
restrict users from uninstalling applications

Only thing that stops developer from doing shady stuff is their promises of not doing so. And if they promise, sometimes they don't keep their promises. ESEA, for example, used anti-cheat to create mining botnet.

Game developers aren't security specialists, it's not their goal to make good security for you. Anti-cheat isn't a product that they sell to increase your security. It's there only to increase their profits by securing their side.

Even if you do trust game developers that they 100% aren't doing bad things, you should be aware that any developer can miss bugs in their software. Bugs in kernel drivers would mean possibility of attacks on your PC that will have unlimited access to everything.

That includes RCE (remote code execution) vulnerabilities. So if someone will find such kind of attack for Helldivers 2/GameGuard, not only they can do funny things with game itself, but also with your whole system.

So, the question is: would you give an access to your banking paswords for companies like Activision or Tencent, Sony?

Or maybe you are willing to share monitoring data with their affiliated 3rd parties which may or may not include advertisement giants or government agencies?

At the end of the day, games are just games. They should be fun to play. Why people need to sacrifice privacy and allow game developers to tamper with their system?

Game developers aren't your friends and it shouldn't be a norm for them to put their sticky fingers deep inside your PC.

[Konnor1224]

this is so sad to find out....... i just pre-ordered like an idiot too. I also missed that its just gonna be online only...... why i was so excited for this game..... why why... gonna refund now

[adaneze]

"I can speak from experience that we're all bending over backwards to be compliant with these regulations."

Sounds like these regulations are a real pain and severely limit someone's real intentions at Arrowhead or Sony if you have to put so much effort to just follow them lol

[sharkrkk]

I am happy the devs posted about this topic. I know they said that gameguard won't collect data alongside other assurances. We are not hating the devs nor the game. But I feel our concern is that these issues, that won't happen, can happen. People can say trust me it won't, but it can still happen, because it already happened many times to many people from many examples posted in these steam threads.

I guess example to kind of tie to this is with payday 3. That game had a great dev team. I loved payday 2. And people trusted them. When they said the game was online only, players had concerns about online only, "what if the servers go down?" etc. And the devs response was "it won't", trust us. Then the servers went kaput on launch day. I am not saying this will happen to helldivers 2. But it just the fact when when a game depends on so many 3rd party systems to run, what if one of them goes down, well you can't play the game you bought anymore. Let alone getting you personal computer destroyed. And this gameguard has a much worse history compared to other anti-cheats. So it will always be a possibility that something goes wrong with it, no matter how small.

Helldivers 2 looks soooo good. Trailers are amazing. If you want to buy the game, you preordered, and you are okay with all these 3rd party stuff added, that's cool, you do you and I get that. But I feel everyone should have the right for their concerns.

So for people that are sceptical and concerned. Just wait till the game comes out. Because only then will we see the true face and everything is revealed. Then make an informed decision then.
I never preordered because no matter how awesome the game looks like I always try and stay sceptical of the product.