AH statement on anticheat.

[ForeverAPeon]

Here's a message from Arrowhead's Technical Director:

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 😉

-Peter


Frequently Asked Questions about anti-cheat:
We collected responses from Reddit, Discord, and elsewhere and have compiled our answers here.

Q. Isn't using anti-cheat just to protect the game's monetization structure?
A. Yes, and no. While it will protect monetized content, our primary purpose in using it is to protect the social aspect of the Galactic War gameplay and preserve player experience.

Q. Does using nProtect GameGuard impact PC performance?
A. We have not seen a measurable impact on performance in our tests with GameGuard.

Q. Why did you choose nProtect GameGuard over other anti-cheats available?
A. We investigated feature sets in many of them, and GameGuard met our needs in preventing cheating in the Galactic War.

Q. Is nProtect GameGuard a security risk? i.e. Will it override security functions, create a backdoor into my firewall, allow malicious software such as keyloggers, etc.?
A. No. GameGuard communicates with a few servers for patching and reporting. However, it doesn't modify anyones firewall settings and it doesn't install other software. INCA, the creators of GameGuard, sells GameGuard as an anti-cheat solution. Their incentive is to make a good anti-cheat for publishers, developers and gamers. Installing malicious software is very illegal activity.

Q. Will GameGuard interfere with programs like MSI Afterburner, or monitoring software like hwinfo64?
A. We don't know all the things GameGuard might react to, but we are actively whitelisting known good programs. If you encounter any issues with GameGuard killing a process that should be whitelisted, please reach out to our support team.

Q. If I uninstall GameGuard, is it totally uninstalled or are files left behind?
A. The administrator level anti-cheat service that is installed with the game is removed when the game is uninstalled (or gguninst.exe is run). However, we've noted that there are some remnant files left in the game directory in the Steam library folder. They can be simply deleted though as they're only previously downloaded GameGuard updates.

[Katsper]

nProtect GameGuard and other services provided by that company are explicitly and verifiably known to do the exact things you're claiming they don't. instead of copy + pasting your (possibly intentionally?) misinformation filled reddit post here for a low effort attempt at damage control just to ignore even more concerns about this can you instead stop compromising the people giving you a job (and excluding non-windows systems) for profit margins and implement a better anti-cheat?

If anyone relevant at Arrowhead actually cared about any of this we wouldn't even be here doing this right now, either it wouldn't have been implemented at all or the (significant) feedback given elsewhere weeks ago would have meant something and actions would have been taken to listen to the community, like you apparently said you would

it's clear the only real goal here is to mitigate loss of early release sales due to the negative feedback and reviews you know you're going to get because you know exactly what you're doing

[Quagimus Decimus]

With all due respect, but Peter Lindgren is a terrible technical director if this was their first choice for an "Anti-cheat" solution. How about the reasoning behind using game guard over other solutions? From all the games the studio has produced over the years none have ever needed anti-cheats to this degree... is this due to incompetence over the years or just lack of caring for the consumers playing the games?

I'm no fan of kernel level anti-cheats but of all the choices out there you went with one of the worst? EAC is used in over 135 games... it's well optimized, and does what it can to stem cheating. I'm trying to understand the reasoning behind using an inferior kernel based solution for such a title. Should we bring up the games used for nProtect?
9Dragons
Atlantica Online
Darkeden
Digimon Masters Online
Dragon Saga
La Tale
Lineage 2
MapleStory
Metin2
PangYa
Phantasy Star Online 2
Riders of Icarus
Rohan: Blood Feud
Rumble Fighter: Unleashed
Uncharted Waters Online

I don't see a single co-op game with peer to peer networking.. they're all mmo's... what were you guys doing...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZxzJGgox_E

[CrypticTaco]

So basically you want everyone to trust you when its proven nguard does not remove with the game its installed with? Some diablo style game has the same problem and had to give people tools to remove it.

Disgusting pratice that your ok with compromising peoples pcs to protect ur mtx.

Wont be seeing me, will be joining the edf instead, they dont compromise my safety.. Well they do but not my pc.

[Pekora]

Devs doublingdown on it, hilarious

[CrypticTaco]

Originally posted by Pekora:

Devs doublingdown on it, hilarious

Best part is if I recall is they said they would listen to feedback and remove it people disliked it.

Guess that was never the case

[도깨비]

Same thing happened with Marauders game, even it was a different anti-cheat but had the same notoriousity, devs doubled down on the anti-cheat and game is pretty much dead now. Many people quit the game afterwards. It's sad one of my favorite games of all the time is being butchered by a pretty bad sequal..

[Deathscythe0117]

Seriously can't even run it on steam deck,would've been freaking nice to know before i bought this crap

[★★ALPHA47♂★★]

https://www.alteredgamer.com/pc-gaming-tech/1709-how-do-i-uninstall-nprotect-game-guard/

[★★ALPHA47♂★★]

Useless damage control statement just replace it with a better & more functional Anti-cheat. I'm not sure the micro transactions will cover your loss of initial game sales. Poor decision.

[Hinamina]

nProtect keeps files even after uninstallation in your registry. Why lie it doesnt? Just a quick Youtube search proves you wrong. I dont trust the anticheat and now i dont trust you either.

[Cornelius V. Osmond]

Since it is using p2p networking (quite a cool idea technically), a good compromise would be to allow playing with steam friends or closed groups with this anti-cheat off and let them opt out from global war etc.
Would solve the reasons for having the thing and allow people on linux and steam deck to play.

[Ratsplat]

And to think Suicide Squad is actually better than this game.

[Cerus]

Well, that's really disappointing.

Was so excited for this too.

[AmusableBman]

Unfortunate. Looking forward to checking on this game again in a year or so, hopefully things are different

[Sopas]

Im sure about if you use another anticheat (not ♥♥♥♥♥♥ kernel ones) you gonna have a lot of sells, more community who support this and less ilegal downloads.

I was waiting much time for this game and not gonna support any abusive DRMs (because yes, it is) so not gonna buy it.

To be honest, im so dissapointed.