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.

[Ryan555]

Цитата допису DiabloKhel:

Цитата допису Ryan555:

I just want to say that I had to actually resort to a full system wipe to undo the damage Gameguard did to my computer. I lost everything over playing this game for a few hours. I'm actually baffled that Arrowhead would stand by actual Malware

What was the damage? Honest question.

If I had to guess it deleted some important system files and driver files. Games kept crashing, system started BSoD. I restored 6 windows files with a SFC scan, and I tried to do a boot repair which said it did something but I'm not sure what. I also tried to do a disk check scan and repair which actually crashed. I'm not sure specifically what it damaged but I do know that every effort I made to repair windows yielded fruit and I thought to myself hopefully that'll fix it". It never did. By the time I got around to trying to reinstall my GPU drivers, not only would it not let me do that, I couldn't even boot to safe mode without a crash anymore. Not even a blue screen in there, just fade to white "windows has stopped working" error.

[Oakatusz]

Цитата допису Ryan555:

Цитата допису Oakatusz:

I am so sad to see this and very sorry for the damage it did to you man. But I thank you for your report, I will add it to my documentation about how horrible this Gameguard trashfire is.

Thank you for putting together such a well documented case btw, I saw it in the other thread. What gets me is these guys who blindly defend AH because they aren't having system issues yet. If there's anything I've noticed about my research in GG it's a timebomb, even if you aren't having issues now you're system could be bricked tomorrow.

Either way they come around acting like we're all overreacting and that our systems some how sucked before GG burned them in front of us. I have a 4K setup that's less than a year old and I've never had a single problem with it. I installed Gameguard and played HD2 for 3 or so sessions and suddenly my entire computer was breaking, BSoD, flickering screens, everything randomly CTD. I was trying to put band aids on it all week and I feel like everything I did was futile. I had to do a boot driver reformat of my drives and fresh install of windows to stop the issues. None of the crashes were listed as directly due to GG in my event viewer, but all of it started right after I installed HD2. If you looked at my stability report before I wiped my system out you'd see nothing right up until HD2 crashes the first time and then a wall of critical errors every single day it's insane.

Boils my blood that people are losing their expensive computers over this and fan boys come by and basically say "sucks to suck"

I am trying my best, but these fanboys are completely ignoring any evidence and are doing their best to silence people who are trying to spread awareness about these issues. As I stated above, they already got our change.org petition thread closed.

What happened to your system sounds hellish, and proves as another proof that this program should be ripped out from Helldivers II as soon as possible. I will add your post to the documentation right away.

I wish you good luck in fixing the damage Ryan555.

[Ryan555]

Цитата допису Oakatusz:

Цитата допису Ryan555:

Thank you for putting together such a well documented case btw, I saw it in the other thread. What gets me is these guys who blindly defend AH because they aren't having system issues yet. If there's anything I've noticed about my research in GG it's a timebomb, even if you aren't having issues now you're system could be bricked tomorrow.

Either way they come around acting like we're all overreacting and that our systems some how sucked before GG burned them in front of us. I have a 4K setup that's less than a year old and I've never had a single problem with it. I installed Gameguard and played HD2 for 3 or so sessions and suddenly my entire computer was breaking, BSoD, flickering screens, everything randomly CTD. I was trying to put band aids on it all week and I feel like everything I did was futile. I had to do a boot driver reformat of my drives and fresh install of windows to stop the issues. None of the crashes were listed as directly due to GG in my event viewer, but all of it started right after I installed HD2. If you looked at my stability report before I wiped my system out you'd see nothing right up until HD2 crashes the first time and then a wall of critical errors every single day it's insane.

Boils my blood that people are losing their expensive computers over this and fan boys come by and basically say "sucks to suck"

I am trying my best, but these fanboys are completely ignoring any evidence and are doing their best to silence people who are trying to spread awareness about these issues. As I stated above, they already got our change.org petition thread closed.

What happened to your system sounds hellish, and proves as another proof that this program should be ripped out from Helldivers II as soon as possible. I will add your post to the documentation right away.

I wish you good luck in fixing the damage Ryan555.

Thank you, hope it's fixed because if it isn't I have hardware damage. But so far so good since I reinstalled windows. I wish you luck on your mission. I'm going to be stepping away from the discussions of HD2 as I've been involved in a few now and I just want to distance myself from this forest fire at this point. I'll be mindful of GG in the future and if AH doesn't rectify this soon I'll be avoiding them and anything they make in the future as well

[diableri]

Цитата допису 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.

<snip>

Thank you for the very clear statement. I popped in to purchase today as I finally had some time to try the game out. After reading this, it was clear that I disagree with the decisions made to use this particular option and it made it easy to step away without buying. Again, I appreciate that you are communicating clearly with the potential customers. Good job here. No hard feelings.

[Leithal--Weapon]

Цитата допису Oakatusz:

So the people I talked about in my post (
https://steamcommunity.com/app/553850/discussions/2/4206994023681287288/?ctp=7#c7599331177369705270
) not long ago are at it again:

I am not even answering their insults, yet they created such an argument in the change.org petition thread and mass reported it so many times, that moderators just locked it:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/553850/discussions/0/4372501943309808762/

I hereby ask anyone to give me any kind of advice how to appeal to Steam to stop these people attacking our threads and getting them locked for no reason.

That frog degener... uhm ya seems special I think that just appealing to the Change.org people with a this is a consumer choice voting thing why are you against this is this not the whole purpose of Change.org... to make changes and to see how much of the community wants that change their will always be naysayers. Then you have steam which I don't know I'd just send out a few letters also so funny how they talk about slander and defamation when this is all about consumer choice and this is all our opinions and due to game guard in our opinions allegedly. But at the same time their is enough evidence to support the claims about how malicious this software is in my opinion allegedly these people just have blinders and want to argue and pursue their pseudo intellectual look and never looked at the other games that use nguardprotect to find that they all have very similar stories. Anyways keep up the good fight sounds like the devs are going to be looking into this on a public level on Monday/Tuesday they must be mulling it over all this weekend their is too much noise down here for them not to know unless they are so busy with the after release back-end issues. Oh on a slightly side note I find it funny how they also slammed the devs here for bad coding while still praising gameguard maybe that will be to your advantage slightly.

[Leithal--Weapon]

You could just ignore them and or block them so you can't see what they have to say it might drive them up the wall lol.

[Oakatusz]

Цитата допису Leithal--Weapon:

Цитата допису Oakatusz:

So the people I talked about in my post (
https://steamcommunity.com/app/553850/discussions/2/4206994023681287288/?ctp=7#c7599331177369705270
) not long ago are at it again:

I am not even answering their insults, yet they created such an argument in the change.org petition thread and mass reported it so many times, that moderators just locked it:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/553850/discussions/0/4372501943309808762/

I hereby ask anyone to give me any kind of advice how to appeal to Steam to stop these people attacking our threads and getting them locked for no reason.

That frog degener... uhm ya seems special I think that just appealing to the Change.org people with a this is a consumer choice voting thing why are you against this is this not the whole purpose of Change.org... to make changes and to see how much of the community wants that change their will always be naysayers. Then you have steam which I don't know I'd just send out a few letters also so funny how they talk about slander and defamation when this is all about consumer choice and this is all our opinions and due to game guard in our opinions allegedly. But at the same time their is enough evidence to support the claims about how malicious this software is in my opinion allegedly these people just have blinders and want to argue and pursue their pseudo intellectual look and never looked at the other games that use nguardprotect to find that they all have very similar stories. Anyways keep up the good fight sounds like the devs are going to be looking into this on a public level on Monday/Tuesday they must be mulling it over all this weekend their is too much noise down here for them not to know unless they are so busy with the after release back-end issues. Oh on a slightly side note I find it funny how they also slammed the devs here for bad coding while still praising gameguard maybe that will be to your advantage slightly.

Цитата допису Leithal--Weapon:

You could just ignore them and or block them so you can't see what they have to say it might drive them up the wall lol.

Well, I can't fathom either. I will never understand people like this. Even though it is just trying to raise awareness to an issue affecting players and a petition, you can see that our other thread got closed out of the blue, when I wasn't even engaging with these people after blocking them:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/553850/discussions/0/4372501943309808762

Yet, this Froschkönig guy himself admitted twice before that he is reporting my posts and accused me of spreading links to cheats:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/553850/discussions/0/4372501943309808762/?tscn=1708196788#c7599331177369024141
https://steamcommunity.com/app/553850/discussions/2/4206994023681304166/?ctp=13#c7599331177368977767

(Since, he seemingly deleted one of his comments, here is screenshots of both, so it is documented: )
https://imgtr.ee/image/IpkfGx
https://imgtr.ee/image/IpVOxW

The ace guy keeps spamming our big thread here in the Anticheat subforum and now stated twice, that he hopes that this thread is deleted too (Screenshots as documentation if he deletes them below):
https://steamcommunity.com/app/553850/discussions/2/4206994023681304166/?ctp=46#c7599331480039948965
https://steamcommunity.com/app/553850/discussions/2/4206994023681304166/?ctp=16#c7599331480040612535

https://imgtr.ee/image/IpVxMl
https://imgtr.ee/image/IpV21A


These people basically admitted themselves that they are just trying to destroy the documentation of Gameguard issues I personally put a lot of effort into researching already and continue to update based on the reports of the players in this community.

Regardless, thank you very much for you kind words Leithal--Weapon, I am doing what I can. I really hope, that Arrowhead's internal discussion on the Gameguard situation will be fruitful, and they will decide to remove or replace this horrible peice of software. I also hope they update the community abut the result of these discussions ASAP.

We shall see what happens.

[(☞ ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)☞]

The fact that there are this many issues with this anti-cheat as well as the very questionable history of it combined with their reluctance to change to something like EAC, which is proven to work and has had all the issues GG has ironed out and fixed, makes it very clear that GG is paying the publishers or dev team to use it because they are clearly losing out on a lot of potential customers over an anti-cheat that has already been bypassed day 1 and the difference between GG and EAC would be negligible at most.

I've had my e-mail hacked before and managed to save my steam account by literally 5 minutes as after I changed to a different e-mail, the first e-mail I got was attempted steam account access from a Russian IP address so I am VERY hesitant about installing games with questionable anti-cheat like this as I never want to feel that panic and stress again.

Also, if this anti-cheat is indeed actually bricking people's PC's as a fair few posts are saying, the devs may be opening themselves up to a lawsuit. Kind of like a seat belt dilemma. A company makes their cars and can choose from 2 seat belt companies. One is well known, widely used and is built strongly and passed all it's safety checks, the other is rarely used and is build cheaply and has a known history of breaking/snapping when in an accident. If the car company used the cheap belt and but claims it's just as good as the other one, they'll get sued when the bodies start piling up for knowingly using a shoddy product that put's the user at risk.

[Megakruemel[GER]]

So, like, 10 days later, do you still feel like Game Guard was the right decision over choices like Easy Anti Cheat or no anti-cheat at all and using server-side checks ensuring players were not cheating?

Like, from a buisness standpoint, and 1 in 150 players reporting issues with the anti-cheat, was the manpower invested into fixing these issues easier handled than the manpower needed to use a different anti-cheat or server-side checks?

[Leithal--Weapon]

I forgot to mention but https://www.inca.co.kr/include_file/pdf_down/nProtect_GameGuard_en.pdf the cost of using this product might make the switch more difficult for them to do right away but hopefully they will see more of a benefit as surely the 2000+ players that are not buying the game because of Gameguardnprotect will balance up the cancellation of said product and allow them to pay for another product that is more reputable in my opinion allegedly. I know steam gets a cut and such and other parts of the pyramid do as well. Also their future earnings on new products they might have envisioned could take a hit just by having used such a system in the past. Looks like the costs could be 30,000 a year or more maybe someone a bit brighter than I can dissect their brochureor do a product inquiry also see what cancellations are like and such but Sweden laws might let them cancel without many hassles.

[dl*Obliter8]

This 'amazing' anticheat software now completely locks up my system when I try and load Helldivers from Steam. Not really doing its job is it? I have not had to hard power-off my PC since Windows XP.

Absolutely appalling. I am not the only one. A possible unifier is AMD X3D chips?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1ase54s/game_totally_freeze_pc_when_trying_to_start_it/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1arvig1/nprotect_gameguard_freezes_entire_computer/

Please get rid of this pointless software

[Oakatusz]

Цитата допису dl*Obliter8:

This 'amazing' anticheat software now completely locks up my system when I try and load Helldivers from Steam. Not really doing its job is it? I have not had to hard power-off my PC since Windows XP.

Absolutely appalling. I am not the only one. A possible unifier is AMD X3D chips?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1ase54s/game_totally_freeze_pc_when_trying_to_start_it/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1arvig1/nprotect_gameguard_freezes_entire_computer/

Please get rid of this pointless software

You are not alone at all dl*Obliter8.

Many players are reporting all kinds of issues caused by this Gameguard. I will add your post to the documentation about this, where we try to let the devs know that this horrible software needs to be removed or replaced ASAP.

If you or anyone else for that matter who is reading wants to join us in the documentation thread about this, you can find it here:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/553850/discussions/2/4206994023681304166/

You can also sight our petition here:
https://www.change.org/p/revoke-kernel-level-anti-cheat-in-helldivers-2-for-enhanced-device-safety

[Nathan]

Futureproof your game:

• Get anti-cheat that is nonintrusive because you can't predict (& it seems likely given history of DRM & anti-cheats) how well current ACs will function under ever-changing Operating Systems, do you want your game to be played in the future regardless of what will be the popular systems people end up playing on?
  
• Make offline mode available, it's clear you can't handle the workload, people should have a right to play the game even if they can't access servers, futureproof your game!
  
• Give players option to opt into/out of anti cheat lobbies/groups, like some other games do (see: Dying Light), where you're not matched with other players who have a simple yes/no choice currently selected in their settings that's different from your choice, that way players have the option to turn it off and play solo or pair up with others who have it off knowing the risks that entails-- While people having it on are only paired up with other players who have anticheat on as well (with the potential costs that too can entail).

[Kwaku]

I would like to know if someone has investigated whether the two claims are true. The first is whether uninstalling the game truly removes it from the system and doesn't leave fragments around the system and registery.

Second, I wonder if someone has a decent firewall and some tooling to check the packets going out of the system don't containe markers related to personal system data, given the history and no matter how old such issues are.

In closing, while for some of us even with network segregated machines only used for gaming and separate from workstations it isn't a huge problem. When it comes to privacy, for some of us, it poses a greater risk than the average person, it is not worth the risk at present. That's not to say privacy and a quality product shouldn't be expected, it's just for some it is a matter that affects many areas of their life and the risk is too much. Additionally, the issues surrounding system stability isn't worth the potential downtime when I want to spend my free time enjoying an experience rather than dealing with potentially deep sporadic issues.

Anyway, just voicing some thoughts and concerns to think on, however, as much as the appeal of a quick and potentially fun experience sounds good, for now it's back to other hobbies.
Sadly, the tech space lately seems to consistently build itself up but let's itself down at the final hurdle. Seems to be a running theme across the majority companies seeking investment at present.

[Captain Fancypants]

I find it odd that one would choose to stick to your guns when there seems to be a lot of controversy around this decision. Especially considering I seem to recall that they promised to "listen to the customers" if they didn't like it and find a different solution.

It just doesn't translate into trust.

At any rate, I would love to buy this game, but I won't based on everything I have read surrounding this particular anti-cheat. I would love to reconsider if there is a change in direction of course.

I'm just not comfortable with giving root access.