possible work around for gameguard anti cheat?

[fnart]

okay this might sound a bit primitive but i REALLY want to play helldivers 2 without potentially compromising my pc's security and avoiding any bricking/BSoDs:

would getting an external hard drive/ssd, installing a fresh copy of windows, disconnecting all current storage and booting from the external, downloading drives, steam, helldivers 2 and gameguard work? it would be inconvenient but cheaper than buying a ps5 i suppose, only thing is the game would cost $90~ instead of the $40 plus the risks.

any thoughts? i was originally thinking of using a 256gb flash drive but that would obviously load wayyyy too slow lol

[Saint Marold YT]

Invest the €90 in a reverse engineering course and then tell us afterwards whether your fears about anti-cheat software were justified...

[★ ace ★]

EaseUS PM is partition software and works great IMO. It would accomplish the same thing that you're trying to do now if your current drive has some free space, like 120 GB or so, or more if you have more room to dedicate to the new install. Otherwise the other approach would work as well if you had a completely different drive and I would use SATA connections idk if you meant external like a USB drive but idk how well that would preform. if you really wanted to take the external drive apart and connect it through SATA that would work too as long as the drive doesn't have some proprietary connection internally.

[★ ace ★]

oh and I guess it really depends on your PC if you got a desktop it'll be easier, I'm not so sure about a laptop

[fnart]

Originally posted by Marold:

Invest the €90 in a reverse engineering course and then tell us afterwards whether your fears about anti-cheat software were justified...

while the horror stories going around are just that, with little to no proof besides word of mouth, logically speaking i don't think it's a GOOD idea to install a kernal-level anticheat on my main system for ONE game. it's simply too much risk, even if the anti-cheat was flawless and not causing issues for anyone at all. just taking a look at the other games that utilize the anti-cheat was enough to come to this conclusion, as i had never heard of it prior.

[fnart]

Originally posted by ★ ace ★:

EaseUS PM is partition software and works great IMO. It would accomplish the same thing that you're trying to do now if your current drive has some free space, like 120 GB or so, or more if you have more room to dedicate to the new install. Otherwise the other approach would work as well if you had a completely different drive and I would use SATA connections idk if you meant external like a USB drive but idk how well that would preform. if you really wanted to take the external drive apart and connect it through SATA that would work too as long as the drive doesn't have some proprietary connection internally.

thanks for the software recommendation! will look into it if i decide to go down this route for getting the game.

[Saint Marold YT]

Virtual Machine dont work?

[fnart]

Originally posted by Marold:

Virtual Machine dont work?

it does not, the anticheat does not let you play the game thru a VM. Mutahar made a video showcasing the same anticheat preventing VM play for a different game, Undecember I think.
I've heard Linux works though, but i'm not sure if i'm ready to dedicate that much time to learn it and make the leap away from windows just yet.

[AstroNaught]

I installed Linux (dual boot) to play the game without having to worry about the anticheat; worked flawlessly!

[fnart]

Originally posted by AstroNaught:

I installed Linux (dual boot) to play the game without having to worry about the anticheat; worked flawlessly!

I'm unfamiliar with Linux, how long would you say it'd take to learn enough to start playing, and where to start?

[AstroNaught]

Originally posted by fnart:

Originally posted by AstroNaught:

I installed Linux (dual boot) to play the game without having to worry about the anticheat; worked flawlessly!

I'm unfamiliar with Linux, how long would you say it'd take to learn enough to start playing, and where to start?

I'm a Linux noob myself. Took me half a day and some light troubleshooting. I installed Linux Mint, which is a really simple install, on par with windows installations. More on this thread here; see comments by myself, kobold and D.Flame :
https://steamcommunity.com/app/553850/discussions/2/7599331177361006128/

Let me know if you want to go for it - I'll be happy to help.

[Saint Marold YT]

Since Proton emulates the Windows environment 1 to 1, you still have a kernel anti cheat with full access to your Linux system.

The accesses caused by the Anti Cheat are only translated from the Windows protocol into the language required by the Linux OS.

Windows viruses also work perfectly under Proton.

Or did I miss something.?

[★ ace ★]

I'm not sure how Proton gets the job done, i'm thinking a container but I would think permissions would be able to solve that but i'm not entirely sure

[fnart]

Originally posted by Marold:

Since Proton emulates the Windows environment 1 to 1, you still have a kernel anti cheat with full access to your Linux system.

The accesses caused by the Anti Cheat are only translated from the Windows protocol into the language required by the Linux OS.

Windows viruses also work perfectly under Proton.

Or did I miss something.?

Well for me at least the Linux system would be practically empty and separated from my other drives. Also, I read a bit on linux anti cheat discussions and it seems proton creates its own artificial sandbox of sorts where the anti cheat cannot go beyond, making it think it has access to the full systems? Not my forte tbf but seems plausible.

[AstroNaught]

Copy pasting info from another thread:

NPGG still runs but it won't ever run kernel level instead it runs in a sandboxed proton environment which doesn't have access to root level permissions.
Additionally linux doesn't give regular users root ("admin") permissions by default. instead its managed in a seperate user fittingly called "root". This gives linux a higher level of security simply because programs don't just have every permission by default like they do in windows.

[fnart]

Originally posted by AstroNaught:

Copy pasting info from another thread:

NPGG still runs but it won't ever run kernel level instead it runs in a sandboxed proton environment which doesn't have access to root level permissions.
Additionally linux doesn't give regular users root ("admin") permissions by default. instead its managed in a seperate user fittingly called "root". This gives linux a higher level of security simply because programs don't just have every permission by default like they do in windows.

makes sense, thanks! I think i'm gonna try to continue holding off on buying the game for a week or so since the servers still seem to be on fire, but if I do decide to buy it I'll go down this route for sure.