Why (I think) valve will never implement a kernel-level anti-cheat

[SH1OOOY ♤]

I just saw a pimp video where he's pretty much begging valve to get a handle on the cheating situation and I want to say what I think the reason is for them not wanting to make a kernel-level anti-cheat as if faceit can make one, why can't valve?

Preface:
- Some games(valorant faceit) have a intrusive anti-cheat solution which runs as you startup your computer and has kernel-level access to your computer and can pretty much do whatever it wants to, which is quite dangerous for the user, but also ensures that they can't easily load some software to cheat in those games.
- This has been implemented on windows however not done on linux yet, partly because the general linux community does not accept this as a viable solution due to the level of access you are giving a program to your computer which contrasts starkly with the goal of linux to be free.
Main:
- Valve is quite invested into linux(steam deck and Proton being a big one ) so they don't want to break the game for those people for example if they are using steam deck.

-Also CS:GO has always supported linux natively breaking linux support for CS2 would be an actual regression which wouldn't be a great look.
-One might say that they could just support a specific LTS kernel, such as the one that they ship with SteamOS which is a wrapper ontop of arch linux, and maybe this is possible as valve certainly has the resources available to make a fork of kernel however this would take some time to implement. But the modifications made to this would certainly not be accepted by anyone else so
- Also there's the whole thing with the fact that it will really annoy the whole linux community which may be steam deck users and I don't think valve wants to really annoy those people.

TLDR: Valve won't make a kernel level anti-cheat as that is not an acceptable Linux which they really do care about

[MAXE]

Messaggio originale di 𝙏𝙎 SH1OOOY ♤:

Messaggio originale di M-A-X-E ™:

Well alot of the players dont like that idea and if the majority is against it, then it will never happen !

yea

Im just a gamer myself .. but this forum has got me into alot of trouble here on steam,

Before i even started to discuss with this forum i had 0 bans or bad reputations, now i got low trustfactor has been banned multiple times from the forums for speaking up the truth about the cheating issues in this game & what did i get out of it ?

Nothing, thats right nothing ..

But the cheaters ?

well they are just free to continue to ravage and destroy this game & all other multiplayer games that got pvp in it over and over and over again ..

The only true way to stop them is to swing the biggest ban hammer of them all by making the ban personal !

And how do Valve do that ?

Only solution is personal id or a Gamer license attached to something that is very uniq and personal to you, e.g. your social security number or some like that ..

Yeah i think that would be needed, that way the police on the internet can easyer track bad guys aswell .. so it would at the same time help protect our kids & other people from crime and people that gets scammed or accounts stolen would allso get a better safety net ..

So the personal id solution would fix alot of issue in 1 strike ..

[Deathtome]

the only real way to put a stop to the cheaters is to require government ids to be tired to the account and a player only gets one account ever, if you are found out to be using another person id you will be banned and so will they... and im not just talking about per game, i mean the whole account will be locked and your id will be flagged.

[Sethioz]

Messaggio originale di 𝙏𝙎 SH1OOOY ♤:

I just saw a pimp video where he's pretty much begging valve to get a handle on the cheating situation and I want to say what I think the reason is for them not wanting to make a kernel-level anti-cheat as if faceit can make one, why can't valve?

Preface:
- Some games(valorant faceit) have a intrusive anti-cheat solution which runs as you startup your computer and has kernel-level access to your computer and can pretty much do whatever it wants to, which is quite dangerous for the user, but also ensures that they can't easily load some software to cheat in those games.
- This has been implemented on windows however not done on linux yet, partly because the general linux community does not accept this as a viable solution due to the level of access you are giving a program to your computer which contrasts starkly with the goal of linux to be free.
Main:
- Valve is quite invested into linux(steam deck and Proton being a big one ) so they don't want to break the game for those people for example if they are using steam deck.

-Also CS:GO has always supported linux natively breaking linux support for CS2 would be an actual regression which wouldn't be a great look.
-One might say that they could just support a specific LTS kernel, such as the one that they ship with SteamOS which is a wrapper ontop of arch linux, and maybe this is possible as valve certainly has the resources available to make a fork of kernel however this would take some time to implement. But the modifications made to this would certainly not be accepted by anyone else so
- Also there's the whole thing with the fact that it will really annoy the whole linux community which may be steam deck users and I don't think valve wants to really annoy those people.

TLDR: Valve won't make a kernel level anti-cheat as that is not an acceptable Linux which they really do care about

What is it with people and their kernel? what difference would it make?
as you already said, kernel is very intrusive, i'd stop playing if they put kernel AV, i'm not allowing anything to have absolute control over my OS, not happening!
that's as good as selling yourself as slave, that's never happening.
so yeah i agree it's very instrusive

BUT, what difference does it make if it's kernel or not?
ONLY thing that kernel-level does, is that it prevents access from non-kernel level tools to game's memory, but there are kernel-cheats aswell, so it wouldn't change anything.

kernel level AV doesn't detect cheats better, it's just more tamper proof, but there are already bypasses and have been for a long time. any competent reverse engineer / debugger can make one.

what they need, is better detection. from what i've heard, VAC does quite good job in detecting any kind of injection into game's memory, i heard some legit tools getting banned aswell

BUT here's the PROBLEM:
certain cheats don't inject anything into game, such as wallhack only. it reads from game's memory, but it doesn't inject anything, therefore no matter if it's kernel or not, anti-cheat won't be able to detect it, because it's not doing anything with game, it just reads game's memory and nothing else.
same with external radar cheats that you can keep open on other monitor.

CONCLUSION:
kernel-level anti-cheat would NOT remove cheaters any better than VAC, it would only make it harder for basic script kiddies to try and hack the game, but VAC already detects any tamper attempts anyways, so there's NO point even having kernel-level. it would just cause lot of PC experts to quit the game as they don't want to have such intrusive AV.