That's one of the main reasons why I stopped playing competitive multiplayer games: you either have cheaters, or you have anti-cheat software that's so intrusive that it's worse than the cheaters.
Look up the Intel Management Engine and AMD Platform Security Processor and prepare to not be surprised. It's essentially another computer inside your computer that bypasses all security, with various vulnerabilities found in it over the years. If the government mandates anything, it's likely just to give themselves access.
There was also a defcon talk I saw a while back where a guy found hidden instructions in some x86 processors that allowed you to dump abitrary memory. Ostensibly for debugging, but they're there. On a modern chip, a lot of the instructions are handled by microcode - it's computers and software all they way down and there's no way to verify it.
But for Intel there is the me_cleaner project but it seems to be dead(is a bunch of scripts that lets you modify the BIOS to remove ME/enable the ME killswitch bit, but it will require you to get an external programmer) but how effective it is depends on how new the CPU is.
CPUs up to Nehalem, can have the whole ME firmware removed rendering it completely useless.
CPUs from Nehalem up to Broadwell, the ME bootloader is preserved to disarm the killswitch in case ME is damaged(in case ME is damaged the PC will automatically shut off after 30 minutes)
Newer CPUs is not really effective as more core parts of ME need to be present
But researchers also discovered a bit(the HAP bit) in the ME firmware that once turned on ME becomes inoperable after initializing the ME hardware and disabling the PC automatic shutoff, but not sure how much you can trust it.
Pretty much all modern games are compromised. China has every consumer PC by the balls. If China ever wants to attack the US, every computer with an install of Riot games (LoL/Valorant), Epic Games Store (fortnite), Mihoyo (Genshin Impact), and Discord will be bricked because China either controls them or has a controlling stake.
The valorant anti cheat software stays on your computer after you uninstall the game. You have to separately delete it. It literally slows down the speed of your computer starting. Insane.
I would not be shocked if even Valve get desperate about the cheaters in their games and they go all in on anti-cheat spyware.
I would be, because it would mean throwing their investments in Linux down the drain to chase an unatainable goal. Cheat development is an arms race, you wouldn't be hearing about DMA cheats 10 years ago, but you hear them now as viable options to be undetectable by Vanguard(and Rito has to just suck it unless someone figures out cloud gaming and forces it down our throats).
And kernel anticheats on linux is a sisyphean task at best that even the kernel anticheats on Windows that work under Proton(EAC,Battleye) are stuck with usermode protection when running on Linux.
Linux is not designed to work with drivers outside the mainline tree and maintainers don't give a fuck about compatibility, and distros have to resort to providing patches and workarounds such as dkms so that when the kernel is updated the driver is automatically recompiled(and actually succeed) to the latest kernel. Windows' driver interface is so stable that you generally can run Windows 7 drivers under 10/11(with some exceptions like GPU drivers) and the only thing you might get is a compatibility warning.
Valve is still earning millions in CS2 cases and marketplace fees despite the cheating problems in matchmaking, so I doubt they would do something this drastic.
any of us who give a shit about the state of games should not be installing modern multiplayer games at all at this rate.
Not that modern multiplayer games are actually worth playing or anything. All of them are pretty much liveservice slop designed with the age old motto of don't ask questions, just consoom product and then get excited for next product.
If the "great firewall of china" actually worked, chinks would be stuck in their containment zone even without the Tiananmen reference. Though at least when I used to play CSGO(like 10 years ago) russians were the avoid at all costs players back then, how naive could have I been.
Well vgk.sys(the vanguard driver) according to the PE header does import(which means the code calls at some point) KeBugCheck which is the function Windows or a driver can call to cause the BSOD when shit is FUBAR(or the driver is misbehaving in case of Windows calling it), so the hyperbole is not entierly unbelievable.
Other suspicious(no I don't call it a spyware since there are legitimate uses for drivers to call these APIs such as logging, but crypto stuff is a bit more suspicious) stuff I can see is ZwReadFile and ZwWriteFile which are the file reading/writing APIs, and BCryptDestroyHash+BCryptCloseAlgorithmProvider which are used to free encrypted data from memory and close the handle to the encryption engine but those don't make much sense since the counterpart open functions are missing from the import table. But again Windows programs and drivers can load DLLs and import functions at runtime so maybe they're used(or functions for malicious stuff that I can't see through the PE import/export table) just not obviously.
Though to see when and how I would need to fully reverse engineer the driver which I totally won't do because of the layers of obfuscation. Maybe someone autistic enough will do the reverse engineering for us to see how much of a spyware it is(or isn't)
Valve uses VAC and has always used VAC, it is incredibly unlikely they would ever use a different anti-cheat imo.
Always possible but not very likely, and as for the OP, any game that attracts trannies and women in such high degrees is obviously not created for the good of gaming(see: Overwatch, FF14). And with the stake tencent has in Riot it isn't surprising they get some chinese spyware for it, I believe the same spyware is coming to LoL and their other games as well at some point, if it hasn't already.
Valve uses VAC and has always used VAC, it is incredibly unlikely they would ever use a different anti-cheat imo.
What OP is worrying about is Valve reworking VAC into a kernel anticheat. Right now VAC is a usermode anticheat based around detecting signatures of anticheat programs/signs of tampering with the game(sometimes overdoing it as AMD users were flagged as cheaters when AntiLag+ was released with a driver update, though those bans were reversed).
I believe the same spyware is coming to LoL and their other games as well at some point, if it hasn't already.
They already added it to League, but only to the Windows version. The macOS client uses "an alternative version"(though I presume once Apple drops x86 emulation from macOS, the mac client will die with it), and Linux users that used Wine to play League were thrown under the bus
Steam Deck is a Linux device so I don't know how accurate the idea that Valve will be quick to throw it overboard is. Non-Steam Deck users are a side effect and not a goal, so, sure, no one cares about them specifically but they can't get fucked without Valve fucking themselves, too.
That said, with the leaderless chaos that is Valve's employees, that the left hand didn't know what the right hand is doing wouldn't be too much of a stretch.
yes, but pretty much every multiplayer game with auntie cheat is spyware at this point. this goes for vac, punk buster, easy answer cheat, and every Chinese gaccha on the market. they all have root level access to your computer, and pinky promise that they won't abuse this access.
don't put your private information on your gaming machine.
They knew how many were playing on linux and decided it wasn't worth the effort. Hell even the macOS client is stuck in support limbo(macOS 12,13 along with ARM macs are not "supported" and 14 is not even mentioned on the page) and I expect them to completely ditch it when Apple drops x86 support
That's one of the main reasons why I stopped playing competitive multiplayer games: you either have cheaters, or you have anti-cheat software that's so intrusive that it's worse than the cheaters.
there are plenty of great single player games out there, multiplayer games are not the only way to game.
Dude, there's a gigantic variety of gameplay mechanics in the indie sphere. People just don't know how to find what they'll enjoy.
Every chip, every processor nowadays have some obligatory backdoor thanks to NSA.
I would not be surprised, but was there a mandate or law that went into place that governs this? or do they just keep it on the DL.
Look up the Intel Management Engine and AMD Platform Security Processor and prepare to not be surprised. It's essentially another computer inside your computer that bypasses all security, with various vulnerabilities found in it over the years. If the government mandates anything, it's likely just to give themselves access.
There was also a defcon talk I saw a while back where a guy found hidden instructions in some x86 processors that allowed you to dump abitrary memory. Ostensibly for debugging, but they're there. On a modern chip, a lot of the instructions are handled by microcode - it's computers and software all they way down and there's no way to verify it.
Is there a vulnerability that lets me shut it off?
For AMD i'm not aware of such methods .
But for Intel there is the me_cleaner project but it seems to be dead(is a bunch of scripts that lets you modify the BIOS to remove ME/enable the ME killswitch bit, but it will require you to get an external programmer) but how effective it is depends on how new the CPU is.
They don't care if they need a law.
Pretty much all modern games are compromised. China has every consumer PC by the balls. If China ever wants to attack the US, every computer with an install of Riot games (LoL/Valorant), Epic Games Store (fortnite), Mihoyo (Genshin Impact), and Discord will be bricked because China either controls them or has a controlling stake.
The valorant anti cheat software stays on your computer after you uninstall the game. You have to separately delete it. It literally slows down the speed of your computer starting. Insane.
It contains a kernel-level ''anti-cheat'' program that spies on your computer continuously EVEN WHEN THE GAME IS NOT ON.
League of Legends announced they would also include it in a comming update so I uninstalled LoL.
It absolutely is spyware/malware.
I would be, because it would mean throwing their investments in Linux down the drain to chase an unatainable goal. Cheat development is an arms race, you wouldn't be hearing about DMA cheats 10 years ago, but you hear them now as viable options to be undetectable by Vanguard(and Rito has to just suck it unless someone figures out cloud gaming and forces it down our throats).
And kernel anticheats on linux is a sisyphean task at best that even the kernel anticheats on Windows that work under Proton(EAC,Battleye) are stuck with usermode protection when running on Linux.
Linux is not designed to work with drivers outside the mainline tree and maintainers don't give a fuck about compatibility, and distros have to resort to providing patches and workarounds such as dkms so that when the kernel is updated the driver is automatically recompiled(and actually succeed) to the latest kernel. Windows' driver interface is so stable that you generally can run Windows 7 drivers under 10/11(with some exceptions like GPU drivers) and the only thing you might get is a compatibility warning.
Valve is still earning millions in CS2 cases and marketplace fees despite the cheating problems in matchmaking, so I doubt they would do something this drastic.
Not that modern multiplayer games are actually worth playing or anything. All of them are pretty much liveservice slop designed with the age old motto of don't ask questions, just consoom product and then get excited for next product.
An unskippable splash screen that just said "June 4, 1989" would get rid of 95% of cheaters. But it would cost too much.
If the "great firewall of china" actually worked, chinks would be stuck in their containment zone even without the Tiananmen reference. Though at least when I used to play CSGO(like 10 years ago) russians were the avoid at all costs players back then, how naive could have I been.
Well vgk.sys(the vanguard driver) according to the PE header does import(which means the code calls at some point) KeBugCheck which is the function Windows or a driver can call to cause the BSOD when shit is FUBAR(or the driver is misbehaving in case of Windows calling it), so the hyperbole is not entierly unbelievable.
Other suspicious(no I don't call it a spyware since there are legitimate uses for drivers to call these APIs such as logging, but crypto stuff is a bit more suspicious) stuff I can see is ZwReadFile and ZwWriteFile which are the file reading/writing APIs, and BCryptDestroyHash+BCryptCloseAlgorithmProvider which are used to free encrypted data from memory and close the handle to the encryption engine but those don't make much sense since the counterpart open functions are missing from the import table. But again Windows programs and drivers can load DLLs and import functions at runtime so maybe they're used(or functions for malicious stuff that I can't see through the PE import/export table) just not obviously.
Though to see when and how I would need to fully reverse engineer the driver which I totally won't do because of the layers of obfuscation. Maybe someone autistic enough will do the reverse engineering for us to see how much of a spyware it is(or isn't)
Yes. Next question?
Valve uses VAC and has always used VAC, it is incredibly unlikely they would ever use a different anti-cheat imo.
Always possible but not very likely, and as for the OP, any game that attracts trannies and women in such high degrees is obviously not created for the good of gaming(see: Overwatch, FF14). And with the stake tencent has in Riot it isn't surprising they get some chinese spyware for it, I believe the same spyware is coming to LoL and their other games as well at some point, if it hasn't already.
What OP is worrying about is Valve reworking VAC into a kernel anticheat. Right now VAC is a usermode anticheat based around detecting signatures of anticheat programs/signs of tampering with the game(sometimes overdoing it as AMD users were flagged as cheaters when AntiLag+ was released with a driver update, though those bans were reversed).
They already added it to League, but only to the Windows version. The macOS client uses "an alternative version"(though I presume once Apple drops x86 emulation from macOS, the mac client will die with it), and Linux users that used Wine to play League were thrown under the bus
Steam Deck is a Linux device so I don't know how accurate the idea that Valve will be quick to throw it overboard is. Non-Steam Deck users are a side effect and not a goal, so, sure, no one cares about them specifically but they can't get fucked without Valve fucking themselves, too.
That said, with the leaderless chaos that is Valve's employees, that the left hand didn't know what the right hand is doing wouldn't be too much of a stretch.
yes, but pretty much every multiplayer game with auntie cheat is spyware at this point. this goes for vac, punk buster, easy answer cheat, and every Chinese gaccha on the market. they all have root level access to your computer, and pinky promise that they won't abuse this access.
don't put your private information on your gaming machine.
They knew how many were playing on linux and decided it wasn't worth the effort. Hell even the macOS client is stuck in support limbo(macOS 12,13 along with ARM macs are not "supported" and 14 is not even mentioned on the page) and I expect them to completely ditch it when Apple drops x86 support