If your cheat detection runs on the client side only, you don't have cheat protection.

Let's do some math here, they said:

More cheaters using Linux than legit users (...) .01% of all players base

Let's do a quick math. The maximum peak users for Rust was 259,646 concurrent users according to https://steamcharts.com/app/252490 . Let's assume 60% (more than half) of all the .01% users were cheaters, congratulations, you got rid of all those 16 cheaters... I haven't played much Rust, but I'm fairly confident that there's a bit more than 16 cheaters there.

And that's without getting into the whole client side anti-cheat doesn't work.

I don't play games that require anti-cheat. Simple as that. If a game is full of cheaters, I don't play those games either. I am not going to have a windows installation just to play games. I am not going to have a console that only plays games. I am a simple man, if it supports Linux and doesn't have anti-cheat I play. But also I don't have friends so...

Well the garbage takes itself out

Skill issue.

People who play games to cheat are the problem with the world. Born losers.

Developer of game 'Rust' talks about ~~anticheat~~ rootkits on Linux

This whole anticheat thing is so stupid. Remember when Sony got sued bigtime for including rootkits on their audio CDs? Why are game developers getting away with it no problem? Society is regressing and it's frustrating to watch.

On Windows the cheating program it's a simple exe that will get kernel access with a simple uac request.

Everyone, especially 12 years olds, are able to run it. (And maybe get malware/ransomware disguised as a cheating program)

None of the losers that need a cheating program to feel validated in online multiplayer games will have the skills to recompile the kernel in Linux to add support for that

They dropped Linux before proton was invented. Go on any cheat website and the requirements will always say to have windows. Maybe proton is exploited by some cheaters, news to me. You should just ban windows, no more cheaters.

Minecraft is actually a good example.

Server owners pay very little to nothing for anticheat, and cheaters have dozens of extremely elaborate clients to choose from, all interfacing with the very open and moddable game. And still, servers that do give a fuck have basically zero rage cheating. ESP? Sure, but that can be solved as well. But beyond that, everything can and is detected. And that in a game as sandboxy and freedomy as MC. It was designed to have a lot of slack in movement and actions, yet ACs are extremely good.

I mean, Linux player base is only .01%, even if they are all cheaters, they will literally have no impact... You can't say "Linux user base is too small", and "if you support Linux you want cheaters" at the same time if you want to make sense.

Hardware level cheat detection has always been a losing game. I'm a professional in similar area (not games) but it's fundamentally impossible to do when you dont control physical hardware, it's stupid. The only way to detect cheaters is machine learning based behavior analysis, period.

TL;DR: skill issue

Never heard of Rust, but it sounds like something I can afford to ignore.

OS shouldn't even matter to prevent cheating; do your anticheat validation server side. Anyone who knows anything about security knows the client side can never be trusted.

This is actually one of the absolute worst trade-offs they could have made, if you think about it for like 2 minutes :

They said 0.1% of players were on Linux.

Even if they were ALL cheaters, that's still a tiny amount of cheaters you just "banned"

Almost 100% of whom will just cheat on Windows instead ; whereas all the legitimate Linux players will loudly complain forever.

They decided to sacrifice all the free PR from one of the most vocal groups of players out there, in order to get a ~ 0% reduction in the number of cheaters.

In more simple terms, they just shot themselves in the foot for no benefit whatsoever (though I do grant it's a relatively small "gun")

The garbage took itself out.

Explain something to me. It’s a multiplayer game anything that affects all players should be handled on the server side, not the client. So if I make a cheat it can only be installed client side, not server side.

So if my hypothetical cheat looks at object placement and any time I sees a small object approaching at a high velocity it can say “I’m going to assume that’s a bullet based on what the server told me about it.” Then my cheat would say “your character moves from here to here until the bullet passes by, then moves back. I will tell the server you moved to the left 20 inches in the blink of an eye then moved back”

This works because the server just trusts what it’s told in this example.

So there are two options here to resolve this. Either the server sets thresholds and denies any placement changes look like the Flash is playing rust, or the server evaluates suspicious placement changes later when the cpu load it’s under is lower. The first approach stops much of this instantly but is computationally expensive and could not scale well for lots of players. The second would work well enough. You need to catch cheaters but it’s doesn’t have to be within the same exact cpu cycle.

In either case, these work because the server is taught to look for something that shouldn’t be possible. The enforcement happens server side. The client doesn’t fucking matter.

There is zero reason to put anti cheat on the client side when it’s not a P2P instance. Target a few servers, not thousands of players.

I’d imagine people on Linux who want to play Rust would be more than happy to shell out $15 and go through the little effort it is to download DLC so they can play on a Premium server when the other option is to shell out $140 for a Windows 11 license and go through the effort of installing that spyware trash to their PC.

On the other hand, Alistair clearly doesn’t want your money so maybe stop trying to give it to him.

mentioning EA games like Apex Legends removing support is laughable. Sure Alistair, ALL those EA games ALL decided around fall of 2024 to ditch support for Linux/Proton. All at the Same time. Not because EA has a deal with Microsoft/Game Pass and NOT because a few months later Microsoft announced their own Handheld with Asus. Just like Riot.

So Alistair how long until Rust is announced for Gamepass with all DLC included?

even most popular Minecraft servers have better functioning anti cheat that is completely server side

Why isn't this the standard everywhere? These servers prove that server side anticheat works.

They're on that lie still?

Cool, cool. I've got plenty of games to choose from to care about lazy lying assholes who can't be bothered to come up with a better excuse than that for why they irrationally hate Linux

I will be so happy when the era of client-side anticheat is over. I think it will happen eventually, especially now that Valve is releasing the new Steam Machine and has been so successful with Proton-based gaming lately.

Plus, Windows getting so much worse and the zero days and exploits of these kernel-level anticheats will put pressure on the devs to move away from them imo.

Glad I never gave this cunt any money.

It's not even real Rust unless it's coded in the real Rust language of Rustlandia.

Otherwise it's just sparkling oxidation

Does the anti-cheat break the game on Linux? Not buying the game. I don't need that kind of crap in my life.

This is the same BS CrowdStrike uses to sell their rootkit EDR. I mean, by all means it is a very solid EDR, but it's being used exclusively to cover gaping holes in discrete security as a cop out for not properly composing enterprise infrastructure.

A kernel space agent should only really be running in an environment where every process must be heavily scrutinized and the design of the kernel module is tightly controlled and itself under constant review, like in a proper data center with thousands of critical nodes. Not your laptop or the shitty windows box used to display ads in the screens at the airport.

Crowdstrike keeps spamming new features and techniques without serious consideration to keep their enterprise customers happy, similar to crappy solutions like Vanguard.

Covering obvious blatant logic flaws should be included in your server software, it's the same as sanity checking your inputs because there is always the possibility in may not match what you expect.

From that experience, I'm very comfortable saying that if a game supports Proton or Linux, they're not serious about anti-cheat

This statement is especially insulting to the massive library of games that successfully added Linux support without so much as a hint of issue relating to cheating. Even crappy outsourced dev War Thunder doesn't need to do anything after enabling EAC/BattilEye because they actually spend the .000001% extra cash from their whale revenue to run a service moderation team.

Hell even Valve's VAC system is mostly just about automating moderation tasks so that hackers can be taken down ASAP instead of a lengthy review process.

Or you know, the thousands of games that have better game logic than Rust's anticheat.

TBF, you'd have to pay me to play most of these "anti-cheat" games anyhow.

i wonder if this guy heard about counter strike...