Now if only they could more clearly communicate when games are playable offline.

    • @saltesc@lemmy.world
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      1172 months ago

      They do this with Early Access and people still lose their shit about empty content and unfinished graphics in a game they paid $10 for.

    • @Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca
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      102 months ago

      If only they let you filter out games from being seen on your store page or showing up in recommendations using this as a criteria.

    • @ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca
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      -1282 months ago

      Gamers don’t care

      If Valve was against this then they would block them from their store. This is avoiding legal consequences

      • DreamButt
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        1712 months ago

        “”“gamers”“” aren’t a monolith

        Some people clearly care bc they are currently discussing it

        • @FeelzGoodMan420@eviltoast.org
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          182 months ago

          Well to be fair, we’re like 1% of all gamers. Most gamers don’t give a flying fuck and will gladly buy these products anyway. So the companies don’t really have much incentive to give a shit.

          • @pressanykeynow@lemmy.world
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            212 months ago

            That’s why it’s a big disturbing banner where most gamers don’t understand the text but know that big disturbing banner is bad. Will it affect the sales? Not at all. But it will raise the problem(mostly Linux anticheat) to the higher standing people in the gaming companies than before because now they require those top level managers to make a decision is it big disturbing banner or Linux anticheat.

            • @FeelzGoodMan420@eviltoast.org
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              72 months ago

              I highly doubt this will do anything at all to sales. But I’m just guessing. Maybe it will. Hopefully! But I still applaud the change by Valve. I think it’s great.

              • @pressanykeynow@lemmy.world
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                92 months ago

                I don’t think the point is to do anything on sales. Valve profit from sales. It’s to raise the problem so now the managers have to decide on a scale how much they abuse the players. Before it wasn’t even a problem, now it’s Valve: “maybe you shouldn’t wink wink”

                • @FeelzGoodMan420@eviltoast.org
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                  62 months ago

                  Well yea, I don’t think Valve wants to nuke their own sales, lol. I think they don’t want any devs doing any funny business and abusing anti cheat. That’s my guess.

        • @brbposting@sh.itjust.works
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          2 months ago

          Another “to be fair” - what do y’all reckon is the proportion of gamers who could define kernel? (not rhetorical)

          Edit: maybe not as good as a question as how many have any opinion on kernel-level anticheat, since you don’t need to be able to define kernel to be against the anti-cheat if you’ve heard it slows down games

        • @ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca
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          -442 months ago

          “””gamers””” aren’t a monolith

          That’s why some people discussing it aren’t going to do anything to dissuade the practice

          • @kopasz7@lemmy.world
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            252 months ago

            Games have been buried in negative reviews for less. We can’t tell in advance.

            But implying you know, and can speak for all people who play games is just bafflingly ignorant and conceited.

        • @Katana314@lemmy.world
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          22 months ago

          I’ve been using some browser plugins for Steam that add ProtonDB information to each Store page, it’s a useful thing to have. It may even make sense to leave it as a plugin, since many Windows users won’t care.

      • @Harvey656@lemmy.world
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        92 months ago

        I’m a gamer, and absolutely fuck these damn things. I still haven’t bought helldivers 2 yet. I refuse to compromise my system for their issues.

        • @mrvictory1@lemmy.world
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          32 months ago

          If kernel level AC is a concern, you can play the game on Linux where “kernel” level AC runs at user level thru Wine

    • Dremor
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      2 months ago

      As he said, modlogs are public, and it seems like other user retreived the trace of what you call an “abuse of power” : https://sopuli.xyz/comment/12732467 .

      It is in his right as a moderator to chose how he moderate the communities he has the right to. If he finds your comment pedantic and annoying, and chose to remove it, so be it.

      I’m not taking sides here. I don’t know the whole story, and I doubt anyone else here does. With the little context provided, It’d be hard to take knowingly a side.

      But in both case, this is textbook harassement as you are copy-pasting this comment on every community this is posted on. This community has a pretty clear rule against harrassement (rule 2), which you are breaching, offense for which I’ll use my g… mod given right of banning you for the time being (I’ll re-evaluate tomorrow when I’ll be less tired).

      Edit : After talking with OP via PM, a ban of 7 days was issued

    • @Jtee@lemmy.world
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      1342 months ago

      Wow, mad because you can be held accountable. That’s sad.

      Thanks for the steam link!

    • @yamanii@lemmy.world
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      692 months ago

      4 likes on him complaining that modlogs being public is something bad, cowards that only want to be shitty in the shadows.

    • @Voyajer@lemmy.world
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      372 months ago

      He used to relentlessly spam the /r/linux_gaming subreddit and argue with people there too until he deleted his reddit account lol

    • @NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip
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      12 months ago

      I really don’t see a need to drag community drama everywhere. GoL is one of the biggest aggregator blogs out there for… linux gaming. Whether we should prioritize original sources over aggregators is a different discussion.

      But yeah. Liam is great for news aggregating but he is 100% the stereotypical linux gamer and has a long history of starting random shit. Still annoyed by how fast he got everyone to shit on the Duckstation devs because they didn’t want to be exploited.

      • Sips'
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        62 months ago

        Being a big(“great”) news aggregator doesn’t excuse bad behavior.

        • @NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip
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          2 months ago

          Are you the lemmy cops? Is it your responsibility to chase any link to someone’s website across every instance and make sure people know they are a bit of a jackass?

          If you think GoL should be a banned source, take it up with the various moderators. If you think only primary sources should be allowed (which I actually agree with), that is also a discussion to be had.

          But rushing in to berate people for linking to one of the most popular news aggregators for a story that people would be interested in because you don’t like the guy who owns that site? All you are doing is discouraging people from making posts in the future.


          Which is the problem with dragging community/subreddit drama everywhere you go. It just makes the site a much more hostile place for everyone. And we really aren’t big enough to be doing that.

          • Sips'
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            2 months ago

            🚨 🚨 🚨 FREEZE! STOP RIGHT THERE!! 🚨 🚨 🚨

            As the official lemmy police I am arresting you for defending a mad lad caught abusing powers. You do not have to say anything. But, it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.

            Jokes aside… I do think people should be allowed to post opinions an discuss other peoples behavior. Gol dude was caught abusing his powers, which is a disgusting thing to do, personally don’t mind him being called out for that in a post here and there. It’s not an attack on the poster, it’s a reminder to folks who the guy really is.

            I’m all for the truth, no matter who it is.

    • @finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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      -12 months ago

      I was going to ask why the thumbnail on this post is a hexagon shaped bear, but your comment explains it well enough.

  • sp3ctr4l
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    2 months ago

    However, it’s only being forced for kernel-level anti-cheat. If it’s only client-side or server-side, it’s optional, but Valve say “we generally think that any game that makes use of anti-cheat technology would benefit from letting players know”.

    I will always love Valve for their ability to use corpospeak against corpos.

    Your game has anti-cheat?

    Wonderful!

    I’m sure that always only results in an improved experience for all gamers, lets let them all know!

    =D

    • @Joeffect@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      How does vac play into all of this then …

      Edit: I was talking about them labeling vac games as being anti cheat… And wondering if they were going to pull some double standard… I didn’t know they label them already and still don’t know if they do…

      • sp3ctr4l
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        VAC is not kernel level, because surprise you don’t actually need kernel level to do anti cheat well.

        VAC games would just get the standard AC message banner, not the scary yellow kernel level warning banner.

        … I am pretty sure VAC games have indicated on their store page that they use VAC for well over a decade.

        • lastweakness
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          72 months ago

          you don’t actually need kernel level to do anti cheat well.

          I’m sure you’re right, but VAC is one of the worst examples for that… I think whatever Blizzard does with Overwatch 2 is a better example.

          • sp3ctr4l
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            32 months ago

            I would love to see any kind of documentation that can somehow prove OW2’s AC is better than VAC, something that isn’t based on vibes or immediacy bias.

            • lastweakness
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              32 months ago

              I sure wish there was some empirical study regarding the same too. I’m very much going by anecdotal evidence from myself and others right now

              • sp3ctr4l
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                2 months ago

                So … your previous assertion that OW2’s AC is superior to VAC was in fact just based on vibes.

                Anti Cheat developers typically do not like to explain how exactly they work, how effective they actually are.

                Their data is proprietary, trade secrets.

                There will almost certainly never be a way to actually conduct the empirical study you wish for, save for (ironically) someone hacking into the corporate servers of a bunch of different anti cheat developers to grab their own internal metrics.

                But that should be obvious to anyone with basic knowledge of how Anti Cheats work, both technically and as a business.

                … None of that matters to you though, you have completely vibes based anecdotes that you confidently state as fact.

                Please stop doing that.

                When someone has no clue what they’re talking about, but confidently makes a claim about a situation because it feels right, this is typically called misinformation.

                • lastweakness
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                  22 months ago

                  I mean, anybody could verify it by spending a few hours each on the respective games… But yes, any empirical data would be nice. For example, a study on the amount of blatant hackers found on lobbies joined in comparable ranks. Anyway, this isn’t exactly misinformation to anybody who has played both games at any decent rank. It’s unproved but immediately discernible information. Take that how you will, i don’t really intend to argue about this here. This kind of pointless argument is the worst thing about Lemmy.

      • graff
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        142 months ago

        It doesn’t run at the kernel level?

      • TipRing
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        512 months ago

        Full agree. I do want some kind of policy for games that introduce anti-cheat both during early access and after release. Bricking a game you paid for should offer some sort of recourse.

      • @CaptDust@sh.itjust.works
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        372 months ago

        I’d really like Valve to take an official policy on post-release changes that break games, but for what it’s worth they have not given me any hassle with refunds in these scenarios.

        • NekuSoul
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          122 months ago

          Yup. If it’s important enough that devs now have to add a disclaimer on the store page, surely devs shouldn’t be allowed to circumvent that by adding it later. Since SteamDeck customers are affected by this the most, it’s weird that this isn’t already a rule, particularly for games that are SteamDeck verified.

        • @theneverfox@pawb.social
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          12 months ago

          That’s a bit much… It’s just not possible to guarantee that as a developer

          Software is a living thing, and anything useful is made up of layer after layer of ever shifting sand. We do our best, but we are all at the mercy of our dependencies. There are trade-offs, there are bugs we can do nothing about, and sometimes moving forward means dropping support for platforms that are no longer “cheap” enough to afford while also working on the game

          I love this though. I also like the idea of requiring access to earlier builds.

          These mitigate anti consumer practices - dropping support for a platform is more likely to be a technical trade-off or unintentional consequence though

          • @ad_on_is@lemm.ee
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            12 months ago

            I do agree with the part where software moves, dependencies yada, yada… I’m a developer myself.

            But… this is different. They eliminated a perfectly working game, where they didn’t have to invest a minute of labor to get it working on Linux. The only thing they had to provide was the .so-file (for EAC) when publishing to Steam… Valve did all the work to make EAC compatible on Linux, yes, on user-level… but still… it fucking worked.

            Punishing an entire userbase, because other assholes (assumably) used Linux for cheating is discrimination. Even if there were no cheaters at all… it’s still discrimination… because it used to fucking work.

            • @theneverfox@pawb.social
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              12 months ago

              Oh no, I totally agree with you that this is gross behavior - I just think your rule is too broad.

              So we need more focused rules and mechanisms. I think disclosing anti-cheat on the store is a good mechanism, I think forcing them to provide previous releases is a good rule. That obviously doesn’t cover nearly enough, but in the current gaming environment I think it’s a good start

      • @PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.world
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        152 months ago

        That’s exactly what Valve did. The automated refund system wasn’t available, but you could request a manual review and cite the added anti cheat; Valve was refunding those who did so.

            • xep
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              32 months ago

              I believe those are games made by other studios with the League IP and published by Riot. AFAIK there’s no reason for them to have anticheat.

      • @pressanykeynow@lemmy.world
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        -112 months ago

        I don’t think that’s fair. I “own” GTA5 and don’t really care for the last… 8 years? what they add. I had the full content of my purchase. Why should I be able to gain money for this?

  • @sonymegadrive@feddit.uk
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    822 months ago

    Easy Anti Cheat - requires manual removal

    Wait, so this sketchy, privacy-invading stuff remains even after a game is uninstalled?! I had no idea.

    How is this stuff not classed as malware at this point?

    • sp3ctr4l
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      232 months ago

      Oh it was initially classed as insanely intrusive malware when kernel level AC was introduced about a decade ago, by anyone with a modicum of actual technical knowledge about computers.

      Unfortunately, a whole lot of corpo shills ran propaganda explaining how actually its fine, don’t worry, its actually the best way to stop cheaters!

      Then the vast, vast majority of idiot gamers believed that, or threw their hands up and went oh well its the new norm, trying to fight it is futile and actually if you are against this that means you are some kind of paranoid privacy freak who hates other people having fun.

    • @michaelmrose@lemmy.world
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      152 months ago

      Do you remember when Sony released cds that when inserted into Windows computer auto ran an installer that installed a rootkit that made it impossible for Windows to see any processes or files that started with a certain sequence of characters instantly turning any malware that named its files or processes similarly powerful rootkit. Oh and it installed a cd driver that made it impossible to copy their music.

      Suggested removal was a full reinstall of windows.

    • @Crozekiel@lemmy.zip
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      92 months ago

      I’ve been shouting from the rooftops for years that this stuff is malware. I’m not the only one. No one listens.

      • yeehaw
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        12 months ago

        I kind of assumed it would be packaged with each game, a waste of space (but how big could it be?) but leaving a game with anti cheat a global dependency seems like a bad idea.

    • @mrvictory1@lemmy.world
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      -12 months ago

      EAC installation process includes “registration” of a game, and the uninstall process “unregisters” the game. If all games using EAC are uninstalled, EAC itself also should be uninstalled.

    • @catloaf@lemm.ee
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      -22 months ago

      Wikipedia says malware is

      any software intentionally designed to cause disruption to a computer, server, client, or computer network, leak private information, gain unauthorized access to information or systems, deprive access to information, or which unknowingly interferes with the user’s computer security and privacy

      It does not do any of these things. Like any software, it may have vulnerabilities, and being a kernel module it can be high risk. But that’s no different from any kernel module, like your graphics driver.

      • @michaelmrose@lemmy.world
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        12 months ago

        It’s a much higher risk than average because games are often abandoned within one year of release and still run as long as 10-15 years later and connects to the internet and other randos on the internet. See the Call of Duty games that allow you to take over the computer of anyone who connects to your online match. It greatly degrades the security of its users.

        Technically lots of things people call “malware” don’t actually do any of those things. For instance they may hijack your default search engine, pop up ads, or otherwise monetize your computer at your expense. The category that was invented by ass coverers is “possibly unwanted program” but outside of those who worry about being sued by scumbags people colloquially refer to both what you call malware AND PUPs as "malware the root of which is “bad” after all. Language being descriptive not prescriptive I think this broader definition of malware is fine.

      • yeehaw
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        02 months ago

        It unknowingly interferes with my security or privacy, 100%. It has root access. What’s it doing in there? Nowadays you’re naive to think it’s just to prevent game cheating. I guarantee they’re collecting all kinds of information.

  • @TommySoda@lemmy.world
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    692 months ago

    I feel like they’re doing this because they are going so hard with steam deck. Regardless, good on Valve for doing this.

    • yeehaw
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      22 months ago

      The steam deck is also amazing, such a nice piece of hardware. I’ve been gaming on Linux for years and I’m surprised how well it works. Feels like a console.

  • Captain Aggravated
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    442 months ago

    I wonder if you phrased it the way the Play store does: This game wants permission to:

    • send SMS messages
    • make calls
    • know your location
    • stalk your family
    • raid your fridge
    • access, read and upload files
    • manage and add contacts
    • cup your balls
    • go through your trash
    • irritate your boss

    etc.

    Think anyone would install them?