jdreyer wrote on Apr 13, 2020, 18:28:

ColoradoHoudini wrote on Apr 13, 2020, 17:01:

Blue wrote on Apr 13, 2020, 16:03:

ColoradoHoudini wrote on Apr 13, 2020, 15:19:
On reddit, the post was nuked and moved because

I do not see that the post was nuked or moved in any way.

Blue:
https://www.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/g08aub/riots_anticheat_software_vanguard_is_causing/

they moved it to the bug megathread.
As if this is a bug? It's 100% intentionally a design decision, and now the information is mixed in with bugs and no longer a standalone issue. This makes it appear to be something that will be fixed and wasnt supposed to happen. You catching on the agenda there?

Also, that subreddit is moderated by people that Tencent chose to run it as "trusted moderators". AKA- people who will do what we tell them. It's entirely counterproductive to a user-run website to have owners of a product moderating the content.. we can all agree there.

Do you have any links to share that reveal this information? IMO Occam's Razor suggests that regular Riot employees would be moderating these threads.

F

jdreyer wrote on Apr 14, 2020, 21:20:
Yeah, EasyAntiCheat is a kernel based anti-cheat. It's used by War Thunder, and I have a few dozen hours in it. The only cheating I have detected is the damn AI who shoots me from across the map through three sets of foliage.

There are paid cheats for War Thunder according to a casual google search. The presence of anticheat drivers just makes it potentially easier to catch them but does not necessarily prevent them.

Yifes wrote on Apr 14, 2020, 18:28:
Oh, and here's an article Riot published 2 months ago talking about their ring 0 level anti-cheat driver, so anyone accusing them of trying to hide that fact is talking out of their ass.

Yeah, EasyAntiCheat is a kernel based anti-cheat. It's used by War Thunder, and I have a few dozen hours in it. The only cheating I have detected is the damn AI who shoots me from across the map through three sets of foliage.

Verno wrote on Apr 14, 2020, 09:35:

jdreyer wrote on Apr 13, 2020, 18:26:

Verno wrote on Apr 13, 2020, 16:51:

The Half Elf wrote on Apr 13, 2020, 15:23:
So question... if you had to install a system driver one time that provided solid anti-cheat protection in all your games would you do it? GTA Online, COD Games, any sort of competitive gaming etc? Go ahead and install it. Just stay out of my browser history.

The tradeoff is not worth "solid anticheat" because everyone would need to opt in and obviously cheaters are not going to do that.

Isn't that the point though? Then you're guaranteed to play only with people who aren't interested in cheating, by filtering out people that don't use that system driver (or whatever tech is used).

You can do it that way, although we've still seen games where cheaters go as far as spoofing the Anti-cheat client to get into the same pool.

Personally I don't believe it's worth giving low level access to your system just to play an online game, it's a level of access I'm not comfortable with. Riot for example has not exactly been a scrupulous company with great moral leadership. The sole exception is if I'm playing with a gaming VM using Passthru because I can just spin down the image easily if I had any concerns.

Well sure, but I didn't think we were discussing actual technical solutions. I thought HalfElf was proposing a "magical" hypothetical that would apply to all games.

Oh, and here's an article Riot published 2 months ago talking about their ring 0 level anti-cheat driver, so anyone accusing them of trying to hide that fact is talking out of their ass.

Beamer wrote on Apr 14, 2020, 09:06:

Yifes wrote on Apr 14, 2020, 07:43:

ColoradoHoudini wrote on Apr 13, 2020, 21:42:
Who owns Riot?

Parent company- Tencent

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tencent

Tencent = China

I really dont want to have a piece of root level chinese software on my PC.

And who owns Tencent? Their largest shareholder is Prosus, which is Dutch. So Tencent = Dutch? That's not how multinational conglomerates work.

And "Riot Games, Inc. is an American video game developer, publisher, and esports tournament organizer based in West Los Angeles, California."

If you think Riot Games = China then you are an incredibly naive and ignorant person.

There's a big difference between a parent company and a largest shareholder.

I don't think anything is being reported back to the Chinese, but as a parent company, Tencent can force Riot to do whatever they want. They can fire anyone that does not listen. They have full, absolute control.

That is generally not true for largest shareholders. Prosus has 2 seats on their board, and no one in management. They can be outvoted on anything Tencent chooses. With only 31% of the company, their share is significant but their voice is listened to, not obeyed.

The point is saying Valorant is "chinese software" is flat out wrong, and about as stupid as saying Tencent is Dutch. Valorant is written by American developers in California. Riot is an American company. Sure the parent company can tell you to do whatever it wants, but the idea that a group of American developers are willingly colluding with Tencent on behalf of the Chinese government is idiotic. You'd think that somebody would speak up if a hostile foreign government was interfering with your company? Threatening to fire someone is scary enough to keep everyone's mouth shut?

The entire idea is not only moronic, but a pretty offensive baseless accusation.

jdreyer wrote on Apr 13, 2020, 18:26:

Verno wrote on Apr 13, 2020, 16:51:

The Half Elf wrote on Apr 13, 2020, 15:23:
So question... if you had to install a system driver one time that provided solid anti-cheat protection in all your games would you do it? GTA Online, COD Games, any sort of competitive gaming etc? Go ahead and install it. Just stay out of my browser history.

The tradeoff is not worth "solid anticheat" because everyone would need to opt in and obviously cheaters are not going to do that.

Isn't that the point though? Then you're guaranteed to play only with people who aren't interested in cheating, by filtering out people that don't use that system driver (or whatever tech is used).

You can do it that way, although we've still seen games where cheaters go as far as spoofing the Anti-cheat client to get into the same pool.

Personally I don't believe it's worth giving low level access to your system just to play an online game, it's a level of access I'm not comfortable with. Riot for example has not exactly been a scrupulous company with great moral leadership. The sole exception is if I'm playing with a gaming VM using Passthru because I can just spin down the image easily if I had any concerns.

Yifes wrote on Apr 14, 2020, 07:43:

ColoradoHoudini wrote on Apr 13, 2020, 21:42:
Who owns Riot?

Parent company- Tencent

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tencent

Tencent = China

I really dont want to have a piece of root level chinese software on my PC.

And who owns Tencent? Their largest shareholder is Prosus, which is Dutch. So Tencent = Dutch? That's not how multinational conglomerates work.

And "Riot Games, Inc. is an American video game developer, publisher, and esports tournament organizer based in West Los Angeles, California."

If you think Riot Games = China then you are an incredibly naive and ignorant person.

There's a big difference between a parent company and a largest shareholder.

I don't think anything is being reported back to the Chinese, but as a parent company, Tencent can force Riot to do whatever they want. They can fire anyone that does not listen. They have full, absolute control.

That is generally not true for largest shareholders. Prosus has 2 seats on their board, and no one in management. They can be outvoted on anything Tencent chooses. With only 31% of the company, their share is significant but their voice is listened to, not obeyed.

ColoradoHoudini wrote on Apr 13, 2020, 15:19:
On reddit, the post was nuked and moved because

1. China has a large controlling ownership of reddit
2. Tencent is Chinese

Reddit really loves to allow censorship and for a few top dogs to make the call on what the rest of the people get to read about, or see.

This is a conspiracy theory, and a bad one. Reddit does not control individual moderators. Especially of a small game sub.

Muscular Beaver wrote on Apr 14, 2020, 00:03:

Yifes wrote on Apr 13, 2020, 19:56:
The software is not from China. The software is made by Americans in the USA. There is a huge difference between this and Wechat.

This is a good case of "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." Riot has often been incompetent in the past, but I don't think it has ever been malicious. You'd think that having the most popular game in the world, with hundreds of millions of monthly players, they would be under pretty heavy scrutiny over the last decade.

I know from first hand experience that stupidity can be at least as bad as maliciousness.

Yeah, like religious nutjobs ignoring coronavirus distancing orders and congregating at churches. The point is that Riot is always known for their shitty code, but they have been around for more than a decade now, and their shitty code has done nothing more malicious than negatively affect the player experience.

ColoradoHoudini wrote on Apr 13, 2020, 21:42:
Who owns Riot?

Parent company- Tencent

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tencent

Tencent = China

I really dont want to have a piece of root level chinese software on my PC.

And who owns Tencent? Their largest shareholder is Prosus, which is Dutch. So Tencent = Dutch? That's not how multinational conglomerates work.

And "Riot Games, Inc. is an American video game developer, publisher, and esports tournament organizer based in West Los Angeles, California."

If you think Riot Games = China then you are an incredibly naive and ignorant person.

Drayth wrote on Apr 14, 2020, 02:01:

Muscular Beaver wrote on Apr 14, 2020, 00:30:

jdreyer wrote on Apr 13, 2020, 18:24:

Rhett wrote on Apr 13, 2020, 16:42:

phinn wrote on Apr 13, 2020, 16:26:
TL;DR Yes we run a driver at system startup, it doesn't scan anything (unless the game is running), it's designed to take up as few system resources as possible and it doesn't communicate to our servers. You can remove it at anytime.


This doesn't sound at all obtrusive enough to combat all the cheating going on in PC. Windows 10 needs a completely locked down Gaming Mode added by Microsoft and coordinated with gaming companies across the world.

Coming soon! Xbox Live Gold for PC Gaming Plus Beta! Don't like cheaters? Pay us money and only play with other suckers!

I do agree cheaters are getting out of hand in games over the last several years though. Really annoying. Bad enough to warrant region locking in pretty much anything competitive, but I'm not sure what games actually do that.

How would region locking help with cheating? Are there nationalities out there that don't cheat at all?

Ever played on European servers that are paired with Russians?
Obviously not.

Yeah, there are certain populations that have a very dense cheat-to-player ratio. It's a very round about way of calling something an anti-cheat technique, but the results are certainly measurable.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but certainly someone has quantified that. Gotta link? Otherwise it just sounds like "other-ism."

ColoradoHoudini wrote on Apr 13, 2020, 19:21:
@Bhruic - you do realize that the bug is related to a piece of software that nobody wants as an anti-cheat mechanic in the game, right?

I imagine a lot of people that play the game want the game to be cheat-free, so saying "nobody" wants it is rather suspect. But ignoring that, thank you for admitting that it is, in fact, a bug. Now that you've admitted that, I'm sure that you are perfectly happy with the fact that they removed the thread about a bug because it should have been posted in, you know, the bug thread. I mean, of course not, you've got paranoid conspiracy theories to chase, but still.

You think Tencent is going to allow any discourse about their game on a website that they own part of? HAHAHA! Yeah, sure they will!

Yeah, they've totally shut down everything on it. I'm sure they don't have a mega bug thread where there are multiple posts about people having the very issue your deleted thread mentioned.

Oh, wait, what's this? https://www.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/fwjskd/valorant_closed_beta_bug_megathread/

Lets see if in a few days, weeks etc.. that this level 0 software concern is still around and discussed openly, or is the moderators who Tencent/Riot chose will decide what people get to discuss on a user-generated content website.

Ah, yes, after I disproved your little pet "Tencent chose the moderators" theory, you are still riding it. A true conspiracy theorist through-and-through. Please, tell us all about how the moon landing was a hoax.

Muscular Beaver wrote on Apr 14, 2020, 00:30:

jdreyer wrote on Apr 13, 2020, 18:24:

Rhett wrote on Apr 13, 2020, 16:42:

phinn wrote on Apr 13, 2020, 16:26:
TL;DR Yes we run a driver at system startup, it doesn't scan anything (unless the game is running), it's designed to take up as few system resources as possible and it doesn't communicate to our servers. You can remove it at anytime.


This doesn't sound at all obtrusive enough to combat all the cheating going on in PC. Windows 10 needs a completely locked down Gaming Mode added by Microsoft and coordinated with gaming companies across the world.

Coming soon! Xbox Live Gold for PC Gaming Plus Beta! Don't like cheaters? Pay us money and only play with other suckers!

I do agree cheaters are getting out of hand in games over the last several years though. Really annoying. Bad enough to warrant region locking in pretty much anything competitive, but I'm not sure what games actually do that.

How would region locking help with cheating? Are there nationalities out there that don't cheat at all?

Ever played on European servers that are paired with Russians?
Obviously not.

Yeah, there are certain populations that have a very dense cheat-to-player ratio. It's a very round about way of calling something an anti-cheat technique, but the results are certainly measurable.

jdreyer wrote on Apr 13, 2020, 18:24:

Rhett wrote on Apr 13, 2020, 16:42:

phinn wrote on Apr 13, 2020, 16:26:
TL;DR Yes we run a driver at system startup, it doesn't scan anything (unless the game is running), it's designed to take up as few system resources as possible and it doesn't communicate to our servers. You can remove it at anytime.


This doesn't sound at all obtrusive enough to combat all the cheating going on in PC. Windows 10 needs a completely locked down Gaming Mode added by Microsoft and coordinated with gaming companies across the world.

Coming soon! Xbox Live Gold for PC Gaming Plus Beta! Don't like cheaters? Pay us money and only play with other suckers!

I do agree cheaters are getting out of hand in games over the last several years though. Really annoying. Bad enough to warrant region locking in pretty much anything competitive, but I'm not sure what games actually do that.

How would region locking help with cheating? Are there nationalities out there that don't cheat at all?

Ever played on European servers that are paired with Russians?
Obviously not.

Yifes wrote on Apr 13, 2020, 19:56:

ColoradoHoudini wrote on Apr 13, 2020, 19:21:
On a piece of software running on Level 0.... from China.. not remotely acceptable. Then after you uninstall the game, it's still there.

The software is not from China. The software is made by Americans in the USA. There is a huge difference between this and Wechat.

This is a good case of "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." Riot has often been incompetent in the past, but I don't think it has ever been malicious. You'd think that having the most popular game in the world, with hundreds of millions of monthly players, they would be under pretty heavy scrutiny over the last decade.

I know from first hand experience that stupidity can be at least as bad as maliciousness.

ColoradoHoudini wrote on Apr 13, 2020, 15:19:
On reddit, the post was nuked and moved because

1. China has a large controlling ownership of reddit
2. Tencent is Chinese

Reddit really loves to allow censorship and for a few top dogs to make the call on what the rest of the people get to read about, or see.

I really hope that site takes a monumental loss in the near future. I want it to take a nosedive of Digg proportions.

I am in no way ever allowing a chinese-owned game root level access to my PC. F right off with that BS.

You would be surprised how many people in Europe trust China more than the USA and even see them as the good guys.

removeddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/g08aub/riots_anticheat_software_vanguard_is_causing/fn9dwhk/

What reddit moderators saw fit to remove from the post once the software was exposed

Who owns Riot?

Parent company- Tencent

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tencent

Tencent = China

I really dont want to have a piece of root level chinese software on my PC.

ColoradoHoudini wrote on Apr 13, 2020, 19:21:
On a piece of software running on Level 0.... from China.. not remotely acceptable. Then after you uninstall the game, it's still there.

The software is not from China. The software is made by Americans in the USA. There is a huge difference between this and Wechat.

This is a good case of "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." Riot has often been incompetent in the past, but I don't think it has ever been malicious. You'd think that having the most popular game in the world, with hundreds of millions of monthly players, they would be under pretty heavy scrutiny over the last decade.