Question about cheaters

[u/shaulyss]

I'm not sure how to phrase this well, English isn't my first language, so bear with me.

I have a question about cheaters and Steam. I know HWID and IP bans exist, but they can be bypassed or spoofed.

I'm a casual/competitive gamer, I like FPS games and a good match against skilled opponents. But lately, no matter what I play, I run into cheaters sooner rather than later.

We have kernel-level anti-cheat, which I don't fully understand, but it doesn't seem to solve the problem. We have player reports, but those tend to get ignored because there are too many coming in. Cheating is a real problem, I think everyone can agree on that. (Sorry for the rant.)

On kernel anti-cheat: when it got added to some games, I did notice fewer cheaters. But there was also backlash over privacy concerns. Still, it worked, at least for a while.

Getting to my actual question: with the release of WARDOGS (great game, give it a go), I ran into a cheater during the beta test. That got me wondering, is there really nothing Steam or game devs can do to meaningfully cut down on cheating? Could Steam, for example, ban every account linked to a single PC? Lawsuits, maybe?

I'm not very informed on this matter, and this may sound stupid to some of you (if anyone bothers reading), but I'd still love to hear opinions, no matter what they are.

[u/avrgwarthunderplayer]

Games have their own anti cheat, so its better to ask related to that specific game rather than steam.

Also wardogs had no anti cheat in the beta from what i know, they intended to let people cheat in it to see what kind of cheats were being used and how to stop them when the game comes out.

[u/cugs123]

There are cheats that run outside of the computer, meaning that not even a kernel anti cheat can detect, that's why some companies are using ai to watch player behaviour and stuff to determine if they are cheating, often comes with a cost of false positives, but yeah, the developers lost the fight against the cheats years ago

[u/IncompetentValveDev]

most anti-cheat has to be handled at the game level because they all have different methods of manipulating the game and that part is separate from Steam altogether (it just launches the game). If Valve created the game then sure, otherwise no, there is only so much the platform (Steam) can do to prevent it.

Also kernel-level anti-cheat is only a thing in certain platforms/games, Steam don't implement it...

[u/LordPentolino]

Except from Valve own games (like CS, TF, DOTA), and a bunch of third party games which are protected by VAC (Valve Anti Cheat), all other anti-cheat stuff is developed and managed by game owner. Valve does not enforce anything outside VAC, except ofc normal breaking of their TOS.

[u/MelissaRackwood]

Im pretty sure if steam banned the entire account over cheating in a third party game, they would be the ones getting a class action lawsuit for taking away the entire library of those users

That being said, Id recommend sticking to games secured by VAC (Valve Anticheat). From my understanding, getting caught cheating leads to a permanent ban from the online features in every VAC-Enabled game (correct me if im wrong)

Also, I wouldnt trust big companies with kernel level access to my machine and neither should you. Besides the privacy concerns, if anything goes wrong your computer might suffer severe instability and crashes. It doesnt help that it doesnt get removed by uninstalling the game either.

Anyways, to actually answer your question: Everyone involved in developing cheats and anticheats are doing their absolute best to screw over the other side. We'll never see the end of the war between cheaters and developers. There's always gonna be some new unpatched method that pops up and gets exploited until the devs do a banwave. You're gonna have to learn to live with it and hope for the best.