Anticheat Update Tracking

Ehh, pretty sad there's almost no information on FACEIT anti-cheat. One of the most impactful out there. Wonder if it's just the invasiveness that separates it.

Valve can't replicate even part of it, while CS2 game modes are flooded with cheaters. Most people who chase competitiveness (which CS used to be all about – now it's also skins) just install FACEIT directly and ignore 90% of built-in game content.

Maybe Valve just doesn't want to make the game more difficult to install and sacrifice several % of their user base.

There's a number of good reasons not to make everyone run a kernel level anti-cheat. Linux (and therefore SteamOS) compatibility is a big one.

I think the status quo where anyone on any platform can access the vanilla game -- where cheaters may not even be a huge problem depending on one's skill rating -- and the most competitively-minded players have the choice to play on FACEIT, works pretty fine.

I do wonder what the 90% of built-in game content you're referring to actually is.

To be fair in the specific case of CS2, the normal modes without FACEIT are really barely playable. Most games are just a massive loss or win, depending on who has the suspiciously good player with 100 hours in their team.

Valve's approach was to avoid the cat and mouse game knowing it doesn't lead anywhere. You can always cheat using DMA or reading the monitor with another computer that simulates a hardware mouse to get aimbot abilities. They wanted a machine learning to detect, flag and ban suspicious behaviour. This didn't work out and I'm not sure they are still trying but there's a few conferences talking about it.

Most fps games when you get high enough rating are this :/

It also doesn't help most streamers have soft aim lock so that's everyone thinks is normal.

I swear fps games have been in the steroid baseball era for years and it'll be interesting if it ever comes out.

There's also a financial incentive to not reveal 25% of the player base is cheating both in the immediate loss of player base and the inability to simultaneously prove it's happening in all the competitors.

EAC supports Linux nowadays, but developers have to manually check the box to enable it.

EAC on Linux doesn't run in the kernel, it's all userspace. Which is part of the reason some developers choose not to accept EAC on Linux.

I think the killer is that even if you have an ML anti-cheat that is 97% accurate, that 3% collateral damage will be your undoing.

Valve's approach is to not care and let the money printer Steam do its thing.

Do not try and copy Valve. They have no financial incentive to actually care.

They did try some stuff but got pushback from Reddit community for being too invasive. Not that it really matters for something already running on your pc.