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Latest Comments by F.Ultra
Brawlhalla to get Easy Anti-Cheat, dev puts up Beta with EAC working on Linux with Proton
16 October 2021 at 3:28 pm UTC

Quoting: TheRiddick
Quoting: hell0I've played robocraft. Whilst the game was fun and enjoyable to play, they're a prime example of trying to make up for jokingly bad cheat-proofing by using third party tools. Their servers trust everything the clients send: that weapon with a fixed unalterable 10 seconds reload is ready to fire again after 0.1s you say? Sure, go ahead! That speed you can't reach with your current setup is what you're cruising at? Seems alright!

I've been saying this allot lately too. EAC/BE as a AC measure and nothing else is called 100% lazy development! Server side rule breaking checks need to be done. I think Mortal Online 2 has server side AC going on since they discovered early on that client side only was completely pointless!

Server side checks however is a major performance pain, having it client side means perfect load balancing. So it's not only about being "lazy", it has a real impact on the number of simultaneous clients you can have per server.

Brawlhalla to get Easy Anti-Cheat, dev puts up Beta with EAC working on Linux with Proton
16 October 2021 at 3:25 pm UTC

Quoting: Raaben
Quoting: F.UltraYou are already running a closed source binary (the game itself and Steam for that matter) on your system that can already do whatever they like with your system, I don't think EAC brings anything more evil to this table since it does not run in the kernel and does not require root(?).

True, but at the same time it is an anticheat's specific job to spy on what one is doing right? It might not have root/kernel access but it can also do alot of snooping around without it.

It can do no more snooping around that the game already can if it wanted to. In fact I would say that you have a much higher risk of a random game doing shady business than something like EAC since if it turned out that EAC did look at things it wasn't supposed to then EAC might find it self without any market so they have much more at stake.

Note that this is not an endorsement of things like EAC, just pointing out that since we already run closed sourced binaries on our system the game is already over so to speak. Proper sandboxing would help here (but Wine/Proton itself doesn't do that even if you remove the Z: share) but AFAIK EAC would be just as sandboxed as the game in that case anyway so the difference is back to zero again.

Huge difference on Windows where things like EAC AFAIK runs as some kernel module, but again that would only allow it to snoop on other user accounts since the game already have access to all your files and how many really run with more than one account on Windows...

Brawlhalla to get Easy Anti-Cheat, dev puts up Beta with EAC working on Linux with Proton
15 October 2021 at 6:23 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: RaabenI'm curious though I doubt we can ever fully know, how bad is this Proton/WINE implementation of EAC security/privacy-wise? Yeah I know it'd be better to be safe and sandbox or still never play those games at all if concerned, but I'm just wondering if there's insight how it operates.

You are already running a closed source binary (the game itself and Steam for that matter) on your system that can already do whatever they like with your system, I don't think EAC brings anything more evil to this table since it does not run in the kernel and does not require root(?).

Ubuntu 21.10 'Impish Indri' is out now with GNOME 40, Kernel 5.13
14 October 2021 at 11:04 pm UTC

Quoting: EagleDelta
Quoting: scainePulseaudio 15 is now weirdly "meh", now that the world has re-focused on Pipewire instead. I suppose Pipewire still leverages PA under the hood though?

And yeah, looking forward to Pop_OS 21.10 now, albeit, I take their improvements with a pinch of salt these days, given that I'm a bit of a KDE convert!

I believe Pipewire has interfaces for both PulseAudio and Jack.... though I can't remember if that's PA -> PW or if it was for using applications expecting PA/Jack with PW.

That is for using applications expecting PA/Jack to work with PW instead. PW replaces PA and Jack, it does not work with them so to speak.

Space sci-fi point and click adventure Warp Frontier releases for Linux in November
13 October 2021 at 11:40 am UTC Likes: 2

The trailer reminds me a bit of the original Beneath a Steel Sky.

A look at the top 100 Steam games and how many will work on Linux and the Steam Deck
6 October 2021 at 12:02 pm UTC Likes: 3

Quoting: BielFPs
Quoting: Purple Library GuyI would be really surprised if Valve were unable to persuade those people to enable their anticheat to work with Proton.

The fact that they don't need to is the key point, remember that most of the profit from steam comes from Windows users so Valve isn't losing anything from developers not supporting Proton.

Don't forget that the release of the Deck is a major event, so there will be adds, and promotions and perhaps even parties. As a game dev you want as much publicity / visibility as possible so they should be interested in being included in the upcoming Deck promotions.

This is one of the reasons why the big publishing houses never release a native linux build even though they obviously have one internally (for Stadia) -> that doing so won't get them inclusion on some big event and why they instead release on say the Switch since Nintendo will give them free air time.

So if Valve handles to release of the Deck properly then there should be huge interest to be on the hype train.

Valve cancels Dota 2 live audience and refunds ticket sales for The International 2021
5 October 2021 at 7:28 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: ElectricPrismHave you seen the data on Sweden? (To be blunt: It looks like your most vulnerable -- obese, diabetic & old probably already were taken out, thus the lower death rates in the present)

Not in the slightest, remember that we have "only" 14.868 deaths out of a population of 11M, we have a lot of more obese, diabetic and old people than that.

There are far too many confounders to say anything regarding country vs country when it comes to covid, perhaps in a decade or so when the scientists have managed to go through all the numbers it's possible to say anything but not today.

Valve cancels Dota 2 live audience and refunds ticket sales for The International 2021
5 October 2021 at 7:24 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: GuestPlace when I life this year: excess number of deaths is above 100 000 and Covid kill 6 000

That just means that in your country there is a huge under-reporting of covid cases. In every single country where there are great covid reporting the covid cases is very very close to the excess deaths number so if the same would not apply to your country then your country is an extreme outlier, so the most logically conclusion, unless reasonable evidence of the contrary can be produced, is that it's simply under-reporting of covid cases.

GTA III & Vice City reverse-engineered code taken down on GitHub again by Take-Two DMCA
4 October 2021 at 2:01 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: scaineI mean... wow. Yeah, I mean in-game. I wasn't implying that GTA fans like to kill cops in real life? I kinda thought that was obvious, but I suppose I didn't state that explicitly.

Thanks for the clarification, you had me really worried there for a moment!

GTA III & Vice City reverse-engineered code taken down on GitHub again by Take-Two DMCA
4 October 2021 at 10:31 am UTC Likes: 7

Quoting: scaineI just find it weirdly funny that a title who's sole premise is to promote car theft, prostitution, drug crime, gang warfare and violence to police is now relying on a posh LA lawyer to prevent "loss of sales" due to a fan effort. It's kinda pathetic.

I say "loss of sales" and not "piracy" here too, because this fan effort required the original games to play. GTA 3 is £5.99, as is Vice City. San Andreas is £9.99.

So what's the betting that the "Trilogy" remake will be more than £22...

Because if it's less... well that would be even funnier. Cost of huge lawsuit to shut down fan effort that promotes sales of ancient games, only to create their own version that costs less again. It would be the kind of brain dead thinking you often see from publishers (re: DRM).

Are you sure that the sole premise of these games are to promote said criminal behaviour? I would claim that the sole premise is to allow a gamer to take part of said illegal activities in a pretend matter.