Rockstar Games DDoSed Heavily By Players Protesting New AntiCheat Code

Some devs sure do fear linux users.

Dont blame developers. It's never developers that make decisions. It's the management, the shareholders, the project manager, the product owner, the whatever-mba-dipshit on top. But never the developers. They just execute and comply and if they refuse, they're let go. A developer is a fleshy code printer. A resource. They don't have real power. They're a factory worker. Remember that. Don't blame the worker, blame the boss.

Source: i'm a professional software developer.

I had been wondering why everybody was so angry at them for implementing anti-cheat software. I didn't realize that they were locking out Linux users. That's a bunch of bullshit.

I did this with Blizzard/Activision years ago.

Zero impact.

Gamers and still buying the same old tired shit while bitching about it, name a more…

You’re absolutely right. The number of great games to play is absurd and the access to them has never been better but for some reason most people just play mediocre games that should have been put out to pasture years ago.

I've read that Steam is accepting refunds for GTAV - I'd recommend anyone who bought it there refund it.

Have you tried not buying something in protest? If so have you noticed they keep selling it anyway and you have no alternative? Not giving them money isn't enough.

I'm not a fan of DoSA as it's rather strongarm but at least this actually sends a message to them AND other users.

I'm not interested in having to fight anti-features to play what I paid for, but at least circumventing it sends a message.

I'm pretty sure it's not Linux gamers doing this.

It's cheaters.

Yeah, I'm actually supportive of some kind of anti cheat on GTA online, because with all the cheating it's just unplayable. Unfortunately I was playing on steam deck so I haven't been able to play it since. Presumably it can be supported relatively easy so I hope they fix that issue.

Even if it's not compatible, "ok then where's my damn refund?"

Basically theft, really.

If a game offers multiplayer, they should also offer a dedicated server that people can setup for themselves.

For MMOs, they can make the servers optionally federated.

Around the time gta 5 came out, i lived with two guys and had 3 neighbours and we would often play video games together, but we never really found a game that we all liked. Gtao was just around the corner and the trailers looked so fun. People doing silly shit, skydiving together, play some golf, race around the city. When it actually came out and worked, oh boy. Leave the house, get shot, drive around, get shot, try to do something with friends, get blown up by a fighter jet. The answer is always: it's GTA, of course you get shot, play mario part, or shot like that. Yeah, i get that, but i always felt like it's just people who enjoy to make other people's experience worse, and it's not about pvp. Gta draws such a weird crowd.

I wish more games came with couch co-op. It was a lot of fun in Halo and Diablo.

wait, can you not play GTA single player anymore?

Yes!

90% of the games I buy now are couch coop. Was sad about Halo abandoning it.

Couch coop defined my view of what video games are.

But how can we milk you for subscription money that way?

Couch co-op gta san andreas was the best, so sad it's not more common in present games.

That's why one never pisses off a Linux user.

There's a patch for proton for Battleye. My understanding is that it's really easy for developers to support Linux with it, but I think they're using their own engine, so things may be harder. Regardless, that's bullshit if they added something without considering Linux users.

After having talked to some on the GTA V SCUD, so many think we are in support of the cheaters and are framing our frustration around us just wanting the cheaters back.

That would lose a ton of profits!

Things like FiveM exist, which is exactly that. I’m not sure if that is at all affected by the anticheat though, I didn’t read the article.

They implemented this 10 years after the game's release. It's harder to vote with your wallet at that point.

Is "get rid of all anti-cheat" a popular position outside of Lemmy? I don't really play these sorts of games but was under the impression that most competitive multiplayer would be unplayable without anti-cheat measures.

It didn't have "invasive user side anti-cheat" on day one you doughnut

That's why Linux users bought it. This was added YEARS after release

I legitimately avoided rockstar for years because they force you to use their store even when you buy on steam. I still haven't played rdr2, despite critical acclaim. I finally caved and got GTAV on sale cause I realised none of this shit works. Consumers using purchasing power to enforce standards is a losing battle. The storefronts or legislators need to enforce this shit. I think it should be valve. They have the market position and userbase to actually succeed or at the very least convince publishers to not break shit that was already working fine.

Firstly, yeah... RDRO is utterly plauged with all sorts of cheaters using trainers and all kinds of cheats is full of crap, at least for PC.

The standard strategy you basically have to employ is that whenever you see something nonsense like that happen is you have to jump to another instance/lobby. Depending on your luck, you may have to do this every 15 to 60 minutes aaaand some cheats allow the cheater to follow you to your new lobby.

Secondly...

A few years back I was in RDRO and was attacked by a cheater.

I had a broke ass level 15ish character with the just a few of the least expensive guns.

They had infinite ammo. Teleport hopping. Spawned 10 additional NPCs versions of themselves, then of my character, then zombies, then legendary animals (basically fucking monsters).

All the while they're scrambling their name in the scoreboard every minute and create spoofs to make it harder to actually do a report or have the grievance system actually work correctly.

I killed them all. I died over and over again, but I kept killing them. Whittled down the fake names and spoofs and kept doing the grievance thing until it was actually landing on one consistent name.

Then the cheater began spawning gigantic props like boats attached to their character, which rotated and hit with physics force when they rotated, which they could shoot out of but I could not shoot into.

But uh, I managed to juke my way through cracks in the collision mesh, then shoot him.

He got tired of this at some point... and just turned himself invisible.

But, by this point I'd been killed enough times that I'd managed to get him showing up on my radar.

I'd by then long since run out of ammo... and began stalking him, via radar, with just a knife and lasso, sometimes the running tackle with the lasso that leads into a hogtie, other times actually managing to sneak up behind him, executing an invisible foe.

After an hour and a half of this, he started slipping up, and I could see him attempting to flee me, teleport half a klik away and just stand there for 30 seconds, then move a bit, then pause again, presumably fiddling around in his menus.

I killed him a few more times in this state, and he quit, he left.

... I would have just jumped to another instance if he had not killed my horse.

Do not fuck with a man's horse lol.

... anyway, yeah. hung up my hat after that. fucking nonsense.

You could have made a private lobby. Although RDR Online isnt too exciting anyway.

Their mom's basement, most likely.

People enjoy video game, more news at 11

Because it keeps getting updates?

something that perplexes me to this day

I'm still playing old school RuneScape.

Hardcore normies.

Cash cow

On the other hand, I didn't realize that EAC would prevent Linux users from playing entirely.

For the most part any game that "won't run on linux" totally would if it wasn't for the anticheat not working (or being supported) on linux, that's usually the downfall. For instance Destiny runs fine, but if they see you're using linux they ban your acct because fuck you that's why. Tbf, even if the anticheat would work it's usually kernel level spyware that linux users mostly refuse to run, so eh.

Also battle eye works (same with EAC) on Linux you just need to enable it

I believe it's BattlEye, not EAC

While I haven't looked into this particular anti-cheat; they frequently prevent Linux users from playing altogether, ban users due to false positives, and sometimes even gain/require access to data entirely unrelated to gaming, such as your personal documents or even browser data (cookies, history, passwords/tokens, etc) as many of them contain Rootkits

What's happened is GTA Online suddenly switched to using BattlEye for it's anti-cheating. And this broke Steam Deck compatibility suddenly. Now, this is bad enough but reports state that BattlEye will work with the Steam Deck, and all Rockstar needs to do is just send a message to BattlEye and it'll just work. But Rockstar doesn't seem to be interested in sending that email.

Pretty sure Rockstar allows community servers to disable the anti-cheat as well, just like single player.

The GTA RP community at this point is a considerable part of why people are still playing GTA.

They didn't enable linux support on the anticheat, so the game no longer runs on Linux/steam deck

The most common cheat is probably gaining money or experience, but there have always been pretty extensive mod menus for GTA Online with tools from invincibility to making your vehicles rainbow, to randomly causing other players to explode or setting hundreds of muggers on them.

In 2015ish, I used to cheat, other than getting rich, all I was interested in doing was making an indestructible chrome bus with smoke trails that I'd drive around picking up players in, to teleport us all to North Yankton and back like a tour guide.

None, now.

Hackers like to glitch other users. Randomly turn into a toilet, have all of your ammunition disappear, suddenly fly into the air and die on impact. It made public servers unplayable. Friends only sessions were necessary

Aside from it being code you don’t want on your machine. I dunno, I don’t get why people cheat. Isn’t it a better feeling when you just play and get good?

I've done some cheating on GTAO, so I can speak to this a bit.

For me, the next biggest reason after the one you listed is that their game is grindy as fuck. I want to be able to play with the cool vehicles and toys in the game, but they're locked behind hours and hours of grinding, even just for a single item. I understand some people like that, but it's not for me. But it's also not just grinding that's the problem. Their loading screens in the game are frequent, slow (1-5 minute of loading each), and are filled with shitty crews that make it impossible to do the missions.

So back when I used to play I had a script that would just give me shit loads of money. I could buy what I wanted, have fun, and move on. Games are for fun, not for feeling like they're a second job.

What's worse, is that Rockstar intentionally makes it grindy so you're motivated to steal your mom's credit cards and use real world money to buy fake world money that lasts you about 20 minutes. It's very scummy behavior, and cheating is a way to get around that.

The script kiddies that just like to fuck with other people are a whole other can of worms. Those people can get bent.

Aside from it being code you don’t want on your machine

Code you don't want on your machine, that have sometimes more permissions than you yourself have on your own files, is completely opaque, and have the legitimacy to keep constant outgoing network data that you can't audit.

Yes, aside for that, no reason at all. No problem with a huge risk on your privacy for moderate results that don't particularly benefit you in the long run.

(and all that is assuming that they're not nefarious to begin with, which is almost impossible to prove)

If you play in Linux assuming this game even runs on Linux. Good chance they will ban you from running this game on that OS. They could allow it but most companies see Linux as a minority and will mostly willing to take the hit of blanket banning the whole OS. I guess Steamdecks would be out of question now. Another is security risk this kind of anti cheat tend to be invasive they have access to your kernel, the part of the OS that has access to everything on your system. If that thing is compromised good chance you'll be affected also if you have that in your system. Think of something like crowdstrike issue.

I think the problem is implementation. it was constantly a top 10 game on steam for steam deck users, and now they can't play online because rockstar decides to not configure the game to support Linux. I think thats the issue lol

Anticheats can be very invasive, they can theoretically scan all the files inside your computer (whether it is practically done, I don't know but it surely feels like it's been done), take screenshots regularly, send your hardware information, etc. So yeah, if you are someone who takes security seriously...

Which ultimately makes being a passionate Rockstar fan a weirder and weirder choice.

The very annoying this is that BattleEye supports Linux, rockstar has just apparently decided not to ask for that from BattleEye

That's not what this is about, the article is simply garbage. They are enforcing a kernel level anti-cheating system that is incompatible with Linux (where no third party gets kernel access, and rightly so). This locks out all Linux players, including Steam Deck.

That is what they are suggesting but its the linux users who are pissed.

Nobody likes cheating.

However, a lot of people don't like anti-cheat mechanisms that are essentially rootkits, and especially nobody likes when a product is changed long after it's release in a way that makes it unusable (as the new anti-cheat forbids Linux).

No one decided cheating in multiplayer games is fine. But invasive anti-cheat software is significantly worse, and frankly doesn't actually work. Automated detection tools can help, but ultimately you need mods / admins to properly stay on top of cheating. Trying to replace those jobs with incredibly invasive software installed on every user's device is just a sign of a trash developer or publisher.