alt Hacker NewsAmongst the discussion of rootkits and anti-cheat, I would like to add that part of the reason it is necessary is caused by the game companies that took away the standard method of playing multiplayer -- players running their own servers.
It used to be pretty easy to just ban people from playing, now we're 100% reliant on their ability to do it. So we have anti-cheat which roots our computer, and still doesn't 100% solve the problem.
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Even if custom game servers were a preferable experience, which I would argue against, it doesn't really do anything for this problem.
By the time you have to wait for someone to cheat just to ban a single user, the disruption is already done. Your 4v4 45min game is already disrupted and everyone has already wasted their time now that you have to kick someone.
It's kind of like thinking you can forgo anti-bot measures because your website's users can just report the bots: by the time it's your users' problem, you've ruined the experience for everyone except the bots.
> caused by the game companies that took away the standard method of playing multiplayer -- players running their own servers
Let's be real, what % people among those who game are interested in running their own game server? I'm definitely one of them, and one of my earliest tech memories was setting up a CS 1.6 game server for a bunch of classmates (and being unable to play myself because the computer had nowhere near enough capacity for both the server and the actual game running at the same time); but it's a minuscule percentage.
Did you played in this era ?
- If you were too good on some server, you'd get banned.
- If the admin doesn't know well cheating, he could tolerate something that was obvious cheating.
- Cheaters could just change server often.
It used to be easy to just ban peoples yes, and it was as easy to switch servers.
Plus on most competitive game today, you have custom lobbies, which do exactly what you want, and there is a reason why only a minority of players uses it.