Honestly, i donāt get why people are bitching about it so much. A company, that makes a game with intention to make money off it, that never supported linux neither promised to support linux some time in the future, clarifies that it sees no purpose in supporting linux because of monetary reasons.
Okay, that may be your favorite game, you might have spend tons of money on in - but idea that it may never be supported on your favorite platform has never crossed your mind? Itās like whining that PS exclusive game is not getting ported to Xbox.
So basically, āitās too hard, and our engineers are not good at their jobs.ā
Imagine this: you have a cheater problem. Your team of developers have only ever worked on gameplay-related stuff - graphics, game engine, etc. You can:
Make them pull solution out of their butts, somehow gain expertise in topic they have never worked on
Pour ALOT of money in HR and hire specialists that have experience in anticheat software
Pay 3rd party for solution that you can use RIGHT NOW and that works (at least somehow)
When money is involved, you make decision by counting them. You give somebody (tech lead, probably) task to evaluate your options - and give you approximate numbers. And iām not surprised they chose 3rd option.
Stop stealing our CPU cycles for high risk rootkits and start mitigating and detecting cheating on the server. Itās that easy.
Iām currently working on bot detection for web resources - and trust me, itās extremely hard to distinguish them from people without some client-side analysis. Sure, you can use behavioral analysis, but you need lots of data and, again, expertise in that. Okay, they have the data - thousands of games played daily. Have you ever seen job listing for āgame patterns analyst for LoLā? Again, you have to find someone capable - highly payed experts, who will spend some time testing their theories, with no guaranteed success.
āHow do you separate good players from cheaters? This low ranked player who just got his second pentakill - is he cheating or smurfing? This weird behaviour - is it because of missing fog of war or are they just communicating over voice chat?ā
Itās justā¦ really NOT that easy.
The ādistributionsā argument always smells like bullshit. Developers actually interested on supporting Linux usually stick to one or two distros of their choice. (Typically Ubuntu.)
Thereās your answer - they are not interested. And there is nothing wrong with that! Itās just business! Remember the āa times b times cā scene from fight club? Theyāve calculated their x - and itās not worth pursuing (for them).
Rootkits are bad, mākay. Wanna avoid them? Donāt install them. Just donāt be surprised when company adds them - itās their product, they do whatever the fuck they want.
While yes the company can certainly do what they want - that isnāt to say that everything they want to do is correct.
In an isolated bubble their decision looksā¦ fineā¦ ish. The reasons they provide are mostly excuses- but for arguments sake letās say it is actually making a meaningful difference. (It isnāt and wonāt: TPM is flawed and has already seen demonstrations of exploits.) So we now have a platform that has locked out users based on OS version, hardware support (TPM), in addition to os. They are actively culling users that otherwise were viable customers. Smart.
Letās expand on this outside the bubble: what os is growing rapidly in usage with gaming? Linux. Riot is actively making a shortsighted decision (historically this tracks) which will cause them grief in the long run. Remember: their games worked on these platforms prior to this decision. The support was all free labor done by the community. Letās say they want to release a game that takes advantage of the handheld platforms that are rising in popularity- they now need two separate anti cheat systems. Oops. They now need to try to claw back the early adopters and free community support they burned. Good luck.. Factoring in the cost of limiting future flexibility and growthā¦ I can only imagine the game experience must have improved 2-3x by the addition of this anti cheat ā¦ except it hasnāt. By their own admission: cheat developers move faster. Objectively? It was a terrible decision.
Linux is at 2 percent in the steam hardware survey, also 50 percent linux gamers in steam are steam deck users. That is not a big enough market and riot has more data than us and they are probably right.
Based on the increase since steamos became a thing - I would argue it is gaining momentum in a significant way. Based on hardware manufacturers interest in the steamdeck and similar products - I would suggest my views are not off base.
Handheld gamers doesnt contribute much to league of legends, which is a highly competitive mouse and keyboard focused game. And riot have data about the linux gamers who plays lol before anticheat update. So they are right to offer zero support. Also linux never had much support for popular liver service games like EFT, warzone, siege, fortnite.
The point I was making is riot isnāt just a league of legends company. They are a game company that is applying this anti cheat on their entire software suite. This decision cuts off future growth- which from a business standpoint is awful. That of course completely ignores the primary issue, which remains, the rootkit.
Highly competitive isā¦ no more competitive than any other gameā¦ but on that subject their matchmaking was so poor they had to hide the ELO mechanic completely to mask the issues with it. The issues still exist of courseā¦ but just like this smokescreen masking the shortcomings in their anticheatā¦ they are just less obvious.
letās say it is actually making a meaningful difference. (It isnāt and wonāt: TPM is flawed and has already seen demonstrations of exploits.)
I dare to say their solution is āgood enoughā to stop ordinary user from cheating - not to solve cheating problem entirely - it may be impossible - but to raise bar of cheating without getting banned
They are actively culling users that otherwise were viable customers. Smart.
They may lose some users who wonāt play anymore because they wonāt install rootkit, but keep those who would leave because of cheaters. Maybe their situation is dire enough so they would apply such drastic measures?
Letās expand on this outside the bubble: what os is growing rapidly in usage with gaming? Linux. Riot is actively making a shortsighted decision (historically this tracks) which will cause them grief in the long run.
I mean, iām all in for that, but year of linux desktop 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025?
Linux is my favorite OS (i use arch btw) and i use it sinceā¦ 2007, i think? But i sorta gave up on that belief - itās a niche OS, and if gaming is ever coming to linux - itās not coming to linux, itās coming to ChromeOS or SteamOS.
To sum things up - iām not saying rootkit anticheat is a good thing. Itās a solution to some problem, which people chose by comparing it to alternatives. Contrary to popular belief, CEOs donāt just sit around and think how to make players more miserable - those decisions are not made in one day. Iād drop a game if it forces me to install rootkit - i value my privacy more and iād advice anyone to do the same. Iām just really annoyed by all the whining and comments āboohooo my favorite game developers suck and donāt value me enoughā.
I dare to say their solution is āgood enoughā to stop ordinary user from cheating - not to solve cheating problem entirely - it may be impossible - but to raise bar of cheating without getting banned
The problem is that it isnāt raising the bar. Sure some low hanging collateral might be caught but in reality a department could easily fudge numbers (banrates) to justify a move to a new solutionā¦ and do. frequently. Speaking generally - this isnāt the days of download an exe and become 1337 like the old days. Hackers want to get paid. You sub to services which are monetarily motivated to stay ahead of a business which gains little from fighting on this front more than āgood enough.ā
They may lose some users who wonāt play anymore because they wonāt install rootkit, but keep those who would leave because of cheaters. Maybe their situation is dire enough so they would apply such drastic measures?
This wasnāt a dire situation. As long as league (or any online game) has existed there have been anti cheat mechanisms in place. And the best mechanism that has always existed was server side tracking with audits. Full stop. Clientside anything is a bandaid and this is no exception. If I were to speculate on the choice? This was the cheapest option available. Dress it up how you likeā¦ companies rarely go for correct optionsā¦ they go for cheap ones.
I mean, iām all in for that, but year of linux desktop ā¦ Linux is my favorite OS (i use arch btw) and i use it sinceā¦ 2007, i think? But i sorta gave up on that belief - itās a nieche OS, and if gaming is ever coming to linux - itās not coming to linux, itās coming to ChromeOS or SteamOS.
Lots has happened with Linux sure, but recently it is becoming considerably more mainstream and is gaining a critical mass on a relevant front: gaming. Linux is (generally speaking) free vs licensed oses like windows. Want a cheap gaming system? Steam is blazing a helluva path. Devs want bigger audiences - and more eyeballs. It would be foolish to disregard the growth in this sector.
Contrary to popular belief, CEOs donāt just sit around and think how to make players more miserableā¦
CSuites / Parent companies make money for themselves - because capitalism. Look no further than VMWare torching their userbase and salting the earth. Short term gains over long term longevity. Riot is not special here- they are being shortsighted.
Look no further than VMWare torching their userbase and salting the earth. Short term gains over long term longevity. Riot is not special here- they are being shortsighted.
Hmm, good point. Iād argue that VMWareās user base was more solvent (is that a right adjective? English is not my native language), but i donāt think this argument would be in my favor.
You sub to services which are monetarily motivated to stay ahead of a business which gains little from fighting on this front more than āgood enough.ā
And subscription costs too raise the bar to start cheating. Not everyone would pay to have upper hand in F2P game. Those who are willing to do it can be hand-picked by reports and manual review. We donāt know their ādefinition of doneā in fighting cheaters - maybe decreasing number of cheaters by 80% is an acceptable result? Maybe those 20% of remaining cheaters can be accounted for as āreally good playersā - those exist too. That would solve the problem.
This wasnāt a dire situation. As long as league (or any online game) has existed there have been anti cheat mechanisms in place.
We both donāt know that, if we are being honest. If it wasnāt problem at all they probable wouldnāt have done anything at all - or theyād do something far cheaper. This is a speculation - i can be wrong about state of things.
Also,
Short term gains over long term longevity.
I think there is a shitty pattern ā if everyone is making same bad decision (good short term, bad long term), it makes this decision not as bad as it would be otherwise. If you are the only one who is forcing players to install possibly-malicious software, you look really bad. But if every (or majority) of competitive multiplayer games requires it, this idea just doesnāt sound that bad. If you already have malware on your PC - what changes if you install another one?
Iām currently working on bot detection for web resources - and trust me, itās extremely hard to distinguish them from people without some client-side analysis. Sure, you can use behavioral analysis, but you need lots of data and, again, expertise in that. Okay, they have the data - thousands of games played daily. Have you ever seen job listing for āgame patterns analyst for LoLā? Again, you have to find someone capable - highly payed experts, who will spend some time testing their theories, with no guaranteed success.
āHow do you separate good players from cheaters? This low ranked player who just got his second pentakill - is he cheating or smurfing? This weird behaviour - is it because of missing fog of war or are they just communicating over voice chat?ā
90% of cheating that is incredibly annoying, that most people tend to be fed up with, is inherently obvious. You get rid of that shit and if someone is within the 99% percentile, then honestly, who gives a fuck, let them try hard.
If thereās something really important on that disk, donāt do ANYTHING, just unplug it and hand it over to a data recovery company.
If there isnāt anything really important on there, go ahead and try and do it yourself.
Paying $100 to a data recovery company can save you a ton of headaches if it has the only copy of your thesis on there and you mess it up trying to fix things yourself.
If you create an image of the disk in the current state from a live boot or an other machine. You can try fixing it without having to risk making things worse
Where is data recovery $100? In my country, data recovery is like $1000 USD to look at your drive, and then they tell you how much they can recover and a full quote.
Depends on what they actually need to do. When itās a drive thatās working and they just have to image it and run some recovery software it should be pretty cheap.
Clean room repair of dead hard disks is a different story.
Lol we can be smug until someone sneaks a backdoor into nixpkgs for a while. For user envs updating the system doesnt mean the compromise is gone, although checking would be super easy.
This is often assumed but most of the only fans adult content creators make very little. What if she makes very little but it just makes her feel sexy? I just want them to be happy in what they do.
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