Kernel-mode anticheat is a huge nope

Just now, icecoldduke said:

I'm sure he's a great guy, and even if he did stretch the truth here, it wouldn't be on him, that would have been a business decision, and I wouldn't think any less of him either way. But its highly suspect that new hitching comes in a patch that introduces a new highly invansive anti cheat system. 

You mean the cheat system that doesn't even turn on until you play battlemode? 

1 minute ago, icecoldduke said:

I'm sure he's a great guy, and even if he did stretch the truth here, it wouldn't be on him, that would have been a business decision, and I wouldn't think any less of him either way. But its highly suspect that new hitching comes in a patch that introduces a new highly invansive anti cheat system. 

I believe him because we do already know about some fundamental changes that were made to the engine in this version, which I warned about a few pages earlier when I said we need to keep the performance issues out of the fundamental conversation about the negatives of the anti-cheat. For one thing, I understand that compute shader usage was massively upgraded in some way. The shit is over my head so I can't explain it precisely. But given the complexity of Vulkan, it's easy to see how something like that happens. What's not so easy to understand is how QA let it sail by and I imagine that's going to be an internal discussion of great length.

32 minutes ago, Ramiel said:

TLDR:

• DAC to be removed in the next PC update, or, at least restricted to Battlemode
• id was not "forced" by Bethesda or Zenimax to include DAC
• Performance issues in Update 1 and DAC are "not related.", suspected to be caused by "VRAM allocation"

 

That's certainly un-ruffled some of my feathers. I can appreciate Id wanting to protect the more competitive aspects of their shiny new Battlemode baby, but I'll choose to look at this as the next closest thing we're ever going to get to an admission that they screwed up.

I will be watching with interest for further details about the next update.

5 minutes ago, Quasar said:

I believe him because we do already know about some fundamental changes that were made to the engine in this version, which I warned about a few pages earlier when I said we need to keep the performance issues out of the fundamental conversation about the negatives of the anti-cheat. For one thing, I understand that compute shader usage was massively upgraded in some way. The shit is over my head so I can't explain it precisely. But given the complexity of Vulkan, it's easy to see how something like that happens. What's not so easy to understand is how QA let it sail by and I imagine that's going to be an internal discussion of great length.

Moving more work over to compute shaders can add to hitching, but if the hitching is on the CPU side, the only way that can happen is if your going out of memory on your GPU, then your GPU has to page bits from VRAM to Main RAM and vice versa. A compute shader by itself wouldn't cause the hitches I saw in the youtube videos I've seen, since they were CPU based according to the various metrics people took. 

6 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

You mean the cheat system that doesn't even turn on until you play battlemode? 

It's very possible the Denuvo anti cheat driver is to blame here, which is activated when the game starts.

Again this is pure speculation and my own personal belief. I'm looking forward to reinstalling the game after the next patch.

1 minute ago, icecoldduke said:

Moving more work over to compute shaders can add to hitching, but if the hitching is on the CPU side, the only way that can happen is if your going out of memory on your GPU, then your GPU has to page bits from VRAM to Main RAM and vice versa. A compute shader by itself wouldn't cause the hitches I saw in the youtube videos I've seen.

 

We don't know exactly were the hitching originated. It's very possible the Denuvo anti cheat driver is to blame here, which is activated when the game starts.

 

Again this is pure speculation and my own personal belief. 

Well, we'll find out once the AC comes back I guess.

25 minutes ago, Quasar said:

This is the correct thing to do and I am extremely happy to see it. Puts to rest my darker speculations.

Same here, this is quite a ballsy move, to remove it altogether.

Although this is only temporary, or might be, as id is still looking for anti-cheat solutions. Whatever it might be, it should be restricted to multiplayer only, and not make modding the game an impossibility. Or that would be ideal, remains to be seen what's next.

21 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

Marty Stratton isn't known to lie (nor allowed to in this context), so if he said it, it's true. Plus "I heard from some people" and anecdotal CPU activity is about the weakest supporting evidence ever presented. 

I'm inclined to agree. Marty is a far cry from the likes of Todd Howard so I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. 

In the end all that matters is it's being removed.

Well that is good news. Now we play the waiting game.

The only realistic(?) alternative to such intrusive systems, is for games to go back to the 1980s home computer model: each game on its own floppy, with custom file system, custom loader, custom OS, etc.

This way no game can single-handedly fsck-up the rest of the system because, well, when you are playing, it IS the system. Game consoles come closer, but even they have deviated from this "pure" model long ago.

4 minutes ago, Maes said:

The only realistic(?) alternative to such intrusive systems, is for games to go back to the 1980s home computer model: each game on its own floppy, with custom file system, custom loader, custom OS, etc.

The only realistic anti cheat option for competitive gaming is to play games on Stadia or a similar service. 

32 minutes ago, icecoldduke said:

It's very possible the Denuvo anti cheat driver is to blame here, which is activated when the game starts.

 

Again this is pure speculation and my own personal belief.

It's only active when actually playing Battlemode.

And you can speculate no longer because you've be straight up told the answer. Your "but they could be lying!" rhetoric is explicitly why developers don't bother to give detailed information usually. Because if you aren't going to believe them when they tell you what's going on, why should any developer ever bother? 

If I sound annoyed, it's because I am. I'm tired of people insisting that any piece of information that a developer or programmer tells them that doesn't fit their expectations must be a lie. I've put up with that too much myself and no way am I giving you a free pass. 

2 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

Well you can speculate no longer because you've be straight up told the answer. Your "but they could be lying!" rhetoric is explicitly why developers don't bother to give detailed information usually. Because if you aren't going to believe them when they tell you what's going on, why should any developer ever bother? 

There's no reason to throw away a solid technical counter just because the developer says the hitching was caused by their gpu memory management system. We'll see the performance when the new patch is out, and we'll see how the performance is when and if they bring Denuvo anti tamper back in. 

8 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

If I sound annoyed, it's because I am. I'm tired of people insisting that any piece of information that a developer or programmer tells them that doesn't fit their expectations must be a lie. I've put up with that too much myself and no way am I giving you a free pass. 

I understand, I've been on the other side of this more times then I care to count. We'll see if they bring back Denuvo and we'll see if the hitching comes back. It's the only way to put this bed. 

Very happy to hear this news! I'll be reinstalling when it updates to 1.1

1 hour ago, Ramiel said:

 

• id was not "forced" by Bethesda or Zenimax to include DAC
• Performance issues in Update 1 and DAC are "not related.", suspected to be caused by "VRAM allocation"

I know Marty said what he said, but we gotta keep in mind that he still speaks in official capacity as id's Studio Director. I would venture to say both of the  above points are misleading. The previous discussion of how games-as-a-service and invasive DRM are the future is still relevant, even if id and Bethsoft stepped away for a moment. 

15 minutes ago, Mr. Freeze said:

I know Marty said what he said, but we gotta keep in mind that he still speaks in official capacity as id's Studio Director. I would venture to say both of the  above points are misleading.

They aren't. How many times does this have to be repeated? Do we need to add a notice to the top of the thread or something? And I'll repeate this in addtion:

34 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

Your "but they could be lying!" rhetoric is explicitly why developers don't bother to give detailed information usually. Because if you aren't going to believe them when they tell you what's going on, why should any developer ever bother? 

8 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

 

They aren't. How many times does this have to be repeated? Do we need to add a notice to the top of the thread or something?

That's your opinion. I'm a engineer, I know why your frustrated, like yourself I've been on the other side of table, but here's my opinion. In this case I think there is enough evidence to say Denuvo is not without blame for the hitching, but as of now it doesn't matter, because its being removed, and we'll see if the hitches come back, if id software brings it back at a later date. 

6 minutes ago, icecoldduke said:

That's your opinion.

It isn't.

6 minutes ago, icecoldduke said:

I'm a engineer, I know why your frustrated, like yourself I've been on the other side of table.

I'm a game developer, I have dealt with this exact problem. I dealt with it with Blood, I dealt with it even with Doom64 of all fucking games from this very forum, being accused of censorship that never happened and stealing some guy's fanfiction which we didn't even know existed, the problem is only getting worse and you aren't helping.

6 minutes ago, icecoldduke said:

However in this case I think there is enough evidence to say Denuvo is probably to blame for the hitches, but as of now it doesn't matter, because its being removed, and we'll see if the hitches come back, if id software brings it back at a later date. 

The perception of possible future evidence is not current evidence. You need to present current evidence to say it's "probably" related.

6 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

The perception of possible future evidence is not current evidence. You need to present current evidence to say it's "probably" related.

I'm also a game developer, my opinion is based off of evidence of CPU spikes exclusive to 1.01, and that's it. Its my belief, new CPU spikes, exclusive to v1.01, have to be somewhat related to the new instrusive anti tamper system that was included in the new patch. If they were unrelated, that would be a huge coincidence.

New big system = new big problems. Development 101. 

9 minutes ago, icecoldduke said:

However in this case I think there is enough evidence to say Denuvo is probably to blame for the hitches

Can I get a citation on this? The game started running worse with this update, so it is reasonable to assume Denuvo is the reason. However id's statement combined with what is just an assumption does not equal empirical evidence. Unless someone did research explaining the correlation, which I am not aware of.

4 minutes ago, Super Mighty G said:

 

Can I get a citation on this? The game started running worse with this update, so it is reasonable to assume Denuvo is the reason. However id's statement combined with what is just an assumption does not equal empirical evidence. Unless someone did research explaining the correlation, which I am not aware of.

See my above post, I'm simply saying new CPU hitches that come along with a new anti tamper system, would be highly coincidental if they weren't related. I would a agree with id software if the hitches were on the GPU side. But again this is just my belief, and we'll know for certain, if the anti tamper bits come back in a later patch. There's no way the "we rewrote the gpu memory manager" reasoning is going to work twice. 

1 hour ago, Quasar said:

This is the correct thing to do and I am extremely happy to see it. Puts to rest my darker speculations.

Wholeheartedly seconded. It’s nice to see a little more of the situation being explained, and it pretty much puts to bed any theories about the demise of any parties or titles. I admit, this whole thing has left me in panic mode and it’s honestly relieving to see Marty provide as much transparency as possible while putting the whole matter to bed.

I guess this boils down to more “trying something and failing” rather than the darker “corporate marching orders” that usually occurs.

3 minutes ago, icecoldduke said:

See my above post, I'm simply saying new CPU hitches that come along with a new anti tamper system

Citations usually explicitly require links to information, not "trust me dawg, I already posted this".

7 minutes ago, icecoldduke said:

Its my belief, new CPU spikes, exclusive to v1.01, have to be somewhat related to the new instrusive anti tamper system that was included in the new patch.

No new anti-tamper system was implemented in 1.01, Denuvo anti-tamper was already implemented on launch.

8 minutes ago, icecoldduke said:

I'm also a game developer,

What games?

9 minutes ago, icecoldduke said:

If they were unrelated, that would be a huge coincidence.

Another game developer has already told you that this is not how correlation/causation works:

1 hour ago, Quasar said:

I believe him because we do already know about some fundamental changes that were made to the engine in this version, which I warned about a few pages earlier when I said we need to keep the performance issues out of the fundamental conversation about the negatives of the anti-cheat. For one thing, I understand that compute shader usage was massively upgraded in some way. The shit is over my head so I can't explain it precisely. But given the complexity of Vulkan, it's easy to see how something like that happens. What's not so easy to understand is how QA let it sail by and I imagine that's going to be an internal discussion of great length.

6 minutes ago, icecoldduke said:

See my above post, I'm simply saying new CPU hitches that come along with a new anti tamper system, would be highly coincidental if they weren't related. I would a agree with id software if the hitches were on the GPU side. But again this is just my belief, and we'll know for certain, if the anti tamper bits come back in a later patch. There's no way the "we rewrote the gpu memory manager" reasoning is going to work twice. 

So your argument is there is no evidence. That's fine, but throwing around "that's your opinion" when what you're saying is exactly that is not how you make a point. Also erroneously saying "anti-tamper" when we're talking about someone different doesn't help. 

As an MP enthusiast for a super long time, unfortunate to hear, I was enjoying Battlemode without cheaters. Judging from their post, they seemed concerned about the future prospects of their MP goals, namely Invasion and their unnamed "competitive initiatives". While I agree with all of their bullet points on a fundamental level, pulling back in the face of an overwhelming reaction on social media and review bomb fronts was probably the best move at the end of the day.

Great example of needing to educate the playerbase for your title with a 15 paragraph post about an entirely different realm of gaming (in this instance, anticheats) before implementing them, and also providing a fallback option for players who have zero interest in MP functionality.

While recognizing that Battlemode and by proxy any future MP is back on life support, I realize the concerns of SP and MP sides are in direct conflict with each other, and hope they can provide an amicable solution in the future.

Good transparency in their post. It's a shame the overreaction of the community blasted the reviews of the game instantaneously rather than waited for any official response. Always do your own research, and not trust the top rated reddit post or whatever equivalent other garbage you read on the internet. Look for the smart people's blogs and stuff about ACs and implementation. You know, the people who have degrees in the stuff. Google is a tab away. Shame on people here who haven't done their due diligence.

On samedi 16 mai 2020 at 7:50 PM, AlexMax said:

Most games these days are matchmade onto servers that are owned by the company, and when you have that setup, you don't have the community server administrators there to set rules and punish wrongdoers. 

So, the solution here is either to let people host their own servers again, or install rootkits in players' computers. Decision, decision, what will the corporation do?

39 minutes ago, Super Mighty G said:

So your argument is there is no evidence. That's fine, but throwing around "that's your opinion" when what you're saying is exactly that is not how you make a point. Also erroneously saying "anti-tamper" when we're talking about someone different doesn't help. 

Your right I meant to say Anti Cheat. 

44 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

Citations usually explicitly require links to information, not "trust me dawg, I already posted this".

No new anti-tamper system was implemented in 1.01, Denuvo anti-tamper was already implemented on launch.

What games?

Another game developer has already told you that this is not how correlation/causation works:

 

Denuvo Anti Cheat was what I meant, and that was enabled in v1.01. I typed fast, that's my fault. However your taking my typo and using it to further your argument which is just silly :)

I'm not a fan of Denuvo. I don't believe we need to obfuscate executables to prevent people from opening them up in IDA pro. I think that's silly. Furthermore I don't believe we need memory scanning garbage to prevent cheating. You can take my opinion or not, but this stuff has been shown time and time again to cause performance problems, and its not a coincidence hitches came long side new anti cheat garbage being added to the exectuable in v1.01.  

26 minutes ago, Xenaero said:

Good transparency in their post. It's a shame the overreaction of the community blasted the reviews of the game instantaneously rather than waited for any official response. Always do your own research, and not trust the top rated reddit post or whatever equivalent other garbage you read on the internet. Look for the smart people's blogs and stuff about ACs and implementation. You know, the people who have degrees in the stuff. Google is a tab away. Shame on people here who haven't done their due diligence.

The response from Id certainly gets a nod from me, but I think you're being unfair to the negative response as a whole. Company makes bone-headed move. Customers complain. Company responds to the complaints of the people who make them money. Isn't that how capitalism is supposed to work?

If there hadn't been this hullabaloo, then that might have been taken as assent by those responsible, and to be fair that's not completely unreasonable. If people aren't complaining, why fix what people obviously think ain't broke?

46 minutes ago, Xenaero said:

As an MP enthusiast for a super long time, unfortunate to hear, I was enjoying Battlemode without cheaters. Judging from their post, they seemed concerned about the future prospects of their MP goals, namely Invasion and their unnamed "competitive initiatives". While I agree with all of their bullet points on a fundamental level, pulling back in the face of an overwhelming reaction on social media and review bomb fronts was probably the best move at the end of the day.

 

Great example of needing to educate the playerbase for your title with a 15 paragraph post about an entirely different realm of gaming (in this instance, anticheats) before implementing them, and also providing a fallback option for players who have zero interest in MP functionality.

 

While recognizing that Battlemode and by proxy any future MP is back on life support, I realize the concerns of SP and MP sides are in direct conflict with each other, and hope they can provide an amicable solution in the future.

 

Good transparency in their post. It's a shame the overreaction of the community blasted the reviews of the game instantaneously rather than waited for any official response. Always do your own research, and not trust the top rated reddit post or whatever equivalent other garbage you read on the internet. Look for the smart people's blogs and stuff about ACs and implementation. You know, the people who have degrees in the stuff. Google is a tab away. Shame on people here who haven't done their due diligence.

Doom Eternal needed a anti cheat system, no question about that. I just don't want any game to install new drivers on my PC. I think your insulting a wide range of people that know enough about tech to realize, games installing drivers on your PC is a recipe for disaster.