Comment Lemmings (Score 1) 138
They almost became real life lemmings.
Based on Valve's response it suggests to me they did not try to work with Valve on this, otherwise Valve could have added an exception into VAC (or advised AMD to not enable the feature for CS2). My guess is AMD tested it briefly in CS2, and pushed it live before the VAC ban hit the test account.
You're saying what Windows drivers can do here Linux ones can't, but you also claim the main safeguard against that is that they wouldn't get merged into the kernel, which suggests you're not so sure. I suspect the difference in capabilities is not as big between Windows and Linux as you think. Windows has WHQL which provides a similar protection as long as you use WHQL approved drivers. That said I don't know if AMD's feature here would pass or not.
Anything can trip anti-cheat if it tries hard enough. AMD's driver seems to be trying pretty hard so it's not surprising.
This feature injects code into the game. A core functionality of anti-cheats is to try to determine if game code has been augmented or modified.
that could "have devastating effects on the entire Internet ecosystem
Sounds like it would have a devastating effect on the AD ecosystem, and it also sounds like it is a problem of their own making. Have fun with that.
Alright I got to make another command since this is still bugging me.
Steam and Valve have done a lot more to champion gaming on Linux than anyone else, I think, except maybe WINE project contributors and contributors to WINE forks (especially CodeWeavers), whose work they built on top of.
First, Steam was Windows only, which I think was understandable since gaming is largely a Windows thing. But the Microsoft once again experimented with a version of Windows that was a locked down walled garden that could only install apps from the Microsoft Store, including games. This was a direct threat to Steam which couldn't be installed on such devices. Valve's reaction was to branch out, bringing Steam to Mac and Linux and further brainstorming ways to reduce reliance on Microsoft.
They introduced the idea of the Steam Machine, which was their first attempt to bring a living room console experience to PC. I believe they were intended to run Linux though I don't recall and the experience was only running native games IIRC, Fast forward as they went through a bunch of other hardware ideas and then we get the Steam Deck with its streamlined Arch-based Steam OS for a very console like gaming experience, and Proton (developed with CodeWeavers), a WINE fork designed to run the latest Windows games in Linux (not to mention old ones) at comparable performance to Windows in some cases.
As for other points in Steam's favor... let's not forget once you buy a game on Steam, Steam's ToS with publishers mean no take backs. That's a huge win for preservation. I can only assume you're referring to Steam's DRM as a downside. Keep in mind Steam is built to provide as much value to customers as possible despite the DRM publishers want. Plus, if Steam ever went belly up, I am sure I could rely on the internet to free my games for me to play again, so I am not worried about that. Publishers won't give us everything for nothing in return. I think Steam's DRM is a fine compromise all things considered.
Valve has done a lot of work with Proton to bring Windows gaming to Linux. With my own Steam Deck I can say the results are pretty impressive. There is no need to install Windows on it to try and get better compatibility or anything like that, unless you have very specific games you consider must-haves.
I've given MS the benefit of the doubt in the past and I even feel the XP EU court case was not necessary. You obviously need a web browser to download another web browser, and most people don't care which web browser they use, so it's perfectly reasonable to bundle Internet Explorer. Similar logic can apply to things like antivirus or a media player. But, Microsoft is definitely going too far with things like this. Let me choose my defaults and respect those choices once I've made them. I feel like an anticompetitive lawsuit would be deserved this time.
Disclaimer: I use Windows 11 and have not personally seen the popup discussed in this article.
Generally this is done by experimenting with top emulators to see what sort of obscure things they can do which deviate behavior in emulators vs the Switch, and try to detect that in the game to see if they are running in an emulator.
It remains to be seen if emulator developers will prioritize fixes (or merging PRs implementing fixes) that make the emulators behave like the real console in these edge cases.
Of course the most effective way Denuvo could work is to test things that the emulator can't emulate 100% accurately without huge performance penalties, especially things that are "good enough" to usually not need that amount of precision. For example minuta of the specific GPU the Switch uses.
If the rumors of a Switch 2 are true, and it turns out to be backwards compatible, there's also a fun risk that Denuvo may not work properly on it without an update. And depending on which games get the update or not... well it could potentially affect legitimate customers which is pretty self-defeating for this sort of thing.
Unless Denuvo for Switch also intends to detect things like jailbroken Switches and pirated copies of the game itself, there's no need for them to do Denuvo for Switch like they do PC, a more open platform. It sounds like their primary objective is to make games unplayable in emulators. It's possible people who jailbreak Switches aren't as much of a concern.
I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning. -- Plato
