this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2025
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Man I hate to ask this, but what exactly is anti-cheat? I'm guessing it's not self-explanatory or it is but comes with some sort of baggage.
I'm being a bit vague here because where it is now is the result of decades of arms race between the cheaters and the developers, thus extremely complicated.
It's a program that sits on your machine, and watches both the game in question, as well as other programs, to make sure there's no funny business regarding the game.
It's somewhat effective, though it comes at a cost. There is a noticeable performance cost on modern anticheat programs, meaning you're losing performance for sometimes no tangible benefit.
Kernal level anti cheat programs are especially invasive, as they have deeper access to your operating system than would normally be allowed by any other program. This can be fine when used correctly, but if abused could be a massive privacy concern, or even a danger to your system. If you remember a little while back where every business windows computer went down for a day due to the crowdstrike antivirus, that's a potential result of kernal level software going bad.
So somewhat necessary evil, and they do kind of work. I personally don't love solutions that eat performance like this, and privacy is a concern of mine, but also I kinda get it.
Thank you for the explanation. It's kind of what I envisioned. I guess it doesn't apply to me mostly since I haven't played a PvP since rage quitting Overwatch a few years ago. Now I just play cooperative games with a buddy in the UK.
Or does it apply to me?
I avoid anything with kernel level anti-cheat. It is a theoretical attack vector - if the anti-cheat were somehow compromised, you've granted it low-level access to your system so whatever payload it is injecting would have that same level of access.
Even if you only play the single player part of a game the anti-cheat will be installed and running in the background.
You think they don't add anti-cheats to singleplayer/co-op?
So that we don't cheat the game?
How can I know? Should I avoid those games?
That’s why this new feature is so great.
Take for example: Monster Hunter Wilds. It’s not popular AT ALL to mod/cheat the game. It never has been in any Monster Hunter. But the anticheat kept me from playing for about an hour on release, while I had to wiggle my way around it.
For whatever reason, they’re showing up everywhere now. It’s disgusting lmao
Sometimes it's so they can sell the "cheats" to you as microtransactions instead.
They definitely can add anticheat to cooperative games, though again it feels a bit much.
I would say not to worry too much? The potential for abuse exists, but is not actually used. The companies that make the anti cheat software these days have way too much on the line to risk that kind of behaviour. It's one of those things that it's in a bit of a weird state, and some people like to keep an eye on it, but for the vast majority of cases is a minor inconvenience.
Anticheat is software that tries to identify cheating while you're running a game. Kernel level anti cheat is malware.
From my understanding, it's either client or server side software for online multiplayer games to try and prevent people from using 3rd party tools or hacks to gain an advantage from ruining the experience of other players. I can't give a more technical answer, though, as to how it works. Someone else would have to provide that.
Thank you for the reply.
Essentially, most cheats for games work because the program can access the RAM addresses that the game uses. Anticheat works by scanning the computer for these running programs/services that are known to be cheats.
Historically this has been done in userspace, ie. no elevated permissions. Nowadays, Kernel level AC let's the AC check for deeper cheating methods, like devices that are operating on a driver level.
Currently, the most difficult to detect method is cheating using a 2nd PC that connects via a cable to a special PCIe device in the gaming PC. It essentially analyzes everything going to RAM and plucks out game related info. It's currently a back and forth trying to hide that PCIe device from the anti-cheat.