50/50 chance this breaks Deck and linux support, especially since the commenters’ inquiries about it have gone unanswered.
Bogles my mind why a PvE game needs an anti-cheat at all - let alone something as invasive as a rootkit.
Source is the dev’s post on, unfortunately, reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/19dp2qw/helldivers_2_nprotect_gameguard_anticheat/
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Went to buy my son and I copies (we’ve been waiting for this release) and was gob-smacked to see this. After reading about the monetization we’re out.
There are too many quality indie titles to play in lieu of having to bend the knee in this way.
If you’re looking for an indie alternative, Roboquest seems like a good recent shooter for two players. It’s on both Steam and GOG. Gunfire Reborn also seems fun.
These aren’t indies, but there’s also Deep Rock Galactic, L4D2, and of course the original Helldivers.
You are appreciated.
Same here, even asked the developer if the Steam Deck is supported but they couldn’t tell me.
Refunded it for now, might check back next sale if it works and the microtransactions are acceptable.
It’s not a top-down shooter, but Deep Rock Galactic is an excellent PvE shooter, and the devs care deeply about the community and quality of the game.
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Ugh, god damn.
Right? I just switched to Linux full time. I was excited for this game, now it may as well not exist for me.
I won’t play any game that has a rootkit, even if it worked on Linux or I had a windows machine. With the permissions they have, they are capable of updating firmware. That means they could infect the computer with malware that would survive wiping or replacing the hard drive.
Just as a side note, if you play on Linux there’s currently no anti cheat that runs in the kernel.
It’s all in user space and only has your user permissions.
Do you have any sources that go into this? Nothing comes up in my cursory searching…
I may finally get around to switching the main machine if this is the case
Unfortunately not since Valve is (understandably) keeping pretty quiet about how they implemented anti-cheat.
However, due to Wine/Proton always running as the current user, it is impossible for it to run anything in kernel space outside of the user-accessible part of the kernel API. Meaning it cannot install kernel modules, access memory of foreign processes or read anything your user does not have access to. It can’t even get a full process list if the process does not want to be listed by users.
If you use Wine/Proton inside of Flatpak it cannot even read most of what your user has access to or any processes outside of the current Flatpak sandbox. So your Steam flatpak has no idea that you are running the Firefox flatpak on the same system with the same user.
It’s something I can’t avoid, however I can limit it a bit. Elden Ring shipping with EAC is unfortunate, but I trust From Software a lot more after they took down DS3 to fix an RCE exploit. Sure EAC could turn on them, but I feel like a good publisher would be lawyering up the second that happened, especially if it resulted in their game damaging their customer’s hardware.
Edit: not suggesting anyone should install rootkit DRM games, just sharing how I justify living with the ones I already have.
Wait, Elden Rings uses a rootkit?
Now I’m glad I never picked it up
Only on Windows, on Linux it runs in user space.
If you aren’t playing multiplayer, it’s incredibly easy to disable.
Even if you are playing multiplayer you can use seamless Coop and turn it off anyways
EAC is honestly pretty standard at this point for multiplayer games. It’s used by some really big companies like Epic for Fortnight, Mihoyo for Genshin Impact (iirc), and obviously Elden Ring. I couldn’t find anything reputable saying it is a rootkit, just that it reads and monitors kernel-level processes.
Whatever Helldivers is doing is something else.
This is one of the worst ones too, I remember being used by several asian MMOs on the late 2000s that were full of hackers and bots.
Kernel level ac is a joke https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwzIq04vd0M
:(
I loved the first one and both magickas enough that I’d buy it first day otherwise. I’just have to play one of 700 other games in my library for a few years until they decide it’s not worth it anymore.
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