The big problem seems to be that with current interest rates, breaking into cloud gaming with a whole new platform is just not profitable.
It stopped Google and now it’s looking like it’s stopping Netflix.
Gamers just don’t want to spend money on new platforms or platforms where their friends aren’t.
It’s a shame to some degree because Stadia was a cheat free paradise. There will always be latency concerns but I think streamed competitive gaming has a future, particularly as kernel anticheat fails to deliver and high end hardware gets more and more expensive.
My wife and I had and interesting pandemic that required a lot of travel unfortunately.
We gamed almost exclusively on Stadia while doing so and it was near flawless. I know it’s meme for Google to kill things but man did that one really sting.
GeForce Now, PS Whatever and Xbox Cloud all aren’t there when it comes to how immediate Stadia felt. I’ll forever be bummed that they didn’t hold out for a few more years until mainstream adoption.
Game streaming would not stop cheats, a lot of cheats now work with a capture card and a device that modifies your mouse inputs, you cannot stop that without REALLY good serverside
Maybe the cutting edge R&D of cheats uses that technique; AFAIK it’s far from mainstream.
Not to mention entire classes of cheats that require manipulating the rendering engine (e.g., wall hacks) just don’t work.
Also with Widevine DRM you can leverage all the crypto crap that the MPAA has forced into our computers over the years and protect the video stream between the GPU and display. That would more than likely screw over 99% of those capture cards.
In any case, you’re talking specialized hardware that’s harder to get a hold of and may be detectable (these capture card companies likely don’t want to get sued so they’d likely cooperate pretty quickly with game developers and publishers).
Here’s another point I’ll make… there are new anticheat approaches that come into play with algorithmic reactions.
You can for instance, modifying the rendering slightly in a way that wouldn’t mess with the player much if it all if you’re suspect of a cheater, but would act as a “honeypot” for cheaters (similar to how some developers have come up with “AI poison pills” to embed in images).
I have pretty high confidence that cloud gaming maybe wouldn’t totally solve the problem. However, removing access to the game code solves a lot of the cheating problem overnight.
Basically the only thing you can do reliably is subtle aim bots, no wall hacks, no spin bots, no mapping hacks, no packet reordering, no ping abusing, no malicious packet injection (e.g., spawning a bullet in front of everyone’s heads), invulnerability hacks, teleporting/movement hacks, etc.
A lot of that stuff can be blocked with just well designed net code, but with cloud gaming the net code design becomes much much less relevant instantly. Cheating in general becomes less “fun” and less ridiculous.
The big problem seems to be that with current interest rates, breaking into cloud gaming with a whole new platform is just not profitable.
It stopped Google and now it’s looking like it’s stopping Netflix.
Gamers just don’t want to spend money on new platforms or platforms where their friends aren’t.
It’s a shame to some degree because Stadia was a cheat free paradise. There will always be latency concerns but I think streamed competitive gaming has a future, particularly as kernel anticheat fails to deliver and high end hardware gets more and more expensive.
Why would anyone want that?
Based boob appreciator.
My wife and I had and interesting pandemic that required a lot of travel unfortunately.
We gamed almost exclusively on Stadia while doing so and it was near flawless. I know it’s meme for Google to kill things but man did that one really sting.
GeForce Now, PS Whatever and Xbox Cloud all aren’t there when it comes to how immediate Stadia felt. I’ll forever be bummed that they didn’t hold out for a few more years until mainstream adoption.
Game streaming would not stop cheats, a lot of cheats now work with a capture card and a device that modifies your mouse inputs, you cannot stop that without REALLY good serverside
I think you’re massively overplaying “a lot.”
Maybe the cutting edge R&D of cheats uses that technique; AFAIK it’s far from mainstream.
Not to mention entire classes of cheats that require manipulating the rendering engine (e.g., wall hacks) just don’t work.
Also with Widevine DRM you can leverage all the crypto crap that the MPAA has forced into our computers over the years and protect the video stream between the GPU and display. That would more than likely screw over 99% of those capture cards.
A good amount of capture cards work invisibly to drm, and you can use a camera.
But you’re right, its not too too many cheats that work like that, but if cloud became the norm there would be.
In any case, you’re talking specialized hardware that’s harder to get a hold of and may be detectable (these capture card companies likely don’t want to get sued so they’d likely cooperate pretty quickly with game developers and publishers).
Here’s another point I’ll make… there are new anticheat approaches that come into play with algorithmic reactions.
You can for instance, modifying the rendering slightly in a way that wouldn’t mess with the player much if it all if you’re suspect of a cheater, but would act as a “honeypot” for cheaters (similar to how some developers have come up with “AI poison pills” to embed in images).
I have pretty high confidence that cloud gaming maybe wouldn’t totally solve the problem. However, removing access to the game code solves a lot of the cheating problem overnight.
Basically the only thing you can do reliably is subtle aim bots, no wall hacks, no spin bots, no mapping hacks, no packet reordering, no ping abusing, no malicious packet injection (e.g., spawning a bullet in front of everyone’s heads), invulnerability hacks, teleporting/movement hacks, etc.
A lot of that stuff can be blocked with just well designed net code, but with cloud gaming the net code design becomes much much less relevant instantly. Cheating in general becomes less “fun” and less ridiculous.