Now that Stop Killing Games is actually being taken seriously - maybe we need to take a look at Stop Fucking Around In Our Kernels
I haven’t really been personally affected by it before - I don’t play any competitive multiplayer games at all. But my wife had her brother over, and he’s significantly younger than us. So he wanted to play FortNite and GTA V, knowing I have a gaming PC. FortNite is immediately out of the question, it’ll never work on my computer. Okay, so I got GTA V running and it was fun for a while, but it turns out all of those really cool cars only exist in Online. But oh look, now they’ve added BattlEye and I can no longer get online.
While this seems like a trivial issue (Just buy a third SSD for Windows and dual boot), it’s really not. Even if I wanted to install Windows ever again, I do NOT want random 3rd party kernel modules in there. Anyone remember the whole CrowdStrike fiasco? I do NOT want to wake up to my computer not booting up because some idiot decided to push a shitty update to their kernel module that makes the kernel itself shit the bed. And while Microsoft fucks up plenty, at least they’re a corporation with a reputation to uphold, and I believe they even have a QA team or 2. CrowdStrike was unheard of outside of the corporate world before the ordeal and tbh nobody has ever heard of it afterwards again.
So I think this would be a good angle to push. That we should be careful about what code runs in our OS kernels, for security and stability reasons. Obviously it’d be impossible to just blanket ban 3rd party kernel modules to any OS. However, maybe here in the EU at least we could get them to consider a rule that any software that includes a component running in the OS kernel, MUST justify how that part is necessary for the software to function in the best possible way for the user of the computer the software is running on. E.g I expect a hardware driver to have a kernel module, and I can see how security software needs to have a kernel module, but I do NOT see how a video game needs to have an anti cheat with a kernel module. How does that benefit me, the customer paying to be able to play said video game?
That’s a strawman argument. First of all, plenty of people would be happy to self-host a game for their friends, if they were still allowed the option. Second, even people who want to run a public server would still be free to ban people (for whatever reason they wanted). We’re not talking about being forced to tolerate antisocial fuckwads.
Exactly! Me and my friends often play on modded Factorio servers that one of us hosts. This is only possible because the developer doesn’t lock things down to only the first-party (official) servers.
We don’t play with cheaters either (you aren’t getting invited to our server if you are). We play with our friends because it is fun, in a way no official server could hope to work.
As something nice to have? I fully agree (and said as much)
As an alternative to anti-cheat solutions/“solutions” as was being presented?
No, it is not an answer. Because it would indeed be forcing people to tolerate “antisocial fuckwads” or forcing people ti find private servers to play with each other like in the good old days.
No shit, Sherlock. That’s exactly what I was advocating for.
I wouldn’t call it “forcing,” though – that’s another strawman. It’s “allowing” the option.
Cool
Also, it isn’t a straw man if you are arguing a completely different topic than the one the thread is about. But cool. You learned a word.