Steam Machine’s upcoming release means more people will be playing games on Linux, specifically SteamOS. The idea of ditching Windows for gaming is becoming more attractive, as the Steam Machine is first-party desktop-level hardware that’s optimized for Linux-based SteamOS. The biggest hurdle for Linux gamers right now is a lack of support for many anti-cheats – particular those that require kernel-level access. But with the release of the Machine, Valve hopes game devs take notice.
Steam Machine seems to getting the most attention out of Valve’s latest hardware launches. The Steam creators announced the new console-like mini PC alongside the Steam Frame VR headset and new Steam Controller. Even the Frame runs on SteamOS, which means Valve now has a trio of first-party hardware on Linux (including the Steam Deck handheld).
I wish this were more prevalent. Server side anti cheat is a problem that money can be thrown at and solved but its cheaper at face value to lease that labor from anti cheat service contracts.
Just tell AAA game studios that AI can solve cheating server-side and they’ll throw money at it.
I wonder if there have been any ML approaches to anti-cheat yet. I could actually see that making a ton of sense.
Literally one of the few problems that “AI” is actually really useful for solving.
Turns out that when their little marketing gimmick comes at odds with implanting a rootkit on your machine, they choose the latter. The whole hype around “AI” is excitement about subverting your agency in favor of their own. Kernel level spyware directly injects their own agency without the expense of training and running cheat detection models.
All the useful applications that can really benefit people have been neglected in favor of LLMs that can more easily serve as data mining SaaS platforms.