Not that I’ve seen, but I know some people who somehow missed the video, and he doesn’t link to it on the website so:

https://youtu.be/w70Xc9CStoE

I really do not understand how server anti cheat is not way easier.

In a clean slate, it is. It’s also way more effective (except for things like wall hacks, aim bots, recoil suppressors, etc, but most of those things are only really important and popular in competitive FPS). It’s also much simpler to understand and to leave no “holes” behind. It also lives in the developers domain so it can’t be “compromised” or circumvented.

The thing is that client side “anti cheat” can be commoditized. Every game with server authority/anti cheat needs specific server software to run their game logic. Client anti cheat is basically “look at everything else running on the system and see if any of it seems suspicious”. As such, there’s not really anything “game specific” to these - they basically are just a watch dog looking for bad actors - so as such, one company can come along, make one, and sell it to other devs.

This being “off the shelf” and not something the dev team has to think about besides a price tag means that management is just going to buy a third party solution and check off the “anti cheat” box on their task list.

I feel like devs are caught up on realtime anti cheat and not willing to do anything asynchronous.

First, this is a management problem and not the devs. Any dev worth their salt knows this isn’t really a good solution.

But I’d say the more relevant and prominent thing here is that game companies just don’t want to have to run servers anymore. It’s a cost, requires dev time, and requires maintenance, and they don’t want to do that. If these games had servers running the game world like games used to, they’d inherently have their own “anti cheat” built in for free that wouldn’t necessarily catch everything but would do a better job than some of these. And it could be enhanced to cover more bases.

But studios don’t want to do this anymore. It’s easier to make the game p2p and slap an off the shelf anti cheat and call it a day.

Some games still require matchmaking servers etc, but the overhead there is way lower.

Or they really like paying licensing fees for client-side anticheat.

Not that I agree with the decision, but it is definitely cheaper and faster than the alternative. But picking something like nprotect totally fucking baffles me. There are better options.

I just don’t understand how any competent software engineer or systems admin or architect trusts the client so fervently.

In some ways, same. Every project I’ve been on that has gotten anywhere near client side trust I’ve fought adamantly about avoiding it. I’ve won most arguments on it, but there are some places where they just utterly refuse.

But then there are things like New World… I don’t know how the fuck that shit released like it did. The number of things trusted to the client were absolutely baffling. I expected Amazon’s first foray into gaming to be a fucking joke, but I was totally appalled at how bad it turned out. They even touted hiring ex blizzard talent to get my hopes up first.

It does

https://steamdb.info/tech/AntiCheat/nProtect_GameGuard/

https://www.resetera.com/threads/helldivers-2-incorporates-nprotect-gameguard-on-pc-a-kernel-level-rootkit-anti-cheat-technical-director-responds-to-the-controversy-on-reddit.808530/

I don’t know if this makes me “a redditor” somehow or what, but…

As a dev, I am deeply troubled by the gaming industry so calmly walking into kernel anti cheats. It’s insane and being tossed around like it’s nothing.

Helldivers especially, since they picked one of the sketchiest ones and it’s a game that entirely doesn’t need it.

I have no idea if Reddit has suddenly picked up on this, but I’ve been pissed since at least Valorants release, but have seen more YT videos talking about it recently.

Yeah this is why I don’t get it. If you expect me to respond instantly, you should be placing a phone call and not sending a text.

To make sure millenials can’t read your password, 𝔀𝓻𝓲𝓽𝓮 𝓹𝓪𝓻𝓽 𝓸𝓯 𝓲𝓽 𝓲𝓷 𝓬𝓾𝓻𝓼𝓲𝓿𝓮.

How would this mess with millennials? I think you mean gen z.

Amongst many other reasons, my biggest is it’s not searchable by search engines.

Well gee, I hope you don’t use texting, phone calls, emails, private forums, social media DMs, or talk to anyone IRL, because those aren’t searchable either!

This argument seems like reaching for something to complain about rather than having a legitimate problem with discord. If anything, you don’t like the “large group chat” paradigm, but that’s like hating a screwdriver because it’s not a hammer.

I think discord is primarily just useful for voice chat, yes.

But:

It’s a closed ecosystem that locks what would otherwise be searchable knowledge on the web, with an unsearchable, proprietary lockdown of that information.

Yeah, no. Proprietary, sure, but you can say that about almost communication mechanism that’s not a website with an API. It’s not like people would otherwise be posting these things somewhere else if discord didn’t exist. If it wasn’t discord it’d be slack or something. Discord is an entirely different medium and complaining that it isn’t a forum is just not a legitimate argument. They’re entirely different things.

This whole comment/complaint is just the pros and cons of different types of communication. None of this is discord specific, it’s just complaints that real time chat isn’t indexed by search engines and isn’t organized into clear topics.

Sure, some IRC chats were logged/posted, but that still has all the same searchability problems, and that process can still be used within discord search. It’s just not useful because real time chat doesn’t have any sort of topic organization.

This whole thing is like complaining that signal is worse than email because it’s not as organized. It’s not worse, it’s just a different medium with different goals and purpose. And you’re not giving any specifics as to why signal/discord is bad, just that you don’t like direct messaging/chat rooms.

Yeah, that’s still true as well. But it feels like one step ahead. Before it was in a totally different field. It’s gotten that much worse.

Google Assistant is definitely getting worse and worse all the time. When the Google Homes first released they were actually pretty useful and handy. I was willing to pick a few up and they served a good purpose. They ran CIRCLES around Alexa and all those.

Now many years later, the devices don’t hear questions correctly, have to ask them four different times, they can’t even pick up my wife’s prompt words anymore, don’t even give reasonable answers when they do get the question right… It’s made hundreds of dollars worth of devices infuriating and useless.

I bought a product that worked. It no longer works because it’s been “updated”.

YouTube purchases also don’t work beyond 480p on any desktop except for Mac Safari. These companies are fucking insane.

This is the most asinine approach IMO.

“Let’s release a worse product. Hey, no one likes it. Okay, let’s spend money on games so THEY can essentially force people to use our software. Hey, still, no one really likes it. Okay, let’s try to give away stuff for free. Hey, people use our thing for the free stuff but still no one likes it for any other reason.”

They just keep spending money to up their numbers and their product is still missing features and inferior to competition. They spend big money on exclusivity, but that is only temporary - if that’s how you’re getting your customers, you’re going to have to keep doing it forever to retain them. If people only use you for free stuff, you’re just going to have to keep giving stuff away at a loss to retain them.

This model is not sustainable. You’re not doing anything that aligns value with your customers besides just throwing free stuff at them. That’s not a business.

What’s especially sad to me is they could literally have just spent that same money to improve their launcher and have an actual product. Instead they’ve invested in temporary stats. They’re essentially bankrolling other devs on games with temporary popularity instead of in their lifelong product.

Using other games exclusivity as sway into your ecosystem only works when you have a good product the person would be interested in but they haven’t seen it yet. EGS is currently something people are essentially coerced into using but no one really gets any real value out of it other than “well I couldn’t buy this game anywhere else”

I don’t know about any of the others, but at least Rocket League and Fall Guys are great examples here.

Both games already existed and were extremely successful on Steam.

Both games got bought by Epic and we were told they were going to get continued support.

Both games were then REMOVED from Steam.

Both games then started suddenly having objectively worse monetization. Both communities grew a pretty negative opinion of the changes.

Both games are objectively less popular now, though at least some of this is just age/fads.

But both games are just objectively in a worse spot than they were before. All Epic did was make them objectively worse.

Yeah, that’s kind of my point.

On the other hand, as mentioned above, including that request is regulated by Google Play and it will trigger a manual review process. It’s possible, yes. And Google is upfront about it.

But it’s still just removing app specific battery policies. It doesn’t stop the device from sleeping itself etc. Disabling these battery optimizations drastically expands where, when, and how often you can run. But it’s not as open ended as Android was 10 years ago. Many of the APIs and system behaviors have changed since then. This gets you like halfway back though. But still only halfway.

On the other hand, iOS is super restrictive and a massive pain in the ass. It’s not surprising the OP mentions Android supporting these cases better.

They do that because that’s the only way they can survive against AMD given how much behind Intel is in terms of CPU and GPU tech.

This is just blatantly false and disengenious.

Sure, Intels GPU tech is pathetic. But it’s also not their business. Their only reasonable market use case is making a serviceable on board gpu for people who aren’t going to buy a real GPU. AMD makes actual fucking graphics cards. Of course their GPU tech is ahead.

But Intel CPU tech is not blatantly behind AMD. Sure, there have been points where AMD has leapt ahead. But the same could be said for Intel. Sure there are advantages to some techs on the AMD side, but the same could be said for Intel. They’re in competition and neither is wholy ahead of the other.

Yeah, you go on to pinpoint one specific use case that you have, which is very specific, and something less than 1% of 1% of 1% of their customers care about. Same could be said the other way.

iOS is way worse when it comes to support for things like this. IOS started super restrictive and slowly allowed for slightly more background app support, but anything off the beaten path of “open app, view stuff, leave app” is not well supported on iOS.

Android would historically allow apps to do whatever the fuck they wanted, but in the past like 6 years started adding restrictions, and then started adding some mechanisms for users to allow exceptions.

It’s very unsurprising for Android to support these cases better, but they’re honestly both getting worse, because “battery optimization”, and it really hurts “off the beaten path” applications.

It’s 2023 and Nintendo is still churning out the same minimum effort bullshit Pokemon and Mario games, and they still haven’t figured out online multiplayer.

True

The max resolution of the Switch is 1080p 30 FPS. Nintendo is a joke and a shell of it’s former self.

Yeah, I wouldn’t go anywhere near that far. The N64 is the only console that was ever really top of its class in raw specs. That’s never been Nintendo’s game, and they’ve never even tried. And, the FTC leaks have shown Xbox is considered 3rd behind the Switch.

Arguably the GameCube was the most complacent and behind the times console they’ve ever released and it did extremely well.

The Wii started a huge “motion controls” revolution, and even if it didn’t stick around, it was fresh and everyone and their mother was trying to buy a Wii.

The Wii U was probably their biggest failure. They tried to do something new and misread the market.

The Switch also brought something entirely new to the market that has redefined the portable. It sold out like crazy and has done extremely well. I know people who own switches that have never purchased any console or handheld.

The Switch isn’t trying to compete with Xbox / PS. It’s competing with Gameboy and PSP but also allows you to play Mario Kart with the boys. And it has built an entire new device segment with Steam Deck and a million spin offs at this point.

Local couch gameplay has always been Nintendos bread and butter. They’re not aiming for hardcore gamers. And they’re still succeeding at exactly that.

As someone else pointed out, his entire perspective of Twitter is skewed by his own usage. His following and crypto bs have resulted in all of his tweets being bombarded by bots trying to get attention. It severely impacts his ability to use Twitter, and he’s been disillusioned into thinking this is everyone’s experience of the platform.

When you look at it from such a narrow perspective, I’m sure yeah, bots are a pretty big issue.

The requirement to create an account to view replies/threads is a show stopper for me and it has somehow made Twitter even more useless. It barely had value when it was freely legible but it’s not worth sharing data with them to get festering garbage in return.

Yet he thinks people are going to pay for it?

We live in a world where social media and communication are commoditized as fuck and people refuse to pay premiums for shit they can do for free elsewhere. How is Twitter going to compete with Instagram, Threads, Mastodon, Reddit, and Facebook when it’s arguably the worst choice, objectively the least feature rich, yet the only one that costs money?