Can’t you load your own keys into your BIOS, letting you sign whatever you want anyway?
You can, but most everything that would let you run your own boot-time code is supposed to end up in the TPM event log, which the TPM is happy to attest to with its unique/uniquely bannable attestation key. Not too difficult to set it up so that no attestation = no access.
This type of attestation is far from perfect for a lot of different reasons, and it would be really impractical to automate bans with it, but I guess it’s a tool they see value in.
So long story short, the anti-cheat software can detect if you’re using a different signing key?
Yep. It would be incredibly bad if they did automatic bans for any key they don’t recognize, but it’s technically possible.
Edit: from what I’m reading it apparently just refuses to let you in with unrecognized/non-MS keys. Yeah that makes a lot more sense.
Shame was really looking forward to bf6. Guess I’ll pass
Back on Reddit, there were even complaints that EA’s anticheat was conflicting with Riot’s anticheat. Yep, now you potentially need two different installations of Windows to run each of your games. At this point, you would need to buy several SSDs and a SSD extension (or an external USB reader, since USB speeds nowadays are relatively fast enough to afford running those games from an external drive), then install each game (and operative system) in a different one, and swap between them before booting, just like a cartridge. Same would go, of course, for your actual main GNU/Linux drive that contains your actual personal data - that way, the anticheat can’t even see your personal information, as it’d physically unplugged from your computer. And since Windows checks the license per motherboard, not per drive, you should be able to recycle the activation key between your Valorant “cartridge” and your Battlefield “cartridge”. At this point, paying for a dedicated game console and the online pass starts becoming attractive…
…That, or just boycott multiplayer games altogether. If your group of friends doesn’t mind, of course.
I play games mostly on my Steam Deck after migrating from Xbox. Didn’t want to pay for Internet access to use the Internet I already pay for (Xbox Live).
Battlefield games like BF1 and BF4 used to run on the Deck about a year ago, but then EA toggled something and disallowed any and all Linux distros. Can’t remember their reasoning, but something something anti-cheat.
Now me, a paying customer, was fucking pissed. I purchased these games on my Steam Deck to avoid corporate walled gardens like the Xbox, and then EA lock me out of my purchase after the refund period had elapsed. What the fuck???
So I started dual booting Windows 10 on the Deck to regain access to a product I had paid for. Fucking shit I had to do this in the first place.
But now I need to enable Secure Boot to play the new shit, and I have no clue how to do this without bricking my Deck. I’m an engineer, but not the software type. I don’t want to fuck around with my gear just to play games.
Client-side AC is a poor solution to cheating that can be solved with server-side AC.
Fuck EA. Fuck M$. Fuck all the corporations that want to run spyware on my devices
Hm, yeah, it’s something every developer should know; client-side validation of input still needs server-side validation, because client-side is not reliable, no mather what you force on them.
Pretty much the same as all the other modern BFs. They all had cheats in the Beta/early release versions. I’ve played and own literally every BF game since the original release of 1942. Cheats have always been present more or less.
Oh no! Ch43t3Rzzzz!
So you got the spyware without the benefits, that’s a hell of a surprise isn’t it?
But thank you for your money suckers!
I am still baffled that anyone thinks that Kernel AC is any kind of effective at stopping hacks, people have been literally making a living off of defeating it, and selling those hacks / methods for almost a decade now…
But nope, still got hordes of idiot gamers who think they work, think they’re necessary, think they can’t be spoofed.
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Indirectly buyers are making a decision on anticheat. If someone buys a game with anticheat, they’ve made the decision to reward the developer for making the decision to include anticheat.
Not sure how you could read this and come away with the idea that I do believe that…
I am talking about the subset of gamers that go on internet forums and discord servers and make false, unsupported claims as to the effectiveness or necessity or Kernel AC over other forms of AC, tell people this just is how it is now, get with the program,
eat the bugs, play the spyware game, its fine, everyone is doing it.
It’s crazy to me that people cheat in online games. You really have to be a huge fucking loser to do this.
Small pp energy.
Sadly, I think the financial incentive is too great these days. People make decent money off this shit
The cheat developers, yes. Because there is demand. The question though was, why there is demand.
There’s demand because there’s supply.
Build it and they will come.
We have to ask the question if cheat developing wasn’t profitable, and even if developers actually operated at a loss, would there be as many cheats on the market as there are now?
Small pp energy.
I don’t know what energy this is, but not good either.
And yet they have the audacity to block Linux players
I’m glad I didn’t enable Tivoization (Secure Boot) and TPM. Those suck, and actually froze our machines. It’s literally useless at this point.
Secure Boot isn’t Tivoization because you can enroll your own keys.
From my research, while I could see that being the case, “Secure Boot” is classified by the Free Software Foundation and the GNU Project as Tivoization, and GPL-3 was made to fix that. That’s how I saw it, at least.
The standard thing people refer to as “Secure Boot” allows users to enroll their own keys and thus is not TiVo. The ability to enroll your own keys is the distinguishing feature here - TiVo devices don’t let you do that, so you can’t sign your own thing and run it.
The FSF has various pearl clutching articles from the days of Windows 8 fretting about whether or not users would be able to install their own keys on Secure Boot devices, but here in 2025, most devices allow this. (I’m sure there’s a handful of bizarre laptops or whatever that don’t, but the vast majority of hardware I’ve seen is fine.)
Why are people like this. How does this make gaming enjoyable?
Honestly, if I had the skills I’d be doing that as an explicit fuck you to the draconian anticheat bullshit they force on everyone, because what better fuck you than showing all that effort was for naught, especially close to launch.
EA can go fuck themselves with the world’s biggest cactus.
I prefer “fuck you with an anchor”
I love that track, but have to skip it regularly with my kid in the car lol
There’s a kid friendly version. Flipped with a sausage.
And one for dogs as well.
A lot of hacking in valorant is about this tbf (and to more efficiently sell boosts)
It’s fun to cheat in games, that’s why we have cheat codes.
Also there’s the competitive side of it where not getting caught is a skill and glitching is just game knowledge.
Cheat codes and cheating in online games is obviously the same thing. You cheat because you’re a cunt.
I don’t cheat, I play online games to get into flame wars not to play the games.
For some people the only things that brings them joy are 1) winning 2) making other people stuffer
Or developing cheats. It sounds really fun and you get to grow by keeping on top of the anticheat.
So I can’t play battlefield without TPM? I hate tech these days. My Ryzen board doesnt have it. Hence why I’m not on windows 11
you will own nothing and be happy
I just refuse to enable it. It makes changing things a hassle.
Same. Keeps things simple with Linux, and Windows doesn’t even complain about it being disabled, so long as it’s present. I’ll never understand why it’s even required if you don’t even have to enable it.
So they can have an excuse to force you to upgrade to Windows 11 beyond “whoops, turns out making an operating system as a ‘buy once’ product is a bad idea.”
Joke’s on them; I already upgraded to Windows 11. I was among the first. It’s actually a solid OS once you disable all the ads and telemetry with O&O Shut Up 10.
Yeah I did the same using WinUtil. Still, I only fire up windows when I need to use software without native Linux support.
Might be a requirement in some companies for security reasons…?
You can still get win 11 without TPM by using Rufus and bypassing TPM which will have to be done for a lot of old PCs and we will have to do it by October this year.
Why would you install Windows 11on a computer? What happens if you don’t do it before October?
Your computer will gradually get more and more filled with security holes that will be problematic to patch. Eventually, programs will stop supporting it as well.
Microsoft will be releasing custom viruses that only infect 10.
Does this disable updates though? My wife somehow had Win11 installed on her pc without enabling secure boot, and her updates got so far behind that now it refuses to update and needs to be reinstalled.
Didn’t Microsoft stop this in a recent-ish update? I remember trying it on a machine without TPM and it just didn’t work.
Bazzite worked fine though (after some headaches setting it up).
More proof that anti-cheat and bans just isn’t a working approach.
Almost every cheater I’ve talked to or seen interviewed has said they do it because they like winning. If thats the case, pushing them away isnt getting rid of them, its making them try to win harder, and they are literally spending money to make that happen.
This means, there is a market for cheaters, one that publishers and devs simply assault instead of realizing they could replace it entirely.
Create a marketplace in your game for cheats. When a player buys a cheat in game, they can turn it on but only in a specific playlist that cheaters get to play in. You dont need to own or turn on cheats to play in that playlist, in case you feel like challenging yourself, but cheaters can use them as much as they want in that playlist. If a cheater wants to go into cheat free playlist, their cheats get turned off by the game and they have to play like everyone else. Cheat free playlists can have cheat detection, and if you are caught cheating then you get banned from cheat free playlists permanently, but you arent banned from the game or the cheat playlist.
This deters cheaters from paying third parties for cheats, gives them a space to experiment in, makes money for the company running the game, and reduces the amount of cheaters in regular public lobbies. It also creates a space of challenge for people who don’t cheat, sorta like how people will do no death runs in souls games.
Sure, it isnt a perfect solution, but its far better than punishing every player with invasive tech, while simultaneously letting a market of cheat sellers thrive. For a bunch of capitalists, its wild they haven’t realized they are missing out on money with cheats.
…alternatively just shadow ban all the cheaters into cheater only lobbies.
I suspect that if you’re now playing where everyone else gets the same advantages, that ruins the fun of having cheats
If not and the cheats themselves are just that fun to use, sure, add it in as another gamemode
They’re gonna kill this game aren’t they.
Game is generic enough, so it’ll keep a playerbase.
There aren’t exactly a wealth of games doing what Battlefield does outside of Battlefield itself.
Battlebit is fantastic. The only reason it hasn’t taken off is because of gamerbros that can’t handle anything besides realistic graphics
I love Battlebit and its a fun time, but it already did take off, sold literally millions of copies (nearly 2 million in its first 2 weeks), and then was effectively abandoned by the developers.
It did take off for a time, and now it looks like it’s an early access game that hasn’t had an update in 19 months. And I can tell you that if they don’t let me host the server myself and play via LAN, they’re not solving any problems for me over Battlefield.
Yeah well too bad that ship has sailed as well. Such a shame, BF2, BC2 and BF3 were quality games, just needed a modern take of one of those instead of whatever this is we got.
That hardly makes it generic though.
If you’ve played any triple A shooters, you’ve played them all.
It’s already dead mate. Hop on the finals, we got linux support.
Nah. Everyone wants tpm 2.0 Ask Microsoft
I have a feeling they are
