50/50 chance this breaks Deck and linux support, especially since the commenters’ inquiries about it have gone unanswered.
Bogles my mind why a PvE game needs an anti-cheat at all - let alone something as invasive as a rootkit.
Source is the dev’s post on, unfortunately, reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/19dp2qw/helldivers_2_nprotect_gameguard_anticheat/
I’m also a progression-driven player yet I’m suspicious of a game that introduces anti-cheats alongside microtransactions. When microtransactions are involved, the pace of progression tends to be affected to incentive people to pay, and at that point I’d rather play in a hacked server that has a more reasonable progression.
If it was just about letting the player maintain the pace of progression however is most satisfying, I’m sure there are better ways to do that client-side. But these days game companies are all too happy to equivocate “company controlled” with “fair” or “fun”, and it’s curious that in this framing nothing is unfair as long as they get money.
Hey, I’m not arguing that mtx are a good thing for consumers or anything like that, and I’m with you that they’ve had an adverse effect on progression systems. I just see the logic in their reasoning for having anticheat. Anything client side could be subverted by those same cheats, and it still wouldn’t address the second issue of the impact on the shared galactic conflict feature. All that said, this was a poor choice of implementation and I don’t think it will pay off for them. I don’t think you’d be seeing the same backlash if it was something like EAC. Maybe from the techy crowd on Lemmy, but not from the average consumer.
Just because we don’t usually see backlash it doesn’t mean it’s a good thing. The average player puts up with absolutely rigged games which treat paying for advantages as fairness.
Personally I only see cheating as a problem if it affects people who haven’t agreed to it, but the solution is not preventing all modification. Games are better off for modding and customization. They could cut off modified games from having matchmaking or any input on a global game mode while still allowing players to run their own servers however they want.
I’m not arguing that anything is good or bad. I’m all for people modding their single player games. I’ve played Frankenstein Skyrim myself many times. I’m a big fan. All that said, this game has a multiplayer element through Galactic Warfare and matchmaking co-op. I think anticheat is entirely reasonable in those scenarios. You can say the multiplayer-lite GW feature isn’t worth the limitation (I would probably share that view), but AC is not evil in all situations. It’s just kind of entwined with certain online multiplayer features, to avoid the equivalent of “Boaty McBoatFace” happening when trolls hit critical mass in your game.