Riot Games talk Vanguard anti-cheat for League of Legends and why it's a no for Linux
Riot Games talk Vanguard anti-cheat for League of Legends and why it's a no for Linux
While previously you've been able to play League of Legends on Linux, and there's some pretty die-hard fans using Wine to play it, that's set to end soon with Vanguard being introduced.
This also applies to Valorant. I know a lot of people look down on both games, but it's still unfortunate for Linux to lose access to such a popular game.
I thought this part was particularly interesting:
Half of anti-cheat is making sure the environment hasn't been tampered with, and this is extremely hard on Linux by design. Any backdoors we leave open for it are ones [cheat] developers will immediately leverage for cheats
That's ok I don't really want spyware anyway.
Their post is a bunch of PR hidden by funnyspeak while not addressing people's concerns in any way. The worst is that they're officially ditching LoL on linux because reasons, they're forcing the anti cheat on windows BUT they can't implement it on MacOS because Apple won't allow it
Their post is a bunch of PR hidden by funnyspeak
I disagree, I think they said pretty plainly that they rely on security by obscurity, which is fundamentally at odds with an open platform that gives you control over your hardware. They're not wrong, they can take their shitty anti-cheat arms race and shove it.
How are they ditching LoL on Linux if they've never officially supported it in the first place?
"They'd find our backdoors T_T"
Oh noooooo! /s
To be fair, I think the backdoors they're referring to would be ones meant to allow Linux users to play.
But with Riot being owned by a Chinese company, I suspect there are plenty of backdoors to go around.
Yeah, you're right. It just sounds kinda bad to call them "our backdoors". It's not inaccurate, but still sounds kinda sus
That's pretty much the only reasonable explanation at this point. If they were afraid of people finding errors it would be beneficial to allow more players to see what's the program doing. Riot basically confirming they just want to run spyware on SpywareOS.
Linux only grants access inside user space, so yeah. Says a lot about any game that refuses to adapt to that
I get your point, but that is only 50% of the article. 800 players simply don't justify the effort of porting everything to Linux and risk more cheaters. Issues with cheaters affect the entire playerbase, not just those 800.
I'd like more Linux compatibility in large games as much as the next guy, but I get the justification not to do it.
I mean, the question should also be, does league of legends have a big enough cheating issue to justify having an invasive anti-cheat. I played the game for 10 years and not once did I knowingly encounter a cheater.
Vanguard was announced and was supposed to be added to League imminently a while ago. I stopped playing months ago as a result. I can hardly imagine that I am the only one, so the number seems cherry picked for convenience.
I'd like to know what the average daily player count on Linux was prior to 2024, I suspect it's higher than 800.
That said, I get the trade-off. I won't support that trade-off though because I will never agree with an anticheat implemented like Vanguard is.
Is Vanguard actually that much more effective than say, the EAC that we have on Linux?
I enjoyed playing TFT but this whole thing made me ditch LoL altogether some months ago. And cheaters on LoL are so rare...
According to the original Riot post, 1 in 15 games has a cheater, and in some regions it's 1 in 5 games.
But valorant has the same kernel anticheat, and has rampant cheating. So I don't think the new anticheat will actually help.
Depends also on their definition of cheater. If they count the mindless weak bots that keep playing just to farm currency in non ranked or if they only count serious cheats.
Real answer: too lazy to port / not worth enough to port
Even with premium Linux support, who in their right mind would run that shit with kernel access
World of Warcraft has its own anticheat that works on Linux no problem, if Blizzard can do it why Riot can't? It's not that WoW has more players than LOL so it could be justified, it's actually the opposite.
It's probably because WoW isn't as competitive as LoL or Valorant, so Riot's games need to be more aggressive in figuring whether someone is cheating or not. A more apt comparison would be with Valve's Dota2 and Counter Strike
You find it interresting, For the backdoors right ?
So no 2XKO? :(
I was so excited
The problem with anti-cheat won’t get away anytime soon, and at least not until one invents effective server-side detection, or some completely different methods that can work with Linux and probably not anything that is known already
Make sure to buy hardware hacks
Oh no, how will I get spyware into my pc then? What a shame
No sweaty, angry, sexist, racist, sub-human filth League gamers on Linux? What a shame. How will Linux users ever recover knowing the trash will never leave the dumpster? I for one am completely devastated.
/s