Valorant

[Leakage Current]

I don’t want this to be a practice in any way in the field of consumer softwares. I don’t want it anywhere in any product on the market regardless of region, purpose, or origin. I don’t care whether I’m buying it or not, I don’t care if you’re buying it. I don’t care if your mother is buying it. It should not be permitted by law.

Is that simple enough for you?

I want all client-side anti-cheat to die, but I don't want that to happen via regulations.

I'm doing my part by not playing any game where I cannot disable anti-cheat (or that has Denuvo because it's the same type of garbage)

 

[Pargon]

you'll have to live with some games being unplayable

If that’s part of “no outside source I don’t authorize is able to view , read or write my shit”, I’m golden with that, where do I sign up

Thanks btw for making the rest of the argument for me. You want fun games and to keep your score legit and you’re good with being collared to have that. Fine. As you said, many of the rest of us aren’t. The difference being that only one side is advocating for giving external sources significant access to hardware that ought to be yours, and our point is that if that becomes viewed as acceptable in the market then things are much harder to reverse.

 

[Indrick Boreale]

If the games that require software I don't want in my computer are otherwise unplayable, then those games were never something I would have been interested in playing anyway.

I grew up without online gaming, and never had the desire to play online at all.

 

[Betonhaus]

While in this case the only people affected are cheaters with expensive specialised hardware, I can't help but worry that if the anticheat is this deep in the system code then one bug from them or Microsoft (or the hardware manufacturers) could literally brick systems.

But the game doesn't run on Linux anyways so I won't be playing it.

 

[Moneybags7173]

Riot are stupid AF for this PR nightmare, retards that need to buy hardware to defeat software AC deserve to have their shit bricked anyway.

EFI loading a hypervisor has bypassed vanguard since day 1 and continues to work.

 

[The Ugly One]

Sheesh, way to miss the point and fail at making your own allegory. "Okay, but if all the facts of the situation were completely different, you'd be wrong!"

My analogy lines up with the facts of the situation. Yours doesn't. Is it because you genuinely don't understand what happened, or do you just like exaggerating and fictionalizing because it helps you be outraged?

a company can't remotely fuck up my property

Nobody's property was damaged, remotely or otherwise. Why do you keep saying this?

You have a computer that is configured to isolate devices that spoof drivers and attack memory. You have it configured in the BIOS to do this. You plugged in a device that spoofed a driver and attacked memory. Your computer isolated the device. That's not damage. That's working as designed.

If you don't want your computer to isolate spoofed DMA attacks, you need to disable your security. Claiming your computer "broke" because it did this when you have security enabled is like complaining your phone is broken because the fingerprint sensor won't work when you're wearing mittens.

Imagine the level of benefit your technical knowledge could do at your profession and to those around you if you weren’t a peat-eating pedant

I just don't understand how you can be this passionate about how no consumer-level device should control memory access and block unauthorized code & devices if you haven't disabled your IOMMU yet.

You don't even need to reinstall your OS to use the $6,000 cheat device again. You can disable IOMMU, VT-d/AMD-Vi, whatever, and go back to using it as if nothing happened.

Nobody in this thread except you and me knows what any of those words mean (but they have very strong opinions about them).

I don’t want this to be a practice in any way in the field of consumer softwares. I don’t want it anywhere in any product on the market regardless of region, purpose, or origin. I don’t care whether I’m buying it or not, I don’t care if you’re buying it. I don’t care if your mother is buying it. It should not be permitted by law.

What should the law allow software to do when it detects a device with unsigned firmware injecting foreign code into an unauthorized memory window? Because this is a pretty basic, common malware attack.

If that’s part of “no outside source I don’t authorize is able to view , read or write my shit”, I’m golden with that, where do I sign up

You didn't authorize the DMA device to access Valorant's memory. That's why the operating system blacklisted it.

 

[The best and greatest]

lol

 

[Pargon]

IOMMU

You keep using these letters as though they’re pertinent to the argument

 

[Gandhi's Left Hook]

I just want it to be on public record that I support the public execution of anyone cheating, facilitating cheating, or profiting from said cheating. And no, not in mincraft. It should be law. Cheaters steal the most valuable thing of all, leasure time.

 

[klab]

While in this case the only people affected are cheaters with expensive specialised hardware, I can't help but worry that if the anticheat is this deep in the system code then one bug from them or Microsoft (or the hardware manufacturers) could literally brick systems.

But the game doesn't run on Linux anyways so I won't be playing it.

You know that running something as root carries certain risks. Installing software to run 24/7 as root is generally a bad idea. It's pretty similar to that with Windows, I guess, where there isn't really much of a difference or such a thing as "deep in the system code."
No doubt leaving auto-updating privileged software running 24/7 on your computer is a bad idea, but that goes for a lot more than Vanguard.

You keep using these letters as though they’re pertinent to the argument

It's okay for words to mean something. "The argument" was originally about Riot's snarky xitter posts about turning $6,000 DMA devices into paperweights. It's not even much of a PR disaster because literally everyone (except for a few people in this thread) figured out that no computers were bricked or compromised. It's all a huge nothingburger about software that isn't any more or less dangerous than what people already decided on back in April of 2020.
Your feelings aren't invalid, but Vanguard really isn't going anywhere, one way or another. Some people are willing to put up with it, some aren't. It's a math equation. How many false positives,

I find it funny how quickly the discussion devolved into tone policing once it became clear that nothing had actually happened. It didn't do much to stop cheaters, either. Everyone lost.

 

[ScarletDevil]

What a fun game

 

[klab]

View attachment 9055276
What a fun game

The real reason these retarded pissbaby games are unplayable.

Also topical:

 

[Breahna]

It's entirely possible that all of these people are lying and secretly cheaters, but its far more likely that Vanguard is a piece of shit.

For what it's worth I tried to install it once to play with my younger brother, Vanguard doesn't let me play because I use Windows AME. Not entirely sure what Windows AME does that they hate so much but...

 

[gambling fetish]

Yet again valorant commits PR self immolation, for no fucking reason. This is will never intentionally brick someone's PC, but no one likes hearing that a anti-cheat could fuck with they're computer

 

[Kuok]

Invasive, proprietary software isn't a good thing, so I limit my exposure to it. But I also prefer not to 3rd-party other people's decision to interact with it. You should know what you're getting into when you install something like Vanguard. You should know what you're getting into when you install any piece of software. It doesn't matter who the software is from.

It is true that no one should install games that require kernel access to run, unless you accept the risks that come with it. In general terms this means partial or complete data loss, unauthorised access to your computer and data, and with potentially even damage to hardware.

On the other hand it's reasonable to assume that a company acts according to law. I doubt Riot will be taken to court anywhere because gaming companies never do, but in a number of countries where they operate this is straight-up illegal (because or especially due to there being intent).

 

[klab]

On the other hand it's reasonable to assume that a company acts according to law. I doubt Riot will be taken to court anywhere because gaming companies never do, but in a number of countries where they operate this is straight-up illegal.

What is? Who's taking Riot to court over what? There's no damage to speak of.

Yet again valorant commits PR self immolation, for no fucking reason. This is will never intentionally brick someone's PC, but no one likes hearing that a anti-cheat could fuck with they're computer

That test was back in April 2020. Not now.
Multiplayer gaming and AC, in general, operate within an ecosystem. You can find many species in this ecosystem. There's no smoke, and there's no fire beyond Vanguard being the vaporware it has been for 6 years (notably no security breach in that time, not that there won't be one in the future).

 

[Kuok]

What is? Who's taking Riot to court over what? There's no damage to speak of.

The sole act of intentionally preventing access to one's OS requiring a repair is damage enough in some legislations, and in others if there is provable data loss from a required repair then that counts. In some cases this may be a criminal act, so the one taking Riot to court would be the state.

In the UK the legislation being broken would be the Computer Misuse Act. In the EU countries it is illegal system interference when done with intent. If there is concrete damage then even in the US we might be looking at the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. These being the examples I could think of. I'm sure other countries some equivalent legislation.

The EULA isn't enough to waive the customers' legal protections.

 

[klab]

The sole act of intentionally preventing access to one's OS requiring a repair is damage enough in some legislations, and in others if there is data loss then that counts. In some cases this may be a criminal act, so the one taking Riot to court would be the state.

In the UK the legislation being broken would be the Computer Misuse Act. In the EU countries it is illegal system interference when done with intent. If there is concrete damage then even in the US we might be looking at the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. There being the examples I could think of. I'm sure other countries some equivalent legislation.

No repair is required as no damage was done. If you don't want the OS to enforce memory stability and security, you can disable IOMMU yourself.

 

[Kuok]

No repair is required as no damage was done. If you don't want the OS to enforce memory stability and security, you can disable IOMMU yourself.

If the OS has to be reinstalled (I assume this to be the case based on comments) to restore functionality then that is soft-bricking requiring repair, and Riot has indicated through their messaging that this is intended behaviour from the software (malware).

 

[klab]

If the OS has to be reinstalled (I assume this to be the case based on comments) to restore functionality then that is soft-bricking requiring repair, and Riot has indicated through their messaging that this is intended behaviour from the software.

The "functionality" is a device accessing memory it isn't allowed to. It's more so that Riot fixed Microsoft's fuckup by patching a security flaw.
You can still disable IOMMU/VT-d/AMD-Vi to use a DMA device as intended. Also, the change Vanguard made was software-based, so it can probably be undone with software as well. A few messages by users on the cheat forum indicated this.
But can you be more specific about what the damage is, who's responsible, and how it would hold up in court?
I don't know how to express how little the past 20 pages of this thread amount to. None of what happened has anything to do with Vanguard being vaporware.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segmentation_fault "Fault" and "failure" are used more specifically in computing. They don't imply lasting or physical damage. A segment fault is an access violation. DMA is performed with a hardware device, but memory protection is still involved.