Now if only they could more clearly communicate when games are playable offline.
I wonder if you phrased it the way the Play store does: This game wants permission to:
- send SMS messages
- make calls
- know your location
- stalk your family
- raid your fridge
- access, read and upload files
- manage and add contacts
- cup your balls
- go through your trash
- irritate your boss
etc.
Think anyone would install them?
i dONt hAVe anYThinG To HIdE
Anyone who says that while wearing pants is a filthy liar.
I mean it’s also pretty cold without pants.
Cup my balls? Go on…
of course, people don’t even look at play store permissions
I suppose they do suffer from the “Known in the state of Cancer to cause California” problem. A bubble level app wants in-app purchases and GPS access.
However, it’s only being forced for kernel-level anti-cheat. If it’s only client-side or server-side, it’s optional, but Valve say “we generally think that any game that makes use of anti-cheat technology would benefit from letting players know”.
I will always love Valve for their ability to use corpospeak against corpos.
Your game has anti-cheat?
Wonderful!
I’m sure that always only results in an improved experience for all gamers, lets let them all know!
=D
How does vac play into all of this then …
Edit: I was talking about them labeling vac games as being anti cheat… And wondering if they were going to pull some double standard… I didn’t know they label them already and still don’t know if they do…
Ooh and it’s a giant yellow banner you probably won’t miss, and not some two-shades-ligher-than-the-background nonsense.
Good job, Valve.
They do this with Early Access and people still lose their shit about empty content and unfinished graphics in a game they paid $10 for.
If only they let you filter out games from being seen on your store page or showing up in recommendations using this as a criteria.
Gamers don’t care
If Valve was against this then they would block them from their store. This is avoiding legal consequences
“”“gamers”“” aren’t a monolith
Some people clearly care bc they are currently discussing it
Well to be fair, we’re like 1% of all gamers. Most gamers don’t give a flying fuck and will gladly buy these products anyway. So the companies don’t really have much incentive to give a shit.
That’s why it’s a big disturbing banner where most gamers don’t understand the text but know that big disturbing banner is bad. Will it affect the sales? Not at all. But it will raise the problem(mostly Linux anticheat) to the higher standing people in the gaming companies than before because now they require those top level managers to make a decision is it big disturbing banner or Linux anticheat.
I highly doubt this will do anything at all to sales. But I’m just guessing. Maybe it will. Hopefully! But I still applaud the change by Valve. I think it’s great.
I don’t think the point is to do anything on sales. Valve profit from sales. It’s to raise the problem so now the managers have to decide on a scale how much they abuse the players. Before it wasn’t even a problem, now it’s Valve: “maybe you shouldn’t wink wink”
“””gamers””” aren’t a monolith
That’s why some people discussing it aren’t going to do anything to dissuade the practice
Games have been buried in negative reviews for less. We can’t tell in advance.
But implying you know, and can speak for all people who play games is just bafflingly ignorant and conceited.
Any program having kernel level access is spyware. This is getting ridiculous.
Vanguard anticheat…
I feel like they’re doing this because they are going so hard with steam deck. Regardless, good on Valve for doing this.
Easy Anti Cheat - requires manual removal
Wait, so this sketchy, privacy-invading stuff remains even after a game is uninstalled?! I had no idea.
How is this stuff not classed as malware at this point?
Oh it was initially classed as insanely intrusive malware when kernel level AC was introduced about a decade ago, by anyone with a modicum of actual technical knowledge about computers.
Unfortunately, a whole lot of corpo shills ran propaganda explaining how actually its fine, don’t worry, its actually the best way to stop cheaters!
Then the vast, vast majority of idiot gamers believed that, or threw their hands up and went oh well its the new norm, trying to fight it is futile and actually if you are against this that means you are some kind of paranoid privacy freak who hates other people having fun.
That’s awesome! GTA V just screwed everyone on Linux! What a rug pull.
Adding kernel malware after the fact should entitle every single owner who requests one to a full refund no matter how long has passed.
Probably a pessimistic take, but I don’t expect this to have any discernable impact on sales, or any other effects that would discourage publishers from these practices. The average user doesn’t care about or understand how these things work; they’ll see an anti-cheat warning on the store page and think “Okay, tell the colonel I’ll be on my best behavior then” and continue to buy the game.
It will benefit those that care and won’t negatively impact the experience for those that don’t.
Win, win.
