Valve Restricts Accounts of 2500 Users Who Marked a Negative Game Review Useful

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/04/14/175246/valve-restricts-accounts-of-2500-users-who-marked-a-negative-game-review-useful

by rurban • 3 years ago

669 343 3 years ago

tech.slashdot.org

Overtonwindow• 3 years ago

This reminds me of a similar incident with the Apple App Store, there were so many negative reviews that rather than Apple forcing the developer to fix the issue, they just deleted all the negative reviews.

I agree with the author, this makes the entire Valve review system pointless.

ncr1002• 3 years ago

the entire Valve review system pointless

... also involves what is currently happening now, the Developer is reaching out to Valve to investigate the apparent mistake by the Moderator.

The system is still working on it.

Question I have is, why does the system allow banning 2500 people so easily? without auditing?

tomovo• 3 years ago

Not banned. Restricted from up- and downvoting for 30 days.

theGeatZhopa2• 3 years ago

May be it was fixed and then the thousands of negative reviews would be to much of a negative impact of/on a fixed product so thus have been removed?

Beldin• 3 years ago

Basically: "Let's hide history over this egregiously bad thing because it's in the past"...

In what universe is that an acceptable reason?

IIAOPSW• 3 years ago

To play devils advocate, I'm sure the far more common case at Apple when thousands of negative reviews roll in very quickly is that some unscrupulous competitor paid a bot farm to knee cap them. Normally the anomaly detection goes off and the fake reviews are filtered.

On very rare occasion, someone somewhere will get a message from a Nigerian prince which they dismiss as spam because it looked just like all those other cases which were in fact spam. oops.

asdfman1232• 3 years ago

I no longer buy Amazon products based on the rating. I buy based on the rating of the rating using Fakespot.

Everything is 4.5ish stars, and the worse products have more fake reviews to get there.

pasc18782• 3 years ago

I do use the Amazon ratings.

I look at the one star ones. If their complaints look reasonable and consistent then I know it is crap.

The only reviews to trust are from consumer reports and which? Who buy things retail and not free from the manufactures and they have been doing this for 60 years. Even then Read the reviews carefully and the user comments.

tmikaeld• 3 years ago

Feels very dangerous to install extensions that have full access to the contents of every site visited..

z_open• 3 years ago

I wish steam didn't have an effective monopoly on PC video game distribution. It was basically forced on us when CS 1.6 required it. But people will choose the option even slightly more convenient for them against ethical costs.

I frequently see people here justifying chrome over Firefox due to a really small feature relative to maintaining a healthier web.

FredPret2• 3 years ago

Devil’s advocate:

Is it always unethical to buy something supplied by a monopoly?

Is convenience an ethical good, especially convenience delivered on a mass scale?

akira2501• 3 years ago

Is it always unethical to buy something supplied by a monopoly?

Never, it's just unethical to operate one.

Is convenience an ethical good

I feel like this could only be true if your life was in actual danger when lacking that convenience. This is possibly the wrong question anyways, I'd ask if the externalized costs of that convenience are small enough to justify the imputed good of the service.

Which is why we can tolerate natural monopolies where collective safety is involved, such as electrical distribution, but shouldn't where it isn't, such as video game distribution.

especially convenience delivered on a mass scale?

What special ethical properties does this provide?

ttoinou• 3 years ago

   It was basically forced on us when CS 1.6 required it.

Huh, they're the one who developed this video game in the first place

ownagefool• 3 years ago

CS was a half life mod that valve bought, so it's half-true.

Reality is almost everyone abandoned PC gaming for a decade+ in favour of consoles.

Valve and steam were the only real player, which is why they're in the position they're in.

I took an shining to GOG, but the the Linux situation just reaffirmed how I buy my games.

pjmlp2• 3 years ago

There is always the Windows Store and XBox games, or plain old physical boxes.

I never used Steam, nor plan to.

There isn't time to play everything.

iforgotpassword3• 3 years ago

or plain old physical boxes

Not anymore. Or hardly anymore. Often these contain a barely working game if at all, but might even just contain a download code for steam, origin etc.

And then there are a lot of games that release exclusively on steam. Oxygen not included comes to mind.

flohofwoe3• 3 years ago

Did they finally fix the problem on Windows Store that large game downloads simply don't work? I actually thought they just gave up when the Microsoft 1st party games started showing up on Steam.

jimbob45• 3 years ago

Is your history off or was I always misguided? I thought Steam effectively launched such HL2 which included the release of CSS. CSS is what required it rather than 1.6, no?

twostorytower• 3 years ago

CS 1.6 definitely required it. 1.5 was the last version of CS on WON. It was the flagship game to have Steam for until Half-Life 2. And yes, CS:S also required it.

skhr0680• 3 years ago

CS 1.6 required Steam and was released together with Steam 1.0. You could say that it was a soft launch to get Steam ready for HL2 one year later.

EtienneK2• 3 years ago

Once the ActiBlizz Microsoft sale goes through, then there will be a huge reason to switch to the Xbox / MS store: Gamepass.

Hamuko2• 3 years ago

I don't like renting my games. One of the nicest things about Steam is that I can still download and play the games I bought 17 years ago.

Also, if I need to choose my monopoly, I'll take Valve over Microsoft.

poopooracoocoo• 3 years ago

Why does the acquisition need to go through for Activision-Blizzard's titles to be on Xbox Game Pass?

mrfinn2• 3 years ago

GOG is the way to go. Enough with the DRM BS. Is not only about ethical costs, all that people that invested thousands creating a huge library better pray Valve doesn't get into any trouble... or they get into any trouble with Valve. Buying and in the end, not owning anything doesn't look like buying at all!.

PS. I'm not angry with Valve because they use DRM in their platform, I'm angry with Valve because they don't give publishers the option to distribute their games using an offline, DRM free installer.

Hamuko2• 3 years ago

I thought that it was possible to have DRM-free games on Steam?

https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_big_list_of_DRM-free_g...

worldsayshi• 3 years ago

because they don't give publishers the option to distribute their games using an offline, DRM free installer.

What does this mean? You can still publish your game through other channels if you publish through steam right? I mean there are games that are on Steam and other platforms.

Avamander4• 3 years ago

The platform that didn't/doesn't bother with a Linux client? Why should I bother?

DRW_2• 3 years ago

I'm angry with Valve because they don't give publishers the option to distribute their games using an offline, DRM free installer.

Yes they do. There are plenty of DRM free games on Steam. DRM is optional on Steam.

AnIdiotOnTheNet2• 3 years ago

This is just false. As sibling comment mentioned Valve doesn't do third party exclusivity, but also the Steam DRM is completely optional and there are many games for which Steam just acts as a downloader and automatic update system. You can just copy these games' folder to another PC and run them without issue.

bogwog2• 3 years ago

This seems like an extreme niche. What is the benefit of offline installers? Doomsday prepping? Because it’s certainly not more convenient than what Steam does, and Steam doesn’t require an internet connection to play games.

mehlmao4• 3 years ago

GOG used to be my first choice for buying games, but I stopped making purchases from them after they delisted a Taiwanese game dev for making a joke about Xi Jinping: https://www.pcgamer.com/devotion-returns-almost-two-years-af...

kzrdude• 3 years ago

Then steam is the most well behaved monopoly I know. They care about Linux.

_cenw2• 3 years ago

They care about whatever Valve employees are interested in / is perceived as creating most value (not always the same as creating most value). Valve has a system of weighted peer feedback (impacting salary and sometimes continued employment) that encourages follow-the-leader mentality despite their supposedly open culture.

People Make Games made an enlightening documentary on the Valve model and where it fails: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9aCwCKgkLo

Though if you need an example: Steam still doesn't have M1 binaries. Steam uses about 15 variants of UI framework, and some of it simply doesn't work on some platforms. Steam also took record time shipping an x86_64 (over x86) binary back in the day. Everything that's not the shiny current thing receives life support at most.

iaml• 3 years ago

They care about linux because they fear(ed) ms pulling the plug on their platform.

ChuckNorris893• 3 years ago

They care about Linux.

They care about making money. Their investments in Linux are their future insurance policy from Microsoft, as unlike Sony or Nintendo, Valve only own the storefront but not the platform on which their games would run, and with Windows being their biggest customer platform, makes their survival completely dependent on the mercy of Microsoft and the potential dystopian scenario where, for example, on Windows 12, 13 or 14 you'll only be able to install apps through the official Microsoft store.

Linux compatibility was their only ticket out. It's purely a business decision, not a benevolent one.

Not knocking them for it, but it's good to keep in mind the reality and not blindly worship a for-profit corporation.

sireat• 3 years ago

Linux is a complement to Valve:

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/

"Commoditize your complements."

In general you open source / lower price (to free if possible) your complements.

Pretty much all companies do this.

paoda2• 3 years ago

While I can appreciate their dedication to Linux, I find their application process arbitrary and random, if not confusingly prejudiced towards certain types of games.

It's honestly a dice roll whether a visual novel will be accepted or rejected from Steam. Whatever reason used will weirdly not apply for titles already released and even titles that will apply after you. It doesn't matter if youre an indie game dev or Square Enix publishing a game set in the same universe as the widely loved Steins;Gate. You're still subject for a ban and for what really? Square Enix at least has the ability to talk behind the scenes to have the game approved.

This all matters so much because visual novels are already a niche. If you want to turn a profit you must sell on steam. This means that in response to an imprecise, contradictory policy it's in your best interest to self-censor as much as you can because you can not afford to have your game rejected.

ScoobleDoodle• 3 years ago

Steam doesn’t have a strict monopoly, but it is the most known and used.

Steam takes a 30% cut of all sales. If a game sells over $10 million then the cut is reduced to 25%

There is Epic Game Store: maker of Fortnite and Unreal Engine which also gives away 1 or 2 free games a week. It takes a 12% cut from developers selling through their store. Tencent, which has close ties to CCP, owns ~40% of Epic.

GOG “good old gamestore”owned by CD Projekt Red, the developers of the Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077. Takes a 30% cut from sales. Also advocates for games without DRM.

Ralfp• 3 years ago

GOG and Red are sister subsidiaries of CD Projekt company which itself does game publishing, distribution and localization.

SXX5• 3 years ago

EGS also dont have any proper user reviews to begin with. Its by design since Epic Games dont want even give players option to affect game sales. For instance compare how terrible broken The Last of Us Part 1 looks on Steam and EGS:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1888930/The_Last_of_Us_Pa...

Reviews are mixed above and a lot of negative reviews from players below.

https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/the-last-of-us-part-1

Some 3.8 star rating above and tons of praise from press below.

PS: As game developer I think competition is good. But as gamer I personally not gonna use Tencent/CCP Game Store since it's intentionally customer-hostile. This is not Steam competitor I want to support.

tstrimple2• 3 years ago

I used to care about this shit, but I don't any more. The experience with Steam is just that much more superior. Cloud saves that allow me to pick up my PC gaming session on my Steam Deck or MBP is something no other platform offers on the scale that Steam does. If I could buy a game on GOG or Steam, I will choose Steam every single time because of the platform benefits unless the GOG game allows a Steam redemption. To me this is the same argument as streaming video content. Steam offers enough content that I don't need to seek other services to supplement my gaming needs. This is very different from the video streaming services where content is so siloed into proprietary buckets.

ivanmontillam• 3 years ago

But people will choose the option even slightly more convenient for them against ethical costs.

Such is human nature. It actually takes mental effort/mind wrestling to justify for ourselves the healthier, less attractive choice.

Same is for our bodies and healthy foods, against something like a chocolate cake or pizza.

I wish steam didn't have an effective monopoly on PC video game distribution.

Back on topic, any other dominant actor in the market could have been the one affected by this moderation misjudgement. Let's suppose Origin was this dominant actor and this faux pas happened to them. This post would have been about Origin.

Note: I chose to say "dominant actor" instead of "effective monopolist" because other market actors are present, even if much less powerful.

pipes• 3 years ago

I use gog.com, come to think of it it's the only thing I have any sort of brand loyalty for. They seem to genuinely care. I use steam if it's not on gog though.

spockz• 3 years ago

But why? All the other launchers I have used are worse. Especially the EA launcher. It has been rewritten multiple times. When patching games it somehow requires a huge amount of extra disk space on top of installed game + 2*patch size.

So if they are the best, why shouldn’t have the largest market share?

snickerbockers• 3 years ago

Steam isn't anywhere near a monopoly lol.

WastingMyTime892• 3 years ago

Effective monopoly on PC game distribution?

They are competing with Epic, CD Project, Microsoft, Apple on macOS plus all the editors store and physical media. They are dominant but very far from being a monopoly.

Ekaros2• 3 years ago

Steam is possibly one of the least worse monopolies that have existed. It doesn't block the products from being sold on other platforms, takes care of quite a lot for those who use it.

I think it is lesser evil compared to having dozens of stores and accounts to manage with some of them dying and taking the products down with them. If you were to play range of titles you could possibly end up with quite many clients running in background, just for that having single big player is positive.

em-bee2• 3 years ago

Steam is possibly one of the least worse monopolies that have existed

and it invests into wine development to make windows games run on linux.

bogwog2• 3 years ago

Steam is possibly one of the least worse monopolies that have existed. It doesn't block the products from being sold on other platforms, takes care of quite a lot for those who use it.

They do require that the price of your game on Steam be equivalent or lower than the price outside of it. That’s very anticompetitive, and IMO should be illegal as it doesn’t do anything but harm consumers.

Bran_son• 3 years ago

lesser evil compared to having dozens of stores

Realistically, the alternative without Steam would not be dozens of stores, but (eventually) 2-3 stores, that would all behave much worse than Steam.

Avamander4• 3 years ago

It doesn't. There are so many launchers and ways of distribution and I loathe it. I don't want all this bloatware to get what I paid for.

Plus unlike Electronic Arts, Valve doesn't delete games I've bought from my library.

flohofwoe3• 3 years ago

didn't have an effective monopoly on PC video game distribution

And yet the PC is the only platform left where the user even has a choice in the matter.

matheusmoreira13• 3 years ago

Monopolies and DRM is always bad but I still appreciate the fact Steam is the least bad implementation of such evil I've ever seen. Other DRM platforms are infinitely worse.

Also, Steam provides a good service. There's a reason people don't remember the old days where you had to download and apply several 500 MB incremental patches on unreliable connections just to play an online game.

LegitShady• 3 years ago

steam doesn't have a monopoly on pc video game distribution. There are many other services - GoG, epic, microsoft, etc. Steam is just the best of those services, by a long shot, and was far earlier and is better in almost all respects.

still_grokking3• 3 years ago

To be honest Steam was one of the best working monopolies out of the perspective of end-users.

All you needed once to play games on Linux was Steam.

Now we have a few more relevant competing game stores and you need a whole bunch of awful launchers.

I'm not saying the monopoly was a great thing for publishers though! That's a completely different story.

But for end-users it was "the one and only app store for games you ever need". This was even better than mostly everything else regarding Linux software. Steam was once like Napster. You've just got everything there. No we have the same situation like with the dozens of movie streaming providers: If you want access to everything you need accounts everywhere. That's a clear step backwards for the consumers.

If only something like Steam or movie streaming could be one globally distributed open service… Than such a "monopoly" would be the greatest thing for customers since Napster.

jeroenhd• 3 years ago

Steam can do with some competition but all their competition is terrible. Chrome's competitors at least work similarly and well enough. Google would have a browser monopoly if all of their competition were as laggy and featureless as Steam's main competitors are.

GOG comes closest to being good but I find their launcher to be quite buggy and slow. Origin, uPlay, Epic Games, those are all terrible in comparison to Steam. The Steam UI is far from amazing, but it's leagues ahead of the competition in terms of usability in my experience.

If you don't like Steam, you can buy your games elsewhere. GOG and Epic exist and together they have most games that aren't Steam exclusives. Xbox Game Pass has some pretty good deals on games too (which includes some PC titles). There are thousands of games to be played without ever having to download Steam if you choose to.

Aeolun• 3 years ago

But people will choose the option even slightly more convenient for them against ethical costs.

I have few, if any, problems with Steam.

ChoGGi3• 3 years ago

It was basically forced on us when CS 1.6 required it.

That'd be CSS, not 1.6.

ThatPlayer2• 3 years ago

CS 1.6 required it when Valve shutdown the WON servers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Opponent_Network

janosdebugs• 3 years ago

Is there any independent confirmation of this? The screenshots in the post are less than informative.

FreakLegion• 3 years ago

The review in question:

AVOID omega double thumbs DOWN

This game installs some random low reputation anti cheat from japan that I have noticed some very strange behaviors from.

First it maintains running even when the game is closed, including tray icons. Also it starts on boot up regardless of boot up settings.

It seems to be sending some packets of data to japan IPs while the game has already been closed.

If you made the mistake of installing this very suspicious application it took me some time to discover all the traces of it on my PC but I believe I have completely removed it.

first uninstall the warlanders game from steam. Check to make sure that C:\Program Files\SentryAntiCheat is gone, not just empty

open a commandline and run C:\Program Files\SentryAntiCheat\setray.exe --unins2 just to make sure

search your whole PC for ses.exe and setray.exe. Delete any traces that occur

Then go here: C:\Users(put your username here)\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Sentry Anti-Cheat Notification.lnk <- delete that

finally I searched quite a bit in the registry and mostly everything in the registry is gone relating to this AC. However there still is an entry so get rid of that

Win+R button

type regedit.exe

then navigate to this section:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\SentryAntiCheat <- right click that and press remove then confirm

(From https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198128363815/recomm..., where they failed to purge it from the page source.)

mcintyre1994• 3 years ago

Based on that I’d guess an algorithm or maybe even person wrongly marked this as instructions for disabling anti-cheat software, without realising that it’s instructions for doing that after removing the game.

rasz2• 3 years ago

Most likely cheap idiot contractors. Looks like whoever is managing moderation sucks at their work or doesnt care.

mananaysiempre2• 3 years ago

These instructions actually look somewhat strange to me: HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\SentryAntiCheat, which is removed at the last step, would normally be the “Add & Remove Programs” list entry, right? Is the poster confused and did they not notice the anticheat in that list? Are the anticheat authors storing bogus data there? This whole thing seems peculiar.

kekebo• 3 years ago

Cannot testify for this case but Bulk Crap Uninstaller[0] is usually a reliable way to fully uninstall tenacious windows programs, including potentially left over files and registry entries.

[0] https://www.bcuninstaller.com/

farkanoid• 3 years ago

I really need to run this on some of the machines at work.

k_sze• 3 years ago

I’m gonna try this to get rid of the McAfee nagger that my laptop came with.

ycombinete• 3 years ago

I have used https://privacy.sexy. I love the idea of it, but always cringe when running a batch file as an administrator from a random website.

matheusmoreira13• 3 years ago

Anti-cheat software is designed to own your machine, take away your control and monitor you. They are indistinguishable from malware. Valve should be taken to task for not only allowing this malicious software in their platform but also for actively distributing it to users.

Thank you for citing this. I favorited it as yet another example to cite whenever the topic comes up.

Seems to be a trend with japanese companies. Check out the wonderful consequences of allowing these corporations access to your computer:

https://github.com/FuzzySecurity/Capcom-Rootkit

https://fuzzysecurity.com/tutorials/28.html

mananaysiempre2• 3 years ago

Money quote: “Essentially, [CAPCOM.SYS] provides ring-0 code execution as a service! Its only function is to take a userland pointer, disable SMEP [thus allowing the kernel to execute from userland-owned pages], execute code at the pointer address and re-enable SMEP.”

xvinci• 3 years ago

I mean, yeah you are right calling those out, but there is a plethora of vulnerable drivers from e.g. mainboard and GPU manufacturers, very often installed by default on new machines.

I would distinguish between an Anti-Cheat actively doing shady stuff (like it seems to be the case here) and companies simply shipping crappy software - because that's too often the case in many areas.

reactordev5• 3 years ago

Especially since Valve already has anti-cheat malware. The reality is that the only way to combat cheating is to stream it to the client but as we've seen with Stadia, it's just not quite there yet. Instead, they turn your machine into an internet-cafe appliance and prevent you from undoing it. To find cheaters, simply look at stats and behavior. You don't need to lock down a PC. You need to lock down your logs server-side.

It's also pretty scary that it's open sourced so more developers can use it. I cringe at having to fight root kits with every game uninstall. I'm a huge fan of games that detect cheaters in subtle ways and direct them to unintended outcomes. Like being stuck in the elevator unable to escape. Or what COD is doing with cheaters, taking away their senses and ability to see people or objectives. Kids will complain it's a bug or what not on the support forums only to expose themselves and get banned.

overthrow• 3 years ago

Does Windows Defender not flag stuff like that as malware and immediately remove it? Seems like it should.

Once upon a time Microsoft wasn't afraid to stand up to corporate-sponsored malware. https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-will-wipe-sonys-root...

I guess that's changed?

baby4• 3 years ago

I think you mean:

software is designed to own your machine, take away your control and monitor you

This is not really a problem with anti cheat

still_grokking3• 3 years ago

Not to mention:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...

dylan6042• 3 years ago

you forgot to mention that tiny little Japanese company that was pretty famous for it's rootkit via audio CDs, Sony

itsTyrion• 3 years ago

I think we can agree Valorant's anticheat Vanguard is kinda intrusive, having a Ring 0 component (tbf: it works).

HOWEVER, it and the user mode component are run on demand.

The issue here is sending data all the time and being balls deep in your Windows install even after removing the game

marcosdumay• 3 years ago

I'm not sure they should refuse to distribute it. But all those things on the comment should be actively disclaimed with high emphasis before you buy the game, and stay available for consultation indefinitely afterwards.

xlii• 3 years ago

all those 2439 people (...) got their accounts restricted for 30 days, during this time none of them can up- or downvote any Steam reviews at all

In my opinion that's rather mild restriction and I'm wondering how come this surfaced with such, IMO limited, impact.

manojlds• 3 years ago

It's a slippery slope.

psd1• 3 years ago

It's mild compared to other punishments, but severe for the action of voting on a review

For me the salient factor is what this is a rare occurrence. If you operate at scale you're going to occasionally do the wrong thing. Is this one wrong incident, or the tip of the iceberg? I don't see any reason to get the pitchforks out just yet.

LelouBil• 3 years ago

I remember seeing on Reddit a while ago that this kind of thing happens in case your account was compromised or fake.

Since the review was removed as spam, if it actually was that would mean there's a good chance of the accounted upcoming it being compromised or fake.

It happened to some other users after a review changed text completely I think.

jeremyjh2• 3 years ago

Because of the chilling effect. Its right there in the article. Plus, people like to see evidence of what a shitty company Valve has become.

bullen• 3 years ago

Has anyone followed the Dark and Darker events yesterday:

The studio got sued and Valve removed their game from Stream a few weeks ago.

They then made a torrent and spread it through discord yesterday.

But discord does not allow torrents to be posted, so now discord redirects to twitter.

When the legal system turns against you, technology used by criminals become the only last resort.

If Elon saw this he would announce the twitter app store in seconds. XD

Asooka• 3 years ago

Downloading via torrents, or specifically breach of copyright, is not a criminal activity in the USA or Europe AFAIK.

maxlin2• 3 years ago

The output from this incident doesn't seem useful for anyone tbh.

-Just deleting the comment isn't right. But it was up for a long time so saying this renders the comment system useless isn't true. Snuffing out speech at inception would be infinitely worse from ethics and pragmatic standpoints.

-"2500 accounts banned" here means just related to that specific game's community, temporarily. Chances are a dozen or fewer of those might have even noticed that trying to contribute to that specific niche forum in normal situation.

-Comments on the anti-cheat seem just FUD. It seems to run like any other anti-cheat, leaving stuff in registry is what almost any software does even after uninstalled. And it doesn't seem to have run unless the games' active besides due to a bug during beta. At worst the "hope they change to a more reputable anti-cheat vendor" kind of talk runs towards a situation where one ("the"?) big vendor's anti-cheat software (which is a rootkit from a permissions standpoint) gets so juicy a target it gets hacked and million gamers get their PC bricked at worst.

If we wanted useful talk on anti-cheat it should first target things like Riot's Vanguard. Other developers don't need their anti-cheat to run as deep which, if something should cause some stress in PC users by default. This also kills Riot's game's accessibility on linux to the cradle, which should not be considered to only to harm Riot's business.

Some also noted it as a negative that the anti-cheat has a tray icon. Developer starts to debate if the software should even have one if it just causes users to FUD themselves instead or increasing feeling of trust and control.

I wonder what would be the right way to handle this without resorting to pointless rigamaroles. Maybe some kind of pre-comment disclaimer from valve administrator to the comment after a short investigation to the anti-cheat solution clearing the FUD (if it was grossly breaking GDPR or such I don't think the game or the company could stay up long)

michaelmrose• 3 years ago

People's computers are used for everything from doing everything from earning money, banking, managing their life, their money, their future. Video games by contrast are about as important as a flea on your dogs ass. It is profoundly weird to put the former at even slight risk for the latter. The fact that we are attempting to normalize this doesn't make it normal or sane.

Running always on software when the game isn't running and talking to resources on the internet is incredibly suspicious. The presence of the tray icon isn't causing users to "FUD" themselves. It is rather making this suspicious behavior—running continually—more obvious. The fact that you seem to think its just ordinary stupidity like leaving crap littered around your filesystem doesn't make it less concerning. People wouldn't be fishing around for traces of it to eliminate like purging a piece of malware if it weren't already acting like malware. If it was initially due to a bug that would be a fine time to communicate with users.

The right way to handle this is to say sorry we screwed up we wont punish people for liking a review in the future. If any aspect of the review is inaccurate the logical response is to have valve or the dev respond to this. If it really really doesn't belong you remove it. There is no scenario where you randomly ban people from reviewing it for voting the wrong way.

if it was grossly breaking GDPR or such I don't think the game or the company could stay up long

How exactly do you propose that would happen? How would people learn their rights are being violated?

Lastly this is your only comment on this site and it seems to be a tad slanted. Do you work for a party involved in this?

maxlin2• 3 years ago

I agree that security on PC's isn't as mature as it should be. There just should not be a case that Riot running a kernel-mode driver -based anticheat just for _their_ games. Hell, I was ready to flame about it not working with virtualization enabled in BIOS as I installed Valorant a few days ago, but it actually does. Still kind of pissed to have to run it in the background (this one actually runs even when not running Riot's games btw, unlike the one in the article!) Though I don't see a situation where one would need to "root" their PC just to run custom software a good situation either.

Running always-on software when the game isn't running and talking to resources on the internet is incredibly suspicious.

From what I read (actually reading a few articles longer than the general observer does while filling their FUD meter) the anticheat simply doesn't run unless the game itself is running. Which makes it comparable to just being a library contained in the game executable, but separate for whatever technical reasons. Note that Vanguard for example isn't as nice.

I did not mention that leaving tons of crap in the filesystem is normal. I mentioned registry which seems to be more prone to spam. As a developer I think there should be some reasonable "scoping" in installs to limit this, leaving it for every developer to do more painstakingly just ends up in the littery situation, which I do not prefer but just mention to be the status quo. Hell, if I was in position to design something on system-level, I would just force apps to declare: -paths it writes to -registry keys it writes to -devices like webcam and other abilities it accesses while at it, like on mobiles This would then be read by installer/uninstaller and user could choose to keep this data or remove it when installing/removing software. Could also prevent writing outside of these as a general rule (unless some dev mode or similar is activated of course)

About the tray icon, my point is that the situation with it ends up being kind of like an armed guard visibly carrying a weapon causing more harm in fear, and the result being them just hiding the weapons, which of course is not a dynamic that should exist. Things being done visibly should be the thing every developer by default would choose but at worst with this dynamic they will feel the need to hide things to avoid the potential FUD. This can cause behavior that is not beneficial to the user but is actually done to alleviate fear. Kind of like disabling developer stuff in games (because user will break their game and complain or some shit) which I have several times successfully argued against.

The right way to handle this is to say sorry we screwed up we wont punish people for liking a review in the future.

Is more useful to think about how this could have been avoided and how this could be avoided in the future. If the deletion wouldn't been done yet, I agree that some kind of joint message could be the best. Maybe in the format:

Probably the reason this ended up in just deletion of the comment is a clusterfuck of inability to communicate or spend time on developer-user-platform owner communications only after something becomes a PR nightmare.

I commented because it is a bit sad that the blame / output of this situation simply isn't constructive (does not cause awareness / pressure for things to actually to go in a better direction).

In a way I see parallels to when Anthem was released and there was shock articles of the game "bricking your ps4!" when I reasonably confidently know the issue was caused just by ps4's bad SDK design which easily causes filesystem-corrupting bugs when doing the simplest of savegames. This then caused a chkdsk-type popup and a crazy dangerous-sounding SFX on the ps4's next boot but didn't seem to cause any actual damage, outside of probably losing the specific savegames from what I collected.

But no constructive discussion in to that direction (how to not design your console OS/SDK) was seen anywhere in relation to that news item.

Lastly this is your only comment on this site and it seems to be a tad slanted. Do you work for a party involved in this?

Fair note, but I do have reason for my tone. No I am not involved. But am a developer with too much free time currently who has worked with multiple kinds of similar stuff so I feel the reason to lament as the discussion around this seems off center.

I tend to be a heavy lurker on sites I frequent, HN being one. I've visited HN probably every day for several years, mostly without an account. But when I write a comment it tends up taking so much focus I avoid internet arguments as a rule. But sometimes I make an exception like now.

frou_dh• 3 years ago

It's seems like an anachronism that Steam games are able to install random junk on your system. Those game installers should be completely standardised and most importantly sandboxed.

Similarly, IMO it feels shoddy when Steam acts as a "launcher for another launcher" when starting a game.

Gigachad• 3 years ago

Problem is that anti cheat essentially is malware and it can’t function as anti cheat inside of a sandbox.

But it would be nice if any single player game was sandboxed.

Certhas• 3 years ago

I haven't seen anyone in these threads propose an alternative to Anti-Cheat. Just not using anti cheat makes popular games unplayable. Everyone has the choice to just not play them but plenty of people do, and accept the trade off of handing control of their PCs to a third party to do so.

vbezhenar• 3 years ago

In the end you're getting full fledged binary which can run anything on your system.

Also I'm not sure if sandboxing on Windows even exists.

pas• 3 years ago

it does, Chrome and Firefox uses it

https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/HEAD/docs/d...

it's not as simple as unshare() for namespaces on Linux, but works pretty well

wongarsu• 3 years ago

In addition to just taking all privileges way from the process, like Chrome does, there's also Sandboxie [1] and the official Windows Sandbox [2]

1: https://github.com/sandboxie-plus/Sandboxie

2: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/threat-pr...

2b: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/threat-pr...

frognumber• 3 years ago

I want complete, end-to-end sandboxes, including for:

- Android apps - Chrome extensions - System apps ... etc.

These should be capable of providing fake data to the app (e.g. simulating no contacts, no working internet, or a fake GPS location), and trying to break out should be an app store ToS violation.

xtat• 3 years ago

Yep - dream device is a phone that runs android+ios under strict supervision

Timshel• 3 years ago

Finally made the switch to run linux by default, there is a nice Flatpak for Steam which works quite well. Not the biggest fan of flatpak but to cleanly isolate steam I'll use it anytime ^^.

Still keeping windows as dual boot but I only switch to play multiplayer but since I run it only occasionnaly I care a bit less which crap get installed.

philistine2• 3 years ago

Let me go up the stack one level: why does Windows allow this kind of software to install at all !? Couldn't most cheating methods be defeated by requiring a signed executable to run, coupled with a complete lock of the input methods to the signed executable running?

I'm at a loss as to why the debate here is on Valve and the devs, when I can't get past the initial step: you can install THAT on Windows?

shrimp_emoji• 3 years ago

Jeez. A walled garden gated by a bureaucratic rubber stamping process (which I'm sure can't scale with the pace of software creation) sounds awful.

Path of lesser resistance: sandbox games. And have weak (serverside)/no anticheat. Cheating in games isn't as big of a deal as malware in your kernel[0,1]. It's just not that important.

0: https://hackaday.com/2022/08/29/genshin-security-impact/

1: https://www.pcgamer.com/doom-eternals-first-update-includes-...

nokya2• 3 years ago

It seems to me that the security mechanisms you described already exist. But Microsoft can't prevent the installation of legitimate anti-cheat software while still letting users install whatever they want to. It is a double-edged sword, one comes with the other. Users who seek this kind of protection (i.e., OS editor telling app makers what they can or cannot do) should drop Microsoft and switch to Apple.

Also, we should not confuse anti-cheat software with malicious software: if you purchase commercial software from an editor who wants to bundle anti-cheat technology in its product, this is not a malicious installation. The security mechanisms you described are aimed at preventing the malicious deployment of code in your system, not the installation of intrusive software on behalf of the consenting user.

matheusmoreira13• 3 years ago

Yeah, just drive the final nail in the coffin of personal computing freedom. Make it so that Microsoft owns your computer instead of you. Windows clearly doesn't suck enough with its advertising and telemetry and forced rebooting, they should just turn it into iOS already. Game companies and their needs are the most important thing in the universe and it's OK to give up our freedoms and control just to play shitty online games with internet randoms.

dagmx2• 3 years ago

Unfortunately, windows doesn’t really have sandboxed processes ubiquitously available.

There is https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/threat-pr...

However it isn’t available in the Home release.

Also unlike macOS or iOS/Android sandboxes, it’s not a process level thing, but rather a VM of some kind.

Plus, if it did introduce sandboxing like macOS, you’d see so many people getting pissed off when their applications start asking for permissions, as can be seen in every single thread that comes up here with regards to macOS.

Personally I think every OS should have sandboxing by default (perhaps as an opt out) because no amount of being cautious as a user is enough to prevent application overreach.

totallyfalse• 3 years ago

This is false. UWP is literally a sandbox. And Windows also supports containerization.

matiasfernandez• 3 years ago

https://www.computerenhance.com/p/why-isnt-there-a-createpro...

make3• 3 years ago

does sandboxing work for things so performance intensive as high end 3d games? (this obviously doesn't apply to low-fi games, including low-fi 3d ones)

LeoPanthera2• 3 years ago

This headline is a bit misleading. "Restricts accounts" just means they can't write reviews, and even then, only for 30 days.

t0bia_s4• 3 years ago

So it's perfectly fine to censor users for limited time just for purpose of rise up sales?

Misleading reviews are basically definition of fraud and wont make game any better.

Nicksil• 3 years ago

just means they can't write reviews

So, restricted.

KomoD• 3 years ago

It's not misleading, restricted is correct

usrusr6• 3 years ago

"Restrict" is a 100% true description of what happened, there isn't the tiniest bit wrong about it. It's just your (our, I was afflicted by it myself) expectation that harsher measures are sugarcoated by deliberately inaccurate PR language. We can't blame the headline for our implicit expectation of incorrectness and neither can we blame the company responsible for a perceived lack of PR lies.

optionalsquid2• 3 years ago

That's the term Valve themselves use when sanctioning accounts:

https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/4F62-35F9-F395-5C...

qwery2• 3 years ago

The user that posted the review had their account returned to normal [0] around the time this was posted.

They were told by Steam support that their "account was locked for promoting or posting malicious content" but the message didn't explicitly mention the review. Their review is still "banned" though. Steam support adds "We've gone ahead and removed the lock. In the future, please make sure you are not spamming or advertising" which makes it sound like it wasn't just the review they had a problem with. But trying to read into support agent messages is like reading tea leaves...

[0] https://steamcommunity.com/app/1675900/discussions/0/6980058...

voytec• 3 years ago

If the review is banned, it seems that the review in question was the reason for ban/lock.

I wouldn't read into "please make sure you are not spamming or advertising". They could write "please make sure you are not harming anyone" and it would not suggest that the user attempted to do so. It's just a trashy, corporate replacement for "we fucked up and we're sorry".

qwery2• 3 years ago

If the review is banned, it seems that the review in question was the reason for ban/lock.\nI wouldn't read into "please make sure you are not spamming or advertising".

Having said that, (that is what I said), the message was convincingly human for a support agent response. They didn't need to use so many words. [+also]

They could write "please make sure you are not harming anyone" and it would not suggest that the user attempted to do so.

It would though, that's why they write things like that. The point is to reinforce that the recipient is/was at fault. They don't talk about specifics. It "makes it sound like it wasn't just the review they had a problem with".

[+also] it didn't say "After careful consideration we've decided to uphold the original decision. We recognise that this may be distressing to you. xoxox YoursTubey"

squarefoot• 3 years ago

Although in a different context (negative reviews backfiring), this brought to mind something happened a while ago.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/03/21/gaming-the-...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Gerstmann

mabbo• 3 years ago

Valve benefits from having lots of people give honest reviews and marking reviews helpful.

But now I'm not going to participate at all, for fear of losing access to all of my games. I'm sure many others will do the same.

I wonder if it was worth it.

usrusr6• 3 years ago

The article is quite clear about nobody losing access to their games. They were blocked from write access to the review system for a while, that's it.

doetoe• 3 years ago

I think the point is that they showed they may sanction you for unpredictable reasons, without justification.

duckqlz• 3 years ago

I don’t think that the anti cheat was doing anything shady. It’s pretty much industry standard to have the anticheat start from the registry and run in the background as a service. While I’m not advocating the general shadiness of anticheat software this doesn’t stand out as a particularly interesting case. Valorant is a great example once installed their anticheat is so pervasive I wouldn’t be surprised if a full OS reinstall didn’t wipe it. Then there is fortnite who advertises to use easy’s anti cheat solution on their splash screen (and they do) but then have multiple obfuscated and hidden running processes made by battleeye. Battle eye not only hides itself from the screen ask manager it also installs as a separate package which doesn’t uninstall with fortnite. I mean the games are free and very fun so it’s hard to be mad. I just heavily segregate my gaming pc from anything else on my network . I never browse the web on it or do anything but game and that makes me feel 1% better about the Orwellian nightmare of spy software sitting within it.

jeremyjh2• 3 years ago

Have you considered using Nvidia Geforce Now? I switched to it when Fortnite became unavailable on Macs and I'll never go back to a physical gaming rig. It works so well, and there are no fans screaming. But not every game is available on it.

xg15• 3 years ago

I think you could sum up the entire discussion about anti-cheat sort of like this: We're currently at a point where game publishers expect to be able to install rootkits on their customers's PCs. This is seen as basically an industry standard security practice and general requirement for publishing.

I think it's not quite unlike the situation with DRM in movies or ads and tracking on the web. In too many parts of tech, hostile behaviour has been normalised as "standard business practices".

nokya2• 3 years ago

The problem I see with anti-cheat technology is that editors are also forcing these rootkits on games that can be played solo (either solo exclusively or multiplayer games with solo campaigns).

While I can fully understand being forced to run anti-cheat technology on my PC to play online games, I find it totally unacceptable and unethical to have this kind of software forced upon me for games I exclusively play solo.

I consider myself lucky to not need to worry at all about the financial cost of my hobby, I value gaming so much that I would even pay double for some of the games I played. But installing a rootkit on my PC is out of the question. Personally, until editors accept to treat their honest customers as honest customers (at least the solo players), I will not behave "honestly" and will keep using "alternative" ways to acquire games.

kmod• 3 years ago

While I'm with you on being against dark patterns and unethical behavior, anti-cheat feels different in that it seems pretty honestly an effort to make the game better for players (the non cheaters, at least). I haven't seen any arguments that anti-cheat is being used in the interests of the company over the user, it's all that people don't like the technology that's required to do this. So I think it's pretty different from DRM which is pretty clearly an interest misalignment.

At the day yes no one likes this software, but people like gaming with cheaters even less. Just like how we don't like being subject to social media moderation, but we dislike spam even more. I think we can't rule out that these companies (in these instances) are trying to give us what we want even if the means are a bit unseemly.

irdc• 3 years ago

I don’t believe that what Valve is doing here, deleting a negative customer review of a good or service for sale, is even allowed under the EU e-Commerce directive.

Edit: sure looks like it: https://www.loganpartners.com/legal-aspects-of-customer-revi...

Xeoncross2• 3 years ago

I've often wondered about escrow for cheat detection.

I'll put $10, $100, $1000 up to enter the player pool at that X level. If someone catches me cheating and can provide evidence via game replays then they can submit it to a group that reviews and then the money is awarded to them.

No bans, if I want to play again then I have to pay again or go back to the public level.

In my experience, it's always the free product/game/saas tiers that have the abuse. Money is a great curb on bad behavior. Not perfect, but drastically reduces the pool of bad actors.

deweller• 3 years ago

This is a great use case for programmable money. A smart contract on a blockchain such as an Ethereum layer 2 chain could handle this openly and verifiably.

WhiteDawn• 3 years ago

Counterstrike through the ages used to be a paid product. After a ban your whole account was locked down, so in a practical sense it used to always have a 20-50 “escrow” fee to join the pool of legitimate players. Even today the cs:go “prime” status does a similar thing.

It doesn’t seem to affect the number of cheaters in any way, if anything it leads to incentives of account stealing and underground exchanges of steam acc/keys.

Personally I feel the cheating issue is more of a side effect of games moving away from dedicated servers with communities and towards global matchmaking. There used to be well run servers that would quickly kick-ban cheating players and have a social construct that incentivizes playing nice to keep access to the good servers.

Not that practical today with all the battle royals and as with any “government” there is abuse and corruption, it wasn’t perfect but I do miss the days of servers that always had a admin online to shutdown cheaters and rules around minimum pings and bare-minimum sportsmanship in the voice chat.

Xeoncross2• 3 years ago

Setting a $500 entry fee would quickly shrink the global pool to about the size of a dedicated server. Not that local server wouldn't still be an option as well if someone (or a group) wanted to run it.

For people that just walk into the game though, I wouldn't mind paying to instantly have a well-curated global community without having to vet each server trying to find the good ones. Again though, for kids with more time I think there is room for both.

ThatPlayer2• 3 years ago

I think the community servers solution wouldn't have scaled up to current markets. Back in the day with smaller userbases you'd have less casual players, more people who would be interested in administrating a server and willing to work for free. Now that gaming is mainstream and everyone does it, not everyone cares as much as people used to back then.

Counter-Strike itself still has community servers as an option. And given the choice between those servers and regular matchmaking, most players prefer the latter. This map hasn't updated in 4 years, but I doubt that has changed: https://teamwork.tf/worldmap/csgo/live

tantalor• 3 years ago

Simpler solution: avoid Windows

ChoGGi3• 3 years ago

Something to keep an eye on for now, but it's Valve afterall.

I think I'll dread the day Gabe steps down.

VLM• 3 years ago

Its 2023 all online reviews are hot garbage.

yarg• 3 years ago

and the game's sales page removed until the claims were investigated by Valve, but this is not a perfect world. However, things didn't end there.

Valve's response has not been ideal, but punishment before investigation isn't any better.

rldjbpin• 3 years ago

feels like people are reading too much into this. it appears to be an oopsie by the ml system filtering for scam posts a la youtube.

it is also possible that the support ticket response is an automated one and not written after manual review.

Valve Restricts Accounts of 2500 Users Who Marked a Negative Game Review Useful

Related Stories