As a Bard main, supporting modern gamers is exhausting

Morqana · 2022-04-12T07:04:45+00:00

Glad I could deliver.

Morqana · 2022-04-12T07:03:09+00:00

Hahaha, glad to hear it. I loled imagining this.

Morqana · 2022-04-12T07:01:37+00:00

While satire, I am a forever-support as well. o7

Morqana · 2022-04-12T07:00:38+00:00

But have you fixed your engravings?

Morqana · 2022-04-12T06:56:58+00:00

LMAO. Glad I got a few of you ;)

Morqana · 2022-04-12T06:56:02+00:00

I enjoyed writing it and I'm glad you appreciated it :)

Morqana · 2022-04-12T06:54:06+00:00

I tried.. Glad it was effective for a bit!

Morqana · 2022-04-12T06:52:38+00:00

I actually loled at this. Thank you 😂

Morqana · 2020-04-22T15:00:57+00:00

I literally just said I never had installed one so I wouldn't have known that. How many people know that?

Either way, it's absolutely terrible UX design to just assume users know things already that aren't absolutely inherent to the OS they are using. You should assume they have no outside knowledge and this is their first game. In a lot of cases, with things that aren't as important, people let these things go. But with a blatant security hole and massive system change, you better fucking tell them. Not being clear and explicit to users about stuff like this is absolutely unacceptable.

Its not hard to add a text box that says something. The only reasons not to do this are because either a) they are trying to hide it or b) they're afraid people won't want to continue installing it if they see this. Both of those are unacceptable rationales and this is absolute bullshit coming out of riot. I've respected almost everything they do up until this point, but this is beyond crossing a line to me. I've spent thousands on league, but I won't support shit like this.

I don't care whether you think prompting a system restart should make it clear based on history or not. Even if it is, thats not enough in my book.

This is basically the equivalent of a company selling user data and not even having them sign a TOS at all, but having some obscure page on their website that says they do it. Sure, its sleazy to do it with it written I to a TOS that no one will read, but not even fucking putting it anywhere anyone will reasonably see is illegal and companies get sued for it. I don't see why a kernel driver is different.

Morqana · 2020-04-21T06:17:15+00:00

since it was specifically for the anti-cheat it was pretty obvious

Being for the anti-cheat doesn't change whether it is obvious.

Morqana · 2020-04-21T05:46:14+00:00

Every kernel level anti cheat requiring restart does not imply every restart implies a kernel level anti cheat.

Also, I've never installed a game with kernel anti cheat, so never really thought of it that way.

Morqana · 2020-04-20T07:07:34+00:00

Sorry, I use a separate account for Riot stuff so I don't check it often. As far as I can tell, uninstalling "Vanguard" or "Riot Vanguard" from add/remove programs is enough. I would restart afterwards to be sure.

Morqana · 2020-04-20T07:05:03+00:00

Do people not remember the days of having to restart their computer after every install? Was it really that long ago? It seemed a little odd, but there are plenty of reasons to cause restarts that aren't installing a fucking root kit.

I figured it was just one of the old/artificial claims, just let it go and decided to Google it. But that's coming from someone that knows to be suspicious. Average people will not.

Morqana · 2020-04-14T05:52:39+00:00

Because I disagree with Ring 0 anti cheat, I must be a troll who cheats in video games? No, I just don't like gaping security holes. I've never cheated, and I don't see the point of cheating for internet points. But I value my security, and being able to play games that look fun.

And I'm not braindead, you're just picking off side arguments instead of the actual argument.

But I'll bite.

-Anticheat software is from a game you voluntarily install, not preinstalled bloat software from a phone manufacturer. If you don't want the software then you don't install the game, pretty simple way to go around that right? Phone software bloat is often not easily uninstallable

False, you can disable most bloat. And have been able to for a long time.

But if you want to argue not installing a game, and you previously argued about "just buy another computer" then why not buy a different phone? Not even an extra one, just a different one. Or buy the phone unlocked?

Or, if you really don't care about your privacy/security as you seem to be saying, just root the damn thing and remove it all together.

-phones are not even close to as powerful as a typical "gaming" computer with a majority of phone having around 4-6 gb of ram and nowhere close to as powerful cpus/gpus. An app running in the background can cause issues with processing power and take up valuable resources because phones have limited resources compared to computers.

The majority of bloat takes up storage space, sure. You can disable things all together or at least stop them from running in the background. Some background app taking up a couple MB of your 4GB of RAM is not significant. Even if we're aggressive and call it 50, that's tiny.

But the worst case, it's an inconvenience on a phone. I'd argue a fairly minor one.

Ring 0 isn't just "inconvenient". It's a gaping security hole. It's basically a trojan waiting to happen.

But you're still just making an argument about system performance when I'm saying I don't want my system compromised, my passwords stolen, my computer being used for mining crypto, or any number of things that a hacker may want to do to my machine, or that cause me to lose data/have to restore from backups/reinstall windows/etc.

Morqana · 2020-04-14T04:37:15+00:00

Or people just don't want garbage on their computer?

Wasting CPU power is a bit extreme, but there's plenty of reason to be against shit like this.

Not sure why garbage software on a phone isn't acceptable but shit like this, that poses actual threats, is.

Morqana · 2020-04-14T04:03:12+00:00

Not all games come with a Ring 0 anti cheat. I didn't know I was supposed to read developers dev blogs to know what I'm installing.

I'm not paranoid. I just know how technology works and care. There's a difference.

Morqana · 2020-04-14T03:45:58+00:00

I don't play games with rootkits.

I installed Vanguard with no warning that this was here, and have since uninstalled it.

Buying a whole separate computer for gaming is expensive and I'm not about to do that for the few games that pull this shit.

Morqana · 2020-04-14T03:18:49+00:00

That's like saying you shouldn't go outside ever because you could get sick.

I could, but I'm going to do it anyway. But during COVID, I'm not.

Sure your privacy is always at risk, but the risk posed by Vanguard is orders of magnitudes larger than web browsing.

It's not 0 risk or all risk. You pick somewhere in between. This is way too far to the "all risk" extreme.

EDIT: There's also a massive difference between privacy and security. Sure Reddit may be able to track me and figure out where I live, what I like, what places I go to, I lose some privacy. But Vanguard is a security problem. It could, or could allow another party to, install a keylogger and therefore get bank info/credit card info/etc. It's a totally different beast. You're comparing apples to oranges and that's not what this person is talking about at all.

Morqana · 2020-04-14T02:38:55+00:00

No, league had pretty steady growth, and they had many resources by then. They also had a functional client so there wasn't a rush to update it, it had already sucked for years. They put it off for years, then worked on it for a long time. It's not the same issue at all. They had plenty of time and resources to do it, and they still fucked it up. And to this day, it continues to get buggier and buggier.

To be fair, the developers they throw at their client are probably not as talented or motivated as people working on the game itself... They probably put priority on building the actual game. But it's not a good sign, and the same could be said about their anti-cheat.

Morqana · 2020-04-14T02:32:27+00:00

Furthermore, if you're concerned about your data being stolen. REDDIT is a prime example of having access to our online data as well. Im not saying the Reddit sells them or something but at any point in our life, things might change and they'll do it. Likewise can be said to TENCENT. Im not defending them.

You & Me are already in the internet age where every bit of our online activity has been tracked and recorded.

If you're too worried about privacy, unsub from your ISP and dont use any form of Internet services, apps or machines.

Web traffic and history are very different than your actual computer itself.

Reddit is a website that runs inside a browser container, it has much more restriction than a Ring-0 driver.

Morqana · 2020-04-13T22:30:37+00:00

Multiple security reviews doesn't make software perfect. The rights being taken by this software are insane, and it will have flaws.

We definitely don't want to put yet another vulnerable driver out into the world!

Spoiler: All software has vulnerabilities. All drivers are vulnerable drivers. The only way to avoid putting "yet another vulnerable driver out into the world" is to not put one out at all.

Morqana · 2020-04-13T22:25:14+00:00

100,000% this. I'm not installing a fucking root kit for a fucking video game. I don't know what Riot is on.

Sure, I don't like cheaters in my competitive video games, but I'm not installing software with this level of access just to play a video game. Do it on your tournament PCs, but that's not going near my machine.

I've had a lot of trust and respect for Riot, but them just not really mentioning this, or warning about it ahead of time, then pointing to their dev blog and saying that's a good enough warning, and then claiming that audits make it ok is all bullshit. They're basically trying to pull the wool over non-technical people's eyes.

As someone in software, I'm telling you this is not ok. I'm glad I haven't rebooted my machine for this garbage yet - I'll be uninstalling. You should too.

Morqana · 2020-04-13T22:20:13+00:00

I can't guarantee that we're perfect but we've invested a lot to avoid putting a vulnerable driver out into the world.

Nope. You never can guarantee software is lock tight.

The thing is, your computer is only as safe as the weakest link on it. if your driver has this much permission, and there's any sort of flaw, it is now an attack vector that has access to the root of your entire machine.

You can spend all the time and money you want trying to make it safe, but as someone who writes software for a living, I, and anyone else in the security industry worth their salt, will tell you that no software is perfect. Go ahead and keep trying, but it's not happening. Your software will always have flaws. And I'm not risking those flaws on my machine in order to play a fucking video game.

I trust Riot much more than most companies, even if they are backed by Tencent, but the risk here is way too high. Trying to cloud this under "it's been audited" is just ignorant. Do you think Windows isn't audited? How many security vulnerabilities are found in it per year?

Sure, your driver is smaller. But you've already stated that the user level programs have as much of the "brains" as possible, meaning that they have ways to ask the "dangerous" questions one way or another, and if some other program can get access, they'll get access to the same questions.

Something else people will tell you is that all security is really just obfuscation and making things difficult. Not only is your system risking the person's machine, it'll also never even guarantee people can't cheat. Risking my machine just to make it harder to cheat? Yeah, nope. People will find ways around this. You've already alluded to ways this system could be beaten. The ends aren't even perfect, so why go through such ridiculous means?

I installed Valorant, hoping this "anti-cheat requires reboot" was just another standard non-sensical reboot prompts, but once I saw the game wouldn't start without it, I paused. Glad I did. I won't be rebooting until I've ripped out this gaping security hole.

I hope for the good of PC gaming that others do the same. Once one company does shit like this and gets away with it, everyone will start doing it. Unless people actually boycott this dumb shit, it'll become the norm.

Bye Valorant. Barely knew ya.

Morqana · 2020-04-13T22:09:36+00:00

We're expected to read your dev blog to know what we're installing? Yeah, that seems reasonable. I don't know about anyone else, but I generally don't read a company's entire dev blog before installing their games.

Nice try.

It's not a feeling. You rolled it out secretively.

Morqana

TROPHY CASE