Developers that want to stop cheaters in their Windows games are getting a little additional system-level help from Microsoft via TruePlay, a new API being rolled out through Windows 10's Fall Creators Update.
The feature, which is now documented on the Windows Dev Center, lets developers easily prioritize a game as a protected process, cutting off some of the most common cheating methods by essentially preventing outside programs from looking at or altering the game's memory. TruePlay also "monitor[s] gaming sessions for behaviors and manipulations that are common in cheating scenarios," looking at usage patterns on a system level to find likely cheaters.
[...] Windows users will have to explicitly opt in to TruePlay monitoring through a system setting, which first showed up in preview builds as "Game Monitor" back in June. Users that don't opt in won't be able to play games with TruePlay implemented, though; as the settings page notes, "turning this off may limit the games you can play."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 21 2017, @04:56AM (2 children)
More nonsense that's only possible because Windows is a proprietary piece of trash that no one should ever use. Even if this anti-feature is defeated (and it probably will be), this shows yet again that you should not trust or use proprietary software because the ones who control it do not care about your freedoms at all. If you use software you have no real control over to do your computing, results like this are unsurprising.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 21 2017, @10:21PM
These games otherwise use their own anticheat system driver shit like punkbuster which make the system unstable as utter fuck. This is a concession to that.
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Sunday October 22 2017, @12:27PM
You don't like proprietary software. Ok.
It could indeed lead to, say, more games which resist legitimate modification.
There's a good comparison with games consoles here. On a games console, you have almost no freedom, and generally can't modify games, but the anti-cheat systems are far more effective than on conventional PCs running Windows/Mac/Linux. To the average multiplayer gamer, this has a lot of value.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Virindi on Saturday October 21 2017, @05:11AM (4 children)
The more eyes there are on a DRM system, the more likely it is to be broken. The most secure DRM schemes are often those that only apply to one obscure thing, because there is not enough reward for breaking them.
By consolidating all anti-cheat for every game into a single feature, MS is massively increasing the reward for breaking it. Is MS really this clueless? Perhaps there is another explanation, such as:
-An excuse for more data collection? Do they really need such an excuse? They seem to already collect whatever they want.
-A backdoor for the reintroduction of "Trustworthy Computing"?
-Other?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 21 2017, @12:35PM (1 child)
"Hey game developers, MacOS and SteamOS don't have TruePlay™. You should develop your game only for Microsoft™ Windows™ and Microsoft™ XBox™One™ if you don't want those cheaters to ruin your game."
(Score: 3, Funny) by Gaaark on Saturday October 21 2017, @03:10PM
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by driverless on Tuesday October 24 2017, @08:15AM (1 child)
How clever of Microsoft to have solved the halting problem. Their TruePlay can obviously tell the difference between a game wanting TruePlay protection and malware wanting TruePlay protection. Or, alternatively, AV software wanting to bypass TruePlay and malware wanting to bypass TruePlay.
(Score: 2) by Virindi on Friday October 27 2017, @07:04PM
Silly! Of course the only AV software allowed to do this will be on a big whitelist of Microsoft-approved AV. For your safety.
(Score: 4, Funny) by multixrulz on Saturday October 21 2017, @06:38AM (2 children)
So with all the "progress" Windows has made over the years, it still doesn't have working memory protection?
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Saturday October 21 2017, @07:06AM (1 child)
Admin is almost as good as root. I think the idea here is you can't even get at a protected process with admin privs, you can't debug it, etc. But it is all a joke until they turn on the full trusted computing lockdown. If an app / game wants to prevent the user from examining it, don't let them run it. Give them a thin client and run the parts that need to be secure on hardware the app vendor controls. Pretending they control a Windows PC is doomed. Microsoft is still trying to assert total control and so far only having limited success because the steps (see Apple and iOS) needed would drive away too many existing Windows users. Even more than the spyware is doing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 21 2017, @09:11AM
And people wonder why the internet is as shite as it is...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by deimios on Saturday October 21 2017, @07:24AM (4 children)
Remember back when cheats were incorporated into games for free? Now you buy them with microtransactions and lootboxes. We can't have people enjoying their game for free so the anti-cheat system is a must.
Think of the children, if they can cheat for free they will grow up to be communists or terrorists or $scary_thing_we_wage_war_on_this_week
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 21 2017, @08:03AM (3 children)
Because we want cheats in all our multiplayer games, right? C'mon.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 21 2017, @02:20PM (2 children)
As OP said, yes, it seems we do. We just want people to have to pay for them, and call them microtransactions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 21 2017, @05:58PM
Microtransactions almost never affect multiplayer gameplay or if they do, only allow you to get items you could have gotten by grinding.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 22 2017, @12:01PM
fucking 'loot crates' and daddies credit card are to blame, and the occasional whale
that and curated content. fuck that. dont want their opinions never asked why cant i turn it off. i so wish i could turn off updates to skyrim or fo4 and never have gotten that commercial club or whatever that store is they made so that they can charge people for mods
makes me as angry as i was back in the 'fuck beta' days
i stopped buying ea games after dragon age origins came out. i'd already bought that game before the shenanigans with their dlc became known--charging extra for content already on the install disk, and worse, it was clear that the content they were selling had been cut from the main game--parts of that content questline hadnt been cleaned up in some areas and had been locked away and hidden instead. you could see how the quests were more seamless into the main plot, at least some of it. anyway they decided to charge extra for what had been intended by the game designers to be in the game all along.
that and the spore drm [say what you want about the game, i am speaking of the drm]--those two actions were what convinced me. i already was upset about how they ate and fucked over bullfrog, interplay, shiny, origin systems... ultima 9 turned into a console game for christs sake
but the genie of profitable exploitation is out of the bottle
next we get ads based on oculus eye tracking via adware technologies. i already dont use facebook. i really wanted to buy into vr stuff for the fun of it, but that is just too invasive, eye tracking. if i cant turn that personalized advertising off then they damn well better show me women with the breast sizes i prefer if I have to spend a few hundred bucks for them to learn i am a heterosexual male gamer
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 21 2017, @01:34PM (1 child)
And so the lockdown begins. For now its just games. Next fall it will be something else. DRM is built into the OS that spies on you.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday October 21 2017, @03:15PM
Windows 10's Winter Creators Update pop-up:
"What? You want to retrieve, view and print/email your thesis?
Microtransaction, please.
$10 for the first page, $1 per page after that.
Spank you; spank you very very much.
Spank you over and over again!"
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 21 2017, @02:37PM
It will be harder to sue them afterwards.
(Score: 4, Informative) by crafoo on Saturday October 21 2017, @04:47PM (1 child)
Windows 10 is the equivalent of an outsourced government Citizen Compliance Officer watching over you at all times as you read from the library, do your banking, and engage in day-to-day private business transactions.
I think I may have grossly misjudged how important the open software initiative is and how important it is to have fully documented, open hardware.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Saturday October 21 2017, @09:21PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrksBdWcZgQ [youtube.com]
compiling...
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 21 2017, @05:19PM
So if malware hooks and uses these new APIs, it will be harder to track/trace/debug what they're doing?
(Score: 1) by corey on Saturday October 21 2017, @10:05PM
idkfa
iddqd
Time to kick arse!