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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, 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. I have always been here. ---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.