Helldivers 2 Technical Director Addresses Anti-Cheat Concerns

[T0@st]

Hi everyone, my name is Peter Lindgren and I'm the Technical Director of Helldivers 2. I've been making games at Arrowhead since the Magicka days and I've been involved in every game we've released to date. I will do my best in this post to address the concerns and confusion that's come up recently regarding the choice of Anti-Cheat software in Helldivers 2. So, let's start off with the more urgent questions:

Is GameGuard a kernel-level / administrator-priviledge anti-cheat?
Yes, GameGuard is a "kernel-level", aka rootkit, anti-cheat. Most anti-cheat run at "kernel-level", especially all of the popular ones. It's unfortunately one of the more effective ways to combat cheating. There are some anti-cheat systems that can run in "user-mode," but they are much less effective and tend to be cracked very quickly, resulting in widespread cheating.




Will GameGuard stay installed on my system after I've uninstalled Helldivers 2?
No, GameGuard is removed at the same time as the game is uninstalled. The installer and uninstaller for GameGuard is visibly included with the game in <install-dir>/tools/GGSetup.exe and <install-dir>/tools/gguninst.exe.

I'm worried about my privacy, will GameGuard collect sensitive information about me?
No, GameGuard does not collect any personally identifiable information (PII). And doing so would be a GDPR and/or ADPPA nightmare as well. I can speak from experience that we're all bending over backwards to be compliant with these regulations. On a more technical note, GameGuard is scanning the running processes (applications) for malicious software and attempts to block such software from manipulating the game client.

Will GameGuard reduce the performance of my PC?
GameGuard is only active while the game is running and after thousands of hours of testing we've not noticed any noteworthy degradations of performance on our developer and QA workstations.

And the BIG ONE that needs plenty of context:

Helldivers 2 is a co-op/PvE game, why do we even need Anti-Cheat?
That's a great question, and there's two related but separate points to it:

First, we want everyone to have a great time playing Helldivers 2, with friends, ex-friends or randoms. What we've seen in some of our and others' games is that rampant cheating tends to have a very negative effect on the participants' openness to playing, especially with randoms.

There's an anecdote from Helldivers 1 I'd like to share: When we released Helldivers 1 on PC there was effectively no anti-cheat implemented. Additionally Helldivers 1 uses a peer-to-peer networking model, and that means, from a security perspective, each game client will blindly trust each other.

Shortly after release we noticed there was a cheat going around which granted 9999 research samples. Unfortunately any non-cheaters in the same mission would also be granted 9999 research samples. These non-cheating players now had their entire progression ruined through no fault of their own. We were able to deal with a lot of these early issues without using a third party solution, but it took a lot of work, and most of it was done reactively.

Incidentally Helldivers 2 also uses a peer-to-peer networking model, but this time around we're trying to be more proactive and make sure everyone can play the intended experience. Second is the Galactic War. There's this huge metagame going in the cloud which all players (and game clients) participate in. Even though we have other countermeasures in place, a cracked game client could make it easier to disrupt the Galactic War, which would sour everyone's experience.

As a final note, on an open platform like PC it's not possible to stop cheating from ever happening. Someone with the skills, dedication and resources will ultimately succeed. The point of anti-cheat is to make it more difficult and time consuming to develop cheats. Needless to say we will be keeping a very close eye for any issues that may be encountered at release.

See you on the battlefield

• Peter

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[Nostras]

Isn't it amazing how they never address Linux compatibility?
I wonder if it's compatible hmmmm? I have a good guess

 

[dcf-joe]

After watching this video, I feel like kernel level anti-cheats are just a buzzword now:

 

[Makaveli]

After watching this video, I feel like kernel level anti-cheats are just a buzzword now:

Watching now great video so far.

 

[GerKNG]

That made the decision easy to not buy this game.

 

[theouto]

An anti cheat is as good as its code, not its access level.
Welp, next game lads.

 

[scottslayer]

So the reason they need a kernel level anti-cheat is because...they are insanely incompetent.
Why in the hell did they ship the first game with blind client peer to peer. Dumb, dumb, dumb and they are fixing the same problem they designed into the second game by adding a third party anti-cheat instead of designing their game better.
Real "burning your house down to get rid of spiders" kind of shit.

So actually looking up the specs of the anti-cheat:
Same profile as a rootkit mad
Hides its own process (rootkit)
Monitors memory
Blocks calls from the OS
Auto update that makes calls to the company's remote database
Some versions apparently also have anti-virus/anti-spyware
Some versions also have anti-keylogger (this is interesting)
The list of games it is currently used in is a list of, lets face it, trash.

Make the game free and I'll consider eating your shit sandwich.

 

[qlum]

After watching this video, I feel like kernel level anti-cheats are

Great video but it does not show kernel level anti-cheats do not work in this context
All of the effective cheating methods described here are at least somewhat involved.
And aimbots are not really the issue, the biggest problem are the generally easiest to detect cheats.