this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2024
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I won't play any game that has a rootkit, even if it worked on Linux or I had a windows machine. With the permissions they have, they are capable of updating firmware. That means they could infect the computer with malware that would survive wiping or replacing the hard drive.
Just as a side note, if you play on Linux there's currently no anti cheat that runs in the kernel.
It's all in user space and only has your user permissions.
Do you have any sources that go into this? Nothing comes up in my cursory searching...
I may finally get around to switching the main machine if this is the case
Unfortunately not since Valve is (understandably) keeping pretty quiet about how they implemented anti-cheat.
However, due to Wine/Proton always running as the current user, it is impossible for it to run anything in kernel space outside of the user-accessible part of the kernel API. Meaning it cannot install kernel modules, access memory of foreign processes or read anything your user does not have access to. It can't even get a full process list if the process does not want to be listed by users.
If you use Wine/Proton inside of Flatpak it cannot even read most of what your user has access to or any processes outside of the current Flatpak sandbox. So your Steam flatpak has no idea that you are running the Firefox flatpak on the same system with the same user.
It's something I can't avoid, however I can limit it a bit. Elden Ring shipping with EAC is unfortunate, but I trust From Software a lot more after they took down DS3 to fix an RCE exploit. Sure EAC could turn on them, but I feel like a good publisher would be lawyering up the second that happened, especially if it resulted in their game damaging their customer's hardware.
Edit: not suggesting anyone should install rootkit DRM games, just sharing how I justify living with the ones I already have.
Wait, Elden Rings uses a rootkit?
Now I'm glad I never picked it up
Only on Windows, on Linux it runs in user space.
If you aren't playing multiplayer, it's incredibly easy to disable.
Even if you are playing multiplayer you can use seamless Coop and turn it off anyways
EAC is honestly pretty standard at this point for multiplayer games. It's used by some really big companies like Epic for Fortnight, Mihoyo for Genshin Impact (iirc), and obviously Elden Ring. I couldn't find anything reputable saying it is a rootkit, just that it reads and monitors kernel-level processes.
Whatever Helldivers is doing is something else.