Comment by nusl
This sort of anticheat exists because cheat developers ruin the experience for players, and for games that intend to be competitive in a real sense, the integrity of the game. Cheat developers keep getting smarter, so anticheat developers need to do the same. I guess the kernel is sorta as deep as you can go, at least with software.
I don't like it personally but I do understand why they do it. It just means I can't play those games on Linux, and some studios just don't care.
It's a shame that they don't care, though supporting such a minuscule percentage of the gaming market doesn't make a lot of sense unless out of principle/just do to it.
Well, we'll have to agree to disagree here.
You absolutely can design a non-intrusive anticheat that doesn't hook into the kernel layer, and many games do exactly that. They do checks server-side, without hooking into your system. Or design their game to make it harder, eg if a player is behind a wall and can't be seen, don't even send the packets saying there's a player there.
Even with invasive anticheat, any dedicated actor can (and usually eventually do) find ways around it, and it becomes a game of cat and mouse. I feel a similar way about DRM in general.
Imo the tradeoff and danger is not worth it for consumers, but most are just not aware of the risk. Game developers take advantage of this and also do it because it's easier than actually designing their game in a way to minimise cheating (be it through code, or game mechanics)
On a tangent, even though it's for the wrong reasons (Even if I were a full-time user and a fan of Windows, I would not want to install games with invasive anticheat and pollute my system, out of principle), I'm glad that there is at least some pressure and pushback on invasive anticheat by gamers that usually run Windows, just for the reason so that it can run on something like a Steam Deck.