GDC 2018: John McDonald (Valve) - Using Deep Learning to Combat Cheating in CSGO

That's not true at all, though? Source has continued to get changes & upgrades over the years. It has a vulkan backend, the UI system is no longer scaleform but a web-based system called Panorama, a new physics engine called Rubikon that replaced the old Havok engine, etc... They aren't putting out many new games, although they did just release Artifact a couple months ago. But DOTA 2 & CSGO continue to get updates, changes, and improvements. CSGO for example has an entirely new, machine-learning based anti-cheat system called VacNet: [this video] They have tons of talks on GDC of all sorts of really cool stuff they are doing that's related to Source 2 and has nothing to do with Steam.

For those who don't know, Riot Games recently released a closed beta of Valorant, their new game with this anti-cheat. Valorant is a direct competitor to Valve's CS:GO, borrowing it's core loop and even some of its weapons. It's interesting to compare the two approaches to anti-cheat that the two companies are taking here: * Valve use VAC, an unobstrusive memory scanner in user-space with an emphasis on never having false positives. * Valve use machine learning on game replays to detect obvious aim-bots and spin-bots * Valve enlists the community via the "Overwatch" program to review game recordings and spot cheaters. * Valve supports CS:GO on Linux. * Leveraging your Steam history, Valve creates a "Trust Factor" score for every player and keeps trusted players together. * Riot uses ring-0 scanners. * Riot will not allow you to run Valorant in a VM. * Riot will ban specific hardware if a cheat is detected. Beware when buying 2nd hand motherboards! * Riot does not allow you to host your own Valorant servers (this makes hack-vs-hack servers, which some people enjoy, impossible) I think that in the long run Valve's approach, particularly with Trust Factor, will be proven the better of the two. [this video]

This presentation from Valve on VACNet touches on this: [this video] Specfiically, at about 7:50 into this, he talks about the propensity of encountering cheaters in CS:GO. The tl;dr is that in a 5v5 multiplayer game the percentage of cheaters required to ruin 9 other players' games at once is not high. It only takes 7% of people to cheater to encounter 1 every 2nd game, and a 2% cheating rate gets you a 20% cheater-encounter rate. I'd also touch on the point that cheating ruins an online-only game. Like, it is the #1 way a game falls apart. Take a look at a game like Escape from Tarkov, where a cheater will ruin a good block of time for a lot of people just by existing in one game. It's especially bad in that game because the distinction between 'being caught by someone in a position you didn't check' and 'being killed by a cheater' is so unclear, and the consequences of losing are so high (and thus losing to a cheater is so much worse). It creates an environment where the players have to be absolutely 100% confident cheating doesn't exist, or it will very quickly sour people to the game.