Recently there was a thing where VAC would erroneously flag AMD’s antilag+ feature as cheating, and issue a ban.

AMD then quickly disabled the feature by default but now Valve also patched detection for it and is now, at least according to these patch notes, reversing the bans.

  • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    34
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    They weren’t erroneously flagging anything. The driver wasn’t so much a driver as much as a locally hosted man in the middle attack. It wasn’t necessary for the functioning of the graphics card it was literally intercepting commands and altering them, which is exactly what cheating software does.

    The only way they could have patched the software to not flag it would have been if AMD had told them in advance of what they were doing. Which I have no idea why they didn’t do because it was blatantly obvious this exact issue was going to happen.

    • Acters@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      9
      ·
      1 year ago

      Devils advocate: they can’t always know what their engineers did would interfere with something like anti cheating software because it can honestly not be something they thought about. It is also hard to know if AMD has CS2 in their testing suite.

      Realistically, they should have ran some beta testing with consumers or in house. On top of that they should have been more clear with how it worked with the public before releasing this very intrusive mechanism in their drivers.

      • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        1 year ago

        Except that they know how, anti-cheating software works at least a day theoretical level, they know how their software works, they know the thing that their software does is something that cheating software does again at a theoretical level. Just on first principles alone it should have been possible for them to work this out without having to have any expert knowledge or have the game in their testing suite.

        That’s all forgetting that apparently not a single person in the software department, the management department or the QA department (assuming they have one) apparently knows anything about games development. Really?

        • histic@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          8
          ·
          1 year ago

          it’s really not amds job to know how anti cheat works I’m gonna be honest most software devs probably could give a rats ass how it works the software devs probably were just like this works and isn’t causing crashes ship it

          • TwanHE@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            10
            ·
            1 year ago

            Nah there is no defending amd in this. How would altering game files and rerouting dll’s not result in getting a ban from almost any half decent AC.

            And yes it is their job to know how games work, they’re the ones making drivers for a gaming gpu.

            • Moneo@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              6
              ·
              1 year ago

              I agree. You don’t ship software that alters a competitive game’s DLLs without spending 5 minutes to discuss potential side effects. This was a major oversight.

    • cannache@slrpnk.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      1 year ago

      Haha, your telling me AMD may need new programmers for their graphics driver implementations?

      • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        1 year ago

        Pretty sure this is just a management issue, as in they they need to be doing some.