50/50 chance this breaks Deck and linux support, especially since the commenters’ inquiries about it have gone unanswered.
Bogles my mind why a PvE game needs an anti-cheat at all - let alone something as invasive as a rootkit.
Source is the dev’s post on, unfortunately, reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/19dp2qw/helldivers_2_nprotect_gameguard_anticheat/
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.
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.