Gabe Newell addresses concern over Valve Anti-Cheat system 'Do we care what porn sites you visit? Oh, dear god, no. My brain just melted.' Deputy Editor Gabe Newell has taken the unusual step of addressing concern over - Valve's anti-cheat system. Newell took to after a thread on the claimed VAC had recently changed the way it worked so that it read all the domains players visited and sent the information back to Valve's servers hashed.
In short, players were concerned Valve was spying on Steam users' internet use. Newell, in a post on Reddit of his own, moved to calm those fears by explaining exactly what VAC had done. 'Cheat developers have a problem in getting cheaters to actually pay them for all the obvious reasons, so they start creating DRM and anti-cheat code for their cheats,' Newell explained.
'These cheats phone home to a DRM server that confirms that a cheater has actually paid to use the cheat. 'VAC checked for the presence of these cheats. If they were detected VAC then checked to see which cheat DRM server was being contacted. This second check was done by looking for a partial match to those (non-web) cheat DRM servers in the DNS cache. 'If found, then hashes of the matching DNS entries were sent to the VAC servers. The match was double checked on our servers and then that client was marked for a future ban.
Less than a tenth of one percent of clients triggered the second check. 570 cheaters are being banned as a result.'
We use high security protection to hide our cheat from VAC. The cheat is vac proof since years and will never get you vac ban. To download the cheat refresh this page if your membership is VIP you will see download button instand of buy now button. Easy Anti-Cheat is a holistic anti–cheat service which uses cutting edge hybrid technology to counter hacking and cheating in multiplayer PC games. Hybrid anti-cheat made Easy The combination of both client and server–side analysis is what enables Easy to.
Newell went on to say the specific VAC test that sparked the initial concern was effective for 13 days and is no longer active because cheat providers have already worked around it. Valve's goal, Newell said, 'is to make them more expensive for cheaters and cheat creators than the economic benefits they can reasonably expect to gain.'
Newell also highlighted the 'social engineering' element to cheat creation, saying if the idea that 'Valve is evil - look they are tracking all of the websites you visit' gets traction cheaters and cheat creators benefit. Indeed it is this aspect to the recent situation, and, that caused Newell to step in. 'VAC is inherently a scary looking piece of software, because it is trying to be obscure, it is going after code that is trying to attack it, and it is sneaky. For most cheat developers, social engineering might be a cheaper way to attack the system than continuing the code arms race, which means that there will be more Reddit posts trying to cast VAC in a sinister light. 'Our response is to make it clear what we were actually doing and why with enough transparency that people can make their own judgements as to whether or not we are trustworthy.'
To sum up, Newell denied VAC sends your browsing history to Valve. 'Do we care what porn sites you visit?' 'Oh, dear god, no. My brain just melted.' And finally, is Valve using its market success to go evil? 'I don't think so, but you have to make the call if we are trustworthy. We try really hard to earn and keep your trust.'
Originally posted by:Gross. Thanks for the information. Yea cuz Google / microsoft / vac /. Are totaly not intrusives.
Player since 1 year, never had a single problem or heard anything bad from it. Where are your sources for some random BS? Hi-Rez has really a really bad anti cheat program. It scans your computer when the games are not running, and will ban you for having them running while the game is not. This is against its own EULA, where it says that you will not have third party software running concurrently with its own programs(1). The ban system also uses an IP Ban system, which can lead to accounts being falsely banned for sharing IP addresses with someone else or playing at a LAN (2). In addition, the EULA is vague on what is allowed and what is not; while a lot of this is general 'common sense' i.e., don't have cheating software on your computer, it also detects and bans other software used for programming and debugging.
Further, its own customer support seems to refuse to correct its mistakes unless overwhelming evidence is provided on false positives, such as when they were caught banning users for using DLL injectors for software development or modding of other games (3). They apparently still do this (4). Customer support claims to manually review each ban, yet users continually receive a canned response for any queries they send (5, 6, 7). This is a problem with their patcher, and is not just an issue with smite. A cursory search reveals many problems on the Tribes: Ascendboards as well (8, 9, 10), and I'm sure that Global Agenda players have had issues with this as well. In all, I'd trust the other anti cheat programs more (at least VAC), because as far as I know, it doesn't actually run while the steam's not running at least. (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10).I realize some of these are hearesay (especially the 'HELP I'VE BEEN BANNED posts), but several of these links contain some pretty good research on how their anti cheat system works.
A cursory search can also find you numerous posts on this as well. Stop it from the manager when not playing Smite when u want to use a cheat 2. Use your cheat 3.???? Profit Srsly if you care so much about your privacy / program running in background when they shouldnt you should just stop turning on your computer. Tho I admit it's not normal, far from it, but it's an everyday deal nowadays in the computer industry. 'They can't do a deeper scan without breaking the EU DPD and running into legal issues', so they ban what seems strange.
W/E I'm not gonna keep answering, I understand you don't like it and find it totaly legitimate you don't want to take the risk to instal it. The hirezpatcher service is the most silent thing out there. Unless you're actually running cheats then you have nothing to ♥♥♥♥♥ about. Well, you'd still have nothing to ♥♥♥♥♥ about if you were cheating anyway.
It literally sits quietly. It does nothing until you touch a HiRez game. Most of the game functions are authenticated serverside so the only 'hacks' you would probably see are speed and aiming, which are trivial to detect. The hugbox threads seen on reddit are needle-in-haystack cases where in fact the people hit do have something running alongside smite. Originally posted by: yea cuz Google / microsoft / vac /. Are totaly not intrusives.
Player since 1 year, never had a single problem or heard anything bad from it. Where are your sources for some random BS? Hi-Rez has really a really bad anti cheat program. It scans your computer when the games are not running, and will ban you for having them running while the game is not.
This is against its own EULA, where it says that you will not have third party software running concurrently with its own programs(1). The ban system also uses an IP Ban system, which can lead to accounts being falsely banned for sharing IP addresses with someone else or playing at a LAN (2).
In addition, the EULA is vague on what is allowed and what is not; while a lot of this is general 'common sense' i.e., don't have cheating software on your computer, it also detects and bans other software used for programming and debugging. Further, its own customer support seems to refuse to correct its mistakes unless overwhelming evidence is provided on false positives, such as when they were caught banning users for using DLL injectors for software development or modding of other games (3). They apparently still do this (4). Customer support claims to manually review each ban, yet users continually receive a canned response for any queries they send (5, 6, 7). This is a problem with their patcher, and is not just an issue with smite. A cursory search reveals many problems on the Tribes: Ascendboards as well (8, 9, 10), and I'm sure that Global Agenda players have had issues with this as well. In all, I'd trust the other anti cheat programs more (at least VAC), because as far as I know, it doesn't actually run while the steam's not running at least.
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10).I realize some of these are hearesay (especially the 'HELP I'VE BEEN BANNED posts), but several of these links contain some pretty good research on how their anti cheat system works. A cursory search can also find you numerous posts on this as well. So basically the same thing Steam does except Gabe Newell didn't do it, so no fellatio or fanboys involved.
EDIT: FWIW I ran cheats for a few MMOs 24/7 about 6 months back, hirez has been on my system longer than most of my friendships and relationships last. I haven't been banned. Probably because cheating in FPS/moobahs isn't cool at all, kids.
Originally posted by:Their spyware is the only reason why I never tried the game. I'm disappointed they decided to keep it on the steam version. There is no spyware here that isn't present in steam it's self. Don't be silly.
Did Hirez go out of their way to explain how their anti-cheat thing works? Gabe did, after reading his post I have no worries about VAC whatsoever. Also VAC is checking your♥♥♥♥♥♥ONLY when you're playing on a VAC-protected server in a game that has VAC protection enabled. Hirez's 'anti-cheat' thing stays active even after you close the game. Now that's quite suspicious.
![Vac anti cheat download pc Vac anti cheat download pc](/uploads/1/2/5/3/125382112/963017178.jpg)
It's quite possible it's a spyware collecting information about users.