Certainly was not my aim, and I sympathize. I've said many times I'd never move into game dev because of the workload and sheer work-to-flame ratio, and this thread isn't an exception. Likewise, thank you for providing some light from within the industry, it is appreciated.
I'd sign that NDA in a heartbeat if it didn't anonymize me, but I don't want my name floating around in databases I know nothing about. It's mighty tempting to see how the sausage is made, though.
I will ask this: Does the decision to include such an anti-cheat come from the studio usually, or the publisher?
Usually it's studio; but it's a bit give and take in that regard.
Some studios might have some bean counter at the publisher asking about things they think are good ("You gotta have anti-cheat/DRM!")
Other studios might be coerced to "if you're going to use anti-cheat, why not use this one we have a good deal with".
But ultimately it has been a studio decision.
I'm even swapping my current anti-cheat due to this kind of Sinophobia.
Ironically, we had to specifically ask Tencent for their anti-cheat (because it was the best available..) but.. people thought it was spyware[0]. To the point that you literally see nothing else about my game it seems.
Double ironically: we still had cheaters on the platform[1]... it will probably be worse with EAC (as it was in the division days[2], some people even blamed the state of cheating on "not enough anti-cheat"[3])
But, to answer your question: in my experience it's the studio's choice, but some people in the publishing chain might try to coerce a decision.
> If you’ll sign an NDA I can show you TC anticheat and EasyAnticheat.
And immediately land in a list of potential suspects the moment those cheats are broken by somebody else but not me? No, thanks. :( We live in a world where such an intellectual curiosity flags you as a criminal so I am never going to risk it.
If you want to demonstrate good will then maybe posting these files somewhere and making a "Show HN" thread is going to work better in showing the world that you're normal hardworking people?
> We can’t be open because it’s too risky. We can’t be closed because people think we’re scum.
I understand your position and I am not blaming you. But you are not the executive team of the company and you don't know their intentions and strategic plans.
Tencent anticheat has a hard baked logger that prints out every network call it makes, which believe it or not was intended to create trust.
You can see in the disassembled code that it can’t make outbound calls without that function that prints the payload.
We can’t be open because it’s too risky. We can’t be closed because people think we’re scum.
Why not just make console games? This thread has me depressed.