this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2025
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Microsoft has long wanted to get vendors out of the kernel. It's a huge privacy/security/stability risk, and causes major issues like the Crowdstrike outage.

Most of those issues also apply to kernel anti-cheat as well, and it's likely that Microsoft will also attempt to move anti-cheat vendors out of kernel space. The biggest gaming issues with steamOS/Linux are kernel anti-cheat not working, so this could be huge for having full compatibility of multiplayer games on Linux.

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[–] kadup@lemmy.world 18 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

This is what, the fourth time a Linux community gets excited about this? But that's actually not good for us at all. Much like Android's safety net, or the nightmare that is the Mac equivalent, the entire point will be creating an untouchable chain from the firmware to the final OS being booted, and only allowing some apps to use a specific API to attest this isn't compromised.

This is horrendous for people trying to modify the OS or, in a more relevant tone, run programs meant for that OS on an entirely different environment. Microsoft has slowly been moving towards making this work on PCs, mostly due to pressure from DRM providers like Netflix or banking apps, but unlike Apple they can't simply lock everything down at once and say "deal with it" because Windows lives by backwards compatibility. Either way, this is just another step towards this upcoming future.

If your favorite games now start asking Windows if the chain of trust is not tampered with... say goodbye to compatibility with Proton.

[–] SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org 2 points 4 months ago

And if Windows makes using their system super easy, there will likely be even more games with kernel level anti cheat. Classic embrace, extend, extinguish.

[–] Godort@lemmy.ca 1 points 4 months ago

I'm not sure this will be an issue.

When a piece of software is checking for chain of trust, it's done primarily for security or DRM reasons. The benefits of verifying this chain of trust would make it a little harder for cheaters to inject code and it would be an extra hurdle for pirates to overcome, but the cost is that everyone that bought your game with the intent of playing it on Linux now has absolutely no way to make that happen. I'm not sure the loss in ~4% of your sales would be worth the benefit.