Linux

Sure hope not. If I wanted to run rookits I'd just use Windows. Why bother with Linux?

This is why I don't want more Linux adoption and don't understand people cheering every new user. We're in a sweet spot where a lot of games enable userland anticheat while we don't get kernel level ports (however they may be shipped doesn't matter). The only thing that'll come out of more adoption is kernel level anticheat ports that'll probably work with a few corporate backed distros only and we'll actually lose the games we have today. Because those will switch over the kernel level alternatives too.

The only way I'd like Linux to be a generic multiplayer platform is server side anticheats. It is very obviously the way to go and we are seeing extremely slow adoption (e.g. Marvel Rivals).

I think its less a question of the technical feasibility, and more of an issue that we, as users, don't want more closed-source blobs in our kernels. Meanwhile, the publishers insist that they can't open-source their anti-cheat code; Their idea being that if we know what's in it, it will be easier to bypass.

Basically, one distro or a few(at most) may get anti-cheat integrated one day(like, say, SteamOS), but it will likely never be in your standard Linux kernal.

They could go the rought of kernel modules, I would think, but for whatever reason, we're still having this conversation.

Absolutely nothing prevents somebody from writing a kernel level anticheat on Linux.

Users would throw a fit, and it would be way easier to bypass, but it certainly could be made.

It already works, but studios using anticheats that DO support Linux CURRENTLY don't bother implementing it because we're maaaaaybe 3% of the market on a good day, so they say "fuck it" and don't expend a few dev hours to enable it because they see it as a pain to deal with v users who need it.

I'm not a programmer or cheater or anything, but I think the answer is yes and no. Yes it could technically be done and even work as intended as long as the device is locked down to prevent the user from replacing the shipped kernel (which would be a bad thing for users). However, savvy people could (in theory) make custom kernels that lie to the kernel module, causing the module to report there is no cheating when there is. It's my understanding that it's close to the current situation with Windows and virtual machines and anticheat: you can cheat by running your game in a VM and then have that virtual hardware extract secret information or flip bits in the right spots. Most competitive games will refuse to run in a VM for this reason.

I hope to fuck not.

What does it even mean? People can recompile the kernel to turn the crap off.

The game developers could if they wanted to, but I hope they won't. I will not willingly install a rootkit on any of my computers. I wouldn't buy or pirate a game that requires one even if it could run on Linux. I don't even like running user level anti cheat, but at least that can be run in a sandbox.

Is it possible to have kernel-level anti-cheat in Linux?

Yes, Absolutely. But, people would throw a fit. There is probably no way to opensource it without also making it easier to bypass. There would be a concerted effort to reverse engineer it and remove it from the system while maintaining functionality

Maintainers of anti-cheat software are not volunteers. If there was an order from management to port the system to Linux, it would happen. It's just that with the Linux userbase as small as it is, it's simply not profitable to cater to them.

I think that if it ever happens, there will be a influx of people moving to linux, or abandoning their duelboots

I fully disagree. The thing keeping regular people away from Linux as an OS is not that they can't play some online game with Anti-cheat.

Linux is in a weird place right now. It's actually a perfect fit for non-technical users that use their computers for email, web browsing, and Netflix, but those users don't know what an operating system is, let alone that there are options. More technical users tend to require more specialized applications, and if there isn't a native linux port available, you have to do some research for alternatives, or to find a way to run it in wine.

Windows is shitty, but it's comfortable. And I know that it will run any software I throw at it with basically no research or troubleshooting.

I feel like bpf would be a decent solution for anticheat. I believe you can limit what an ebpf program can look at quite effectively.