From wall-hacks, to aimbots, and everything in between,The Finalshas been having a lot of trouble keeping cheaters at bay. With continued outrage from the community, Embark Studios is introducing a kernel-driver anti-cheat, but the upgraded security could potentially cause some hiccups.
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Kernel-level anti-cheat is more effective, because it’s more invasive and it requires custom drivers, resulting in the possibility of problems for Linux users. In the patch notes for update 7.3, Embark reveals some information about how the new kernel anti-cheat will roll out, and why it’s necessary in a time when hackers are evolving.
“A lot of cheats these days use a kernel-driver to read and write memory to gain an unfair advantage. This means that they run in a privileged mode in the Windows operating system, making it unlikely and in some cases impossible to detect via Anti-Cheat in the game client.” (viaSteam)
The Finals Kernel-Based Anti-Cheat
The main problem is that Embark is introducing kernel-level anti-cheat, but they have no plans on introducing official support for SteamDeck, Proton/Wine, and SteamOS. Community Manager, Dusty, posted in The Finals Discord server to reassure their fanbasethey won’t be left high-and-dry. “Despite us not officially supporting the platform, we will do our utmost best to maintain your ability to play!” (viagamingonlinux.com)
One ofThe FinalsDevelopers also joined the Discord conversation to give insight on what is being done to address the problem.
“Just to add to what Dusty just said, we’re working pretty closely with CodeWeavers to QA every release we put out there since about Season 5, and I don’t see a reason to stop that. It’s not exactly a collaboration, butwe do catch issues with SteamDeck early because at the very least they do a pass on the game before we release a patch.” (viagamingonlinux.com)
The developer added a message urging players to continue helping Embark fix the problem through community feedback.
“Please keep reporting issues here, to our support, or report them to the Proton devs directly, and we will investigate what we can do to fix things.”
Giving an anti-cheat complete access to your operating system gives Devs a better chance at being able to rid The Finals of cheaters, but not everyone is comfortable with it.
“What it means when anticheat is operating at kernel level is that it’s running at the deepest, most authoritative layer of your operating system. Developers appreciate that level of control in detecting and shutting down cheat programs, pre-empting them with a maximum level of system authority. Many consumers understandably take issue with relinquishing that level of control to a third party.” Said Ted Litchfield (viaPCGamer)
“Despite claims from cheat developers that they’re undetectable, every cheat leaves breadcrumbs and we’ve been following them. Closely.” -Embark (viaSteam)
The Finals player count has recently skyrocketed, and although the new kernel-based anti-cheat could potentially cause problems forSteamDeck, SteamOS, and Linux users, the devs say it will work, and they will continue to manage the issues. AsThe Finals communityhas been sharing nightmarish stories of losing ranked games to cheaters for quite a while now, it appears Embark is going to do their best to finally put an end to it.
The Finals
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The Finals is a first-person shooter wherein the in-game contestants compete on a televised combat gameshow.
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