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Microsoft's Built-In Anti-Cheat TruePlay

Blam

Member
Didn't see anyone talking about this but Microsoft added a UWP anti cheat into the Fall update for Windows 10 called TruePlay.

TruePlay provides developers with a new set of tools to combat cheating within their PC games.
A game enrolled in TruePlay will run in a protected process, which mitigates a class of common attacks. Additionally, a Windows service will monitor gaming sessions for behaviors and manipulations that are common in cheating scenarios. These data will be collected, and alerts will be generated only when cheating behavior appears to be occurring. To ensure and protect customer privacy while preventing false positives, these data are only shared with developers after processing has determined cheating is likely to have occurred.

Developers may have some game features and experiences which do not require active game monitoring. In recognition of that need, TruePlay is not a "block on launch" experience—customers who have not opted into TruePlay's game monitoring are still able to launch protected games. Developers can then make decisions around which experiences are allowed from within their games. Whatever the decision, use the provided APIs to indicate to the system whether active game monitoring is required.

xboxsettingstrueplaycropped.png

You can turn this off but it might limit your games you can play. Since it doesn't block the games from launching but that's also up to the developers not Microsoft.

Turn me into an Anti-Cheat if old.

edit: Seems like people are acting like it's a global anticheat it's just for UWP and mainly crossplay games.

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/mt808781(v=vs.85).aspx
 

Htown

STOP SHITTING ON MY MOTHER'S HEADSTONE
I'm sure this will work out exactly as well as every other Microsoft PC gaming related initiative, and cause absolutely no problems for regular users.
 
If it depends on Microsoft's servers collecting data to make a decision, it wouldn't work offline, right? So just play offline.

(If you're cheating in online multiplayer games, screw you.)
 
A system level cheat tracker in theory should be better prepared to know what different programs are influencing a different program (read: game). So long as it works this could be neat.
 

jrcbandit

Member
I have no problem with this if this is meant for Online gaming. Will be a total shitshow if they try to force this to work on single player games with loot boxes crap, though.
 

Guess Who

Banned
If it depends on Microsoft's servers collecting data to make a decision, it wouldn't work offline, right? So just play offline.

(If you're cheating in online multiplayer games, screw you.)

Or just like, turn it off. Only games that explicitly opt in will block you from playing without this on, and almost all of those are sure to be online multiplayer games anyway.
 

Hasney

Member
I bet it takes days for someone to release a tool that tells games YEAH IT'S ON, NO REALLY and then it just becomes a cat and mouse game.
 

Keinning

Member
"Turning this off may limit the games you can play."

Pardon?

Developers may have some game features and experiences which do not require active game monitoring. In recognition of that need, TruePlay is not a "block on launch" experience—customers who have not opted into TruePlay's game monitoring are still able to launch protected games. Developers can then make decisions around which experiences are allowed from within their games.

you're welcome

Turning it off is detectable and allows developers to limit (because why would it enhance?) game play/features.

That's up to the developers though
And i don't know about you but playing Borderlands online without people duping cheated weapons that one hit KO everything and running around invincible would be an enhanced experience to me
 
Interesting, just did the big update today morning and turned off TruePlay just now, was just on/off with no warnings or anything.

Wonder if Shadow of Mordor 2 uses this, since you can cheat to add loot boxes to that game and it is cross play as well.
 

MUnited83

For you.
That or, you know, turn it off if you don't want it?

I mean, if they use it to limit single player games cheating, you can't simply "turn it off if you don't want to", because it literally won't give you access to the part of the game that you wanted to cheat at.
 

Guess Who

Banned
I mean, if they use it to limit single player games cheating, you can't simply "turn it off if you don't want to", because it literally won't give you access to the part of the game that you wanted to cheat at.

Any dev who blocks you from offline single player for turning this off is probably an ass.

I wouldn’t expect any devs to bother with anticheat for offline SP games, just like they already don’t.
 
Nothing good can come of this for customers.

Well from a cross play point of view it's all good....one of my biggest pc peeves is the amount of hacks in popular mp games.....I'm assuming me will probably be announcing pubg as a cross play title in the future so it makes perfect sense to have tools to prevent you being killed by Barry Allen...I don't see any negatives....you cheat...you get punished.
 

LordRaptor

Member
Or just don't turn it on. It's not an obligatory feature

The implication is that if you 'opt out' it will return a "dirty client" that a developer can choose what to do about.
That might be 'nothing', that might be 'only allowed to play with other dirty cients', that might be 'do not launch application and give wanring message they must enable anti cheat'
 

shiyrley

Banned
Turning it off is detectable and allows developers to limit (because why would it enhance?) game play/features.
Yes. And try to guess what they would limit. I'm gonna give you a second to think here.

The online multiplayer! Shocked!

You can LAUNCH any game with it disabled. Then the developer can avoid you getting into the online mode.

Or they may pull some shady shit to avoid cheating in game currency for loot boxes in SP games such as Shadow of War. Don't do that. We won't buy your games.
 
If it depends on Microsoft's servers collecting data to make a decision, it wouldn't work offline, right? So just play offline.

(If you're cheating in online multiplayer games, screw you.)

No need to go offline, you can just disable the service, and it won't prevent the game to launch at all.

This is literally a service to prevent online cheating.
 

Joey Ravn

Banned
"Hey, I saw you were trying to use Cheat Engine. I know that game you're trying to play with cheats on is a singleplayer game, but what's the fun in cheating? Right, buddy? Let's activate the antivirus, delete that bad program and hit the Windows Store (TM) for some cool cross-buy games ;) ;) ;)"

Yep. Great idea. Thanks, Microsoft. I already feel safer.
 

Blam

Member
"Hey, I saw you were trying to use Cheat Engine. I know that game you're trying to play with cheats on is a singleplayer game, but what's the fun in cheating? Right, buddy? Let's activate the antivirus, delete that bad program and hit the Windows Store (TM) for some cool cross-buy games ;) ;) ;)"

Yep. Great idea. Thanks, Microsoft. I already feel safer.

Nice so you didn't actually read the post. It's not for any games. It's just UWP. It's also mainly imposed on MP games.
 

Syntax

Member
Yes. And try to guess what they would limit. I'm gonna give you a second to think here.

The online multiplayer! Shocked!

You can LAUNCH any game with it disabled. Then the developer can avoid you getting into the online mode.

Or they may pull some shady shit to avoid cheating in game currency for loot boxes in SP games such as Shadow of War. Don't do that. We won't buy your games.

No need to go offline, you can just disable the service, and it won't prevent the game to launch at all.

This is literally a service to prevent online cheating.

Most big games already have systems in place to combat that. This one may prove more effective but it also has troubling implications for offline, single-player (not necessarily offline), and modding.

This could be particularly useful for a dev like Bethesda. Limit free mods to push paid mods.
 

Blam

Member
Most big games already have systems in place to combat that. This one may prove more effective but it also has troubling implications for offline, single-player (not necessarily offline), and modding.

This could be particularly useful for a dev like Bethesda. Limit free mods to push paid mods.

I mean that's not the use for this since it's UWP. I very much doubt developers are going to be putting a UWP function into their titles since it's only gonna work on W10
 
Most big games already have systems in place to combat that. This one may prove more effective but it also has troubling implications for offline, single-player (not necessarily offline), and modding.

This could be particularly useful for a dev like Bethesda. Limit free mods to push paid mods.

IIRC from the apis this is basically a service for UWP games, which I believe could be harder to get working with existing solutions.

I don't think it will cause trouble for offline only games anymore than the existing solutions already do, except if it is very simple to integrate and since it's license free from the developer they might turn it on all the way, but even so, the developer would face a tremendous out cry if they tried to limit offline mods that I doubt any would try...
 

Guess Who

Banned
Most big games already have systems in place to combat that. This one may prove more effective but it also has troubling implications for offline, single-player (not necessarily offline), and modding.

This could be particularly useful for a dev like Bethesda. Limit free mods to push paid mods.

It has no more implication for those things than any other anticheat system. All this does is give devs another option for an anticheat mechanism that’s free and built into Windows 10 without having to use VAC, BattlEye, PunkBuster, etc or implementing anticheat themselves.
 

rrs

Member
It's not like questionable anti-cheats were just invented by MS, look up gameguard for example.

Also: UWP can encrypt internal files already for any of the bethsofts to use
 

Blam

Member
It's not like questionable anti-cheats were just invented by MS, look up gameguard for example.

Also: UWP can encrypt internal files already for any of the bethsofts to use

Yup encryption is shit tho since you can just decrypt it in memory and dump the games.
 

Audioboxer

Member
"We'll share system info"

Yeah, okay, some of the Windows 10 spying hysteria is out of whack, but MS really does seem to be giving tinfoil hats a field day with Win 10.

This seems like one of these "great ideas" in heads, complete trainwreck messes in execution. Expect false positives, something screwing up for legit users and who knows what else.
 

LordRaptor

Member
I don't think it will cause trouble for offline only games anymore than the existing solutions already do, except if it is very simple to integrate and since it's license free from the developer they might turn it on all the way, but even so, the developer would face a tremendous out cry if they tried to limit offline mods that I doubt any would try...

Well, most anti-cheat is on a per application basis and runs on demand, not a thing that is permanently built into the operating system and presumably always enabled and always active by default
 

Guess Who

Banned
To protect those sweet, sweet dollah's for micro transactions, that people otherwise can hack with cheat engine?

1) any game where you can buy things for real money is inherently not “offline”, as basically every microtransaction system requires an internet connection

2) what you’re describing is piracy

3) pretty much any game with loot boxes etc. already had protections and server-side verifications that prevent you from hacking yourself free ones, even if they occasionally fuck it up
 

Izuna

Banned
I asked what it was in the other thread. Hmm, not too happy about this being at the OS level. It literally says some games may not work at all.
 
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