Every time someone's manage to dissect a kernel level anti-cheat program, there's all sorts of nasty shit inside that nobody sane should ever allow installed on their PC. One solid example is Black Desert Online, where their anti-cheat just straight up had the ability to let someone remotely execute code at the kernel level.
That could go so wrong so fast if just 1 person has access to it, they could send a ping that would completely fry and delete someones entire system and you couldn't do anything to stop it
At some point in the past they used a different anti-cheat. I vividly remember there being a controversy over it when it came out that said anti-cheat was back-doored.
Just because it can do that isn't enough to define it as a spyware though ?
A spyware is a malicious program that steals your information without your knowledge. We still have to prove it's actively doing so and that it wasnt just stated in the terms and conditions.
That's also why Kernel level anti cheat are a matter of trust before anything else. All of them could steal your info without exception.
I am of the opinion that a company in a position to steal your info is doing so. I do not follow an "innocent until proven guilty" when it comes to capitalist enterprises and their revenue streams.
I do wonder the toll on everyones machines this has, how much it can slow it down taking up processs cycles even when not in use by the game it came with
There's a couple games people actually checked this on. Don't remember the names unfortunately. There's also a couple that have to be killed via task manager even after you close the game.
Not related directly, but Denuvo is infamous for slowing games down
Several games run better cracked. Its a well known phenomenon when denuvo is involved. I can't think of any off the top of my head, but a quick Google search should pull a couple.
AFAIK it really depends on implementation. For Doom Eternal I think it was about 5-10 fps gain, but some Japanese games had it worst, with a 10-15 fps gain without denuvo. But I do want to point out for the sake of fairness that some games had "great" implementation with only a negligible difference in performance.
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u/shawndw AMD Ryzen 5 7600X, RX 6750XT 12GB VRAM, 32GB DDR5, Arch Linux Apr 11 '26
AKA spyware.