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Microsoft Confirms Windows 11 Update Kills Star Wars Outlaws, Assassin's Creed Valhalla, and Other Ubisoft Games (www.ign.com)

submitted 3 days ago by ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net to c/games@lemmy.world

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As reported by VGC, Microsoft updated its support website to reveal it has placed a temporary block on Windows 11 for users with those games installed.

"After installing Windows 11, version 24H2, you might encounter issues with some Ubisoft games," Microsoft said. "These games might become unresponsive while starting, loading or during active gameplay.

"In some cases, users might receive a black screen. The affected games are Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Assassin's Creed Origins, Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Star Wars Outlaws, and Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora.

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[-] dustyData@lemmy.world 173 points 3 days ago

This why kernel level anticheat is the stupidiest idea. It's already hard enough to have the developers coordinate on a mission critical component of the OS. Now imagine dozens of profit hungry, lowest effort publishing companies all meddling and putting their greasy hands into that code at the same time. No, thank you.

[-] acosmichippo@lemmy.world 25 points 3 days ago

are these games even multiplayer? is it anti cheat or anti piracy?

[-] Mistic@lemmy.world 37 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I believe Ubisoft considers these games as "life service," despite them effectively being single-player.

Kernel-level anticheats are specifically anti cheat. Although, if you take cheats to kernel level, they become anti-cheat in name only. For all the normal players out there, it is practically malware. No software ever should have permissions to track everything you do, see everything you have, and brick your OS just because.

[-] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 15 points 3 days ago

With the caveat that there's a lot of space in which users can do things that even kernel level anti-cheat can't detect. Like it can't see what's going on inside plugged in hardware to know if an attached video capture device and the mouse and keyboard is actually all connected to an embedded system that analyses the video stream and adjusts the actual user input to automatically fire if it detects an enemy that would be hit or to nudge the looking direction a bit so that firing would hit.

I've also seen reports of exploits that use the presence of cheat detection combined with other exploits to install cheats on target systems to get their target banned from the game entirely. Which both forces them to deal with a situation they never intended to in the first place (they never tried to cheat), it also gives plausible deniability to actual cheaters who get caught.

One of those cases happened during a live tournament. Dude is playing and all of a sudden can see enemy locations through walls. He knew what was up and left the game to avoid being banned, which makes the tournament itself a bit of a joke.

[-] Ohmmy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 3 days ago

There's also the reverse effect where kernel level anticheats provide the illusion of no cheaters so people can cheat more openly without being reported or kicked from the lobby/server like the old days.