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Kernel Anti-Cheat Is an Overreach
(nooneshappy.com)
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this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2026
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People just want to play videogames. How would they know if the anticheat has kernel-level access without going out of their way to research it?
That's what I find weird, no matter if it's a vacuum cleaner, a game or a pair of jeans of course I'm gonna research the product (and the company producing it) before I buy.
"What the hell is a kernel? Like... popcorn?"
You severely overestimate the layperson.
Nah, I don't expect people to research. I just find it weird that they don't. Both the first link in Googles search and the AI overview of Google explains that question as long as you add anticheat into the sentence.
The next issue you run into is if you research a game, is the news site is talking about the game, talking about the fact that it has kernel level anti-cheat, and to go one step further. Do you know what kernel level anti-cheat is?
Like, we both know what it is, but we're also on Lemmy, which means we're probably more on the tech-savvy side. Your typical Joe Smoe gamer who's only using their computer to play AAA titles isn't necessarily going to know what kernel level anti-cheat is, aside from the fact that when they install the game, it makes Windows pop up the UAC, saying that it needs more information to install.
They may know that it's running as admin, but they don't know the extent of what that means, or what it has access to. and it won't be until it starts actively inhibiting what they're able to do before they will actually care.
It's hard to research a feature if you don't really know what the feature is and how it associates, especially a feature that is as mainstream as a kernel level AC which is becoming common on competitive games.
The everyday person knows current level anti-cheat as a cheat that is on video games and makes it so it's harder to hack/cheat on it. At face value, that sounds like a good thing. So the general public isn't going to bat an eye. It's only the people who care about privacy or using systems that are blocked by it that really bat an eye at it.
Yeah, but let's be honest: If all your friends are playing the newest Call of Duty, you buy that and play with your friends.
People who know what a kernel is likely don't have friends who play the newest call of duty
Last time me and my friends played Call of Duty it was LAN hosted with punkbuster inactive (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_of_Duty_2)
Because it causes problems. It makes you install an extra thing, it sometimes causes crashes or conflicts with other programs, and it often prevents you from playing on Linux (which is becoming more mainstream in the form of the Steam Deck and competitors).