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Asus Request Feedback on "Cheat" Drivers
skunkeh writes "Asus have a poll up on their site asking the general public whether or not they would like to see "SeeThrough technology" available in drivers for Asus graphics cards. The technology in question is causing uproar in the online gaming community where the drivers can be used to cheat in games such as Quake III and Counter-Strike. Asus have posted some flimsy arguments in defence of the technology on their product page but they don't appear to be convincing the several thousand gamers who have already posted their comments." I still think this is cool stuff. People are just going to cheat online: drivers don't have all that much to do with it. And if they can't cheat, they'll DoS attack. Maybe I'm just disillusioned, but I have more fun playing with people I know and trust then strangers. Strangers cheat.
So you ask, why don't id software and Valve just add cheat protection to their games? Well, that's the funny part. Because the games use an open standard to render their scenes, they are also succeptible to all sorts of totally unpreventable "hacks." Just like id software loves to hack open protocols and add some error correction to UDP, Asus likes to hack the open protocols and modify the way some OpenGL instructions work. It helps their business, just like it helps id's business.
Is it A Bad Thing? No, I don't believe so. If someone will go to all the trouble to buy a $150+ video card just to see through walls, I believe that they would no less likely spend the five minutes searching to download the superwallhack cheat for Half-Life. Anyone who won't face up to this fact is simply naive.
Regardless, id software and Valve are both in the same boat: by using an open standard to render their games, they are relying on security through obscurity.
One day, you're actually going to have a girlfriend.
> Strangers cheat.
Girlfriends cheat too!
Man, I tried the ASUS see-through drivers on NPRQuake, and it didn't help my deathmatch skills at all! I tried the "wireframe" mode in the sketch rendering mode, and it didn't help me 0wnz anybody! What a scam.