[NB: this leads into it because GW2/Arenanet is a subsidiary of NCSOFT, a Korean company; NCSOFT uses all this stuff on all their games too]

Virtually every single multiplayer/MMO-like game does this. All of Asia does it - every country there, for instance, and a lot more invasively and insecurely.

Hackshield and XIGNCODE outright read through your process memory for content and keyword searches, not just hash matching - I've been issued bans for browsing security forums because of a freetext process title match in Firefox.

Gameguard, hackshield, xigncode (all 3 are Korean) send data insecurely, unsigned, over plaintext HTTP including PII across the public internet, run boot-mode driver rootkits, and are leaps and bounds worse than anything like Warden. They are also insecure and provide holes for actual malware to hide in with their awful client side rootkit process/file-hiding hooks.

League of Legends, for instance, runs outside of Asia perfectly fine, with a reasonable anticheat that detects its own processes being screwed with, not very invasive, not insane.

In League of Legends Korea, a Korean company basically installs one of these invasive rootkits - and even requires browser plugins to log in.[0] The founder of that company previously run for president in Korea and have virtually a monopoly on this crap. Some of it is required by local law.

[0] http://static.leagueoflegends.co.kr/common/js/aosmgr_common.... - note the plaintext http everything too

Riot KR is really bad. Idk if its a KR thing or if its isolated to Riot, but being in that community for the better part of 6 years now, the horror stories of the shenanigans that Riot KR pulls are notorious. Recently they banned a popular western streamer for criticizing them.

KR is ..KR. The people are nice, but the aggregate culture and laws are interesting.

They are equally bad in other companies, other games. For some reason they are horrifically toxic even when publishing a completely Western made game.

Of course, it's incredibly difficult to impossible to "run a game" from outside the country, their structure effectively forces you to open a subsidiary or separate company inside the country and give up control / be subject to those laws.

>You give informed consent by continuing to play.

The average player, even if they consent, is in no way informed enough to understand what having such a system installed means. They don't understand the value of the information they are leaking, and thus they are not in a position to give informed consent.

Many of those installing this kind of software are literal children, and thus quite incapable of giving informed consent.

Agreed. What I would like to know is how to ban cheaters without using these methods?

Because I would much rather play a cheat-free game and have well-intentioned programs scan for foul-play than the opposite.

I wonder if this is why Blizzard has refused to port Overwatch to the Mac; even though there are more graphically-intensive games available for macOS, and all other games by Blizzard themselves, but why are they holding back on Overwatch? Is it maybe because they can't implement their "anti-cheating" [spyware] as easily?