This is your root assumption underlying everything else. This also doesn't make any kind of sense. These companies put a lot of money into trying to stop cheaters. People don't want to play a game that is rampant with cheaters, it's bad for business.
The incentive is there. The incentive is more than there. As are their well reported attempts which end up making some gaming experiences incredibly negative for consumers, reporting in incredibly negative receptions which put a big dent in sales.
To say the incentive is not there is just...silly. Or disingenuous. Either way it's simply not true.
So, again, why hasn't Rockstar or Activision made these trivial modifications to completely and entirely stop cheating serverside? The cheating gives them negative press, hurts sales and turns people away from their software. So why haven't they fixed this since it's so easy?
> Here, I'm genuinely trying to understand your position
You keep repeating this but honestly I think it's bs. My point is clear and been repeated several times. You continue to try and refute the points I make; if you didn't understand my point, you wouldn't be able to do that. Honestly, I think most of your reply here is nothing but noise. Just focus on answering the top part of my reply, because eventually, inevitably your claims will be shown to be false, and the assumptions you rely on will be shown to be incredibly unlikely. I don't expect you to be able to admit that or concede, but I expect it will be entertaining for future readers and useful to those who are unfortunate enough to engage with you in the future.
Arrogance and ad homs, as expected. These particular ad homs giving your recent comments are particularly amusing and ironic though.
> I said companies do not have an incentive to respect users' privacy and autonomy.
Your actual claim, the only claim I care about and stepped in to correct you on, is that all cheating can be solved serverside. That's it. I know you like to write essays in place of giving an answer, but that's the only relevant point here.
> You have conflated anticheat with kernel access when the whole argument is about whether it's possible to prevent cheating without it
The entire argument is refuting the nonsense claim that all cheating can be solved serverside. You've yet to provide any proof of that, demonstrate even reasonably grounds to assume that, and dismissed the numerous real world examples and facts that show that case to be unlikely.
> Nearly every post you've made has fundamentally missed the point of the one it's replying to.
If you really believe that, then that's on you for not being clear at all. I've continually backed up my points and addressed yours, all while you constantly disingenuously claim you don't understand my point, lol.
I've outlined what the main point is above. Hopefully you won't still be confused by it.
So please, stop delaying and procrastinating, and just support your fucking claim so we can be done with this, or grow some balls and admit you were wrong, so I can be done with you.
Also, I guess you're not reading my post history very carefully when deciding it's a good ad hominem attack to use, because just this week I had a heated argument about some culture war shit and the nature of governments and ended up realizing I was being an asshole and making assumptions about someone, and apologized for it. I get that I'm pretty belligerent, especially on topics like how we live in an orwellian dystopia of surveillance and a majority of people in my trade seem to range from complicit to actively advocating for its necessity, but it really sounds like you're responding emotionally to my verbosity and tone and using this to try to discredit me instead of having anything substantive to say about the topic at hand. It is exactly an ad hominem attack, no more, no less
Here, I'm genuinely trying to understand your position and you are only using ad hominem and appeals to authority. My fundamental claim is that anticheat mechanisms for multiplayer games are possible without client-side control, wherever they are possible at all. So far, in opposing this claim, you have not given any justification whatsoever, opting instead to claim this is obvious and well-known and thus requires no justification. I made the only good faith argument either of us have made in this whole thread right at the beginning, the post you initially responded to, and you refuse to engage with it in any sense. Every reply you've made is argument to incredulity, ad hominem, or naked appeal to the authority of your supposed expertise, the consensus of the games industry, etc. I would love to engage in good faith with substantive arguments. You are doing neither.
"You think all the smart people in the games industry are wrong?" is just another appeal to authority. I don't think they're stupid, I think they have no incentive to value the privacy and autonomy of their userbase and look for other solutions