this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2026
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I've made this comment before, but to reiterate, I think that consoles are generally a better solution for competitive multiplayer games.
Consoles were designed from the ground up to be locked down. PCs were designed to be open and modifiable. Trying to figure out ways to jury-rig a PC to act locked-down is always gonna be an uphill battle.
Also, since this is for competitive multiplayer games, consoles also provide a level playing field on hardware. No pay-to-win "buy this hardware to get an edge" stuff. There's a whole industry of PC "gamer" hardware sold using basically "pay to win" marketing.
PCs are nice because they're open. That lets you make one faster or prettier or use any input device or rig up macro software or mod games, fiddle with memory or whatever. And that's a good thing for games that aren't competitive multiplayer games. You can play the game however you want, and it's not like it negatively affects anyone else. But that same characteristic that's an advantage for non-competitive-multiplayer gaming is a drawback for competitive multiplayer gaming.
For competitive multiplayer gaming, you want a platform that provides equal footing for all players as much as possible and is hard to modify, and that's what consoles do well.
You don't need to force competitive games to console to do this, just have the tournament or league provide the hardware for tournaments. If a "pro" shows up and suddenly sucks when playing on the league machine then you figure out pretty quick they are getting help from something.
Also, consoles doesn't stop cheating. This is the same mentality that thinks EAC or Vanguard stops cheating. Hardware cheat tools can work on console exactly as well as they do on a PC. There are already plenty of options for people that really want to cheat that the host computer doesn't even know about, just sees a standard mouse and/or keyboard plugged in. This can do the exact same thing with a console and a controller.
Regular players suffer from cheating way more.
I am not against all anti-cheat, just kernal level anti-cheat.
Stopping cheating doesn't require exclusive zero-ring access to a device. Some people are going to get around any anti-cheat you put in place short of actual human review (which is nearly impossible to do at scale). There are plenty of online competitive games that don't use kernal anti-cheat and don't have their community ruined by constant cheating. Anti-cheat was a "solved" problem ages before kernal anti-cheat hit the scene.
All Kernal anti-cheat is doing is giving access to everything you do on your device to a game publisher and making you feel warm and fuzzy that you lost because of a skill reason and not someone paying for an edge when both are true. Sometimes you lose to a cheater, sometimes you lose to someone vastly better than you, and in many cases you will never know which is which. It's like magic vs science, the end result feels the same whether you understand it or not.
Yeah but that's expensive. It's a whole lot cheaper to get the players to bring their rigs. Plus you're not liable for any damages machines or security. Play at your own risk.
It's expensive? That's the problem? Let them fucking cheat then I guess. I feel like they can either take themselves seriously or not, but how something "hurts" the professional competitions shouldn't be taken into account for the general public trying to enjoy games. Kernal Anti-Cheat is a fucking plague that needs to end.
I agree but I have a big issue with this if it's being the reason for what makes a company release on a console vs a pc
I mean, why wouldn't they? Like, say you're making, oh, a deathmatch shooter. Cheating kinda ruins gameplay for players. If the competitive multiplayer crowd winds up on console, then...shrugs that's where you do game development.
The PC world really pioneered a lot of competitive (remote) multiplayer game genres because PCs with network connections were widespread before consoles with network connections were. And to some extent, genres adapted to PC hardware rather than console hardware. High-speed twitch mouse+keyboard—PC hardware—first-person shooters dominated in the late '90s and early 2000s. That's what players who could play the games had. MOBAs are often (unless things have changed recently) adapted to the mouse.
But I don't think that there's any fundamental link between PC hardware and competitive multiplayer games. You could make games adapted to console hardware just as well. And if it's more important to prioritize a level playing field and avoiding cheating for competitive multiplayer games...I mean, sure, I'd focus on console releases too.
The flip side of that is that I think that in general, the PC is a better platform than consoles for non-multiplayer-competitive games, and if those don't make it to consoles...shrugs I mean, same thing, just cutting the other direction.
Shooters are the best possible example of consoles not being ideal for certain games. Give me a keyboard and mouse and I'll potentially beat the best shooter champion trying to struggle through playing an fps with a controller.
To be fair a console is just a locked down pc these days. There's no reason technically why you couldn't use a mouse and keyboard. The only reason is because they're focused on couch play and lack of interest I think.
Right, exactly. It's definitely possible for some games to be playable on console with mouse and keyboard, but given that it's not the norm you definitely may have issues. A serious fps player likely would not want to switch to a console without some convincing.
I agree. I mean, SteamOS also exists now. Maybe valve could introduce some lockdown mode where you get no kernel access as the user for these types of games or something. I don't know.
Either way, there has to be a way to solve this problem without kernel level anti cheat.
My understanding is that the solution is and always has been to write a good network subsystem for your game/engine. That's not easy, so most developers would rather spend time on the gameplay and outsource the cheating concerns to the ultimate sledgehammer against cheating: full freaking kernel access. It's honestly terrifying what could happen granting random companies that access, and it's probably a miracle we haven't seen a million users have their data leaked, deleted, corrupted, etc.
What if the companies doing this kernel level anti cheat refocused their efforts on a secure network stack for developers?
I think that could be a great change! I don't honestly know enough to think through all the implications, but it at least sounds like something that could work and may be more feasible moving forward. I don't think the kernel level stuff can last forever regardless. Once that first horrific mistake happens and data is lost on millions of machines... they're going to change approaches asap. Sadly it might take something like that to get it to happen though.
that heavily depends on the game. the majority of professional Apex Legends players use gamepads because of the aim assist advantage.
would golf tournaments be improved if the ball had a strong magnetic attraction to the hole? lol I don't think so
I'd rather the tournaments banned aim assist
Yeah, I don't doubt that. But it's funny that the reason for it being preferred on console is that you don't actually have to aim well lol. Making it, imo, a shitty shooter.
oh, I'm talking about PC players using the controllers.
some argue that the stupidly strong aim assist is a way to give the console players (since there's PC/console crossplay) a chance against KB+M users who get to use some movement techniques that aren't possible on a controller and that make it much more difficult to hit them, but tons of people started using controllers on PC just for the aim advantage, so it's definitely been an overkill.
Ohh, wow. Yeah that is crazy. I get that reasoning, but I would agree it's overkill to go ahead and give the controller a leg up! The only shooter I ever could stand on a controller was Halo and that was after a lot of practice (and not having a choice, playing against friends on their xboxes). Still kinda hated it in the back of mind lol
Playing on console sucks. I think the best way to play competitive multiplayer games is on Linux with anticheat support. We are currently not there, but this EACv2 implementation might be the best way in the future.
Why is cheating bad?
In full competition you're in a LAN, using pre-approved and configured hardware. Just let server mods decide if they want to ban cheaters or not.
This should be plainly obvious, of you want to have fun playing with strangers as the game is designed, it sucks if someone could just disable your camouflage by replacing textures with bright orange.
It's not just about integrity of "eSports".
That said, I just don't play online with people I don't know. Even without cheating online randos can be frustrating, especially in coop games.
This solves your complaint.