I actually listed three threat models for cheating in video games that I think matter, and then explained that for those broad classes as I described them, one was a solved problem (If players can change the state of the game in unintended ways directly, your netcode is not just bad, but worse than ready-made standardized solutions that exist), another is solvable with netcode (probably provably so. For example, garbled circuits protocols are a subset of zero-knowledge proofs and can be used to obfuscate domains as broad as any input a neural network is training on, and those are general function approximators about which we can't really make good structured assumptions about what information they will need), and the third is not even solved by a rootkit. You then quoted me about the third, input automation (I then shorthand this later as "macros"), and say

> So basically, except the most common types of cheating

So yes, I concluded from this reply that your concern is about macros, or context-free input automations. With good computer vision models we could also externalize certain classes of context-aware automation from the base system via a camera and an edge GPU on the external device, but this is exotic enough that I assume you're not worried about it. For macros, you can use a keyboard or mouse or joystick modified with a circuit to automate inputs that come from the device in a way that's indistinguishable from those generated by a human user, except perhaps approximately through forensic sequence analysis, which you could do in the network layer or on a server just as well

> You're trying to dismiss what I'm saying with hyperbolic sarcasm, but it isn't working and isn't funny. iPhones, Apple Devices in general, Nintendo devices, plenty of Android devices, game consoles, none of these give the consumer control of the hardware. They don't need a keylogger and transmitter to stop cheating, they just need for the cheaters not to have control of the hardware. Like I've been saying.

I am, as I said, well aware that tech companies are plunging us ever-further into a pervasive dystopian panopticon, which may sound like a silly thing to say about older game consoles, but not ones with cameras and microphones, and which may intercept network traffic, and which you have financial information tied to, and it is certainly not a stretch to say about phones. This is neither hyperbole, sarcasm, nor even subtext. In fact, it is the crux of our disagreement. If your conceit here is that I should accept this as inevitable and not oppose it at all, we have nothing to talk about. Really, if you're going to repeatedly insist that you have epistemic authority and it should exempt you from having to make any actual arguments, the least you could do is to keep up with the conversation.

Let's break this down since you seem confused. I am arguing here that your specific claim that you need this level of control to make a fair video game fails on its merits. Video games are here used as one justification for why it's good that your computer is being controlled remotely by a tech company instead of you. You are here acting as the advocate for that position, essentially that the price of freedom to control the device you play a video game is people cheating in video games. Your arguments so far are "This is the only way" and that this is "common knowledge in the industry", and then I guess a bunch of condescension about how my disagreeing with this premise automatically makes me naive or foolish*. You are correct that I haven't cited specific examples, because I am the one making the general argument, which I've defined in terms of three threat models I'm claiming exhaustively cover the ways someone could cheat at a video game that one could plausibly hope to prevent. Really, your job here is a lot easier, as all you need to be right is one (1) specific counterexample to my claim, a single case where it is definitely impossible to prevent cheating without controlling the computer of the game client, but where it is possible with that control. I'm well aware already that many video games implement "anti-cheat" measures this way, so I wouldn't count "Well they did it here and here and here" as counterexamples. To do this, you could point to a case where one of those classes of threats has no other feasible solution, given control of the server or even on the assumption that at least one player isn't cheating in a p2p context. You could even say "Actually you missed a whole kind of cheating in your threat model", and then demonstrate that it would still be cheating and that it requires a rootkit to accomplish, or something like that. But also, you don't need a counterexample. Maybe my reasoning's wrong somewhere, and pointing out something about it that falls down would at least be a starting point. Instead, you say "This is obvious, everyone knows this, I can't believe I have to explain this", which is you trying to use status in place of an argument. I don't respect that in almost any context, but even if I did, you have not established here and I have no reason to assign you this epistemic status. So in effect, you have not made anything resembling a compelling argument for your position, empirical or otherwise, as I said. As you said, you are under no obligation to, but if that's your tack, it's weird that you bothered to reply at all

*To be fair, I made a really similar argument in my first reply! It applies equally in both directions, and is pretty facile - a combination of an ad hominem attack and begging the question - in both directions. I wrote it in a tone intended to convey that it was more meant as partisan invective than actual argumentation, but regardless of whether you got that subtext, it's not exactly a pillar of my claim here