An article from this weekend that seemingly got buried by soundbites about the Steam Machine price in the same interview, but given that we have no information on price, this seems way more interesting to me. I mean…I basically self-select games that don’t use these kinds of anti-cheat at all, but this is important information for a lot of people, especially if you’re looking for an off-ramp from Windows and still want to play some of the most popular live service titles.
you are mostly right. anti cheat is somewhat more effective with kernel level access. also, it is infinitely more dangerous and creepy to run on your machine.
however, if the devs can get rid of just a couple more cheaters - they will absolutely insist on the more intrusive versions. it is not their machine after all.
i see two variants on how to solve this issue: