AMD's Anti-Lag+ issues causing bans, crashes, and other issues in several online games

Jimmy2x

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Facepalm: Friday the 13th certainly wasn't a good day for AMD and the Radeon graphics team. The company officially acknowledged issues related to its Anti Lag+ technology and unintended bans for players using the solution in Counter-Strike 2. It said it is working with Valve to rectify the situation.

Unfortunately for AMD, Anti Lag+ users now report encountering bans, crashes, and performance issues in other popular multiplayer titles, driving many to question the decisions behind the solution's overall design.

Rather than helping players reduce lag to shoot their opponents, AMD shot itself in the foot as reports of Anti-Lag+ related issues began popping up across social media on Friday afternoon. The official Counter-Strike X account immediately issued a warning, letting players know that using Anti-Lag/+ would result in a VAC ban. Several hours later, AMD confirmed the problem was related to its Adrenaline 23.10.1 driver package. It advised users to refrain from enabling Anti-Lag+ in CS2 until further notice.

The issue appears to stem from AMD's chosen implementation of its low-latency solution. Instead of building functionality to supplement the existing game files, AMD's Anti-Lag+ solution design directly augments the game file's dynamic link libraries (.DLLs). In this case, the solution attempts to tamper with the Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC) .DLLs causing the auto-bans.

The situation went from bad to worse between Friday's announcement and early Saturday morning, as more reports of users encountering Anti-Lag+ related problems continued to surface. Users across several platforms began reporting issues in other titles such as Modern Warfare and Apex Legends, both popular multiplayer games with extensive and well-known anti-cheat protections in place.

Given the driver-level nature of AMD's solution and protections put in place by other anti-cheat measures, it's not out of the realm of possibility to see the issue arise in other games until a fix (or a replacement) is released. The safest approach for Radeon users running the latest driver packages is simply disabling the Anti-Lag/Anti-Lag+ functionality via the Adrenaline client by navigating to the Gaming tab and Graphics menu or using the default Adrenaline hotkey combination.


Click to enlarge

It's understandable why many popular online multiplayer games have rigorous anti-cheat protections to ensure players do not tamper with game files. However, it's unclear why AMD would target those untouchable files directly rather than building a solution that works within the allowable parameters known as anti-cheat measures.

Nvidia's competing latency reduction solution, Nvidia Reflex, is implemented via a software development kit that augments and works with game files rather than attempting to manipulate them directly. This implementation is one of the reasons that Reflex has not triggered similar anti-cheat protection measures.

Given the impact and current fallout of the AMD situation, there's a good chance that Team Red may have to regroup and redeploy a new solution altogether. Until then, users should exercise caution when enabling Radeon's Anti-Lag+ in online games.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/100493-amd-anti-lag-issues-causing-bans-crashes-other.html

 
winjer said:
Seems like Valve didn't whitelist a common feature in a GPU brand.
Click to expand...
Not really. The whole point of this particular anti-cheat mechanism (from a dev perspective) is to make sure your game files are tamper proof/unmodifiable without being detected. Valve (presumably) didn't ask AMD to modify their files, and it would be impossible for Valve to know for certain that it was AMD who modified them *and* that the modification was entirely safe/benign to the player experience. This is entirely an AMD issue and seems like an insane way to implement the feature to begin with.
 
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Good grief, can't they confirm it'll be fine with valve before ? amd's communication team is a meme.
 
winjer said:
Drivers change a lot of things in games.
And devs have to know what to whitelist.
AntiLag+ has been around for a while, so Valve should have already done their homework.
Click to expand...
no amount of work from valve would stop these drivers from crashing
Call of Duty/Warzone:

Apex Legends

Click to expand...
 
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The perpetual lack of maturity of the software ecosystem is just one of those perhaps not quite immediately obvious things that you have to take into account when considering buying an AMD GPU.

As much as many passionate brand evangelists, along with certain reviewers, try to project product classes like GPUs as fully commodified in order to try and reduce purchasing decisions down to a simple analysis of cost per frame, noone can really deny that the great many benefits that Nvidia offers go a long way towards justifying the premium that their brand commands.

Lower cost does not automatically equate to better value. This shouldn't be news to anyone.
 
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So, a driver team didn't bother testing the driver with popular games that their anti cheat don't allow you to temper with dll files. Is this team new to making drivers? Onto top of it you didn't bother letting ANY devs know that your driver may change dll files. Not the smartest way to go about it. Bonehead moves being done over at AMDs driver team.

Wonder if any game dev will remove any bans. It's not something thats commonly done but has happened in the past. Bet a cheater or 2 get a pass cause of this.
 
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winjer said:
Seems like Valve didn't whitelist a common feature in a GPU brand.
Click to expand...
...Did you even read the article? This has nothing to do with Valve's anti-cheat implementation, but AMD's new DLL changing implementation for their anti-lag utility.

In the article, it even points out other anti-cheats taking issue with it lol
 
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m4a4 said:
...Did you even read the article? This has nothing to do with Valve's anti-cheat implementation, but AMD's new DLL changing implementation for their anti-lag utility.

In the article, it even points out other anti-cheats taking issue with it lol
Click to expand...

Might I point out that AMD is not the only one that is injecting code into games.
Geforce experience does that to add features and graphical effects into games.
But anti-cheat programs have it whitelisted, as not to cause false-positives.
 
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winjer said:
Might I point out that AMD is not the only one that is injecting code into games.
Geforce experience does that to add features and graphical effects into games.
But anti-cheat programs have it whitelisted, as not to cause false-positives.
Click to expand...
Again, that's covered in the article (in-engine tools). Read it.
 
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winjer said:
There is no mention to Geforce Experience, which is basically reshade on steroids.
Click to expand...
Why would GFE be mentioned in this article, lol ?
GFE can only add a visual layer via freestyle and it does nothing to change actual game files, unlike al+

Nvidia's competing latency reduction solution, Nvidia Reflex, is implemented via a software development kit that augments and works with game files rather than attempting to manipulate them directly. This implementation is one of the reasons that Reflex has not triggered similar anti-cheat protection measures.
Click to expand...

It's not like for like situation. Even reflex works in a different way than anti lag+ not to trigger a ban, amd are just super sloppy, it's nothing new, no amount of "....but nvidia" whataboutism from amd fanbase will cover their basic incompetence. why wasn't this discussed with valve before the al+ driver was out ?
 
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winjer said:
You might want to read it yourself. There is no mention to Geforce Experience, which is basically reshade on steroids.
Click to expand...
Geforce Experience doesn't change game files externally.

Man, you're either trolling, or such a big AMD fanboy you can't admit your team got this wrong. The fact that it has issues with major anti-cheat clients says it's clearly an AMD implementation issue. Period.
 
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m4a4 said:
Geforce Experience doesn't change game files externally.

Man, you're either trolling, or such a big AMD fanboy you can't admit your team got this wrong. The fact that it has issues with major anti-cheat clients says it's clearly an AMD implementation issue. Period.
Click to expand...

It injects external code into games. Just like Anti-Lag+
The way to do it might be different, but it's the same thing.

And don't try to pass others as fanboys just because you have no real arguments to defend you position.
 
winjer said:
It injects external code into games. Just like Anti-Lag+
The way to do it might be different, but it's the same thing.

And don't try to pass others as fanboys just because you have no real arguments to defend you position.
Click to expand...
No, it doesn't. Hence why it's not flagged. The fact that AL+ has issues with major anti-cheat clients says it's clearly an AMD implementation issue. Even if you ignore that point again.

We're done here, fanboy.
 
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m4a4 said:
No, it doesn't. Hence why it's not flagged. The fact that AL+ has issues with major anti-cheat clients says it's clearly an AMD implementation issue. Period.

We're done here, fanboy.
Click to expand...

It's not flagged because it has been whitelisted.
When Valve whitelists Antilag+, it stops getting flagged.
 
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