Oh sorry - I misread your suggestion! I thought you were talking about separate matchmaking logic for known cheaters, but you're asking about opt-in matchmaking for those willing to use invasive anticheat.

The example still kind of applies. In the CS world, serious players use Faceit for matchmaking, which requires you to install a kernel-level anticheat. This is basically what you're suggesting, but operated by a 3rd party.

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throw10920 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Hmm, I guess that since VAC is not a kernel-level anticheat, the comparison between it and Faceit for CS is pretty close to my idea. Thanks for pointing that out.

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phplovesong 3 hours ago | parent [-]

VAC is actually an AI based anticheat. I guess IF (a big if) it ever gets good enough it will be better than any kernel level AC, because it analyzes the gameplay, not the inputs, meaning a DMA cheat would also be caught.

But so far that still seems to be miles away.

	▲	shaokind an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		"VAC" is a catch-all term for all of Valve's anti-cheating mechanisms. The primary one is a standard user-mode software module, that does traditional scanning. The AI mechanism you're referring to is these days referred to as "VAC Live" (previously, VACNet). The primary game it is deployed on is Counter-Strike 2. From what we understand, it is a very game-dependent stack, so it is not universally deploy-able.
	▲	sfn42 26 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I don't think that's what VAC is. I think VAC just looks for known cheat patterns in memory and such, and if it finds indisputable proof of cheating it marks a player for banning in the next wave. Maybe there is some ML involved in finding these patterns but I think it's very strictly controlled by humans to prevent fase positives. That's why VAC bans are irreversible, false positives are supposed to be impossible.