[JP] 05.03.2021 News (XignCode3 -> EAC)

[KAMIKADzE]

[Notice] XignCode3 -> EAC

Change time: 2021.03.17 Maintenance
This was written on the wall, that it'll eventually reach us...other servers had it for quite some time already.
I'm very disappointed that it's almost here. I have avoided playing games with EAC in the past, because it's one of the worst AC on the market, not in a sense of "game security", but in a sense of user's privacy, not even to mention that it opens a hole in your system that can be potentially used by malicious programs. I do recommend to not take my word on it and simply search online for articles about this AC and what it does.
The best idea would be to play Black Desert from now on a separate gaming-dedicated PC, which obviously is not possible for most of the playerbase. As for the others - do not use your banking, do not enter any passwords anywhere, do not view any sensitive data, while EAC is running, also encrypt all of the sensitive data on your system meanwhile it's not here. If you have a powerful PC - using a Virtual Machine might not be a bad idea.
Most likely, instead of abandoning Black Desert, I'll be adding various tools to Launcher to combat some of the security holes introduced by EAC. I will never recommend to use them, as it might potentially get you a banana, but for me it's well worth the risk (I have way more important things on my PC than Black Desert, including stuff under NDA, albeit it's already extremely encrypted ). And don't worry I don't plan to abandon Black Desert yet, even if I'll get a banana for it (I'll definitely appeal).

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[Notice] Windows Update to play the game

Basically you'll need a SHA-2 certificates update installed on your system, which most of you should have it installed on your system already. SHA-2 is not the gimmicky thing required only by Black Desert, so you need it regardless. Launcher also uses SHA-2 certificate for signatures.

[Margo]

Privacy aside is it a better anti-cheat or not? Will cheaters get banned?

[KAMIKADzE]

Privacy aside is it a better anti-cheat or not? Will cheaters get banned?

Unfortunately I can't give you a definitive answer. To properly evaluate both ACs I'd need to check their code, which isn't publicly available, for obvious reasons, so it's not that easy to. The last time I checked EAC it was in its infancy, so things might have improved since then, but at that time their shady spyware practices were enough for me to not consider playing anything with EAC (if I were new to Black Desert - I'd skip it as well). XC3 is a good AC, as an AC, but as a spyware EAC was in a whole another league from the start, and I highly doubt that anything has changed since then.
What I expect to see is an initial ban-wave (of let's say 20-40 players, with maybe 4th part of those being actual cheaters; not because XC3 is bad, just due to the different approaches, the same would happen if the switch was in the other direction, albeit probably with way less false-positives), and after that there will be simply more false-positives. I'm not implying that EAC is a bad AC, it's just not a panacea, even the best possible AC can be defeated with a well-designed separate cheating PC "in the middle", which cannot be detected. AC is more of a way to limit the amount of people that try to cheat, the actual way to defeat cheaters would be to make it impossible to cheat, but that will put a strain on servers, as they'll have to do a lot more computations, which are currently offloaded on player's PC (opening holes for cheaters).
tl/dr: IMHO in the grand matter of things - nothing will change for those that have a dedicated gaming PC and cheaters.