It’s AI, the tell tale sign is the use of bullet points.

That doesn’t give /u/dev_null any credibility but they like to be a good little boy that yaps at clouds, cars and AI.

In this case user /u/Samsuma was unsatisfied with my regular meandering writing style so I reformatted my points into a more semantically coherent package to undermine any possible pedants to come in and complain about misplaced commas and semi-colons and start legislating what the meaning of “is” is.

I’m quite confident the logic here in unassailable, and that’s why /u/dev_null didn’t have anything to say but complain about the formatting while being unable to address the substance of my comment.

And nobody can “tell” AI text. You can make it adopt any writing style, the only thing people like /u/dev_null have to go on is em dashes, bullet points and “purple” turn of phrases, which, if I’d really care to get these synthophobes off the scent, I would have, but I was more concerned about giving /u/Samsuma the tightest response I could without spending too long on it.

Because of people /u/dev_null just prowling the internet, I do recommend any AI user simply not disclose AI use, gaslight synthophobes into thinking AI text is not AI, inserting em dashes and bullet points into non-AI text and generally being hostile to people like that because they’re really insufferable.

The reason I’m telling you all this is so that /u/dev_null knows they can duck off and the more they try to bully me the more undetectable I’m going to make it, there’s really not going to be any winner for anyone trying to antagonize me.

If you’re not going to address the contents then I’m putting you on my blocklist

How will it be installed once the deal closes?

Assuming default settings, the EA App runs a background service with elevated privileges (often as TrustedInstaller on Windows), and automatic updates are enabled by default. That means:

• No user action is required for software updates, including those that install kernel-mode drivers.
• Kernel-level components can be silently updated or extended through routine game patches or EA App updates.
• Any newly introduced or modified driver (e.g., an anti-cheat update) would be signed by EA, but users are not alerted to the depth of the update unless they manually inspect it, which is virtually impossible given the encrypted/proprietary nature of the codebase.

So, once the acquisition closes, any architectural changes to anti-cheat or telemetry mechanisms can be deployed silently as part of routine patching cycles. This does not require a new game release or user intervention.

Has it already been installed?

This is a fair assumption under standard security threat modeling practices.

• EA has already shipped kernel-level drivers (e.g., EAAntiCheat.sys) since 2023, and these are typically installed alongside online multiplayer titles such as EA Sports FC and Battlefield 2042.
• These drivers run with the highest system-level privileges, and the EA App has full access to update them.
• The compiled binaries are not open-source, not auditable, and may include encrypted segments or obfuscated logic, meaning users and third parties have no reliable way to verify what the software is actually doing.

Security best practices assume that any installed kernel-level driver is capable of full system access, including:

• Reading any file or memory region
• Installing persistence mechanisms
• Monitoring user input
• Communicating externally, including via encrypted channels

So yes, if you’ve installed a modern EA game, the capability is already there. The only real change under a new ownership model is intent.

Could this be a concern if the acquirer wasn’t Saudi Arabia’s PIF?

The kernel-level threat model doesn’t change based on ownership, the capabilities remain the same. But the motivations and likely use cases absolutely do.

It is a factual and well-documented reality that Saudi Arabia is:

• An authoritarian regime with little tolerance for dissent
• Known for surveillance and digital repression (including use of spyware such as Pegasus)
• Responsible for state violence, including the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi
• Building a significant intelligence and cyber operations apparatus under the guise of technological investment

In that context, PIF’s ownership of a widely installed, privileged software platform, with millions of endpoints and baked-in telemetry infrastructure, is not just theoretical risk, it’s an active national security concern.

It’s reasonable to assume that whatever institutional restraint EA may have had about using anti-cheat for more than gameplay integrity may now be loosened, or removed entirely.

Does this apply to all EA games? Is it properly disclosed?

EA claims that kernel-level anti-cheat is used “selectively”, primarily in high-profile online multiplayer titles. However:

• There is no centralized or transparent disclosure list showing which games install kernel drivers.
• The EA App and installers do not consistently warn users at install time that a kernel-level driver will be added to their system.
• Detection is only possible after installation, by manually inspecting the installed drivers or using tools like Autoruns, Process Hacker, or Sigcheck.

So while it’s technically true that not all EA games use kernel anti-cheat, the lack of disclosure and difficulty in verifying makes it functionally impossible for the average user to know which games are safe, especially given the bundled update system that can install new software silently at any time.

Games purchased outside the EA App (e.g., on Steam or Epic) often still require the EA launcher to run, meaning kernel drivers can still be deployed through those channels.

disconnect the glass fiber that is flashing heinous light into my house and be happy with whatever still lives

Must we abandon art for it has been poisonned ?

How can you even tell without install ghydra ?
How can normies be expected to know without strong labelling laws or whatever it takes for distributors to actually provide informed consent about their silly little game rootkitting your private computer space ?

So isn’t that tantamount to letting the ghouls purchase culture away from us ?
500 years into the future the only thing we’ll be playing is offline games from 1984-2014
What a sad ending for humans !

Will you do retain this attitude when all of culture has been put behind the dignity-wall and requires a neuralink brainchip for digital rights management purposes ?

What will you do when the last DRM unencumbered piece of entertainment is playing with a bunch of rocks and sticks ?

How do you play Battlefield 1 on TAILS ?

Well the original title is “Video gamer Electronic Arts to be bought in largest-ever private equity buyout valued at $55 billion” Which only points to “wow this is large exchange of capital”

And the text of the article is just investor-centric propaganda like
"PIF, which was currently the largest insider stakeholder in Electronic Arts, will be rolling over its existing 9.9% investment in the company. "

or meaningless puff like
“The IPO came seven years after EA was founded by former Apple employee William “Trip” Hawkins, who began playing analog versions of baseball and football made by “Strat-O-Matic” as a teenager during the 1960s”

Ultimately concluding with “By going private, EA will be able to retool operations without worrying about market reactions.”

“Hickey is unsure if the transaction is in shareholders’ best interest.”

“The financial backing and resources of the investor consortium should enable EA to increase its focus on long-term growth opportunities that may have been viewed as too risky or expensive as a public company,”

In other words no mention whatsoever of the ethical, cultural consideration nor even touching of the largest stakeholders in the transaction, the IP License Holders and their interest in allowing a foreign enemy nation administrative access to their computer kernel beyond their own user privileges.

This is nothing less than dereliction of duty by this “apnews” company, obviously misdirecting the attention of the reader and quieting their non-sense inapplicable fears such as return on investment levels for the C-Suite and the interest of “Freedom Capital Markets”.

These rootless bugpersons are colonizing our attention, spamming their virulent thoughts to distracts us from real, imminent dangers while our hostile leaders are selling us out to the highest bidder, instead of being lined up against a brick wall next to a deep communal ditch.

I use windows 10 and debian 13 on proxmox 9 !

? I see this another post in the community with the same article

No, that post you mention, was posted 2 hours ago

my post https://lemmy.ml/post/36863093/21361452

Was posted 5 hours ago and came first

Certainly, the true reason of the deletion is that my title was too evocative of the underlying consequences of this purchase.
Rather than the establishment-spun neutral titled crafted my the mind washing specialists at the pseudo-journalistic outfit of “apnews” Who did not seek to cause trouble for shareholders.

I’m sure if pushed the moderators would have rules-based legalese with completely above board reasonnable reasons for the deletion of my post, it’s not even worth asking what they were. they even have catch-all overbroad rules for this exact purpose anyway. We live under the constant crush of censorship even in these nominally decentralized spaces.

A great fire is well over due.

Well, it’s a driver and it runs in the kernel with system level privileges. I imagine as long as it remains installed the computer will be vulnerable to whatever is in there. And it’s undecypherable compiled code so we can’t tell what it is doing. I suspect shady bits will use the TPM cryptoprocessor to hide any malicious code so we’ll never know what is in there.

Even if you uninstall it, it just says it is uninstalled but it’s not like you can verify if it really uninstalled it or just renamed the files to something innocuous.

I will re-install windows entirely as if it had been infected by malware, and I just hope there’s a way in Steam to identify all EA games and block them from every installing even by accident

When I last tried to setup openwrt+iPXE I kept ending up on their forum but I don’t get what are they actually for ? Is that just a netbootable disk imaging thing ? Live OS netbooting ? Installer netbooting ?

Is it like iVentoy the non-open source netbootable version of ventoy ?

The only counter we currently have to state power is leveraging other states, getting them to fight one another until they’re so damage that they let go of their fascistic plans to enslave and tag the entire population. Russia isn’t going to politely send delegate to advocate against total state surveillance, they’re doing it, every state is turning fasch and doing it. They are to embolden, to empowered and they don’t respect of fear the population.

The only way to counter this trend is by distracting them with an existential crisis. They need “something” to save us from, when we are too safe and they are too powerful, they start treating us, as the enemy, as their pets, as their farm animal, cattle, we can’t stop them doing that but we can send them to clash against enemy states to dissipate their violent, dominating, malignant energy

to the alternative of accessing big parts of the internet by trusting private companies

Let me stop you right there, how about no to that, and no to whatever EID is too.

And anything that does, fire, that’s my solution ? Want EID ? Eat fire.

Or they can give up chat control right now, they can give up that BS a-n-y-t-i-m-e

But if not, then taking out Russia and mildly inconveniencing states that are developping an authoritarian bent in their digital space, that’s a win-win

Of course, maintain the hierarchy of capital which sees most humans as serving the hierarchy and terminating those who defy “the order” for “their own good” of course, because as the central tenets of this religion asserts, exploitation of capital benefits “everyone”. As in, this meritocracy structure allows anyone to become King Bezos through “hard work”(*).

Since anyone could become king meritocatically, therefore they all benefit from the equal and just potential, to receive “each according to their needs and from each according to their ability” anyone who opposes this system in fact opposes their own interests and those of other, therefore justifying the deployment of unlimited violence to neutralize the threat, for everyone’s interests including the perpetrator.

Ok, we need to ally with Russia to topple/flatten the states supporting chat control and feed their politicians to a very large blender

Are these options going to require installation of specialist software and then entering of special configuration parameters on the client computer as rather than just using any standard browser on any internet connected computer and typing yourjellyfindomainname.com ?