Anti-cheat technology keeps moving, and 2024 set the direction for the next few years. Three shifts matter most for anyone who cares about hardware identifiers.
Kernel-mode everywhere
Every major publisher — Riot, Epic (BattlEye, EAC), EA, Activision — now ships a kernel-level anti-cheat driver. The era of user-mode anti-cheats that only run during the match is effectively over. Only a few older Source-engine titles still rely on lighter userland checks.
For users this means the anti-cheat reads your hardware earlier and more thoroughly than before.
TPM 2.0 moves to the centre
More publishers are tying bans to the TPM 2.0 security chip rather than to easily changed identifiers. Because the TPM is hard to alter, a TPM-bound ban is harder to recover from than a classic HWID ban — and Windows 11's TPM requirement makes this the default direction.
Detect first, ban later
Modern anti-cheats increasingly collect data for days or weeks and then ban in waves, instead of reacting instantly. They also lean on machine learning to tell genuine cheats apart from ordinary software — which, over time, should mean fewer false bans for honest players.
What it means for you
Hardware-ID hygiene gets harder, and keeping a record of your previous states matters more than ever. A ban is no longer guaranteed to be permanent, but recovering from one takes a more careful approach than it did a few years ago.