Wuthering Waves performance issues on PC are allegedly caused by its anti-cheat system

Wuthering Waves is no stranger to performance issues on PC, and a recent find by a Redditor blames the game's anti-cheat system. Players have experienced a wide variety of issues with the game since its launch, some of which have been addressed by the developers, Kuro Games. Although the current version is comparatively stable, performance issues are still experienced by a vast majority of its players on PC.

One user u/kaelan_ on Reddit, who claims to be a game developer, has shared detailed insights and analysis on the game's performance issues, which are allegedly tied to its anti-cheat system for PC players. In this article, we will take a look at these details that have recently come to light.

---

Redditor alleges why Wuthering Waves performance is bad on PC

WuWa's performance issues are caused by anti-cheat, not your PC byu/kaelan_ inWutheringWaves

Wuthering Waves reportedly uses an anti-cheat system developed by Tencent, called "Anti-Cheat Expert". This software installs a system-level service that runs with OS-level permissions, along with a driver that runs hand-in-hand with your video, sound, network, and other core drivers.

Essentially, this anti-cheat installs a kernel-level driver that can be considered similar to Riot Games' Vanguard. According to u/kaelan_, this anti-cheat uses as much power and resources from the CPU as Wuthering Waves' game code and Unreal Engine's rendering combined.

How did the Redditor reach this conclusion? Through tests and system logs. The anti-cheat seems to block DXVK, which is a Vulkan-like implementation of Direct3D. This feature is blocked by the anti-cheat in Wuthering Waves, but it does not detect this software until you log in to the game. You can sit at the starting menu for hours and problems will not arise.

CPU usage for the entire Wuthering Waves components (Image via u/kaeulan_ on Reddit)

To verify this, u/kaelan_ ran a system-wide test when the game was loading, which seemed to be the point when the stuttering was at its peak. This also happened to be the point where the user got at least one BSOD (Blue Screen of Death), and the test could potentially identify the root cause of this issue. Unsurprisingly, Anti-Cheat Expert seemed to be the one using maximum resources at this point.

---

How does the Wuthering Waves anti-cheat affect your PC?

Wuthering Waves can cause a kernel failure BSOD (Image via u/kaelan_ on Reddit)

Other than stuttering and lagging, Wuthering Waves' Anti-Cheat Expert reportedly causes a KERNEL_SECURITY_CHECK_FAILURE BSOD. It is already established that the anti-cheat runs as a kernel-level driver. However, the problem arises because it interferes with other core drivers. The Redditor mentioned:

"The anti-cheat system is able to interfere with the functioning of your video driver (which will cause video playback in a browser tab to stutter or make your whole screen freeze), your sound driver (which will cause sound and music to cut out, which often sounds like the "beep" some players have complained about), your network driver (which will cause your in-game ping to spike or cause you to disconnect from services like Discord), or your mouse and keyboard."

These findings coincide with the stuttering issue in Wuthering Waves where high-ping was reported at random times, especially after switching tabs with the game still running.

Since anti-cheat software mostly hides itself intentionally, tools like LatencyMon and similar that help identify problems with games will mostly blame other devices like your graphics drivers. Furthermore, u/kaelan_ also suspects that this anti-cheat driver is poorly constructed and can potentially harm your PC in dire cases. They mentioned:

"Worse still, if the anti-cheat driver is not written correctly - and I am now convinced it isn't - it can corrupt your system's memory, which will cause BSODs or in the worst case (if you were exceedingly, exceedingly unlucky) could even corrupt the contents of your hard drive."

Lastly, the Redditor also ran a Driver Verifier test that confirmed that Tencent Anti-Cheat Expert does not pass driver verification. If you play the game with the verifier enabled, a DRIVER_VERIFIER_DETECTED_VIOLATION BSOD will ensue.

Verifier causes a different Blue Screen of Death (Image via u/kaelan_ on Reddit)

To sum it up, it seems that Wuthering Waves' usage of Tencent's Anti-Cheat Expert is a major cause behind a lot of the problems with the game. While there is no official statement by Kuro Games regarding this, it would be interesting to see what route the developers take to address this problem.