Mar 26, 2018 - Prior to 2017, Garena has been using Garena+ as a sort of launcher hub for. Everytime i start Garena 2.0 its always make 'Service Host:Local.
Garena literally makes League unplayable
Prior to 2017, Garena has been using Garena+ as a sort of launcher hub for all their games (LoL, HoN, etc.), so you have to log-in to garena then look for your game click it and launch/update it from there. But in 2017 they decide to shift to a new launcher called Garena2.0. They still supported the old Garena+ launcher until around late 2017, but after that they made updating the game impossible unless you were using Garena2.0. So you uninstall g+ and go to 2.0
Garena2.0 has been filled with bugs since the beginning, and Garena isn't even trying to fix them. Whenever you open the 2.0 launcher, it will immediately take up all bandwidth downloading something (I have no idea what it is), even when your client and games are all updated. When you try to update your game, garena will give you an arbitrary progress bar, at 10% it will say 'optimizing resources', at this point bandwidth throttles, and it stays at optimizing resources for about 30 minutes. Here's the fun part about this, let's say your dl speed is 3mb/s. Only 1.5mb/s is going to downloading the patch, the other 1.5mb/s is garena downloading something (something I don't know again).
Okay, so you get past the first 30 minutes of optimizing resources, only half of your speed goes to downloading the patch, and the other half to god knows where. It will download pretty normally until 25%, where they'll tell you garena2.0 was unable to fetch the patch, so it'll ask you to either cancel patching and dont play the game, or download the unzipped patch. So normally, patches are like 600mb or so, but this unzipped patch is about a few gigs in my experience. that may not be much for most of you, but internet is pretty shitty in asia compared to the west. Plus the fact that only half my bandwidth goes to downloading? I can leave it downloading at 2 in the morning, and I can come back after my classes at 5 in the afternoon and it's still not done.
So normally, a patch can take a day to download properly.
The best part is Garena has been deleting forum posts regarding these issues, because fuck you.
And before, someone brings it up, if you think my g2.0 is/has a virus, probably. But I got my launcher from their site. And I've been experiencing this since around nov 2017, and I did a clean wipe of my computer and redownloaded g2.0 from their site in january 2018. So fuck me sideways amirite?
EDIT 1: so I just woke up to this, it kinda blew up, I'll make another edit in a few minutes when I properly wake up. I'll try to answer (with my experience) some concerns raised in the thread.
EDIT2: wall of text
What is this kernel mode driver people are talking about???
At around March-April of 2017, some guys found that garena was placing a kernel mode driver in computers that install it (Garena). ' this Kernel mode driver has highest level of access to your computer,' understates the possibility of this. With this KMD, Garena could potentially, access your computer from anywhere, log all your keystrokes, force a shutdown, etcetc. It's essentially a virus just waiting for Garena's orders. But aren't all viruses like that? Eh probably. Why didn't I include this in my post?
I didn't experience this in my G+ installation back then, so I just didn't include it. As for now however, I have no idea, I have not checked. KMD link here
Is Garena a crypto miner?
Probably not, when I launch G2.0, my Cpu and GPU utilization rises by 8% and 2% respectively. Internet bandwidth is maximized though. Looking at the nominal increases I think we can all agree that having a million computers running at less than 10% capacity for mining is inefficient and the returns would be meaningless for a company like Garena. What I mean is, financially the gain that garena gets from selling the bitcoin they get from 10% utilization systems would be pretty meaningless in terms of their entire financials.
But hey, if you have a KMD, you can just make it so that cpu and gpu measures will return 5% utilization right?
What is GarenaPlatform and what don't you just turn it off.
The beautiful thing about G2.0, is it split the old systems of G+, which was only one process, into like 4 or so. One of these is Garenaplatform, which is essentially the launcher itself. I use essentially here, as it isn't really the launcher, but its a prerequisite for the process of the launcher, without it the launcher wouldn't even startup. And when you startup Gplatform, you have to give it access to make changes in your harddrive, so yeah, fuck you.
You can't turn it off, because don't play the fucking game.
Why not change regions?
I live in Southeast Asia, the closest countries with non-Garena owned servers are OCE, JP, KR (I think). I'm lucky to know how to read write and speak japanese so I can play in JP right? Yeah sure, if I'm okay with play on ~500 ping stable. Moving from 20-500 is literally unplayable. I would imagine OCE is around the same. KR is kinda hard to check since you need a Korean phone number to sign up, so I have no idea how to check my ping there.
Why is Garena there?/Is garena really the only distributor for lol there?/why is rito not doing anything?
Many south east asian governments have made it really hard for foreigners to open up businesses here. They have things such as a certain percentage of share holdings have to be owned by a citizen of that country, or higher tax percentages for foreign owned companies, and many other legal shits. It just doesn't make financial sense for Riot to be the distributors in SEA, they'll make money sure. But the amount of money you make in relation to the stress (of governments and the ecosystem of the countries) and the work you have to put in, probably isn't worth it according to Riot's estimates. Garena has established a monopoly on game distribution in SEA (if we dont take into account Steam, but Steam is like, don't even bother). There is literally no other company that can distribute the game. Riot isn't doing anything, because Tencent owns rito and garena. So it isnt that garena is under rito because theyre publishing the game they made, but they're more like sister companies now. For riot to do something, they have to look up to tencent, and tencent to look down to garena. Not happening.
Garena didn't change loot rate on (the last patch)
yeah, fuck you I guess. I've gotten 60+ 400BE shards (or whatever the lowest tier is) since the new system and got like 5 of the highest.
Garena doesn't even have good infrastructure for its events
Yeah, every year they try to make this big event that's supposed to be a year end tournament thing for every region. Every fucking year, the venue they get is too small for the amount of people that come in/tickets they sell. Literally, please fire whoever is running your events programs and planning. Now, I don't watch their streams (like the local LCS, or whatever garena calls it), so I can't talk about that.
On nepotism and garena hiring 'morons'
Yeah, you basically have infinite power in garena if you know a GM (they're like mods). GMs will ban whoever the fuck tries to destroy this image of garena being an all beautiful, can-do-no-wrong company. Also if you give them a name, they'll ban that name on the spot. Here's the fun part, they ban whomever their friends say, but not actually toxic people. OF course there's an overlap between the two somewhere, but that fact that GMs ban on account that family/friends telling them is, oh boi, fun. Then again, what do you expect? Garena only pays minimum wage to its workers, about a small increase for (local) top management (idk about actual TOP management). Even when they make millions a month. Can't really expect the employees to work harder than now.
Servers randomly die for long intervals.
Yeah, it happens. Not as often as back then, but it still happens. It happened last month, servers died for like an entire day, because of a TF bug or some shit. Unlike Riot, garena doesn't give like compensation for downtimes. I really don't care. But I guess it looks bad when the other company does and you dont.
Garena has a built in live chat
I actually have no qualms about the live chat. I used it waaaaaaay back then, from like 2013-2015. I had no issues then. Idk about now, since they moved to g2.0, I've been using other things.
But yeah, there is a button for the support team. It's just a button, no one is there ever.
Just use manual patch you fucking retard.
I did use manual patch for the most recent patch. I applied the patch properly, and yes, I did apply it properly I followed the instructions on their site, and the shit I saw on my monitor was the same as in their site. I open up g2.0 after the manual patch, yup, still need to update haha what a jokester gotem
Garena doesn't allow API.
Yeah, they have this mobile app that essentially works like opgg. I say essentially, since it doens't really work. I don't use it, so Idk.
I thought we were talking about the champion Garen
We'll have a seperate post for that. But I can't really check rn, SINCE LEAGUE IS UNPLAYABLE
Levi went to NA to escape G2.0
honestly, this is probably true. Good for him.
Inting
yeah garena doesnt do shit about what is otherwise punishable behavior. But you soil the name of garena you will be banned on sight, like pre-freedom Tyler1
What is garena?
just imagine steam, but shitty. I mean, really shitty.
Why dont we reverse engineer garena and update/make it opensource so we can patch/play without it.
You need to be logged in to garena to log in to the lol servers. So you only have one login id for garena and the game itself. The very game launcher itself is modified so that you don't type your id/pass when the client opens. The lol client connects to your g2.0 and uses the same credentials for your lol login. So without garena, you're not connecting to the lol servers
Is garena mordekaiser?
they should honestly just make a garena mordekaiser skin
I fail to understand why riot keeps allowing garena to ruin their reputation.
50 percent of something is bettern than a hundred percent of nothing. $$$$. refer to the answer above why garena is the only disributor in SEA and why rito does nothing Why does league need to be launched by Garena anyways? Did Riot sell the rights to Garena or something? Why would they even do that? Riot, before they were bought out by tencent, licensed the game to garena for publishing in the SEA region. refer to the answer above why garena is the only disributor in SEA and why rito does nothing.
is Garena a real server, that's my question
its more like a concentration camp
Does garena block you from playing in other regions? are you isp blocked?
Actually no, I can play in NA, EU, JP, OCE, KR (technically) to name a few. IF I can stomach moving from 20 ping to ~500+, sure.
What if ur computer is just shit specs hurhur potato
I have an i5 8400, and a 1070. Which is pretty potato by today's standards. Maybe I should upgrade. yeah.
Have you tried reinstalling?
yes, same problems. I did a clean wipe of my computer to redl everything early january 2018. same problems persisted
End of wall of text
EDIT 3
Another redditor messaged me about what Garena was downloading in the background on startup. Apparently every time the client needs an update, it redownloads all of the files it needs to function. Instead of only downloading the changes that the update brings, it redownloads even the things that were unchanged. So if you look into your garena folder there are a bunch of '2.0.xxxx.xxxx' folders with the same files. These folders are the different version of g2.0 that you've downloaded.
Garena 2.0 Optimizing Resources
So let's say I'm on G2.0 build 1.0.0, everything is working fine, very good, the contents of this build are packets A, B, C and D. However garena rolls out G2.0 build 1.0.1, because they needed to add an image asset. A reasonable person would tell you, well, just download the image asset then apply it to the install folder. No, Garena, makes you redownload packet A,B,C and D, and then the image asset. So you're left with 2 copies of packet ABC and D.
It feels like garena is trying to beat riots meme of being an indie company. Holy shit. A five year old that knows how to code can make something better.