BattlEye confirms Linux support for Steam Deck, will be opt-in like Easy Anti-Cheat

Planetside 2... I last played that in 2012, on Windows, a year before jumping ship forever. It's... it's still going???

This is all just incredible. Amazing. I'm gobsmacked. Valve just smacked me in the gob!

Heck yes, keep them coming Valve!

And it's opt-in... Fantastic 🙄

Pretty much the only way this would work is opt-in. Any attempts to bypass the anti-cheat without support would risk looking like cheating!

Clearly Valve have been making waves with the Steam Deck announcement -- big industry players, previously indifferent (at best) towards Linux gaming, are now starting to see the light. Hopefully there will be a large percentage of developers that "opt-in" to the proton support, and those that don't get consigned to the history books as short-sighted naysayers.

Personally I don't give a flying fuck about anticheat, but this is still good news for those who play online multiplayer games.

And it's opt-in... Fantastic 🙄

Laissez-faire freedom, heck yeah!

/s

Well. Another shoe. I was wondering if it would drop.


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 24 September 2021 at 8:40 pm UTC

Absolutely hate the fact that this and EAC are opt in. Willing to bet most game devs won’t check that box for proton support.

I mean, this is definitely a good thing, but it still requires developer cooperation. I won’t be playing PUBG or Far Cry 5 on Linux any time soon, if ever.

Willing to bet most game devs won’t check that box for proton support.

If they want to sell games to Steam Deck owners, you're damn right they will.

I hope this will not end up in a story of one big game opting in, seeing some Linux based cheaters, then opting out again and claiming on Twitter that all it does is bringing in cheaters as the number of legit Linux players is so low (or some shortsighted BS like that).

So we can have Dead By Daylight, Fortnite, PUGB and Rainbow Six Siege (only missing League of Legends as one of the nowadays relevant popular games).

Now the only thing that is left is Steam Deck to be relevant to mainstream users, because game companies will surely opt-in to surf in the deck hype, but they can can also give up as fast as such like the wave of native ports caused by steam machines before.

And in my opinion: If all of this, combined by windows 11 scheduled obsolescence, doesn't make some considerable difference in the adoption of Linux Desktop (more than 0,*) then I don't think anything will.

I hope this will not end up in a story of one big game opting in, seeing some Linux based cheaters, then opting out again and claiming on Twitter that all it does is bringing in cheaters as the number of legit Linux players is so low (or some shortsighted BS like that).

Exactly my concern with AC software running entirely on user side like wine.

2 fing good news in a day WHAAAAAAT

Seriously this makes me happy i wanna cry

"there will be a lot of disappointed players if some games are blocked when they ship with the Arch Linux-based SteamOS 3 distribution."

or players instaling windows

This whole opt-in business sure sounds a bit annoying at first, but it's IMHO completely understandable: with native games, be it for Windows or macOS or Linux, it comes as a given that if you release your game for a given platform you consciously commit to support said platform in everything, including a properly working anti-cheat solution if your game needs to use one. And if you don't release your game for a platform then you just don't have to worry about it. The choice is in your hands.

Wine/Proton is a whole new ballgame though, in that it takes that choice off your hands and allows the users to run your game in a platform that you may not be able or willing to support, and quite possibly without you even knowing about it until trouble comes knocking. And if that trouble is non-existent in the case of a single player game, for an online competitive game it's a nightmare, because you can't have "illegal" players going around and possibly disrupting the game for the "legal" players by either cheating or by simply introducing bugs and unintended behaviors.

The only reason game companies haven't had to deal with this kind of trouble so far, even though Wine/Proton has been a thing for years, is that anti-cheat was incompatible and thus served as an obstacle for "illegal" players entering your online game. But now that it's finally compatible, if it had been made mandatory instead of opt-in then you'd suddenly need to choose between two options, one worse than the other: either you're forced to commit to supporting this new platform that you never even signed up for, with all the financial and organizational headaches this implies, or you don't support it and you let the new users do whatever they want unsupervised, which quite possibly means destroying your game.

In both cases you're f*cked as a business, and not only would it be be unethical on the part of the anti-cheat companies if they did such a thing, but I'd venture it could also very well be illegal and serve as a basis for game companies to take the anti-cheat companies to court. But even simply being unethical is a valid reason for making it opt-in. Not to mention the negative image this would create for Linux.

So anyway, first EAC and now BattlEye, Valve sure has delivered on its promises so far. Kudos to them.


Last edited by Nocifer on 24 September 2021 at 11:09 pm UTC

"there will be a lot of disappointed players if some games are blocked when they ship with the Arch Linux-based SteamOS 3 distribution."

or players instaling windows

IMHO some 99% of steam users don't know how to even install Windows on a normal PC. They all get it preinstalled with their gaming pc.

But now that it's finally compatible, if it had been made mandatory instead of opt-in then you'd suddenly need to choose between two options, one worse than the other: either you're forced to commit to supporting this new platform that you never even signed up for, with all the financial and organizational headaches this implies, or you don't support it and you let the new users do whatever they want unsupervised, which quite possibly means destroying your game.

I don't quite see how that choice follows. Let's say you officially state that you don't support Proton, but it still works. Say despite official lack of support you get people who buy the game and use it via Proton. You have no responsibility to support their game experience, because you disclaimed it up front--they were aware before they bought. But, they still paid for the game and clicked the EULA. They're subject to being policed while playing the game online same as anyone else, are just as subject to banning and whatever, won't actually look any different to a game administrator than anyone else.
Unless you're saying that this hypothetical game leaves everyone unsupervised, and the Proton ones just (perhaps) represent a bigger risk? But any game like that was probably destroyed long before any hypothetical Linux cheaters got to it.

And it's opt-in... Fantastic 🙄

If we have the right to choose whatever platform we want to use they also should have the right to choose the platforms they want to support.

Of course I'm going to criticize the developers if they choose to not support Linux for some reason, but it's their right to do so.

"there will be a lot of disappointed players if some games are blocked when they ship with the Arch Linux-based SteamOS 3 distribution."

or players instaling windows

IMHO some 99% of steam users don't know how to even install Windows on a normal PC. They all get it preinstalled with their gaming pc.

on my country people didnt knew how to USE an computer, but they were able to put an pirated copy of windows to replace the shit linux distributions that came on cheap computers due to tax exemptions for machines running linux.

to be fair, things were much worse back then:
1)prety much no games
2)an shit distribution
3)an country who is used to pirate stuff.

hopefully things will be different this time, but i would not hold my breath, its better to not create any expectation and be surprised than create and be disapointed.

"there will be a lot of disappointed players if some games are blocked when they ship with the Arch Linux-based SteamOS 3 distribution."

or players instaling windows

IMHO some 99% of steam users don't know how to even install Windows on a normal PC. They all get it preinstalled with their gaming pc.

on my country people didnt knew how to USE an computer, but they were able to put an pirated copy of windows to replace the shit linux distributions that came on cheap computers due to tax exemptions for machines running linux.

to be fair, things were much worse back then:
1)prety much no games
2)an shit distribution
3)an country who is used to pirate stuff.

hopefully things will be different this time, but i would not hold my breath, its better to not create any expectation and be surprised than create and be disapointed.

Of course there will be an amount of people being able and willing to do this, but I don't think that even in your example we where talking about millions of people.

edit: I mean e.g there are lots of people running custom roms on Android phones, but when compared with the total number of Android users they are still a tiny minority,


Last edited by F.Ultra on 24 September 2021 at 11:53 pm UTC

So now all Valve need to do is keep this device highly desirable, and sell enough units that it represents a significant number of users rather than a potentially significant number of potential users.

EZ.