Today, Easy Anti-Cheat from Epic Games / Epic Online Services has officially announced a full expansion for Linux including native builds and Wine + Proton. This is big for Linux Gaming and the Steam Deck.
For those who don't know, Epic Games owns Easy Anti-Cheat and earlier this year they made it free for all developers making Windows games. Today this has been expanded to fully support developers doing native Linux games (and macOS too).
Not only that, this is the big one we've been waiting for — they've also expanded Easy Anti-Cheat support officially for the Wine and Steam Play Proton compatibility layers.
Earlier this year, Easy Anti-Cheat for Windows games was made available to all developers, for free. Today, we extend support to Linux and Mac for developers who maintain full native builds of their games for these platforms.
To make it easy for developers to ship their games across PC platforms, support for the Wine and Proton compatibility layers on Linux is included. Starting with the latest SDK release, developers can activate anti-cheat support for Linux via Wine or Proton with just a few clicks in the Epic Online Services Developer Portal.
Sadly it's not an automatic thing for Wine and Proton, as developers do need to actively go and do those "few clicks" but it's a huge step. In the documentation, it says how developers need to "test and activate client module updates for Linux regularly in addition to Windows". Hopefully many developers will go and do it, since it sounds like very little effort on their part. Considering just how many of the most popular games use Easy Anti-Cheat, this is the start of something massive.
Have a favourite Windows game that doesn't work on Linux currently with Proton or Wine? Looks like it's time to politely ask them to hook it up. Just a few of those that would hopefully work if developers update include:
- Apex Legends
- Dead by Daylight
- Fall Guys
- Halo: The Master Chief Collection
- Rust
A good time to remind game developers and readers to ensure you email us news tips, especially if a game enables this to start working so we don't miss it.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Quoting: gustavoyaraujoDo someone know if FIFA 21 or PES 21 are using ECA?I don't think FIFA has EAC but I don't know about PES. Online play either doesn't work or is unreliable but everything offline works well
Comandante Ñoñardo Sep 24, 2021
Quoting: dxmnYes, everything is okay offline, but those games have a great online experience, so I hope they will work at some point.Quoting: gustavoyaraujoDo someone know if FIFA 21 or PES 21 are using ECA?I don't think FIFA has EAC but I don't know about PES. Online play either doesn't work or is unreliable but everything offline works well
Quoting: Comandante ÑoñardoSo.... Now all this depends of game devs or wine devs?Gamedevs
Kimyrielle Sep 24, 2021
Quoting: einherjarQuoting: KimyrielleNot sure why they thought it would be a good idea to make developers perform a "few clicks" to enable other platform support. Developers quite frankly shouldn't have a say about what platforms people run their software on. Just enable it for all EAC games, with no way to turn it off. :S
Hm, freedom of choice - but not for game devs?
No one should be forced to support Linux IMHO.
Your point makes no sense whatsoever. EAC automatically working in WINE without having to be activated wouldn't constitute official support of Linux any more than a game not having anti-cheat in the first place running in WINE without the devs being able or required to consent with it.
On the contrary, if an active step is required to allow a game to run in WINE, people WILL view that as "official support", even if the devs otherwise don't want to officially support WINE.
Quoting: KimyrielleIt could also be possible that they switched it to opt-in for now in case of unwanted side effects(IF hackers could exploit it or bugs occur they dont want to be the ones to be blamed for it).Quoting: einherjarQuoting: KimyrielleNot sure why they thought it would be a good idea to make developers perform a "few clicks" to enable other platform support. Developers quite frankly shouldn't have a say about what platforms people run their software on. Just enable it for all EAC games, with no way to turn it off. :S
Hm, freedom of choice - but not for game devs?
No one should be forced to support Linux IMHO.
Your point makes no sense whatsoever. EAC automatically working in WINE without having to be activated wouldn't constitute official support of Linux any more than a game not having anti-cheat in the first place running in WINE without the devs being able or required to consent with it.
On the contrary, if an active step is required to allow a game to run in WINE, people WILL view that as "official support", even if the devs otherwise don't want to officially support WINE.
If it turns out that there are no problems they could easily switch it to opt-in and even later remove the setting completely and just always activate it.
-> https://steamcommunity.com/app/513710/discussions/0/
Quoting: RossBCFortnight installs EAC, loads semi normally. MediaFoundation problems doesn't like the MFpatch, you can start a game, some times get past lobby area always most definitely crashes when you jump out of the party bus.How did you get it to launch? I can't get it past the BattlEye bit
Maybe they just checked the box and didn't see if it worked properly. (only seemed to work with staging builds of anything)
Its loads in some type of driver as well, if it can't load it's driver d at startup, had to logout of my linux user and log back in again, was doing a hard reset though to be sure. with non-staging the driver would never load.
Gonna wait this one out till next year, have a feeling there is going to be teething problems.
Quoting: clygroQuoting: RossBCFortnight installs EAC, loads semi normally. MediaFoundation problems doesn't like the MFpatch, you can start a game, some times get past lobby area always most definitely crashes when you jump out of the party bus.How did you get it to launch? I can't get it past the BattlEye bit
Maybe they just checked the box and didn't see if it worked properly. (only seemed to work with staging builds of anything)
Its loads in some type of driver as well, if it can't load it's driver d at startup, had to logout of my linux user and log back in again, was doing a hard reset though to be sure. with non-staging the driver would never load.
Gonna wait this one out till next year, have a feeling there is going to be teething problems.
Need to use wine staging. I was able to get in game and start a battle lab and drop in but after a few minutes it always crashes. Performance is very bad too.
Quoting: BobbydigitalNo different than before. Fortnite, like all others has not updated to allow Linux players in. I doubt Fortnite will either.Quoting: clygroQuoting: RossBCFortnight installs EAC, loads semi normally. MediaFoundation problems doesn't like the MFpatch, you can start a game, some times get past lobby area always most definitely crashes when you jump out of the party bus.How did you get it to launch? I can't get it past the BattlEye bit
Maybe they just checked the box and didn't see if it worked properly. (only seemed to work with staging builds of anything)
Its loads in some type of driver as well, if it can't load it's driver d at startup, had to logout of my linux user and log back in again, was doing a hard reset though to be sure. with non-staging the driver would never load.
Gonna wait this one out till next year, have a feeling there is going to be teething problems.
Need to use wine staging. I was able to get in game and start a battle lab and drop in but after a few minutes it always crashes. Performance is very bad too.
Patreon
PayPal
See more from me