Sadly it seems like Insurgency: Sandstorm is not one you'll be enjoying on the Linux desktop or Valve's Steam Deck any time soon, even with Epic Games supporting Easy Anti-Cheat with Wine / Proton.
A game that originally planned Linux support, which New World Interactive decided not to do while also cancelling the planned story campaign back in 2019. The last hope was Steam Play Proton but it appears the developer will not be enabling support for it in EAC.
Writing in their recent patch notes, the developer said this:
The Linux Situation
Hello penguin pals, this message is being written for you by someone who has in their lifetime been a self-described Linux-head. Yes, we are very much aware that EAC announced Proton and Wine compatibility. Please understand however that we would still need to do quite a bit of development work to properly support Linux, and at this point in time we do not have that capacity. Thank you for your understanding!
Perhaps they, like we expect others to, may change their mind once the Steam Deck is out and they might see more players asking them to support it. That, or people just go elsewhere and find a different game. I'm sure there will eventually be no shortage of first-person shooters that you will be able to play online.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Quoting: libgradevRealistically, we have no idea what their internal processes are. Other bigger developers have already said it's not as simple as people think, and now we have a smaller developer alluding to the same. Again, just enabling it means nothing, unless they're going to keep up with supporting that side of it to ensure it doesn't randomly break and keep up with SDK upgrades to ensure it.Quoting: Liam DaweQuoting: libgradevNot that I care for this game personally but what development work?! Isn't the whole point that devs don't have to do the heavy lifting Proton does... or are they just saying they cannot be bothered to toggle EAC support onThis has been discussed before, and it's just like telling developers to "export to Linux" without doing any testing, it's not going to be great. For EAC, developers first need to go and upgrade the Epic SDK used, which means it also then needs testing again on their main platform. Then it needs testing on Linux, to make sure it works and continues working with Proton.
Things are rarely a button to hit and be done with it.
To fully support it on Linux sure but they don't have to take it that far. I was referring to the article:
Quotethe developer will not be enabling support for it in EAC....
Surely allowing EAC and then leaving the rest to Proton is an option akin to all the other Windows games that aren't blocked due to anticheat. By not taking the EAC step they're blocking it outright.
Quoting: pete910Oi, Find your own news @liam, I posted this in the forum yesterday!
And it was so worthy, it got a full article! You're welcome!
Quoting: TheRiddickYeah so they don't want to update to the latest EAC SDK which would offer them better protection against cheaters.. Instead they prefer to use older versions which basically do nothing to stop cheating....
If I had to guess I would say that the dev that implemented the EAC SDK last time is no longer on the team an no one knows how it works, or EAC have some really horrible upgrade paths (never used it so cannot say).
Hopefully other studios do enable proton support. Kinda looking forward to playing online shooters with friends while my family watch tv.
Last edited by Green on 17 December 2021 at 9:41 pm UTC
Quoting: lordgaultWhat they are saying is that they barely have the resources to maintain the game on Windows. So it's clear that they won't do it even for Proton.
I was actually on their discord and in a steam discussion for a large amount of time when the EAC proton push first started, I tried many times to reach and convince them, but despite supporting consoles AND trying to add some jank modding support for them (with a 1GB limit according to a few people on their discord,) it does not appear they will budge on this; I brought up many times how they initially promised linux support and now that someone else did most of the work it's only a small push away with arguably the same or less work than a hotfix patch (they need to upgrade their SDK if they have not, then click a few buttons.)
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