While it's supposed to be relatively easy for games with anti-cheat like BattlEye and Easy Anti-Cheat to get working on Linux and Steam Deck, some developers are having issues like Fatshark with Warhammer: Vermintide 2.
This particular game uses Easy Anti-Cheat, which is supposed to be a case of ticking a few boxes and making sure things are in the right place to allow EAC to work with Steam Play Proton but it turns out it might not be that simple for every game. A shame, but not a big surprise, as if it was truly that simple for every game more would have done it by now, and considering how big game projects and code are, there's likely plenty of smaller gotchas developers need to deal with.
A rep from Fatshark posted on the Steam forum to give an update on the work to get Warhammer: Vermintide 2 playable and it's not good news. Despite chatting to Epic and Valve, they couldn't figure it out and now their team is working on the upcoming Warhammer 40,000: Darktide.
Here's what they said:
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.So we have performed all the requisite steps to have this work. We've ticked the boxes in the EAC portal, included the files in the appropriate places. Problem is, as you can see, it doesn't work in this scenario. We've been in touch with both third parties (in this case Epic and Valve), but we're at a bit of a roadblock truth be told. Those who would work on really digging in to the weeds on this are indeed digging in to Darktide weeds, so aren't able to spend sufficient time liaising with Valve and Epic to figure out what's causing the 'simple steps' to not be as simple as they sounded.
In short, work on this is on hold for now. We'll bark up this thread should things spin up again.
Quoting: GuestQuoting: scaineQuoting: GuestQuoting: scaineQuoting: GuestQuoting: TheSHEEEPQuoting: GuestI feel obliged to go off-topic and say that it might not be the coders, it might be management pushing for continual rabbits out of hats instead. I've seen that so very much that it's actually the more likely scenario. The coders themselves have probably performed miracles to get anything running at all under such conditions.Usually, I'd agree.
But with Fatshark you really have to look at the history.
They have been taking forever to make even simple changes (you know, reminds me of CA a little) in their previous games.
There's also the fact that lots of other devs have exactly the same thing working just fine now.
Only Fatshark and their custom engine can't do it right ... ???
Of course, it is entirely possible that they don't have the manpower in the software-side that they'd need and they are just crunching the few coders they do have.
And those then don't have the time to look into Linux properly - we've all done it, it takes a week or two to get acclimated development-wise if you come from the crutch-driven world of Windows.
In the end, though, even bad coders are a management fault for not detecting that, so you're definitely right in that sense, no matter the actual issue at hand here.
Well, all I can say is that from what I've seen (and personally experienced) really don't be so quick to judge the coders.
Also "a week or two" is really....intense, if someone is moving from Windows to GNU/Linux. Obviously depends on a lot of factors, but even counting coder reprioritisation in weeks can be something a manager will baulk at. Better ROI spending the time to improve something else. Which is exactly what's happening here.
It's been nearly 9 months. They started looking at this in October 2021.
And I doubt they continually looked at it all that time. There's nothing to suggest they only just handed it over to Epic and Valve to sort out now - it would've been done some time ago. Yet nobody seems to be suggesting Epic and Valve have bad coders because they haven't sorted it out yet either.
I'm not suggesting they're bad coders. I just don't think they care. They'd have known about, raised and fixed the issue within days or weeks if they did. It's been 9 months while many, many other games have easily and simply enabled EAC or BattlEye.
I'm still unwilling to say that it's as easy for them as for others. They have, by their account, done everything that was supposed to make it easy and...it didn't work. Considering they're in the middle of Darktide, works fine under Windows (their actual target environment), I doubt the audience would be that large even with the Deck, and they could've spent ages getting nowhere, I think they absolutely made the right call here.
Sounds like you agree - they don't care. They have other priorities. Because if you genuinely think that if they did care, but still couldn't get this working in 9 months, then we'll agree to differ. If there was money on the table here, they'd have it working.
But I won't be buying Darktide now because I don't trust them to care about Steam Deck or Linux. That's their call. It's my money.
mr-victory Jul 1, 2022
Quoting: mr-victoryDoes this game have EAC files at multiple locations like Fall Guys?Yes, it does. Can someone try copying the .so file from binaries/ to installers/EasyAntiCheat and launcher/EasyAntiCheat ?
Last edited by mr-victory on 1 July 2022 at 12:52 pm UTC
Quoting: GuestDepends on your definition of care. They might care, but can't justify, which is a wildly different scenario than simply not caring.I think one could have serious and interesting philosophical discussions about whether those two things are actually wildly different.
Quoting: Purple Library GuyI think of it like the Trolley Dilemma. It's a matter of finite resources, where best to spend them, and what lives or dies as a result. Either way, much like the Linux based GoG client, it doesn't matter in the end. They're not doing it so that essentially takes it off the table for exclusively Linux gamers.Quoting: GuestDepends on your definition of care. They might care, but can't justify, which is a wildly different scenario than simply not caring.I think one could have serious and interesting philosophical discussions about whether those two things are actually wildly different.
Quoting: randylAbout which one can also have serious and interesting philosophical discussions.Quoting: Purple Library GuyI think of it like the Trolley Dilemma.Quoting: GuestDepends on your definition of care. They might care, but can't justify, which is a wildly different scenario than simply not caring.I think one could have serious and interesting philosophical discussions about whether those two things are actually wildly different.
Patreon
PayPal
See more from me