It appears that Apex Legends from Respawn and EA has started banning some players on Linux, and while the Steam Deck uses Linux too it seems nearly all the bans were desktop Linux players.
The bans started appearing just before the weekend, and I waited to see what happened here instead of jumping the gun. As we've seen in the past when only a couple mention a ban, it turned out to be actual cheaters. In this case though, more ban reports are gradually appearing on this.
Currently it's not clear what the issue is or what's causing it and the overall number is still really low when talking about the overall Apex player-base, even taking into account the lower amount of players on Linux Desktop and Steam Deck, the number is still pretty small. However, now there's quite a few noting a ban, it's worth perhaps waiting to see what happens if you value your Apex Legends account (especially if you've spent money on it…).
Looking over the reports on the EA Forum, at least one person was using a Steam Deck while the rest were on Desktop Linux and on the GitHub post all reports there were seemingly on Desktop Linux too. Seems the players were using a mixture of different Proton versions too including Proton Experimental and GE-Proton so there's not a clear cause.
Apex Legends uses Easy Anti-Cheat, and they have the support turned on for Linux / Steam Deck with Proton, so this shouldn't happen to legitimate players regardless of how many it is but accidentally bans do happen. It is also a Steam Deck Verified title.
EA is at least looking into it as of a few hours ago, as a Community Manager replied to say they've passed the information on.
I've been playing a good few hours over last night and today with no issue on Steam Deck so far.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
aufkrawall Mar 1, 2023
Just guessing at this point, though. It could well be something entirely different.
mr-victory Mar 1, 2023
Quoting: aufkrawallWhat about Vulkan layers such as vkbasalt? On Windows with D3D, you need to put files into the game directory to make games load ReShade, which usually is blocked by anti-cheat systems. This is not the case with Vulkan layers, so it might be easier to shoot yourself in the foot if anti-cheat instead recognizes this as a cheat.
Just guessing at this point, though. It could well be something entirely different.
Isn't this a prove the developper haven't a clue about anything what they are doing? If they can't tell the difference in such obvious filepath that doesn't operate the slighest hack , how could they figure anyone cheating? That sound pretty amateur work.
mr-victory Mar 1, 2023
Quoting: JahimselfIsn't this a prove the developper haven't a clue about anything what they are doing?I should add they didn't screw up when adding Linux EAC support initially and they fixed missing .so file problem in a few hours only. I hope Linux bans will be reversed as soon as possible.
Quoting: JahimselfIf they can't tell the difference in such obvious filepath that doesn't operate the slighest hackWhat do you mean by this?
Quoting: GuestIndie devs: port their games to every platform possible, flawless native linux ports.
AAA studios with billions of dollards profit: wE cAn't aFfOrD LiNUx sUpPoRt uwu
just admit that game industry is full of incompetent useless people managed by greedy billioners. even though you buy all games, you don't support developers. you support upper management's annual paychecks so they buy another yacht size of aircraft carrier
To be fair, EA was one of the first companies that enabled EAC for Linux (and was afaik the biggest one). Apex Legends and Star Wars Squadrons are playable since about 1 year now. I played a lot of Apex since then and it worked kinda okay (the game is very buggy, but also on Windows). We don't know the background behind these bans, yet. For me Apex still works and I got no ban. Forgot about this article and played nontheless ;)
Quoting: GuestIndie devs: port their games to every platform possible, flawless native linux ports.
AAA studios with billions of dollards profit: wE cAn't aFfOrD LiNUx sUpPoRt uwu
just admit that game industry is full of incompetent useless people managed by greedy billioners. even though you buy all games, you don't support developers. you support upper management's annual paychecks so they buy another yacht size of aircraft carrier
The issue is real and has nothing to do with greed or incompetency. Indie titles are far less likely to be targetted by cheaters than the big titles, so indie devs don't need to spend much time, if at all, fighting cheaters; for them it's usually just a matter of flipping on the switch in the engine. Big titles on the other hand are usually targetted by a lot of cheaters, and by more sophisticated cheaters and it takes a lot of efforts to fight those on different platforms.
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