You might have seen recently that I covered the upcoming updates for Roblox, and now it's here blocking Wine with their new anti-cheat. This means you won't be able to play it on Linux any more, at all, unless you find some sort of special workaround.
Previously the roll-out of this update was being tested only with some users. Now though it's here for everyone giving a 64 bit client and introducing their Hyperion anti-cheat software which they are intentionally blocking Wine with. Naturally plenty of Roblox fans on Linux are upset by this, asking their team for updates on what their plans are.
In a fresh statement on their official developer forum one of their staff said this, in reply to users asking about updates in regards to Linux support:
Hi - thanks for the question. I definitely get where you’re coming from, and as you point out, you deserve a clear, good-faith answer. Unfortunately that answer is essentially “no.”
From a personal perspective, a lot of people at Roblox would love to support Linux (including me). Practically speaking, there’s just no way for us to justify it. If we release a client, we have to support it, which means QA, CS, documentation, etc., all of which is much more difficult on a fragmented platform. We release weekly on a half-dozen platforms. Adding in the time to test, debug, and release a Linux client would be expensive, which means time taken away from improving Roblox on our current platforms.
Even Wine support is difficult because of anti-cheat. As wonderful as it would be to allow Roblox under Wine, the number of users who would take advantage of that is minuscule compared with our other platforms, and it’s not worthwhile if it makes it easy for exploiters to cheat.
I’m sorry to be such a downer about this, but it’s the reality. We have to spend our time porting to and supporting the platforms that will grow our community.
Again, I’m personally sorry to have to say this. Way back in 2000 I had a few patches accepted into the kernel, and I led the port of Roblox game servers from Windows to Linux several years ago. From a technical and philosophical perspective, it would be a wonderful thing to do. But our first responsibility is to our overall community, and the opportunity cost of supporting a Linux client is far, far too high to justify.
They're clearly not going to be releasing a Native Linux build, which I think most people probably already knew, but at least previously they repeatedly said that Wine was a "priority" to support but now it doesn't sound as likely going by the above.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Quoting: Teodosio1) This is why we should always ask for Native releases; Proton is just a fallback
And yet now every time someone does express interest in working on a native version, the masses now scream for them not to because we have Proton and native releases will forever suck/be a waste.
mr-victory May 9, 2023
Quoting: Mountain ManQuoting: IzaicThat's how these changes generally seem to go. "Oh we broke wine? Oh well. But don't worry!" And then later after release: "Oops, time to worry! We justbwont be supporting Linux at all."This doesn't sound like they accidentally broke Roblox on Wine, but, rather, they intentionally stopped it from working.
I believe I read that on another site actually. It's not that anti-cheat simply won't work but apparently the new update intentionally blocks running through Wine. Which, as nobody would fail to notice knowing that, their "official response" skirts around entirely -- the fact that they're outright blocking it from working. Thankfully, I have never been a fan of the game and haven't allowed my kids to play it for years now due to how toxic and exploitative the game is (though my original reason for blocking it was primarily how toxic it was when observing my kid playing it on occasion).
Last edited by dibz on 9 May 2023 at 2:23 pm UTC
Quoting: Teodosio1) This is why we should always ask for Native releases; Proton is just a fallback, marginally better than post-development ports;
2) Keep in mind that Steam provides a "Review" feature.
This will only happen when enough PC users change from Windows to Linux systems. And that will only happen when people feel like everything they need is on a linux system with easy access to it and great user experience. That's why things like proton/wine exists in first place.
Other than that, I don't get why they don't want to support linux, since Roblox is available on Android, which is a linux based system and is more close to SteamOS than Windows is. I don't think a linux port would be that hard to do, unless the armv8/x64 differences are the main problem to tackle.
Quoting: pogofeQuoting: Teodosio1) This is why we should always ask for Native releases; Proton is just a fallback, marginally better than post-development ports;
2) Keep in mind that Steam provides a "Review" feature.
This will only happen when enough PC users change from Windows to Linux systems. And that will only happen when people feel like everything they need is on a linux system with easy access to it and great user experience. That's why things like proton/wine exists in first place.
Other than that, I don't get why they don't want to support linux, since Roblox is available on Android, which is a linux based system and is more close to SteamOS than Windows is. I don't think a linux port would be that hard to do, unless the armv8/x64 differences are the main problem to tackle.
I would guess it was probably recommended by their anti-cheat vendor. There is a stigma around linux that that's where the cheaters are, and that it makes it easier for "hackers" to attack the game. Honestly it's pretty similar in thinking that cloud storage companies intentionally don't release clients for linux, because there is a stigma that linux users are more likely to be heavy users. Frankly, there is probably at least a little truth to both.
I hate to tell whoever needs to hear it, but at least with cheaters, if they're good at linux w/ cheating they're going to be good at cheating in Windows too.
Quoting: Perkeleen_VittupääWhy do they specifically want to take this game away from so many people? "Sorry kids on Linux, we took the ability to play Roblox from you and there is nothing you can do about it haha!".
Why is this company like this!? Or is it possible that some other instance has influenced them behind the scenes?
There might be trouble in it and it's very little they lose by not supporting it. Sad, but true.
DumbAceDragon May 9, 2023
I've been playing roblox since I was around 9 years old, my account has been around for over a decade. I'm a fairly recent linux user (about 2 years now) but I have no intent on moving back to windows because of this. I'm not even going to bother rebooting into my windows 10 partition any time I get the mild urge to play "survive michael jackson in area 51".
I don't see this ending well for them to be completely honest. A fairly prominent portion of game developers on roblox are linux users, many of whom have already voiced their concerns. Of course, their voices have gone pretty much unheard, with the only replies from roblox staff being empty "please understand" type statements.
It's sad to me seeing a platform I'm super nostalgic for pull this type of move, but it's far from unexpected coming from them. As much as I'd love to see them support linux, I'm just gonna have to accept it and move on, because right now I just look like a manchild whining about his favorite kids game not being supported on his favorite operating system.
Some open source alternatives would be awesome to see though, something like minetest but for roblox.
--Revenue scales with number of users (obviously)
--Coding costs do not.
So like, if it was a game that had a few thousand, even a few tens of thousands, of users, then OK, the expense for 1% of that would be arguably prohibitive.
But Roblox is not such a game. They have, what, 60 million users did I hear? And they're getting Robux/year from all of them. Let's imagine $10/year on average, which is probably low given what I hear about my grandkids, and what I know about stuff they get for birthdays/Christmas. That's $600 million. Assuming Linux at ~1% (which is also on the low side these days), that's $6 million in revenue from Linux users, per year. You could so totally pay for a coder, full time, to wrangle Linux issues and still be making plenty of money from them. Heck, you could pay for several. And I can't see how it could possibly take more than one full time coder just to fiddle with Wine vs Anticheat issues.
What they really mean is that in order to make such a decision and keep track of having made it, somebody important, an upper executive, would have to spend time paying attention to the issue, and they don't think it's enough money to be worth an upper executive's attention.
So you know, fuck those guys. Especially--I mean, dude said they use Linux for their servers. You can be sure, they do that because it saves them a stack of money. They owe Linux. But they can't be bothered to "pay back" even though it would certainly be profitable, albeit in a small way. Fuck them.
Quoting: CatKillerWell, it's probably easy for exploiters to cheat anyway, but that's not something you can really admit as you're in the process of rolling out your shiny new anti-cheat system.Quoteit’s not worthwhile if it makes it easy for exploiters to cheat.That's a hell of an assumption right there.
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