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: MarlockAlso there are bare minimal requirements (even with the workarounds) that may already preclude usage of a significant fleet of old machines:
QuoteIt is important to note that successful Windows 11 installations will still require TPM 1.2 or better and UEFI boot capability. This will also only work for the 64-bit versions of both operating systems. Those requirements are immutable.
Win11 is just not possible where any of the above is missing, and that would include perfectly fine gaming machines like my AMD Phenom II x4 (recently broken, donated to a friend electrician and put back to use by him, gaming included). It's a nice 4 core cpu @ 3,4ghz but no UEFI.
Windows 11 can be installed without TPM.
At least some of the workarounds for older hardware are registry keys, so they have been explicitly implemented by Microsoft.
But of course, they don't officially support it, there's no guarantee it will work or continue to work.
Quoting: Avehicle7887yeah i agree... instant someone starts talking about fragmentation and linux it shows how little they know about linux... this isnt android with its 50 different versions of the kernel... all distros are on litteral like 1 or 2 versions of the kernal... that isnt fragmentation. and as u said u dont need to support all the distros just pick one. like valve did when they brought steam to linux... i logged on to type this message too...Quoting: sarmad"fragmented platform"
What a silly execute
Logged in just to say the same thing but you beat me to it.
This excuse is old and very inaccurate. I've plenty of native Linux games which run perfectly fine on a number of distros, and if the Roblox devs want to make it easy on themselves they could just target a slightly older Ubuntu distro.
I don't know the inner workings or how intention the blocking is, but if they are going out of their way to block wine specific code they are legitimately wasting their time, time that could be spent ensuring minimal wine support.
Only reason to intentionally block it is if you have substantial evidence of cheaters using wine and Linux systems, and I have trouble envisioning that some kid would gothrough such an effort, I have a hard enough time getting my Lil', cousins to remember their darn email passwords or so much as install a program.
Last edited by Botonoski on 11 May 2023 at 5:09 am UTC
Last edited by 14 on 13 May 2023 at 2:21 pm UTC
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