Goodbye to Roblox on Linux with their new anti-cheat and Wine blocking

1) 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.

The masses scream that? Really?!
The occasional person says that, yeah. Let's not go overboard.

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.

That's what bothers me the most. When I first read that they use Linux for their servers and then they've got the nerve to go out of their way to punish Linux users… I thought that it's a shame that we cannot lock them out of using the kernel.

1) 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.

The masses scream that? Really?!
The occasional person says that, yeah. Let's not go overboard.

Maybe I spent too much time on Reddit. It seems any time it's come up people rally behind that idea and argue/downvote anyone otherwise.

1) 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.

The masses scream that? Really?!
The occasional person says that, yeah. Let's not go overboard.

Maybe I spent too much time on Reddit. It seems any time it's come up people rally behind that idea and argue/downvote anyone otherwise.

Ah, well, so you have information I don't, since I spend zero time on Reddit.

Maybe I spent too much time on Reddit. It seems any time it's come up people rally behind that idea and argue/downvote anyone otherwise.

Any time spent on Reddit is too much time spent on Reddit.

But people do claim that Proton is better than native, even here, which is unfortunate.

This doesn't sound like they accidentally broke Roblox on Wine, but, rather, they intentionally stopped it from working.

They claim that even if they didn't block Wine, the AC would crash but that does not justify their actions. Goodbye Roblox.

"fragmented platform"

What a silly excuse


Last edited by sarmad on 10 May 2023 at 5:47 pm UTC

"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.

1) 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.

the problem with native Linux games is how well they get supported but a lot of the AAA games that have native Linux ports get little support or no support or are missing features or DLC

IMHO this is not a loss
games like this that have an in-game currency that you need to spend real money to get microtransactions or games that have loot boxes or as EA likes to call them surprise mechanics these games need to be banned

or as EA likes to call them surprise mechanics these games need to be banned

Come on, man.
Where is your sense of pride and accomplishment?!

I wonder how many of their players are in India, considering the mass exodus from Windows happening there (down to 53% as of April). Roblox claims it is a "global platform that brings people together through play". Is more than 1/16th of the total world population (apparent Linux users in India alone) not enough to justify supporting the Linux platform?

(And yes, statcounter says "unknown" for what all the new devices have shifted to, however: we already know that they were planning on dropping windows in favor of linux for government and educational institutions as of this January (and if it's what they're now teaching students on, presumably those same students would want that on their own systems) - it is probable that we're seeing the resulting shift in monthly snapshots...it's not far-fetched that statcounter doesn't support counting every single linux distribution as "linux")


Last edited by lectrode on 9 May 2023 at 10:42 pm UTC

We can't force companies to support Proton/Wine because even Linux users frequently don't want to rely on them.

Many companies starting to feel that Valve set a trap with Steam Deck and Proton. They were happily making money out of developing games for Windows. Now, they have to deal with users that demand to support the poorly documented Windows emulator.

People can always run Windows to play this game. On the other hand, it doesn't solve this issue because you can expect more companies to block Wine/Proton users.

It's too adventurous for me to waste time and money on companies that ignore us. They are so many great companies and programmers that port games to Linux. I think that they deserve to buy games from them.

I'm mad when a company drops support for the native version for Linux. From the get-go, some companies ignore Linux users, and people are always angry because they decided to block them. I presume their decision was predictable, and we can't do anything about it.

You can't win "a game" with a company that created it.


Last edited by gbudny on 9 May 2023 at 11:16 pm UTC

There might be trouble in it and it's very little they lose by not supporting it. Sad, but true.

Actually they are going to lose more than they think. Also, it's not just that they aren't "supporting" Linux, they are actively sabotaging, with failure of the client when the environment is detected.

Here's how they lose. People like me, who were at best indifferent to their stupid game, are now actively hostile towards them. I won't see anyone play this game without admonishment, I'll warn parents (my computer service customers) about it ("the exploitation of children"... buzzwords right there) and any opportunity I get to discourage will be my pleasure. Fair game.

I wonder how many of their players are in India, considering the mass exodus from Windows happening there (down to 53% as of April). Roblox claims it is a "global platform that brings people together through play". Is more than 1/16th of the total world population (apparent Linux users in India alone) not enough to justify supporting the Linux platform?

(And yes, statcounter says "unknown" for what all the new devices have shifted to, however: we already know that they were planning on dropping windows in favor of linux for government and educational institutions as of this January (and if it's what they're now teaching students on, presumably those same students would want that on their own systems) - it is probable that we're seeing the resulting shift in monthly snapshots...it's not far-fetched that statcounter doesn't support counting every single linux distribution as "linux")

That is very interesting. But a note of caution--although, yes, that "India dropping Windows for Linux" article refers to a broader national policy somewhere within it, the main body discussing real world government and educational Linux use is just about Kerala state. That's not a surprise because Kerala is run by a bunch of raving socialists who believe in unfashionable things like the public benefiting from government. But most of India is not run by people like that; most of it is run by corrupt neoliberals, some of them with fascist tendencies. In those other places I have doubts that having a policy will be enough to result in real change, especially when the bribes start flowing.

And yes, statcounter says "unknown" for what all the new devices have shifted to,

Other countries have a surge of "unknown" as well, but smaller than India. IMO "unknown" isn't entirely but only partially Linux on India, because countries like ie. Turkey certainly aren't going to switch to Linux in a month so "unknown" indicates whatever that lost market share.

Here is a plausible reason why people might be more motivated to try Linux at home and at work there now, besides govt policies:
https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/microsoft-ending-support-to-windows-10-current-version-to-be-final-updates-101682831410557.html

Combine India's huge mass of old PCs that can't be changed to a new PC and Win11's official minimal supported hardware restrictions, and you have effectively Microaoft to thank for any uptick in Linux usage there

ps: win11 can be installed on older hardware, but MS makes it abundantly clear this is not supported and puts several roadblocks on it
https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-to-install-windows-11-on-older-unsupported-pcs/


Last edited by Marlock on 10 May 2023 at 9:32 am UTC

Here is a plausible reason why people might be more motivated to try Linux at home and at work there now, besides govt policies:
https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/microsoft-ending-support-to-windows-10-current-version-to-be-final-updates-101682831410557.html

Combine India's huge mass of old PCs that can't be changed to a new PC and Win11's official minimal supported hardware restrictions, and you have effectively Microaoft to thank for any uptick in Linux usage there

ps: win11 can be installed on older hardware, but MS makes it abundantly clear this is not supported and puts several roadblocks on it
https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-to-install-windows-11-on-older-unsupported-pcs/

Strange enough, the means (provided by Microsoft) against the roadblocks for updates are different ones than those for the installation. So you might end up with an installation that you cannot update one day - when not being able to update made you change from 10 to 11 in the first place...

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.

They don't even need to do that: Valve have abstracted away the library differences between distros with the Steam Linux Runtime. Build against those libraries and it doesn't matter what the distros do - your game is run in a container isolated from the system libraries.

Testing on Ubuntu as your target platform is still sensible, of course, as the popular distro with conservative updates (the same reasons Valve picked it as the basis for the SLR).

[quote=Eike]

Strange enough, the means (provided by Microsoft) against the roadblocks for updates are different ones than those for the installation. So you might end up with an installation that you cannot update one day - when not being able to update made you change from 10 to 11 in the first place...

As stated by the linked article:

This procedure is NOT SUPPORTED by Microsoft. While company blog posts suggest the company is aware of users taking these drastic steps, they have not yet taken counter steps to block them, and they don’t currently have plans to do so—but that doesn’t mean that they won’t.

Also there are bare minimal requirements (even with the workarounds) that may already preclude usage of a significant fleet of old machines:

It 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.


Last edited by Marlock on 10 May 2023 at 12:21 pm UTC

By sounds of it actual position of company has always been "no support because it is difficult and we can't be bothered". Which is fine, but inconsistent message throws off.
I don't think it changes much in discussion of Proton/Wine versus native - this is DRM we are talking about. Which ends up saying more about litigation side of this - there is no evidence DRM being supported or even unintentionally working under Wine/Proton undermines games - but it is more security vendors saying "we can't cover you in this case, so it is your call to block setups we do not support".
Decision making around this always involve producers and these people do not care about technology per se - for them it is about mitigating risks and minimizing QA calls on theoretical level.
They are not first and probably not last company reacting like this. Sometimes gaming and open source and free software spirit of Linux is not compatible and we will have to live with that.