The situation is currently a bit messy, with conflicting statements but it appears that Roblox should work again on Linux / Steam Deck with Wine eventually.
As a little refresher: Roblox acquired Byfron, makers of anti-cheat software. They've now fully integrated it into Roblox with what they now call Hyperion in their new 64 bit client. They made a choice to block Roblox in Wine with this update, giving an assortment of reasons but saying Wine was still a priority and then later seemingly backtracking on that a bit.
Hope is not lost though Roblox fans, as they've now put out a fresh comment on the subject to make it clear that while they won't support it officially, they aim to get it working again.
Here's the latest word on it:
To clarify one detail: while we have no plans to release a Linux client, we are aiming to support Wine again. It seems possible, and we see a lot of value in it as a way of letting people run on Linux without the large investment on our end of releasing a native client. For all the reasons described above, Wine won’t ever be something that we guarantee will work, but also for all the reasons described above, we’d really like to make it work.
Right now though, it's all just words of course. We'll have to wait and see if it happens.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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The comments on this article are closed.
hardpenguin May 15, 2023
I worked for a company once that used similar narration for their app 😄
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Solution is flatpak + landlock. I know landlock probably land on Linux and (I heard) even Steam start using it for runtimes (I read runtimes are already in sandbox for some time on Steam; previously they use some trick with LD_LIBRARY_PATH). So: do not target any Linux distro, but Steam + Some Linux runtime (Soldier, etc.). I also joke now: since Windows supports WSL2, there is way to use flatpak to deliver single binary to ran both on Windows and entire Linux market, so porting on Linux means less problems. And WSL2 could be first-class citizen on Windows in near future.
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mr-victory May 15, 2023
How about disabling the "Wine is not supported" message Roblox?
EDIT: Can't post on their forum, their forum system is cursed.
Last edited by mr-victory on 15 May 2023 at 11:53 am UTC
EDIT: Can't post on their forum, their forum system is cursed.
Last edited by mr-victory on 15 May 2023 at 11:53 am UTC
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Quotewe see a lot of value in it as a way of letting people run on Linux without the large investment on our end of releasing a native client
This mindset is one of the reasons why I am still not sure whether I am happy about the popularity of Valve Proton or not...
Last edited by AsciiWolf on 15 May 2023 at 11:44 am UTC
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StalePopcorn May 15, 2023
"Right now though, it's all just words of course. We'll have to wait and see if it happens." The most succinct way to understand the situation.
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Ah yes roblox, the game that turns kids into content machines and takes the profits.
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Quote"For all the reasons described above, Wine won’t ever be something that we guarantee will work, but also for all the reasons described above, we’d really like to make it work."This, to me, makes sense.
Quoting: AsciiWolfThis mindset is one of the reasons why I am still not sure whether I am happy about the popularity of Valve Proton or not...The alternative would be practically no games working on Linux, at all.
Or only through the horrible hassle of manually fiddling around with Wine.
Linux is never going to amount to such a large player base that releasing a native client FOR A MULTIPLAYER GAME WITH SELF-MADE CLIENT-SIDE CHEAT PREVENTION would make business sense to developers.
For single-player games as well as devs using an out-of-the-box anticheat solution that does support Linux, the situation could be different depending on their circumstances (engine used, cross-platform experience, etc.).
Once Proton enters the picture, the question completely changes, as there is now a third (and fourth) option between native client and no Linux support at all.
Does Proton lead to less native versions? Of course. Well, at least I'm fairly certain it does.
Is that a bad thing? Not really.
You don't really have much of an advantage from a native Linux version compared to Proton. Very often, that version is developed once and then badly maintained, if at all. It might simply cease to function as fixed precompiled binaries tend to do on Linux as the kernel/distro itself advances. Which is one of the great strengths of Linux - it doesn't need to carry that extreme burden of having to support decades of legacy-code and programs.
The performance difference seems completely negligible to me - if it exists at all for a given care, I don't care if I could run a game at 200 fps or "just" 180 if all I need is 60-144 depending on the display.
The lack of official support, eg a game breaks Proton compatibility that it used to have but didn't officially support and then you can't play it anymore and devs don't care to fix it... I have heard of such cases, but in ~5 years of gaming exclusively on Linux by now, I don't recall this ever actually happening to me.
And if it did, I'd probably move on to one of the other hundreds of games in my library ;)
These things are all so minor compared to being able to play the vast majority of games on a much better OS.
So I'm definitely extremely happy Proton is as popular as it is and may it continue to be so for a very long time.
Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 15 May 2023 at 1:08 pm UTC
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Quoting: TheSHEEEPDoes Proton lead to less native versions? Of course. Well, at least I'm fairly certain it does.Not according to the data. I ran the numbers for a comment on a previous article, and the introduction of Proton had no significant effect on the number of native builds that are released. It provides a handy excuse for developers that weren't going to make a native build anyway, but they already had plenty of those (fragmentation! tiny market! hackers! Oh, hey, the Roblox devs used all of these as well).
Making a native build is trivial compared to literally everything else in game dev. That isn't the part that developers don't want to do. Testing and supporting the build are the time-consuming (and therefore expensive) parts that developers don't want to do. But if a developer is "supporting Proton" rather than "supporting Windows and hoping for extra money from Linux users" then they need a Linux testing pipeline anyway for their Windows build in Proton. Proton saves them hardly anything, and is just a mechanism to be able to say "Wine won’t ever be something that we guarantee will work" when they aren't doing that testing.
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mr-victory May 15, 2023
Quoting: TheSHEEEPa native client FOR A MULTIPLAYER GAME WITH SELF-MADE CLIENT-SIDE CHEAT PREVENTIONAFAIK Mac client doesn't have this anti cheat.
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Quoting: AsciiWolfThis mindset is one of the reasons why I am still not sure whether I am happy about the popularity of Valve Proton or not...Not sure if it'll change yours or anyone's opinion, but I find it interesting that Roblox staffers seem to consistently refer to Wine, rather than Proton 🤔
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