Following on from adding EA anticheat into FIFA 23, Battlefield 2042 and Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare 2 we're about to see another game broken on Linux / Steam Deck with Battlefield V.
Released today is a news post on the official Battlefield website, which mentions the previous implementation for Battlefield 2042 but now it confirms Battlefield V will also be getting it in April. The post doesn't say the exact date, but the official X account posted it will be live on April 3rd at 8AM UTC.
A shame to see more games get it, as there will be no option at all to play it on Linux and Steam Deck because EA AntiCheat simply doesn't support it at all. It's a kernel-mode anti-cheat and anti-tamper solution made in-house by EA, which is especially problematic.
Released back in 2018, Battlefield V still has plenty of players, with it hitting a peak of 38,736 in the last 24 hours on Steam.
Hopefully EA don't add it into Apex Legends which currently uses Easy Anti-Cheat that's enabled for Linux, as that will be a big loss, but no word on that so far.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Is creating a good server-side anticheat solution even possible?
Story time, I used to run some private servers for fun. In case you don't know, private servers are emulators/leaked binaries which let you run servers for games which you are not meant to, WoW for example.
In one of the games I hosted, there were dungeons you had to go through to get your gear. In typical game code fashion, the server checked pretty much nothing. As a result, there was a popular cheat for this game which let you fly or go through walls. Of course using this cheat you could complete dungeons within minutes getting unfair advantages or even crashing the economy.
Sadly the code for this server was not fully available, hardening the server directly was not an option. However the server would log players' positions every few seconds. So I wrote a small program which would stream the log and constantly calculate the speed at which players were moving and check whether the coordinates were within normal values. When a player was producing suspicious data, I would check what they were actually doing. Within a few weeks of adding this system and refining it, cheaters would get banned within a couple minutes by the moderators.
Of course my small server was not a massively popular FPS, but I was a teenager with no access to the server code nor extensive programming knowledge. I believe companies likes EA or Valve would be perfectly capable of producing really good server-side anti-cheats.
7 Likes, Who?
i'm going to stop playing games at this point, i refuse to be a microsoft laboratory rat just to play battlefield
0 Likes
i'm going to stop playing games at this point, i refuse to be a microsoft laboratory rat just to play battlefieldYou should definitely stop playing EA's games. Plenty of excellent alternatives still out there.
4 Likes, Who?
preludelinux Mar 29
The more these kernel level and root kit based AntiCheats get used it just forces the cheaters to all use rootkits to cheat. This has been going on for years on a lot of the supper "secure" games using RootKits. so more kernel level AntiCheat and more rootkits is not going to fix the problem. But the only thing this does is prevent the game running on Linux and will dramatically increase piracy for solo play type games where the question of AntiCheat makes no sense. Besides rootkit based cheats there is a growing market using hardware hacks and AI will become a serous problem rather quickly. Its a Pandora's box of security.
2 Likes, Who?
PublicNuisance Mar 30
I had enough reason to not buy the game before, this just adds to the pile. I'll stick with DRM free games.
0 Likes
Viesta2015 Mar 31
good thing i stopped buying EA stuff a long time ago.
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Sounds like a Steam Deck limitation.
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Sounds like a Steam Deck limitation.
It's also a Linux desktop limitation as well because there are those that play on it that won't be able to enjoy the game for the same reasons as Steam Deck users.
Good thing I didn't care too much about the multiplayer parts of the game and completed the stories to get something out of it before the crappy anti-cheat gets added this week on the Steam Deck.
0 Likes
UltraViolet Apr 3
it's a shame gamers feel the need to cheat, if cheaters didn't exist EA wouldn't feel the need to implement things like this.
I'll only be supporting EA again when they bring out the next BurnOut game. :)
I'll only be supporting EA again when they bring out the next BurnOut game. :)
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StalePopcorn Apr 4
Welp, the update kicked in today (Battlefield V)…gives a similar error as Roblox; "The program encountered E111000B at 00001D9B during initialization. Wine is not supported!"
Thank EA… I mean… fuck yourselves.
Last edited by StalePopcorn on 4 April 2024 at 12:18 am UTC
Thank EA… I mean… fuck yourselves.
Last edited by StalePopcorn on 4 April 2024 at 12:18 am UTC
1 Likes, Who?
nebadon2025 Apr 4
Yea I just installed to test and its the EA Anticheat Installer that is failing, it detects wine and the game can not be launched until the installer runs, so this game is now effectively dead even for single player missions.
2 Likes, Who?
i agree but i just love the battlefield franchise, even tho 2042 wasn't the best :(i'm going to stop playing games at this point, i refuse to be a microsoft laboratory rat just to play battlefieldYou should definitely stop playing EA's games. Plenty of excellent alternatives still out there.
also ending live service after season 7 ends... :(
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