Well, there it is, the update for Roblox has arrived that now forcefully blocks it from working with Wine on Linux systems (like Steam Deck).
It's been a bit of a saga hasn't it? Roblox has always been somewhat iffy to play on Linux, at times being broken while people working on the likes of Grapefruit and Vinegar repeatedly kept up with changes to make it work. The Roblox developers then introduced Hyperion anti-cheat software, although they continued to make it work unofficially with Wine but that wasn't to last as a developer explained that it has caused cheating.
Now if you try to run it, you will simply be told "Wine is not supported.":
This is an intentional change by the Roblox dev team, to block Wine, as noted in the previous article linked above where a Roblox developer clearly replied to note it wouldn't work in future.
Despite what you may think of Roblox (and it's historically had plenty of problems) as one of the biggest gaming platforms ever, it's certainly a shame to see it go. There's plenty of people out there that have Roblox as their main thing, and so not being able to do it on Linux is quite a loss.
Any game that intentionally prevents it from working on Linux is a loss as it just increases the uphill battle Linux has as a gaming platform. There's not exactly many accessible alternatives to it for Linux fans.
Know any alternatives for people looking? Let readers know in the comments.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
pleasereadthemanual Mar 1
I don't think the anti-cheat problem will ever be solved on Linux.
Don't buy/play or support multiplayer games that don't support you hosting your own dedicated server, on hardware you control (none of this forced 'rent a server from our partners' BS either), using configs and settings you control, including the ability to opt out of and disable whatever anti-cheat they support.
Something like Minecraft Java? Amazing - totally the kind of thing an interested person can set up a private server for, mod and customize to your heart's content, invite friends and family onto and be able to admin (cheat) to fix when little Timmy's house gets blown up for the 5th time.
Any kind of 'live service' game? Not so much.
Now even I admit this can't be a 100% hard and fast rule - this means no MMOs, nothing ranked or hyper competitive, and not even the likes of casual things like VRChat (which *has* anti-cheat that works on Proton and they explicitly court Steam Deck support on, but that could change at any moment!), so you can be flexible if you so choose, but this is a general concept I try to stick to.
Kind of how hearing a cool game everyone talks about is some console exclusive, for a console I don't have nor have any other use for? That's nice, but I'll pass...
pleasereadthemanual Mar 1
Quoting: shadownetdev1The stupid thing is that they already have a Mac client. Meaning that they have already done most of the work required to port a native Linux version.I'm not sure that solves the reliable anti-cheat problem they're having with Wine. Having reliable anti-cheat is likely much easier on macOS than it is on Linux.
Linux_Rocks Mar 1
Quoting: EhvisAs longs as devs/publishers believe that rootkit anti-cheat is a valid solution, this will always be a problem
This. This goes way back to the old "Starforce days" (that are fortunately gone now, but were replaced by not much better anti-cheat rootkits). I was a Windows user for some time (with Gentoo in dual boot) back then and Starforce was something that I would never allow to be installed on my computer. Sure, I had to sacrifice many good games, but at least my system was not compromised.
Quoting: pleasereadthemanualQuoting: shadownetdev1The stupid thing is that they already have a Mac client. Meaning that they have already done most of the work required to port a native Linux version.I'm not sure that solves the reliable anti-cheat problem they're having with Wine. Having reliable anti-cheat is likely much easier on macOS than it is on Linux.
Why would that be? I'm not a mac person, but I highly doubt that Apple would make it easy for software to run something at elevated permissions. So maybe the mac built is running with the same restricted "anti-cheat" as they did to support wine. If that is the case, some of these cheaters may just move over to try their luck on a mac. Maybe not as many since that would require a fairly significant investment.
Quoting: EhvisQuoting: pleasereadthemanualQuoting: shadownetdev1The stupid thing is that they already have a Mac client. Meaning that they have already done most of the work required to port a native Linux version.I'm not sure that solves the reliable anti-cheat problem they're having with Wine. Having reliable anti-cheat is likely much easier on macOS than it is on Linux.
Why would that be? I'm not a mac person, but I highly doubt that Apple would make it easy for software to run something at elevated permissions. So maybe the mac built is running with the same restricted "anti-cheat" as they did to support wine. If that is the case, some of these cheaters may just move over to try their luck on a mac. Maybe not as many since that would require a fairly significant investment.
There is plenty of software that can run in a priviledge mode in a Mac. AFAIK, you can do it as long as you get permission from Apple (e.g. many enterprises have full control of employees Macs, just like they do with active directory on Windows).
Unpopular opinion here, but I think that for this online only type of games the best solution will end up being that they create a cloud solution that doesn't require any local client. That way they can reduce the number of cheaters plus make it independent of the user OS (and not to mention how much they will reduce QA cost).
Patreon
PayPal
See more from me