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PayPalWell, 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.
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As longs as devs/publishers believe that rootkit anti-cheat is a valid solution, this will always be a problem. It could technically be solved by making a rootkit specifically for Linux to bridge the gap. But I highly doubt that devs want to put the effort in and that Linux users would ever install it on their system.
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pleasereadthemanual Mar 1
Liam mentioning the People Make Games videos before anyone in the comments can point them out again 
I don't think the anti-cheat problem will ever be solved on Linux.
I don't think the anti-cheat problem will ever be solved on Linux.
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The 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. It's sad that a company as big as Roblox is turning it's back on hardcore fans that have spent hours of their life getting Roblox to work on the OS they want to use. Also Chromebooks, Steam decks, and other Linux based devices are starting to become much more mainstream. Not having a native Linux version is probably going to measurable hurt Roblox, but I doubt they will/are measuring the impact.
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Simple solution to any of these that I (mostly) try to stick to:
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...
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...
14 Likes, Who?
pleasereadthemanual Mar 1
The 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.
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Linux_Rocks Mar 1
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As 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.
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The 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.
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The 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).
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Literally nothing of value was lost to Linux, no matter how you try to spin it; that's just how horrible Roblox is to humanity, and it not being able to run on Linux is a boom for parents and children that left or don't use Windows.
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I've always found this "Wine causes cheating" to be a bit of an excuse. The majority of cheat software is made specifically for Windows and in-turn windows games. They make these claims, but never back it up with anything other than saying "we just know".
It really feels like a false reason. I mean, don't you find it ironic devs will turn around and say "We won't provide a Linux build because the Linux market is too small!" followed by "We are blocking Linux because there are too many people on Linux cheating!". Well, make up your mind because both sets of the OS's cheaters are a small subset of that OS's users.
Last edited by BlackBloodRum on 1 March 2024 at 3:41 pm UTC
It really feels like a false reason. I mean, don't you find it ironic devs will turn around and say "We won't provide a Linux build because the Linux market is too small!" followed by "We are blocking Linux because there are too many people on Linux cheating!". Well, make up your mind because both sets of the OS's cheaters are a small subset of that OS's users.
Last edited by BlackBloodRum on 1 March 2024 at 3:41 pm UTC
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I've always found this "Wine causes cheating" to be a bit of an excuse. The majority of cheat software is made specifically for Windows and in-turn windows games. They make these claims, but never back it up with anything other than saying "we just know".
Although for me it also looks a bit of an excuse, their rationale here is: people are using wine to debug Roblox and with that knowledge come up with cheats that are then used on Windows.
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don't you find it ironic devs will turn around and say "We won't provide a Linux build because the Linux market is too small!" followed by "We are blocking Linux because there are too many people on Linux cheating!". Well, make up your mind because both sets of the OS's cheaters are a small subset of that OS's users.Not really, no, since both metrics have different target numbers (as few cheaters as possible, as many buyers as possible). If Linux as a platform is bringing in a disproportionate amount of cheaters while providing a disproportionately low amount of income, it’s entirely logical to say that the market is too small to invest in it and has too many problematic users to keep supporting it in spite of it not being particularly profitable.
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Hey, Liam, I have a question, since I don't recall it being addressed in any of the recent articles about this, though it did come up in one a while back: Does this mean they're now blocking their game-creation suite on Linux as well, or are they happy to leverage child-labour for that whilst not letting them actually play what they create on Linux? They weren't blocking the creation tools before.
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When devs don't give a shit about Linux, we as community go there and reverse engineer drivers, create Wine, DXVK, native tooling and an amazing software stack so we can enjoy our beloved OS.
But when devs give shit to Linux, what sould we do? Yeah, just put these devs in the hall of infamy of the companies that are actively hostile towards our OS. Roblox devs can go to hell.
But when devs give shit to Linux, what sould we do? Yeah, just put these devs in the hall of infamy of the companies that are actively hostile towards our OS. Roblox devs can go to hell.
3 Likes, Who?
I've always found this "Wine causes cheating" to be a bit of an excuse. The majority of cheat software is made specifically for Windows and in-turn windows games. They make these claims, but never back it up with anything other than saying "we just know".
It really feels like a false reason. I mean, don't you find it ironic devs will turn around and say "We won't provide a Linux build because the Linux market is too small!" followed by "We are blocking Linux because there are too many people on Linux cheating!". Well, make up your mind because both sets of the OS's cheaters are a small subset of that OS's users.
they needed to disable a lot of functions in their anticheat to don't trigger in wine, and in turn it made easier to make anticheats in windows(because of the disable functions) that why, is a good excuse, sad, but it's true
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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.
The thing to remember is that "anti-cheat" isn't really anti-cheat at all; it's anti-tamper. They want to know that the software and environment that it's running in hasn't been modified to do anything unexpected. On Windows, you've got a fairly standardised environment, but the broad range of hardware means that you need the ability to load, for example, hardware drivers... so people can load a "driver" that's actually modifying the running environment of user software. So the software developers put their anti-tamper software at the kernel level to be able to check on all the drivers as well as the user software. Macs have a hugely reduced breadth of hardware, so drivers can just come from Apple, and there's a built-in attestation mechanism to say that software hasn't been tampered with. They just use that. On Linux, every OS install is a special snowflake, so you don't even have a baseline standard environment to look for deviations from.
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Ah, yeah, they did say that. Um, is that actually a thing? Does Wine itself help you do that? In a way that blocking just running the software under Wine will stop? I have no idea, so I'm hoping someone knows.I've always found this "Wine causes cheating" to be a bit of an excuse. The majority of cheat software is made specifically for Windows and in-turn windows games. They make these claims, but never back it up with anything other than saying "we just know".
Although for me it also looks a bit of an excuse, their rationale here is: people are using wine to debug Roblox and with that knowledge come up with cheats that are then used on Windows.
For that matter, whatever they're doing to block people from running Roblox with Wine presumably is going to continue working because the Wine people are too polite and too US-oriented to violate the DMCA by sidestepping it. But presumably anyone using Wine as a tool for cheating will not be deterred by this issue and will alter the open source Wine software in whatever way they need to get it to work again, and distribute the altered version to the cheater community. Sooo, if Wine is actually used by cheaters to analyze the Roblox software, blocking Wine will probably stop legitimate use but not the cheaters. Um, congratulations?
This is a bad thing. Certainly any idea I might have had of getting my grandkids onto Linux is now gone.
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