The developers of Apex Legends have announced that they're going to be blocking the game completely on Linux platforms including Steam Deck.
Writing in a post on X / Twitter I'll copy it below:
Hey Legends,
We’re sharing today that Linux (and Steam Deck using Linux) will no longer be able to access Apex Legends.
Our dev team wanted to provide a bit more context into this and share some of the decision-making process that happened along the way. As mentioned in our prior anti-cheat dev blog, competitive integrity is a top priority for our team and there are many ways in which we’re battling cheaters—this is one to add to the list. We remain committed to more regular updates on topics like this and appreciate your continued reports.
Read on to hear from our Anti-Cheat Team.
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What’s happening?
In our efforts to combat cheating in Apex, we've identified Linux OS as being a path for a variety of impactful exploits and cheats. As a result, we've decided to block Linux OS access to the game. While this will impact a small number of Apex players, we believe the decision will meaningfully reduce instances of cheating in our game.
Linux is used by default on the Steam Deck. There is currently no reliable way for us to differentiate a legitimate Steam Deck from a malicious cheat claiming to be a Steam Deck (via Linux).
Decision making process
The openness of the Linux operating systems makes it an attractive one for cheaters and cheat developers. Linux cheats are indeed harder to detect and the data shows that they are growing at a rate that requires an outsized level of focus and attention from the team for a relatively small platform. There are also cases in which cheats for the Windows OS get emulated as if it’s on Linux in order to increase the difficulty of detection and prevention.
We had to weigh the decision on the number of players who were legitimately playing on Linux/the Steam Deck versus the greater health of the population of players for Apex. While the population of Linux users is small, their impact infected a fair amount of players’ games. This ultimately brought us to our decision today.
Next steps
To eliminate this cheat vector, we have made the decision to prevent access to the game for Linux users. This means that Apex Legends will be unplayable immediately for those running this operating system. Playing on handhelds, such as the Steam Deck, is still possible if the user opts to install Windows.
To clarify, this will not impact users who play Apex via Steam on Windows (or other supported platforms).
Thanks for everyone’s continual support and we look forward to sharing future anti-cheat updates!
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This is only a part of our ongoing efforts towards Apex’s anti-cheat. We are continually expanding and refining our detection and banning capabilities globally. Keep an eye out for more news to come in the future. Please continue to report cheaters using the designated tools and channels. Your reports are helpful and matter to us and anti-cheat continues to be a top priority for us.
For future updates and the latest info, continue to follow us here or check out the Apex Tracker Trello for bugs or concerns we’re investigating.
Valve are really going to need to do something more about the anti-cheat situation on Linux. We only recently had GTA Online in GTA V blocked (single-player still works). EA also broke the likes of Battlefield 1 and various other multiplayer games as well on Linux / Steam Deck, and I did say it was likely only a matter of time until EA messed with Apex. The list of blocked titles just keeps going like Roblox too — it's just a repeating problem that seems to have no end in sight.
Soon then the official Steam Deck rating from Valve will drop from Playable to Unsupported. Update 18:16 UTC - Valve have now marked it as Unsupported on Steam Deck.
When you try to play on a Linux platform now, you're just given an anti-cheat message. So this is the end of Apex Legends on Linux and Steam Deck.
How much of a loss is it? Well, for Apex fans on Linux platforms it will of course be a big one. However, looking at Valve's own stats, Apex isn't actually in the Top 100 for the last month of most played games on Steam Deck. The past year though? It's number #48 overall.
Oh, and before you suddenly go "but…but Microsoft are banning kernel-level anti-cheat!" — no they're not. Various YouTube videos and other media made headlines about it, but they're wrong which I wrote about before. Even if in some far-away future Microsoft managed to do so, companies will still block Linux directly if they wanted to (and they already do like Roblox!).
In related news, Valve only announced yesterday that Steam store pages will need to properly note what kernel-level anti-cheat they use.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Still, stuff like this is only going to hurt Linux in the end. Imagine someone wants to switch away from Windows; then they hear they can't use
If we're lucky, Linux users will still be able to play these games via cloud gaming services like GeForce NOW, even if using such services requires a sizable sacrifice in terms of control and privacy.
Last edited by Talon1024 on 31 October 2024 at 5:32 pm UTC
But without the price tag for cheating, the problem naturally gets out of hand and the developers resort to desperate measures.
To what extent Linux has played a role, I don't want to judge. But it is certainly naive to believe that there will be less cheating without Linux. Cheaters will simply adapt as long as it doesn't cost money to create a new competitive account.
Last edited by 1xok on 31 October 2024 at 5:38 pm UTC
Kimyrielle Oct 31
RenardDesMers Oct 31
QuoteHey, we noticed a big number of cheaters were using intel graphic cards. Since only few players currently use intel graphic cards, we decided to block access from computers running on intel graphic cards.
We will do everything possible to solve cheating.
Thanks
The anticheat scene is so bad and clueless right now it's ridiculous.
Quoting: Liam Daweand this is just on Steam - they will no doubt have a lot of console players too keep in mind.
I'm glad you brought this up because I would like to remind everyone: despite consoles being entirely closed source, they also have problems with cheating. They lump cheating software in with bug exploits and other nonsense, then blame it on Linux because cross-platform and their anti-cheat is ineffective.
At least we didn't pay for this hot mess :)
Quoting: Liam DaweQuoting: BeemerThey should put up stats. I want to see:This type of comment *always* seems to appear, and I'm seeing a lot of it across social media in reply to this news. I'm really surprised people don't understand, so here's it in simple terms.
- Total Linux user count pre-block
- Total of Windows user count
- Pre-block count of users allegedly cheating
- Post-block count of users allegedly cheating
The statements of "we've identified Linux OS as being a path for a variety of impactful exploits and cheats" and "this will impact a small number of Apex players," seemed a bit at odds. If it's such a small number, how are the hacks "impactful".
They install a cheat into your system to prevent cheating. It honestly should be illegal to do that.
They have all the metrics they need on their end to kick users or ban them. This is exactly whatA.I.expert systems are for.
There's a difference between counted players, and cheaters when these situations appear.
The number of Linux players will be (in percentage terms) low. The statements aren't at odds at all. Even a small number of cheaters can cause huge problems for the whole of the player-base, of which is mostly not-Linux.
You could have 100 Linux players, 1000,000,000 Windows players and 2 people on Linux doing cheats that affect everyone. That's what they mean. We've seen this info repeated by various developers, that Linux enables the cheats because it's harder for devs to block.
Hope people get that now.
Hello Liam,
I think that willing some feedback is legit though, if you mitigate a risk you want to know the impact of the said mitigation.
So, releasing the number of cheaters before and after blocking the Linux OS would be nice (even a percentage of cheaters) if everybody was doing it in good faith.
And if I follow your example, if 2 cheaters disturb a game I would say the game is ruined for all the players involve in that round so maybe 10 times (I have no idea of the player count in a round) then, it disturbs 20 people at a time not everyone that's why you always see the same type of comments imho.
Cheating is obviously a problem and I think most of the time it is an afterthought for the game industry at the moment Linux seems the weakest point for them but I'm pretty sure a lot of things could be also done server side to sanitize received data but the cost is higher in resources.
Like in the pharmaceutical industry a drug that try to fit all is way better for the profit margin (even with no know benefit for the patient) than an effective drug that's only needed by 0,0001 % of the population.
Quote"There is currently no reliable way for us to differentiate a legitimate Steam Deck from a malicious cheat claiming to be a Steam Deck (via Linux)."I am somewhat sympathetic towards the messy situation developers find themselves in with the current anti-cheat war but the article just feels so disingenuous with the way it tries to minimize the importance of their Linux playerbase and the way they refer to Linux like it is itself the problem. The anti-cheat situation needs to see some changes soon because the snowballing anti-cheats have done to catch cheaters are actually starting to harm everyone else to an almost equal degree to the cheats themselves.
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