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.
---
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.
Linux_Rocks Oct 31
It also makes me wonder if there is some anti-Valve conspiracy here. Inquiring minds want to know...
However, in the end, they seem to be unable to signficantly reduce cheating anyways, so it's kind of moot.
The correct solution ofc is to properly develop anti-cheat and more secure code, but that requires effort, so just blaming/blocking Linux is their low-effort solution w/o really being a solution (thus harming Linux users w/o much benefit to Windows users).
Oh, and also, large-scale cheating almost always implies cheat-devs making a lot of money (which keeps them competitive in the "cat-and-mouse" game), so divesting some of their resources to investigating and suing the devs would be a better use of said resources.
Last edited by coolitic on 31 October 2024 at 7:29 pm UTC
Looking at the Steam reviews it looks like Apex is dying. It's been getting massive negative reviews since July, 43% positive reviews in the last 30 days. And 33% positive reviews so far today since this news dropped.maybe the reviews are negative because the game got flooded with cheaters?
Looks like they are panicking and trying to find any easy solution to their bad image, but they just created more bad press in doing so.
Lifetime ratings are now at 68% which is "mixed" and will be turning off new players looking for a new game.
chickenb00 Oct 31
How soon until these MP games are entirely streamed -- you download a thin client which connects to a server, and all gameplay elements are streamed to your PC, MMO-style?
Then mandate controller input only, create some "reasonableness" check for number of inputs received in a given span of time... Eliminate cheat creators by locking down the game so that all you receive is video streamed to your device and your inputs are sent back. That's likely the future of gaming. Once Fortnite or Valorant decides to go down that road, everyone will follow.
Mohandevir Oct 31
This news is sad but expected. The devs know a route to close off some small portion of cheat engines, and that is denying Proton and Linux.
How soon until these MP games are entirely streamed -- you download a thin client which connects to a server, and all gameplay elements are streamed to your PC, MMO-style?
Then mandate controller input only, create some "reasonableness" check for number of inputs received in a given span of time... Eliminate cheat creators by locking down the game so that all you receive is video streamed to your device and your inputs are sent back. That's likely the future of gaming. Once Fortnite or Valorant decides to go down that road, everyone will follow.
Exactly my tought, but it would require heavy hitting servers (meaning lots of investments in hardware for a gaming company) and good internet speed everywhere. This said, they could optimize their games for one set of hardware and one graphical preset, reducing development costs and debugging.
Still, it would be a pretty nice solution against cheating, imo.
Last edited by Mohandevir on 31 October 2024 at 8:57 pm UTC
pleasereadthemanual Oct 31
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.Linux itself is the problem. It's not compatible with the most advanced modes of the most advanced anti-cheat software. Server-side anti-cheat is workable in some situations but does not work as well as client-side anti-cheat—else you might find more developers using Valve's server-side anti-cheat instead of all of the kernel level options. Competitive Counterstrike forces the use of FACEIT, a kernel-level anti-cheat, instead of VAC because it is more effective.
In fact, Apex Legends could have used VAC as it is a Source game, but they decided not to.
This was going to be a problem from the time BattlEye and EAC announced support for Linux and it was why they left it up to the developers to enable. I don't think there's anything more to be done. Competitive multiplayer is dead on Linux.
The only thing that will work, as Apex Legends says, is for Linux users to be such a huge audience that blocking them altogether would result in a noticeable drop in the amount of players. For now, it's a lot easier to block Linux than deal with the problems it brings.
I'm not hopeful but I would enjoy being proven wrong.
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.Your interpretation of "disturb" seems overly generous. First, even if only one match out of ten puts me up against a cheater, my experience of the game overall will be hampered as that might mean getting paired with cheaters multiple times a week. Second, those games typically have ranking systems and rewards for player performance. If cheaters can easily occupy the top of every leaderboard without skill, it does disrupt the game’s competitive scene for the whole player base and devalues the competition itself.
I refuse to believe the amount of cheaters who would go out of their way and install a whole different OS just to cheat to be of any signifiacnce. Cheaters are lazy bitches, most of them would probably get filtered just by the aspect of dualbooting alone.
rather than implementing server-side anti-cheat, huh.
I see this claimed all the time, "why not implement it serverside, lazy fucks...". How exactly would you do that? How would you fairly accurate algoritmically determine the difference between a cheater and a very good player? Sure, *some* types of cheats are fairly obvious. But most aren't. What's the server-side difference between a player with great game sense, and one with wallhacks? Or a player with insane aim and tracking control, versus one with aimbot? Or someone with remarkable movement skills, and one with scripted assistance? Because, the best players are at a skill level that looks like pure trickery for an average gamer.
These things can, simply put, only be reliably detected clientside. Think about it; Would ANY developer ever bother the efforts of making a client side anticheat if it could all be solved safely within their own server park?
Last edited by Beamboom on 31 October 2024 at 9:58 pm UTC
So yeah, major blow. Surely, surely there must be a way for us to get Linux at least on par with Windows on the anti-cheat situation.
chickenb00 Oct 31
This is a massive downer for me. Apex has become my major title over the last couple of years, I've got a long friends list in that game of players I met ingame and hook up with regularly.Valve could step in and say that on Steam, VAC must be used.
So yeah, major blow. Surely, surely there must be a way for us to get Linux at least on par with Windows on the anti-cheat situation.
Otherwise we are looking at kernel level controls. That's not going to fly based on the foundational principles behind Linux. --- edit: but maybe Valve could step in and implement kernel level anticheat on their SteamOS package?
But then... Won't that just mean cheat creators edit the SteamOS package, remove the kernel access, and repackage?
Last edited by chickenb00 on 31 October 2024 at 10:12 pm UTC
StalePopcorn Oct 31
Mountain Man Oct 31
Looking at the Steam reviews it looks like Apex is dying. It's been getting massive negative reviews since July, 43% positive reviews in the last 30 days. And 33% positive reviews so far today since this news dropped.
Looks like they are panicking and trying to find any easy solution to their bad image, but they just created more bad press in doing so.
Lifetime ratings are now at 68% which is "mixed" and will be turning off new players looking for a new game.
Judging a game's quality and popularity based on Steam reviews is a fool's errand. Despite Valve's best efforts, they remain far too easy to manipulate.
VAC is probably not good enough for now but I'm pretty sure Valve is working on an updated version.This is a massive downer for me. Apex has become my major title over the last couple of years, I've got a long friends list in that game of players I met ingame and hook up with regularly.Valve could step in and say that on Steam, VAC must be used.
So yeah, major blow. Surely, surely there must be a way for us to get Linux at least on par with Windows on the anti-cheat situation.
Otherwise we are looking at kernel level controls. That's not going to fly based on the foundational principles behind Linux. --- edit: but maybe Valve could step in and implement kernel level anticheat on their SteamOS package?
But then... Won't that just mean cheat creators edit the SteamOS package, remove the kernel access, and repackage?
That being said Kernel level anti-cheat is not a silver bullet neither, there are some ways to cheat it cannot see.
I really hope a server based AC tech will raise the bar so that everyone will migrate to it, because this issue clearly shows once again that client side anti-cheat is a dead end.
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