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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!

---

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.
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38 comments
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melkemind about 6 hours ago
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This seems a lot like airport security in the US. Some executive told them they had to do something to appear like they're making it more secure, and Linux is an easy scapegoat. The fact that they say it's "not easy to detect" but they must've detected them if they identified Linux as the source shows this is low effort. They're blocking Linux because it's the easy thing to do, not necessarily because it's the most effective.
Linux_Rocks about 6 hours ago
juxuanu about 6 hours ago
They should offer a refund to Linux users. Moreover, I think Valve should come up with a system that can be trusted like Windows's kernel. Be that a signed build, or whatever their smart engineers come up with.
robvv about 5 hours ago
Whilst I have no interest in this kind of multiplayer game, some will sadly take away the impression that "all Linux users are cheaters". Which, of course, is far from the case.
It also makes me wonder if there is some anti-Valve conspiracy here. Inquiring minds want to know...
Grimy1540 about 5 hours ago
Well we saw this coming... fortunately the game is not as good as it once was.
coolitic about 5 hours ago
Well, while I don't believe they'd back-pedal w/o at least *some* data to support it, I do believe that this is their "low-effort" way of reducing some "attack-vectors".

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
elmapul about 5 hours ago
i dont care about those games (except maybe gta5) but the damage they are doing to the linux "brand" is quite bad.
elmapul about 4 hours ago
Quoting: WYWLooking 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.
maybe the reviews are negative because the game got flooded with cheaters?
chickenb00 about 4 hours ago
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.
Mohandevir about 4 hours ago
Quoting: chickenb00This 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
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