Back in October 2024, Respawn announced they were blocking Apex Legends on Linux platforms (including Steam Deck). Apparently this has worked quite well for them.
In the latest Apex Legends: Takeover Dev Update video on YouTube they went over various details on what they're doing to improve the game. Steven Ferreira, Game Director on Apex Legends, mentions in the video at about 2 minutes in: "A couple of months ago we blocked Linux access to Apex. And we are pleased to report that we've seen a meaningful reduction in the amount of cheating recently."
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Back in early December 2024, they also made a post on X/Twitter to show a continued reduction in cheating:
Does this mean Linux users / players are cheaters or cheat more than players on other platforms? Well, no. The issue is mainly that cheat makers like to run their exploits on Linux whenever they can, so blocking Linux as a platform is the easiest and bluntest tool game developers have to combat the problem. On Windows, they have kernel-level access for their anti-cheat that they don't have on Linux as well (although the benefit of that is debatable).
The same situation happened with survival game Rust, as noted by developer Alistair McFarlane back in 2022:
When we discontinued linux support in 2019, one of the core reasons was how the cheating community was exploiting the Linux platform. That's not to say that cheating was super widespread on Linux, but it was safer for cheat developers.
Presumably that's why GTA Online was blocked as well even though it also uses anti-cheat that supports Linux.
Anti-cheat is just going to remain an issue for Linux gaming for a long time it seems, until we see more Steam Decks getting sold and regularly used, along with SteamOS expanding onto more devices. It's going to be the big elephant in the room if Valve did build a living room Steam Console.
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Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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mr-victory 5 hours ago
Didn't Apex EAC get hacked in a tournament a month or so after blocking Linux? I am not taking their word.
12 Likes, Who?
I can only find articles relating to a tournament hack from last March, well before they blocked Linux.
2 Likes, Who?
Complete and utter bullshit. They're saying this to save their ass "See? we did something about the cheaters!".
Last edited by Pyrate on 5 Feb 2025 at 6:11 pm UTC
Last edited by Pyrate on 5 Feb 2025 at 6:11 pm UTC
9 Likes, Who?
What I take away from this is that EA game had a meaningful number of players using Linux. Indeed, much more than "meaningful" when you consider that many, such as me, didn't use cheats.
What's not known is whether those players went back to Windows when they blocked Linux. I doubt it, because the whole video reeks of desperation. In just 12 months, this game has dropped from a daily average player base of 450K to just 130K.
Still healthy, I guess. But dying. I guess the player base is also starting to resent all the £75 skins and £10 colour reskins. Finally.
EA are gonna EA tho. They won't change.
What's not known is whether those players went back to Windows when they blocked Linux. I doubt it, because the whole video reeks of desperation. In just 12 months, this game has dropped from a daily average player base of 450K to just 130K.
Still healthy, I guess. But dying. I guess the player base is also starting to resent all the £75 skins and £10 colour reskins. Finally.
EA are gonna EA tho. They won't change.
5 Likes, Who?
I wonder if the meaningful reduction in cheating activity was actually because of their reduction in the playerbase in general...
As a big battlefield fan, I am ready to make peace with not being able to play it on Linux from here on out. I was always hoping that Apex Legends being Linux friendly would open those doors but it seems like it may be a lost cause. Dragon Age Veilguard seemed like a change of heart for EA, but alas, singleplayer linux games are commonplace.
I will continue to champion The FINALS as a beacon of peak Linux multiplayer gaming. Ironic that it's from ex battlefield/DICE devs.
As a big battlefield fan, I am ready to make peace with not being able to play it on Linux from here on out. I was always hoping that Apex Legends being Linux friendly would open those doors but it seems like it may be a lost cause. Dragon Age Veilguard seemed like a change of heart for EA, but alas, singleplayer linux games are commonplace.
I will continue to champion The FINALS as a beacon of peak Linux multiplayer gaming. Ironic that it's from ex battlefield/DICE devs.
3 Likes, Who?
I will continue to champion The FINALS as a beacon of peak Linux multiplayer gaming.
I'd add in Marvel Rivals as well. Even better there as they use their own in-house solution, so I expect more competence there. Also, they're not western devs so I expect higher standards as well.
2 Likes, Who?
Unless Linux players accounted for more than a single digit percentage of their total playerbase, I find it impossible to consider it a "meaningful reduction". Let's assume 1-in-5 Linux players were cheating, if we had 10% of the total playerbase that's only a reduction of 2% of players total. But as scaine mentioned they're down from 450k to 130k daily average, far greater than 2%.
5 Likes, Who?
Yeah great - unmarked axies and two factors smashed into one conclusion.
And even if we let that "questionable" conclusion slide, blocking Linux is still just a very poor excuse for "we're too cheap for proper server side anticheat"...
And even if we let that "questionable" conclusion slide, blocking Linux is still just a very poor excuse for "we're too cheap for proper server side anticheat"...
5 Likes, Who?
EA is doing exactly what it wants you to believe “windows” only. EA is a disgrace for the gaming community with their shitty/unstable games. It’s not linux fault their servers get hacked, it’s their shitty EAC. I don’t even believe those numbers, all they want is to get developers away from linux because they see the shift too.
In a few years EA has no choice then to give in into the linux community, linux is growing and growing (thanks to steamos). It’s a matter of time before they say “we developed the ea app for linux and we have integrated the eac into linux as well”
In a few years EA has no choice then to give in into the linux community, linux is growing and growing (thanks to steamos). It’s a matter of time before they say “we developed the ea app for linux and we have integrated the eac into linux as well”
1 Likes, Who?
theannoyingfruit 3 hours ago
Mind numbing. How can you say we blocked linux and added additional security measures and then say so linux is why we saw a reduction in cheaters.
2 Likes, Who?
Schattenspiegel 3 hours ago
One could measure the miniscule actual change in steepness of allready ongoing decline after the Linux ban and discuss how within a week the infection rate is already about halfway up again...but why bother. Just look up the graph for the player numbers.
Funny how the drop and rise of the "infected" matches follows the the curve of players actually playing the game in that week.
Funny how the drop and rise of the "infected" matches follows the the curve of players actually playing the game in that week.
3 Likes, Who?
Client-side anticheat is invasive and silly, so good riddance.
2 Likes, Who?
BladePupper 3 hours ago
More people play counter strike and that has linux compatibility, either that means CS2's anti-cheat is magic or somebody here isn't telling the whole story. A chart with unlabled axies is really funny and so is the end of the chart, uh oh looks like cheating went back up. Now if only they removed windows support then they could see a whole 100% cheating reduction.
3 Likes, Who?
blindcoder 3 hours ago
I hate it. I get it, and I don't blame the developers, but I still hate it.
1 Likes, Who?
Now I'm not a scientist... and putting aside the fact that a graph does not prove any correlation... am I dumb or the graph actually suggests that there is no correlation at all between Linux and cheat? 
The drop trend started way before the Linux support removal and the trend continued practically unaltered after the removal.
The drop trend started way before the Linux support removal and the trend continued practically unaltered after the removal.
4 Likes, Who?
Mind numbing. How can you say we blocked linux and added additional security measures and then say so linux is why we saw a reduction in cheaters.
Exactly. Blocking a whole platform from playing, and adding new security measures (which I'd bet is what's doing the heavy lifting here), and after all of that, only a -33% decrease in an already established downward trend, AND it went up again not long after? Not impressed at all.
They tried their best to make this sound like a victory, and that Linux is to blame, but even through their bullshit talk one can clearly deduce Linux doesn't actually have this supposed cheating problem all these incomptent devs are using as scapegoat when they run out of ideas.
1 Likes, Who?
InvoxiPlayGames 2 hours ago
I'm not at all surprised by this, as unfortunate as it is - bypassing the anti-cheat on Linux was as simple as using built-in Linux kernel syscalls while running as root, no wonder they had a drop in cheaters disabling it (if what they claim is 100% true, which I think it is since the most popular free Apex cheat at the time was Linux-based)
Really hoping one of these days a game company actually cares about making a good client side anti-cheat for Linux...
Really hoping one of these days a game company actually cares about making a good client side anti-cheat for Linux...
0 Likes
StalePopcorn 2 hours ago
"Ah may not be a smart man," but ah know what bullshit is, and this isn't correlation, it's coincidence. Point to a spot that's already on a descent? Might as well tell me the sun rose that day!
Assholes.
Assholes.
1 Likes, Who?
It's ironic that the Apex Legend team are themselves CHEATING with that graph. The graph was already dropping for whatever unspecified reason, and if you see the point at which Linux was removed you'll see a slight change in the direction of that downwards graph. The correct method of measuring the difference is to project where the graph would be with Linux and then compare it against where the graph is without Linux and measure the difference, but instead of doing that they just measured the total drop which includes other factors not just the removal of Linux.
And then the graph started rising again even though Linux is removed, but instead of comparing against where things are today, they just chose the bottom point in the graph to compare against.
And on top of that they just zoomed the graph in to give you an impression of a bigger drop than it really is. When you look at the zoomed graph you'll get the impression that the drop is over 50%, when it's 33% according to their faulty numbers, and in reality the numbers are far less than 33%.
And then the question is: what about the remaining 66% who are cheating on Windows? I see this as just the team trying to justify their decision that numbers are proving was a wrong decision.
And then the graph started rising again even though Linux is removed, but instead of comparing against where things are today, they just chose the bottom point in the graph to compare against.
And on top of that they just zoomed the graph in to give you an impression of a bigger drop than it really is. When you look at the zoomed graph you'll get the impression that the drop is over 50%, when it's 33% according to their faulty numbers, and in reality the numbers are far less than 33%.
And then the question is: what about the remaining 66% who are cheating on Windows? I see this as just the team trying to justify their decision that numbers are proving was a wrong decision.
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