Blocking Linux / Steam Deck in Apex Legends led to a 'meaningful reduction' in cheaters

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.

Check out anti-cheat game compatibility on our dedicated page.