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A headline in Linux gaming circles that hasn't hit the wider circuit yet (probably because it hasn't actually been delivered yet) is that Valve are working with
by Zhyl 5y ago
A headline in Linux gaming circles that hasn't hit the wider circuit yet (probably because it hasn't actually been delivered yet) is that Valve are working with Battleye and EAC to get anti-cheat working on Proton for the release of the steam deck.
If this happens it will be, without exaggeration, the greatest thing to ever happen to Linux gaming.
I'm not expecting a massive increase overnight, but it should mean that the marketshare will increase more likely than it will decrease.
- gpderetta 5y agoMy brother wanted to play CoD Warzone with me and of course it doesn't work with Proton. After attempting and failing to dual boot into Windows (how hard could it be to create a bootable Windows installation usb key?), yesterday I decided to try vfio. It actually was quite straightforward and way simpler than one would expect from the very intimidating archlinux wiki page. I spent more time getting a nice grub vfio menu entry than actually setting up the VM. Of course now I expect I'll be eventually banned for running under a VM. Proton support for anti-cheats can't come soon enough.
- trulyrandom 5y agoI don't think Activision bans VM players. I've been playing Warzone in a VM since it was released without issues.
- gpderetta 5y agoThat's what I have been reading online. Good to have another data point, thanks.
- carlhjerpe 5y agoI've played overwatch for years in a VM now, no ban here
- thejosh 5y agovfio works great for games (and general "Oh cr*, I need this random Windows only thingy), and the added bonus is if you install to another nvme drive, you can actually dualboot if you ever wanted to do that :-).
- garou 5y agoI'm only waiting for it to nuke out my windows install.
- junon 5y agoThis is not a good thing...
- Zhyl 5y agoIf it increases Linux Market share and the viability of Linux as a gaming platform, I see it as a good thing.
- judge2020 5y agohttps://partner.steamgames.com/doc/steamdeck/faq https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/steamdeck/faq > We’re working with BattlEye and EAC to get support for Proton ahead of launch.
- tl 5y agoI'm a huge fan of the work Valve is doing, both in gaming hardware and Linux support, but I'm unconvinced helping game-oriented malware run on Linux is good period, let alone the "greatest thing to ever happen to Linux gaming".
- colejohnson66 5y agoThe alternative is requiring publishers to remove their DRM, and use Valve’s, and they (the publishers) most certainly would not do that. I’d bet that if Valve tried that, there’d be an antitrust lawsuit against them real quick. It sucks, but the alternative is getting the DRM to work on Linux, so that’s what they chose.
- tl 5y agoThe arms race between game publishers and the small minority of gamers who actually cheat is harmful to everyone else. Stub the DRM APIs to usefully return nothing quickly rather than enabling voyeurs who think scanning and logging the contents of people's hard drives on their servers is acceptable.
- asoneth 5y ago> the small minority of gamers who actually cheat The small minority of gamers who cheat impact the experience for a much larger number of customers who don't. So each cheater might cause dozens of lost subscriptions. (Contrast to software piracy, where each pirated copy only represents a probability between 0 and 1 of a lost sale.)
- michaelt 5y agoI've heard of some online-only games - such as Fall Guys - being basically killed sales-wise by insufficient anti-cheat protection. After all, if another player can run faster or fly or has perfect aim, everyone else is basically playing an unwinnable game. This isn't helped by the current fashion for automatic match-making and 100-player battle royale games - which make one cheater impact a lot more players.
- sourceless 5y agoIt'll certainly be the jump point for me -- I'm even holding back a much needed hardware refresh until BattlEye is supported on linux.
- aitchnyu 5y agoUmm, is there anti-cheat that doesnt need a locked down OS and hardware? Dont understand what you are cheering for.
- Zambyte 5y agoYes, and the ones that don't have crazy requirements already work fine. Unfortunately a lot of people don't care about running malware (see: the % of people who still use Windows). Lots of those people would be more likely to switch if they could run their malware on GNU/Linux.
- trasz 5y agoHow does the anti-cheat malware suddenly stop being malware when run under Linux?
- ShrigmaMale 5y agoIt doesn't. User freedom means freedom to run malware, just as all choice implies the option to make a bad decision. In this case, it might increase adoption and so be a bad means to a good end.
- Zambyte 5y agoThey don't. People who are conditioned to want to run malware will be more likely to switch off they are able to run their malware of choice though.
- Kaze404 5y agoEAC already exists on Linux for Linux games. Only the Windows version is incompatible.
- Zhyl 5y agoI'm cheering because this will mean more people can use Linux as a daily gaming driver. I see that as a good thing, albeit with trade-offs.
- 5y ago
- worldmerge 5y agoI really hope the work Valve is doing with Proton will help to get Office (no, the browser versions aren't a substitute), Adobe software and Touchdesigner working on Linux. I don't game, and would love to switch to Linux but I need those apps to work on it.
- ShrigmaMale 5y agoMicrosoft could at least stop actively trying to break O365 on Wine, which I believe it is doing. I have heard rumors (albeit unsourced ones) that MS is trying to bring Outlook over first.
- atatatat 5y agoOutlook is a progressive webapp now, so that makes some sense.
- carlhjerpe 5y agoOutlook has a PWA, but the thick client is still here and will be for awhile to keep legacy plugin infrastructure running.
- flohofwoe 5y agoI think that's quite unlikely, most games use a fairly small subset of the Windows APIs, if non-game applications currently don't work then it's unlikely that the situation for those applications will be improved by better game compatibility.
- atatatat 5y agoDoesn't all of that stuff have great Wine ratings?
- ShrigmaMale 5y agoInteresting question on how to create same level of protection. On Windows I think the general idea for a bypass is find a vulnerable signed driver and exploit that, but Linux doesn't have the same paradigm for kernel modules as the Microsoft-signs-everything approach on Windows.
- matheusmoreira 5y agoPlease no. Keep all those poorly-written proprietary privacy-invading vulnerability-enabling anti-cheat kernel modules as far away from Linux as possible.
- Zhyl 5y agoThat's ok, you don't have to install the games if you don't want to.
- matheusmoreira 5y agoOkay, give me my money back then. Let me count how many thousands of dollars my Steam account is worth.
- Zhyl 5y agoI think I'd just recommend you not play games with anti-cheat. I'm not sure why you'd buy games with anti-cheat if you don't like anti-cheat though.
- matheusmoreira 5y agoI bought those games decades ago. Anti-cheating software used to be a lot more tolerable back then. They were still obnoxious malware but at least they were not literal drivers with vulnerability-as-a-service ioctls that give the games and everything else free access to ring 0 from user space. They were also optional, I could find game servers that didn't require the software.
- Zhyl 5y agoWhich games did you buy decades ago that now use Battleye and EAC?
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
- TomasBaneUK 5y agoClient side anti-cheats are getting disrupted anyway. You can already buy ML and external hardware cheats that are obviously impossible to detect using the same old methods. It can work for games being streamed locally or over the internet, Stadia, game consoles, anything with a screen.
- acharp 5y agoI really wonder how they're gonna do that tho, like implementation wise. I suspect either they are gonna have some sort of deal where VAC can be swapped in, or they're working on some secret sauce kernel module that implements Battleye and EAC.