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The day this number reaches 100% will be on of those before/after moments. Considering the only problem with remaining 8 titles not running is DRM/anti-cheat, i

The day this number reaches 100% will be on of those before/after moments. Considering the only problem with remaining 8 titles not running is DRM/anti-cheat, it is possible that we'll see this day arrive. I usually make fun of "linux on the desktop" prophets by saying "Yes, 90% is great but problem is that everybody uses a different 90%". But 100% of the 50 most popular games is a different thing. It is a level of compatibility that you may not even achieve on windows depending on your hardware. Of course, performance and a few bugs will exist, but compatibility will be good enough for almost everybody. I wonder if this coupled with steam deck will finally make supporting linux sustainable. I mean, a point where supporting is so cheap and the number of users is big enough that it becomes profitable to do so. If that happens, most excuses to not support linux will finally vanish away.

owaislone 5y ago
> Considering the only problem with remaining 8 titles not running is DRM/anti-cheat, it is possible that we'll see this day arrive. Valve has confirmed they are working with Epic (and another vendor) to support EAC on at least Steam OS if not every distro but I'd imagine Steam itself would contain everything that'd be needed to run EAC. So if you can run Steam on your favourite distro, I think EAC should work as well.
- skohan 5y ago
  Is there a possibility it would be solved only on Steam Deck but not other hardware?
  - ekianjo 5y ago
    On Steam Deck they will be using signed Proton builds to make EAC work. Which means you wont be able to use EAC on just any Linux distro unless you use the same signed builds.
    - the8472 5y ago
      What will a signed proton build do when a cheater can run as root or load a kernel module? I suspect they'll go much further and demand secure boot with vendor keys (no custom keys) and a locked down kernel.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - foxhill 5y ago
      citation required?
  - pkulak 5y ago
    Yes. You will likely need to be running a signed Steam install plus a signed version of the game. I’m 100% confident that it will be figured out in a repo like the aur, but it may be some work for Ubuntu folks and whatnot.
    - mjevans 5y ago
      Archlinux steam user here: Steam auto-updates and Steam's default Proton install is pulled down by Steam and stored within it's paths. Mostly this would affect anything that needs an unsupported build of Proton to work properly. Which is mostly lots of games that use the insane plethora of media presentation layers every big company has added to Windows over the decades. From what I've seen of games on Twitch, EAC style games tend to not rely on FMV and are generally 'all live' so there shouldn't be many problems.
- pstrateman 5y ago
  The irony is that EAC doesnt stop cheaters at all.
  - dkersten 5y ago
    No anti-cheat will ever completely stop cheaters. There are plenty of cheat tools that are basically impossible to prevent. The question is whether EAC is good enough? I don't know, I play very little multiplayer these days.
    - mastax 5y ago
      In my experience any popular free to play multiplayer game is eventually inundated with cheaters no matter what anti cheat is used.
      - judge2020 5y ago
        In the end, games need to be built better by sending the least information needed to clients, ie. zero-trust. This is a big part of things like CS:GO, Valorant, and RTS games like starcraft/League/Dota since they can implement a 'fog of war' and only network information if their client actually needs it[0]. The only cheats that still plague Dota are scripts that perform tasks automatically, such as disabling an opponent as soon as they're visible (beyond human ability), and those are taken care of by heuristics[1] and a community-voting-based 'overwatch' system in CS:GO and Dota 2[2]. 0: https://technology.riotgames.com/news/demolishing-wallhacks-valorants-fog-war https://technology.riotgames.com/news/demolishing-wallhacks-... 1: https://youtu.be/hI7V60r7Jco https://youtu.be/hI7V60r7Jco 2: https://www.dota2.com/newsentry/3025824821114909461 https://www.dota2.com/newsentry/3025824821114909461
        orbital-decay 5y ago
        >games need to be built better by sending the least information needed to clients, ie. zero-trust That isn't possible in real world for every type of competitive gameplay; trade-offs need to be made. Even games you list are not "zero trust" - things like looking direction are left to the client because of the latency. Moreover, it's not enough. What's also needed is a hardware chain of trust for input devices. On-device cryptographic signing of mouse events would be sufficient and would guarantee that input comes from a fair play-compliant device.
- jorvi 5y ago
  Most of the other titles run BattlEye, it seems. What is kind of strange is that Ark: Survival is running on Linux and also has BattlEye..
  - valczir 5y ago
    Check the chart again - ARK is native. If you run it in proton (many mods have issues with the linux-native version of the game, so many people do run it in proton), then you can't join battleye-enabled servers.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
Agentlien 5y ago
As a game developer who used to run Linux exclusively it's really frustrating to work full time on games knowing they don't work on Linux just because of DRM.
revolvingocelot 5y ago
>I wonder if this coupled with steam deck will finally make supporting linux sustainable I'd settle for devs trying to make games whose win32 api calls are within the bounds of that which Proton can handle. Why bother natively supporting Linux when you can architect something that'll run in Windows and Proton? Elsewhere in the thread I saw comments about how most indie stuff Just Works even now; I wonder if that's the subset of indie stuff that's, like, fairly paint-by-numbers projects in Unreal or Unity that aren't doing anything really unusual and thus are handily translated by Proton.
matheusmoreira 5y ago
> Considering the only problem with remaining 8 titles not running is DRM/anti-cheat This is going to be a huge problem. These corporations are going to be installing borderline malware into our computers. People will be forced to accept it if they want to play the games they paid money for. Invasive proprietary kernel modules designed to monitor your activities isn't something we should be supporting.
- fragileone 5y ago
  I run these games via GeForce NOW. There's no way I'm installing kernel-level proprietary monitoring software.
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    > There's no way I'm installing kernel-level proprietary monitoring software. Yeah, me neither. It's gonna suck if they start requiring it on Linux though. I hope smarter people than me will find workarounds that allow us to pretend their shitty modules are running. Just in case anyone is wondering why this is a big deal: https://www.theregister.com/2016/09/23/capcom_street_fighter_v/ https://www.theregister.com/2016/09/23/capcom_street_fighter...
  - baby 5y ago
    Unfortunately cheaters ruin everything
    - tl 5y ago
      You misspelt corporations.
      - baby 5y ago
        I think it's hard to understand my comment if you've never been seriously involved in a competitive game that has a cheating problem.
        5y ago
2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
I'm not so sure. Steam is nice but what about other online stores like the Microsoft Store? I'm worried that Microsoft will push more integration to break compatibility on Linux.
- TingPing 5y ago
  They absolutely will. The entire reason Steam started working on Linux support is because they knew the direction Windows would go in.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    With Epic having their own store, Apple, Google, Sony, Nintendo and the Microsoft budgets, the key question is how many game studio is Valve able to afford buying.
darthrupert 5y ago
I would bet a small amount of money on "that will never happen"
phendrenad2 5y ago
At this point it's not a matter of game compatibility, it's a matter of anti-cheat. As I've spoken about many times before, Linux has a kernel module problem. Anti-cheat wants a closed-source kernel module that hooks into everything. Linux wants to disallow access to internal kernel state unless your module solemnly swears it's GPL. Valve has said that they're working on this problem, but the workarounds one can undertake are pretty grim, and I doubt other companies (Blizzard, Ubisoft, Sony, EA, etc.) are all going to go down that sketchy rabbithole.

owaislone 5y ago

> Considering the only problem with remaining 8 titles not running is DRM/anti-cheat, it is possible that we'll see this day arrive. Valve has confirmed they are working with Epic (and another vendor) to support EAC on at least Steam OS if not every distro but I'd imagine Steam itself would contain everything that'd be needed to run EAC. So if you can run Steam on your favourite distro, I think EAC should work as well.

skohan 5y ago
Is there a possibility it would be solved only on Steam Deck but not other hardware?
- ekianjo 5y ago
  On Steam Deck they will be using signed Proton builds to make EAC work. Which means you wont be able to use EAC on just any Linux distro unless you use the same signed builds.
  - the8472 5y ago
    What will a signed proton build do when a cheater can run as root or load a kernel module? I suspect they'll go much further and demand secure boot with vendor keys (no custom keys) and a locked down kernel.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - foxhill 5y ago
    citation required?
- pkulak 5y ago
  Yes. You will likely need to be running a signed Steam install plus a signed version of the game. I’m 100% confident that it will be figured out in a repo like the aur, but it may be some work for Ubuntu folks and whatnot.
  - mjevans 5y ago
    Archlinux steam user here: Steam auto-updates and Steam's default Proton install is pulled down by Steam and stored within it's paths. Mostly this would affect anything that needs an unsupported build of Proton to work properly. Which is mostly lots of games that use the insane plethora of media presentation layers every big company has added to Windows over the decades. From what I've seen of games on Twitch, EAC style games tend to not rely on FMV and are generally 'all live' so there shouldn't be many problems.
pstrateman 5y ago
The irony is that EAC doesnt stop cheaters at all.
- dkersten 5y ago
  No anti-cheat will ever completely stop cheaters. There are plenty of cheat tools that are basically impossible to prevent. The question is whether EAC is good enough? I don't know, I play very little multiplayer these days.
  - mastax 5y ago
    In my experience any popular free to play multiplayer game is eventually inundated with cheaters no matter what anti cheat is used.
    - judge2020 5y ago
      In the end, games need to be built better by sending the least information needed to clients, ie. zero-trust. This is a big part of things like CS:GO, Valorant, and RTS games like starcraft/League/Dota since they can implement a 'fog of war' and only network information if their client actually needs it[0]. The only cheats that still plague Dota are scripts that perform tasks automatically, such as disabling an opponent as soon as they're visible (beyond human ability), and those are taken care of by heuristics[1] and a community-voting-based 'overwatch' system in CS:GO and Dota 2[2]. 0: https://technology.riotgames.com/news/demolishing-wallhacks-valorants-fog-war https://technology.riotgames.com/news/demolishing-wallhacks-... 1: https://youtu.be/hI7V60r7Jco https://youtu.be/hI7V60r7Jco 2: https://www.dota2.com/newsentry/3025824821114909461 https://www.dota2.com/newsentry/3025824821114909461
      - orbital-decay 5y ago
        >games need to be built better by sending the least information needed to clients, ie. zero-trust That isn't possible in real world for every type of competitive gameplay; trade-offs need to be made. Even games you list are not "zero trust" - things like looking direction are left to the client because of the latency. Moreover, it's not enough. What's also needed is a hardware chain of trust for input devices. On-device cryptographic signing of mouse events would be sufficient and would guarantee that input comes from a fair play-compliant device.
jorvi 5y ago
Most of the other titles run BattlEye, it seems. What is kind of strange is that Ark: Survival is running on Linux and also has BattlEye..
- valczir 5y ago
  Check the chart again - ARK is native. If you run it in proton (many mods have issues with the linux-native version of the game, so many people do run it in proton), then you can't join battleye-enabled servers.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

Agentlien 5y ago

As a game developer who used to run Linux exclusively it's really frustrating to work full time on games knowing they don't work on Linux just because of DRM.

revolvingocelot 5y ago

>I wonder if this coupled with steam deck will finally make supporting linux sustainable I'd settle for devs trying to make games whose win32 api calls are within the bounds of that which Proton can handle. Why bother natively supporting Linux when you can architect something that'll run in Windows and Proton? Elsewhere in the thread I saw comments about how most indie stuff Just Works even now; I wonder if that's the subset of indie stuff that's, like, fairly paint-by-numbers projects in Unreal or Unity that aren't doing anything really unusual and thus are handily translated by Proton.

matheusmoreira 5y ago

> Considering the only problem with remaining 8 titles not running is DRM/anti-cheat This is going to be a huge problem. These corporations are going to be installing borderline malware into our computers. People will be forced to accept it if they want to play the games they paid money for. Invasive proprietary kernel modules designed to monitor your activities isn't something we should be supporting.

fragileone 5y ago
I run these games via GeForce NOW. There's no way I'm installing kernel-level proprietary monitoring software.
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  > There's no way I'm installing kernel-level proprietary monitoring software. Yeah, me neither. It's gonna suck if they start requiring it on Linux though. I hope smarter people than me will find workarounds that allow us to pretend their shitty modules are running. Just in case anyone is wondering why this is a big deal: https://www.theregister.com/2016/09/23/capcom_street_fighter_v/ https://www.theregister.com/2016/09/23/capcom_street_fighter...
- baby 5y ago
  Unfortunately cheaters ruin everything
  - tl 5y ago
    You misspelt corporations.
    - baby 5y ago
      I think it's hard to understand my comment if you've never been seriously involved in a competitive game that has a cheating problem.
      - 5y ago

2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago

I'm not so sure. Steam is nice but what about other online stores like the Microsoft Store? I'm worried that Microsoft will push more integration to break compatibility on Linux.

TingPing 5y ago
They absolutely will. The entire reason Steam started working on Linux support is because they knew the direction Windows would go in.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  With Epic having their own store, Apple, Google, Sony, Nintendo and the Microsoft budgets, the key question is how many game studio is Valve able to afford buying.

darthrupert 5y ago

I would bet a small amount of money on "that will never happen"

phendrenad2 5y ago

At this point it's not a matter of game compatibility, it's a matter of anti-cheat. As I've spoken about many times before, Linux has a kernel module problem. Anti-cheat wants a closed-source kernel module that hooks into everything. Linux wants to disallow access to internal kernel state unless your module solemnly swears it's GPL. Valve has said that they're working on this problem, but the workarounds one can undertake are pretty grim, and I doubt other companies (Blizzard, Ubisoft, Sony, EA, etc.) are all going to go down that sketchy rabbithole.