Someone in EU should try to make a complaint to the local authority who is enforcing ePrivacy Directive regarding anti cheats in general. Despite what people think ePD isn't limited to cookies and rather also applies all data read or stored in "terminal equipment" via use of electronic communications networks. I would say anti cheat should usually qualify. If they want to do it without consent then they need to show that it's strictly necessary for the service user specifically requested (and that applies for each piece of data written/read, including the OS information).
There's good argument that anti cheat itself would need to be consent based. If you don't accept then you simply don't get placed in games with users who have it enabled.
For anyone pursuing this, consider that the EU age verification apps are the EU’s first foray into digital anti-cheat systems at population scale. If you take the time to research how those are being designed and implemented and incorporate awareness of their work into your complaint about anti-cheats in gaming, your missive will be a lot more likely to strike the target and be taken seriously.
The age verification is it's own can of worms. I'm currently waiting for my native country (but not the one where I reside) to actually publish their wallet implementation. I'm planning to make complaint around it because the whole thing almost certainly breaches ePD. ePD's exceptions are actually for "information society service" rather than just any service. The ISS itself has it's own sets of requirements, but the important one here is that "normally provided for remuneration". Service provided by government as part of their public duty almost never fulfills that requirement.
So in order to store or read data they would need consent. But consent requirements come from GDPR and it's unlikely that this type of consent would be "freely given" given the impact of refusal.
From a technical standpoint, there’s no functional difference: without secure boot and OS attestation, age verification is as ineffective as EAC on Linux, because you can simply `insmod GameGenie.ko code=A456-GH4C` to have your mobile device simulator kernel patch success into any challenge. At the surface level they’re different — one is PvP, the other is PvG, one uses webcams for Twitch, the other uses webcams for facial recognition — but the same set of kernel defenses enable both.
This is funny since they are literally using "Easy Anti Cheat" and that fully supports Linux.
From what I understand Easy Anti Cheat, makes it very easy for developers to run on Linux, basically it is a compile setting to support it. It is one of the anti-cheat providers that had decent Linux support since the beginning.
Back before Proton and when it was new developers often denied requests for turning on Linux support, however this is the first time I head a developer actively turning it off.
I think it speaks volumes of their intent that the game is to be "fully removed from the Linux platform", and they won't offer the single player experience or non competitive experience for Linux based customers.
On top of that it seems to me they tried sneaking this statement in an announcement titled "Ranked FAQ". This shows they have no respect for their customers.
EAC is functionally useless on Linux and can be defeated by anyone with the ability to sudo or to boot a modified operating system. Steam Linux does not supported sealed/signed boot with secure attestation, and supporting 1% market share options that do (if any) is unrealistic for developers, so it’s perfectly sensible for PvP multiplayer games to ban Linux users. Not out of malice or disrespect but out of simple technical incapability to detect unskilled cheaters using purchased toolkits.
Removing the single player mode from Linux, however, suggests that they’re doing this because any platform without multiplayer is worthless to them, which suggests there must be a ‘skin shop’ in this game that is viewed as the primary revenue generator. That decision is extremely disrespectful — but it’s the same disrespect they might show by not selling the single player game in countries that disallowed predatory loot boxes, for example. I wholeheartedly support naming and shaming that disrespect; here, they’ve mixed it with complaints about cheating to (largely successfully) disguise a cost-benefit analysis as out of their control due to Linux.
> Steam Linux does not supported sealed/signed boot with secure attestation
Even if it did, you wouldn't stop DMA cheaters from hacking the game. This is the slippery slope we see on Windows with Ring 0 anticheat being defeated with spoofed PCI hardware.
That’s nice, but 99% of cheaters (pre-Win11, anyways) were software-only because the software is $0 with free same-day delivery. Turning off the spigot of pure-software cheating almost entirely empties today’s cesspool, which is partly why Windows 11 requires an TPM, and it won’t refill rapidly due to the simple obstacles of hardware product businesses.
I know that Nvidia’s been implementing attestation for the PCI links to AI GPUs recently, and iirc USB has supported it for a while now (though I’m not sure whether USB-IF has formalized it). I would be shocked if there isn’t already a DDR standard for same coming up in 6 or 7. It’ll take a while to for all this reach the consumer market but the alternative is, as you correctly observe, the gradual decline of trustworthiness of not only attested Win11 gaming PCs but also gaming consoles — but emptying the cesspool of the software cheaters in the meantime remains a sensible step to take.
EAC supports Linux, but by doing so you're disabling a number of security features since you're making the anti-cheat run entirely in userspace.
Remember these games aren't Linux native either, so it allows Windows-using cheaters to lie to the process that they're on Linux and to only use userspace protection. The cheat then runs in kernel space and remains invisible.
The only realistic way to solve this on Linux is enforcing secure boot w/trusted kernels and then running the anti-cheat in sandboxed eBPF kernel space. Embark is looking at this approach.
> The only realistic way to solve this on Linux is enforcing secure boot w/trusted kernels and then running the anti-cheat in sandboxed eBPF kernel space. Embark is looking at this approach.
Assuming secure boot, there’s another realistic way, which is to use vendor-signed readonly Linux OS images — not just kernels — that disallow process memory access to root, come with signed kernel drivers, and offer secure attestation support chained to secure boot. Steam Linux and Bazzite could both implement this easily; the former has a fixed hardware target list and the latter is already an ‘all in one’ solution. Since Linux users are generally competent at dual-booting, one would simply dual-boot into the sealed image to play PvP multiplayer games, no eBPF development or maintenance of anti-cheat required. Embark is within their rights to evaluate the workload of supporting DIY unsigned Linux instances through eBPF but doing so would create a viable competitor to an attestation-derived Valve Anti-Cheat for Steam Linux, and so likely inspire the giant in the room to step up and obsolete it.
Because EAC and other anti cheat offer basically no protection on Linux, basically anyone can vibe code an undetectable cheat. The situation on Windows isn't exactly great but it funnel cheat creators into a few methods that can be detected.
But they are not selling the game for Linux. Only for Windows. It's another story that it works because of Proton but technically they don't support the platform at all.
They've stated in their patch notes that they made a change specifically to run on the steam deck. Regardless of what they say now, they have actively supported linux in the past and so should be liable for breaking the game for those customers.
I don't think this is accurate. Easy Anti-Cheat has supported Linux for a long time, many years before this. I doubt they were years and years out of date, updated, and allowing Linux was turned on by default in the new version. What they likely mean is they ticked the box in this game update to let it run on Linux.
Why would they specifically mention the Steam Deck? EAC doesn't have separate flags for Linux and Steam Deck. It's almost certain they intentionally allowed it to run on Linux. They call out Steam Deck by name because it is a popular handheld that has greatly increased the # of Linux users, not because an EAC update allowed it to work by chance.
And it's still not an active support decision. They allowed it - but it's your business. Whenever people gets problems or successes running through Proton, this is never a publisher's issue.
Still user's problem if they manage or not manage to run the game through whatever translation and emulation layers they have instead of using official system requirements.
.. that must have been some atrocious telemetry data correlating cheaters and Linux. I wish they’d released a report on it — I mean, fuck Ubisoft, but at least we’d have data to argue about rather than this copout of a release note from them.
And that would be fine if they left it at "we don't support it, if you run into problems on your own". When they go so far as to actively block Linux users, then they are doing something wrong and should be required to refund those purchases.
>Valve should. Valve is the one making these games available for purchase on non-Windows platforms.
it sounds like you're suggesting valve should be restricting which games they sell depending on the platform you are viewing from?
that would be annoying, and ultimately futile. i purchase games from my phone to play on my pc, or from one pc to play on another. i purchase windows-only games and mess around to see if they can work with proton. etc. i do not need valve to coddle me like that.
"system requirements" is at the bottom of every listing.
Valve absolutely knows what platform you've logged into desktop Steam from even when you're on a mobile device, and can pop up a dialog during purchase saying "This game requires Microsoft Windows, and you have not been active on that platform in the past 30 days. This game will be supported by Steam Play, and developer support is not guaranteed."
It'd actually be your mistake for buying a game for a platform that's not even supported. That they even allowed or spent resources for it to run on Linux initially is something to be grateful for.
>account for their mistake in selling you the game.
i hate ubisoft as much as the next person, but if they listed the game as only supporting windows when it launched, and someone bought it for linux despite it not being supported, ubisoft did not make a "mistake" in selling the game to them. the buyer made a decision to purchase the game for an unsupported system.
(the rule i follow, which hasn't gone wrong yet, is to avoid all ubisoft games like the plague)
edit: am i missing something here? those disagreeing, please let me know why you believe you deserve a refund in this situation, knowing that ubisoft only advertised support for windows.
That's only because the shirt would be worn. Digital media doesn't wear out. If that shirt never wore out and it suddenly stopped working in a specific way I use it, it would be reasonable to me to return it.
if i manage to install a windows-only game onto my fridge, and then the game gets updated and doesn't work on my fridge anymore, it would be ridiculous to suggest i should get a refund.
this is getting silly though. i am saddened that the concept of personal responsibility has been so eroded. best of luck on your refund.
Doesn't sound ridiculous to me. If anything, companies should provide old versions of the game so the update doesn't affect you, so the problem doesn't happen in the first place. That way you can still play on your fridge with people using other fridges. You lose out on newer features, but you've still got access to what you paid for.
I've gotten refunds for less. If an update introduces a fault, that's on the company, no matter the fault. Compatibility with my fridge might be the reason I bought that game. An update removing that functionality leaves the game with a fault, for which I can get the game refunded (or fixed, but companies tend to go with refunds).
>Compatibility with my fridge might be the reason I bought that game
the game specifically said it only supported windows. that means it explicitly does not support other platforms. they waived their responsibility to cater to your unsupported use case. people who purchased it understood that when they bought it. caveat emptor.
if we carry this on much longer my comments are just going to be flagged, so, good luck with your refund.
> the game specifically said it only supported windows.
I don't see why this matters.
> they waived their responsibility to cater to your unsupported use case.
I don't see why they should have the right to do that. They could just give me access to the unmodified product they originally sold me, rather than the one they didn't actually sell me, and we'd have no issue. They did support my use case. The fact that they aren't now is their fault, and should thus be their problem to solve.
> people who purchased it understood that when they bought it. caveat emptor.
The Romans weren't familiar with products being able to change from under you. It's one thing to buy a product not knowing what it does support. It's another to buy it, knowing it does work for you, only for it to change due to the whims of the seller. Not to mention we can do better. Consumer protection is important. I don't want an economy based on caveat emptor being an unbreakable truth.
> good luck with your refund.
I've already had success. I live in a country with good consumer protection laws. I wish the rest of the world would catch up.
The case for a refund seems totally obvious. Why should you get to keep my
money? I paid for a product and I did not get it. Selling it incurs no cost on
you and I have received none of the benefit of the transaction. It's not like I
ate a meal and then decided I wanted to order something else.
This all presumes of course that it is legitimate to ban people from using
certain computing environments when running software for whatever reason you
feel like. Lots of people don't think this is legitimate at all, which makes
sense, because people don't really try to justify it. It's legitimate to want
to ban cheaters, this is just not a reasonable means of enforcing that, because
there are legitimate players who want to play the game and can't because of
this policy.
you paid for a windows product. the product still works on windows, right?
if ubisoft advertised linux support for this game, i am 100% with you on the refund. as far as i can tell, they did not. they advertised the game as a windows product.
> edit: am i missing something here? those disagreeing, please let me know why you believe you deserve a refund in this situation, knowing that ubisoft only advertised support for windows.
You're probably downvoted by people's emotions and feelings because they don't want to see any (even and especially if valid) defense of Ubisoft here. It's wrong and shouldn't happen, but it very much does.
I'm linux-only for 15+ years now and only buy games that run on Linux. I am filled with righteous rage when companies do what they are doing. But you're not wrong, this one is on the buyer not the seller, though everyone should remember this move and avoid buying Ubisoft games in the future because they have proven outwardly hostile.
A criticism I do give them (the seller) though, if you're going to block linux then it should be well-stated in the game description so people don't miss it. Not doing this is dishonest marketing IMHO.
Going forward, I simply will not be purchasing any game that does not work on Linux. I realize that I'll be missing out on some titles, but Windows simply isn't worth the headache. CachyOS has been working great for me. Proton has been amazing. I have had zero problems with the games I typically play -- some of which are multiplayer. Luckily, I have not run into anti-cheat issues yet.
There are obviously few or no hard technical blockers preventing Valve and the Linux community from supporting any game that runs on Windows, unless it's been specifically engineered to block Linux, and publishers of those games will simply not be getting my money anymore. If Windows was still as pleasant and non-invasive as eg KDE Plasma on Cachy, it would be a different story, but I haven't used it in months (previously I did my desktop gaming in a windows VM) and the feeling of relief is almost tangible. Windows 11 is _so fucking bad_.
I understand that there may be some semi-legitimate arguments around anticheat, but a) not my problem, and b) back in the day we dealt with cheaters by having a persistent dedicated server community with admins ready to kick or ban. The publishers took that away from us.
> There are obviously few or no hard technical blockers preventing Valve and the Linux community from supporting any game that runs on Windows
The announcement is a proof that your statement here is incorrect. Ubisoft is not banning Linux because they hate you and your money, but because there's a hard technical blocker to implementing an efficient anti-cheat system on Linux and the cost of overcoming this technical blocker is presumed to be higher than the loss of revenue they're incurring from losing your business.
So your claim is that it's actually impossible to implement "efficient" anticheat on Linux? That's interesting. But it's not the same thing as "the cost of overcoming this technical blocker is presumed to be higher than the loss of revenue they're incurring from losing your business", so I am not quite sure what point your comment is supposed to be making.
If your point is simply that the publishers think this is a good business decision for them, that's obvious, because they're a business and they aren't going to make decisions they think are bad. But I am not sure how your muddled logic about feasibility feeds into that point.
> So your claim is that it's actually impossible to implement "efficient" anticheat on Linux? That's interesting.
This is absolutely not my claim and it's a pretty absurd interpretation of what I wrote.
My claim is that there's ample evidence that anti-cheat on Linux happens to be a pretty hard technical blocker and multiple companies at this point have chosen to ban the platform outright and take a revenue loss over trying to overcome this blocker. This directly contradicts your claim of "obviously few or no hard technical blockers" existing.
This does not imply it's impossible to implement. It implies that at this point implementing it would not justify the cost. This pretty much 100% matches the any reasonable interpretation of the term "technical blocker"
You seem to be fixated on picking apart the wording of my original comment, so let me help you understand it:
> There are obviously few or no hard technical blockers preventing Valve and the Linux community from supporting any game that runs on Windows
'Few' there is doing a fair amount of work: it allows that some significant (or "hard" if you prefer) blockers may still exist (this is consistent with my own observations of game compatibility in aggregate). So your (implicit) insistence that I claimed there are no blockers is obviously nonsensical already. But, furthermore, I went on to say this:
> unless it's been specifically engineered to block Linux
Which precisely describes a game that previously worked on Linux, with anticheat even, but now has been updated to remove that compatibility! It also describes a game whose anticheat has been configured that way since launch.
Also, your implication that "hard technical blocker" and "not worth it to implement" are interchangeable is ridiculous in any scope, whether you're Valve deciding whether to commit tens or hundreds of man-years to Proton development or a one man shop considering a hacky workaround in a client's dated web framework.
You are just barking at the mailman. I'm done here unless you can respond to the actual substance and nuance of my comments rather than a strawman.
Except we already know the anti-cheat system they use works on Linux, because other products use it. Therefore we have no evidence that the blocker here is technical: it could be political, process-driven, simple incompetence, or anything else. In any of the latter cases, there can be no conclusion of correctness of the parent comment's claim.
I don't play For Honour, but I'm monitoring Apex Legends pro scene and I know that Respawn has banned Linux because none of the existing anti-cheat solutions were good enough and the cost of maintaining their own solution was not worth the revenue Linux support was bringing.
Before the ban the cheater population was disproportionally high on Linux.
I'm pulling for Microsoft to create an XboxOS for PC you can just freely install on any machine, as that's about the only thing I care about regarding Windows. Then I could see myself dualbooting that when I want to play my Xbox collection. And it'd be nice to build a beefy machine to max them out on, once the PC component prices settle a bit.
They're playing with that with the Xbox Full Screen Experience on ROG Xbox Ally, but it's still running Windows 11 underneath. I just want the Xbox.
We should invest in solutions outside of Microsoft for games. Even if Microsoft comes out with XboxOS, and even if somehow it isn't terrible, it will eventually be terrible and will enable companies to continue to do anti-consumer B.S. like what Ubisoft is doing here.
Given how dogshit Windows 11 is, and how dogshit the Xbox-branded apps have consistently been in the last 10 years or so (it's genuinely impressive how bad they are), it's hard to see why a new Microsoft thing wouldn't have all the same problems. They just don't make software to serve the user anymore.
I like the software side on my Series X, so if they can bring that over to PC as an OS, that'd be great. I agree the Xbox on PC experience hasn't been stellar so far and I hope they ditch that app with the next generation, for the sake of current userbase. It was serviceable at best in my Windows 10 days.
For anything not gaming related, I have Linux or MacOS.
I recently moved to Linux for gaming. Last time I tried was around 2008 and I guess I was reluctant to move gaming to Linux because that experience was far from smooth.
Honestly, it's like magic that I can run "The Finals" on highest settings without any hiccup. It literally 'just works'. Happy that I could completely get rid of Windows (it was only there for gaming). It's still hard to believe, given back in 2008 when playing CS I had framerate bugs, text would not render properly (even after messing around with it for some days), and mouse input was.. not ideal. It's come a long way since the days of WINE.
FWIW, I moved from Debian to "Nobara Linux" for this. Mostly because I was in the mood for some distro hopping as well. Highly recommend the experience. (https://nobaraproject.org/). It was a smooth experience from the start, no issues installing it, drivers worked out-of-the-box, audio settings all worked fine, and Steam was pre-installed as well. Super cool.
Would not move back to Windows gaming for Ubisoft games lol.
Yeah, I hadn't used Fedora-based distros for over a decade. I haven't ran into issues with Nobara, but I'm sure that if I do any LLM can help me debug/resolve them.
Definitely lowers the barrier of entry for someone entirely new to Linux as well.
Nobara Linux, which is based on Fedora. I used the "Gnome" installer rather than "official" because I still want a regular desktop experience. I've been on Linux for development since 2008 as well so I wanted an "all in one" OS this time rather than dual-boot Linux/Windows.
I'm running this on AMD CPU & GPU (because AMD historically was always better supported than Nvidia). I've not run into any issues the past weeks. Discord and the game both run smoothly. Honestly hard to believe given how rough it was in the past.
That said, I don't play a wide variety of games, I tend to stick with a single game for years. So I'm happy just running "The Finals" and haven't tried other games lol.
What kind of issues are you running into with Bazzite?
>What kind of issues are you running into with Bazzite?
It's just a mess. There are three different ways to get software, so despite being a seasoned Linux user of 20+ years I'm never really sure if I'm installing something via the happy path or not.
I wanted to install Battle.net, for example, and the best/only way I could get it to work is by following some random forum post to run battle.net as a steam app, so if I want to play StarCraft 2 I need to launch Steam, launch bnet from within steam, then finally run sc from that.
Networking is kinda flaky, too. Sometimes games (incidentally, StarCraft, but also other battlenet games like HOTS) will simply refuse to connect to the master servers.
Controllers randomly don't work, etc.
I could go on. None of these are deal breakers in and of themselves, but I'm continually reminded why The Year of the Linux Desktop isn't happening. It's just generally janky.
I used both Bazzite and Debian, and, while the games do "just work", the problem with Bazzite was that the peripherals were fiddly. Getting the Xbox controllers to work needed some fiddling every time, streaming games from the desktop was hit and miss, and a few other small things like that.
It's still amazing how well gaming on Linux works, but the only reason why I wanted a Steam machine is becasue when a few friends are over, I don't want to spend twenty minutes fiddling with controllers, it kills the mood. I want to turn it on and game immediately.
That's the caveat of Proton. Running games on unsupported platforms they are not meant for. And if it doesn't work who's fault that? Valve? The dev? No one because it's open source so fix your own?
Honestly Valve should have a stricter warning if a game is Windows only
The situation here isn't that the game doesn't work. It does work, it's just the Ubisoft isn't happy with the quality of Easy Anti Cheat's (their third party anti cheat provider) Linux offering.
At Valve's scale, it becomes the publisher's problem. Which is, in this particular case, a good thing imo. I certainly don't mind the pressure on publishers to ensure basic compatibility with Linux
There's a couple different ways to look at this. From a charitable point of view to ubisoft, they do not advertise support for Linux. Instead they openly state it's a window's only game. So when a third party (i.e. Valve) makes shim that grants linux functionality, it's not really on Ubisoft to maintain that.
However, from a consumer perspective, this is incredibly frustrating. The average person does not think of "linux vs. windows". They just bought the steam deck and when they bought For Honor it was sold on that "platform". Again, it's hard to blame Ubisoft for this conundrum since they were never necessarily trying to be steam deck compliant to begin with, but it definitely feels wrong to take the game away from a player in this perspective.
All that being said, historically across many games such as Rust, many are quick to blame linux for cheating, but pragmatically banning linux has yet to measurably reduce the amount of cheating that players report experiencing, so I don't agree with the decision at all. It's a footgun disguised as a band aid
I bought Farcry 3 Blood Dragon some years ago. I seem to recall I had to install some kind of mod otherwise the game would hang on startup or had long delays because the installed version tried to communicate with some long dead Ubisoft gaming service that they'd shut down the servers for years ago. Funny they were still willing to collect the money for the game that they no longer supported.
Actually, the intent was to preserve the sense of pride and accomplishment by motivating players to play through their purchases instead of hoarding them indefinitely. You think you want a permanent game library, but you don't. Do you guys not have free time? It shouldn't be that hard to finish a game well within its service life anyways.
Valve can't even make their own anti cheat system work (VAC) on Windows let alone on Linux so not surprised that 3rd party publishers with 3rd party anti cheat system is giving up. I mean they technically work as a software but they don't fullfil their purpose, to block cheaters.
I suppose the only good solution is like those "game streaming services": move all the logic to the server and use the client only as a rendering device.
Even sending metadata so the client can use local sprites to render the enemy is hackable, if the end-user knows the coordinates where to render the enemy, it can immediately tell the server that "user aimed at $COORDS and pulled the trigger"...
i find it quite amusing that some people forget that opensource software is a double edge sword in these cases.
> "why can we run windows games the way we want and often better than windows?"
its because we can fiddle with anything in the system, from even before the kernel boots up to the software itself.
> "why cant we stop people tampering with their own systems to stop cheating?"
its because we can fiddle with anything in the system, from even before the kernel boots up to the software itself.
but my addendum is:
> I suppose the only good solution is like those "game streaming services": move all the logic to the server and use the client only as a rendering device.
we are in the "dark ages" of AI/computer vision usage and this wouldn’t stop aimbots that are screen readers. Overall the proposal is the "lesser evil" but still quite fucking evil.
Aren't there EU laws on modifying software for interoperability and whatnot being legal? This and right-to-repair should block any opportunity for companies to intentionally prevent users from using their software the way they want. I'm sure the laws aren't written to actually to ensure that, but they should be.
Wouldn't it be possible to have two tiers of servers here? Like have one that's accessible to everyone with a possibly increased risk of cheating and one restricted to Windows users.
I remember in the old days some games had optional anticheat and there were servers with and without it.
I expect competitive multiplayer to shift towards dedicated locked down gaming distros (such as steamos) that will offer fully signed hardware backed (tpm) remote attestable system for anti-cheats. Which will make casually playing such games pretty awkward.
It’s extra hard on Linux because the amount of ways you can reconfigure a linux machine to work around boot- or root-kits, the ways you can modify a running process, and hide what is happening from an existing process.
Really, linux is meant to give you control over the software that runs in your computer. Anti-cheat is inherently about limiting what you can run on your computer. Windows is much more aimed at allowing you opt in to hard limitations.
These are the same dicks that want my kids to create dedicated Ubisoft accounts just to be able to use the PS5 games they've paid for. Never buying anything from these scammers again.
If your game doesn't work on Linux I just won't buy it. I have a steam machine and a gaming pc, your game needs to work on Linux. This isn't 2008 anymore dude...
ok, 10%. but you're trading full root/admin access to game code on your pc... is it really really worth?
People are so brain washed that it is essential that here we are, sad companies won't take the option you giving them root access on linux too!
a much better solution would be absolutely no root kit, but players picking "never play with this player gain". done. boardgame.com does this and it is very much perfect and flawless.
Not much difference when a user space program alredy can read all your files and memory of processes of your user. People just read big bad kernel or rootkit without considering what's alredy possible.
The Verdana font that your message is written with - how can you be sure that its TrueType bytecode hasn't escaped the sandbox and snuck into your ring0?
You either put some trust into the systems made by other people, or you don't touch computers at all.
Absolutely, and we can discuss the amounts of this trust. Some people trust the anti-cheat devs. (I do too, on a PC that is used for almost nothing but gaming.)
okay, if you agree with that, i am confused about your initial comment comparing anti-cheat to a font.
it appears like you are saying "if you trust the font to be okay, you should trust anti-cheat". but we've just cleared up that they have wildly different levels of trust, due to their wildly different access, size, purpose, etc.
I mean - trust is subjective, right? Some people just don't care, some people are okay with the risk-reward tradeoff. I agree it's a bit absurd to compare vanguard to a font, but the parent comment was pretty unapologetic too.
---I stopped buying Ubisoft games after CoD MW2 when they stopped allowing dedicated servers and switched to P2P. The gameplay was trash. Can't say I miss it.---
Ubisoft didn’t make either iteration of MW2. That was activision.
But a year after that bullshit, then Ubisoft started pushing the always-online requirement for even single player games like assassins creed. Maybe you were thinking of that?
Someone in EU should try to make a complaint to the local authority who is enforcing ePrivacy Directive regarding anti cheats in general. Despite what people think ePD isn't limited to cookies and rather also applies all data read or stored in "terminal equipment" via use of electronic communications networks. I would say anti cheat should usually qualify. If they want to do it without consent then they need to show that it's strictly necessary for the service user specifically requested (and that applies for each piece of data written/read, including the OS information).
There's good argument that anti cheat itself would need to be consent based. If you don't accept then you simply don't get placed in games with users who have it enabled.
For anyone pursuing this, consider that the EU age verification apps are the EU’s first foray into digital anti-cheat systems at population scale. If you take the time to research how those are being designed and implemented and incorporate awareness of their work into your complaint about anti-cheats in gaming, your missive will be a lot more likely to strike the target and be taken seriously.
The age verification is it's own can of worms. I'm currently waiting for my native country (but not the one where I reside) to actually publish their wallet implementation. I'm planning to make complaint around it because the whole thing almost certainly breaches ePD. ePD's exceptions are actually for "information society service" rather than just any service. The ISS itself has it's own sets of requirements, but the important one here is that "normally provided for remuneration". Service provided by government as part of their public duty almost never fulfills that requirement.
So in order to store or read data they would need consent. But consent requirements come from GDPR and it's unlikely that this type of consent would be "freely given" given the impact of refusal.
From a technical standpoint, there’s no functional difference: without secure boot and OS attestation, age verification is as ineffective as EAC on Linux, because you can simply `insmod GameGenie.ko code=A456-GH4C` to have your mobile device simulator kernel patch success into any challenge. At the surface level they’re different — one is PvP, the other is PvG, one uses webcams for Twitch, the other uses webcams for facial recognition — but the same set of kernel defenses enable both.
This is funny since they are literally using "Easy Anti Cheat" and that fully supports Linux.
From what I understand Easy Anti Cheat, makes it very easy for developers to run on Linux, basically it is a compile setting to support it. It is one of the anti-cheat providers that had decent Linux support since the beginning.
Back before Proton and when it was new developers often denied requests for turning on Linux support, however this is the first time I head a developer actively turning it off.
I think it speaks volumes of their intent that the game is to be "fully removed from the Linux platform", and they won't offer the single player experience or non competitive experience for Linux based customers.
On top of that it seems to me they tried sneaking this statement in an announcement titled "Ranked FAQ". This shows they have no respect for their customers.
https://dev.epicgames.com/docs/epic-online-services/platform...
EAC is functionally useless on Linux and can be defeated by anyone with the ability to sudo or to boot a modified operating system. Steam Linux does not supported sealed/signed boot with secure attestation, and supporting 1% market share options that do (if any) is unrealistic for developers, so it’s perfectly sensible for PvP multiplayer games to ban Linux users. Not out of malice or disrespect but out of simple technical incapability to detect unskilled cheaters using purchased toolkits.
Removing the single player mode from Linux, however, suggests that they’re doing this because any platform without multiplayer is worthless to them, which suggests there must be a ‘skin shop’ in this game that is viewed as the primary revenue generator. That decision is extremely disrespectful — but it’s the same disrespect they might show by not selling the single player game in countries that disallowed predatory loot boxes, for example. I wholeheartedly support naming and shaming that disrespect; here, they’ve mixed it with complaints about cheating to (largely successfully) disguise a cost-benefit analysis as out of their control due to Linux.
> Steam Linux does not supported sealed/signed boot with secure attestation
Even if it did, you wouldn't stop DMA cheaters from hacking the game. This is the slippery slope we see on Windows with Ring 0 anticheat being defeated with spoofed PCI hardware.
That’s nice, but 99% of cheaters (pre-Win11, anyways) were software-only because the software is $0 with free same-day delivery. Turning off the spigot of pure-software cheating almost entirely empties today’s cesspool, which is partly why Windows 11 requires an TPM, and it won’t refill rapidly due to the simple obstacles of hardware product businesses.
I know that Nvidia’s been implementing attestation for the PCI links to AI GPUs recently, and iirc USB has supported it for a while now (though I’m not sure whether USB-IF has formalized it). I would be shocked if there isn’t already a DDR standard for same coming up in 6 or 7. It’ll take a while to for all this reach the consumer market but the alternative is, as you correctly observe, the gradual decline of trustworthiness of not only attested Win11 gaming PCs but also gaming consoles — but emptying the cesspool of the software cheaters in the meantime remains a sensible step to take.
See also:
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6258448 (2012)
https://memlab.ece.gatech.edu/papers/DSN_2023_2.pdf (2023)
https://pcisig.com/blog/ide-and-tdisp-overview-pcie%C2%AE-te... (2025)
https://docs.trustauthority.intel.com/main/articles/articles... (2026)
EAC supports Linux, but by doing so you're disabling a number of security features since you're making the anti-cheat run entirely in userspace.
Remember these games aren't Linux native either, so it allows Windows-using cheaters to lie to the process that they're on Linux and to only use userspace protection. The cheat then runs in kernel space and remains invisible.
The only realistic way to solve this on Linux is enforcing secure boot w/trusted kernels and then running the anti-cheat in sandboxed eBPF kernel space. Embark is looking at this approach.
> The only realistic way to solve this on Linux is enforcing secure boot w/trusted kernels and then running the anti-cheat in sandboxed eBPF kernel space. Embark is looking at this approach.
Assuming secure boot, there’s another realistic way, which is to use vendor-signed readonly Linux OS images — not just kernels — that disallow process memory access to root, come with signed kernel drivers, and offer secure attestation support chained to secure boot. Steam Linux and Bazzite could both implement this easily; the former has a fixed hardware target list and the latter is already an ‘all in one’ solution. Since Linux users are generally competent at dual-booting, one would simply dual-boot into the sealed image to play PvP multiplayer games, no eBPF development or maintenance of anti-cheat required. Embark is within their rights to evaluate the workload of supporting DIY unsigned Linux instances through eBPF but doing so would create a viable competitor to an attestation-derived Valve Anti-Cheat for Steam Linux, and so likely inspire the giant in the room to step up and obsolete it.
Because EAC and other anti cheat offer basically no protection on Linux, basically anyone can vibe code an undetectable cheat. The situation on Windows isn't exactly great but it funnel cheat creators into a few methods that can be detected.
Apex is another game that also disabled it.
I disagree.
Ubisoft respected my wishes to not play their shitty games by not even supporting my OS of choice.
This stuff should only be legal if companies are forced to return you the full purchase price of the game.
But they are not selling the game for Linux. Only for Windows. It's another story that it works because of Proton but technically they don't support the platform at all.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/304390/FOR_HONOR/
https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/help/for-honor/article/system-...
They've stated in their patch notes that they made a change specifically to run on the steam deck. Regardless of what they say now, they have actively supported linux in the past and so should be liable for breaking the game for those customers.
https://www.ubisoft.com/en-gb/game/for-honor/news-updates/6j...
> made a change specifically to run on the steam deck
No, they didn't, you don't need to lie. From your url:
> EASY ANTI-CHEAT
> Updated Easy Anti-Cheat client module and library.
> Developer's Comment:* This update of Easy Anti-Cheat makes the game playable on Steam Deck.*
That is not "we made a change to specifically run on deck." Steam deck support might be accidental side effect of them getting newer anti-cheat tech.
I don't think this is accurate. Easy Anti-Cheat has supported Linux for a long time, many years before this. I doubt they were years and years out of date, updated, and allowing Linux was turned on by default in the new version. What they likely mean is they ticked the box in this game update to let it run on Linux.
Why would they specifically mention the Steam Deck? EAC doesn't have separate flags for Linux and Steam Deck. It's almost certain they intentionally allowed it to run on Linux. They call out Steam Deck by name because it is a popular handheld that has greatly increased the # of Linux users, not because an EAC update allowed it to work by chance.
And it's still not an active support decision. They allowed it - but it's your business. Whenever people gets problems or successes running through Proton, this is never a publisher's issue.
You need to include extra files and enable a flag for EAC to work on Linux. You don't do that by accident.
You also don't advertise that it works on the steam deck by accident.
Ok, I admit I was wrong.
Still user's problem if they manage or not manage to run the game through whatever translation and emulation layers they have instead of using official system requirements.
“Steam Deck” here means Steam Deck booted into Windows but not Steam Deck booted into Linux, I thought?
No, it means Linux. They enabled the easy anti cheat flag to allow running on Linux.
Wow.
.. that must have been some atrocious telemetry data correlating cheaters and Linux. I wish they’d released a report on it — I mean, fuck Ubisoft, but at least we’d have data to argue about rather than this copout of a release note from them.
What's up with people on here being jerks and saying
> you lie!
It's becoming more common, and I know I'll downvote anything that says it because it isn't constructive.
Back to the point, the quote definitely says to me that they support Linux other why mention that the game is playable on Steam Deck?
> why mention that the game is playable on Steam Deck?
Because it became playable? And now it's not. System requirements are still the same. You can see them on game purchase page.
And that would be fine if they left it at "we don't support it, if you run into problems on your own". When they go so far as to actively block Linux users, then they are doing something wrong and should be required to refund those purchases.
Valve should. Valve is the one making these games available for purchase on non-Windows platforms. Ubisoft never supported this.
>Valve should. Valve is the one making these games available for purchase on non-Windows platforms.
it sounds like you're suggesting valve should be restricting which games they sell depending on the platform you are viewing from?
that would be annoying, and ultimately futile. i purchase games from my phone to play on my pc, or from one pc to play on another. i purchase windows-only games and mess around to see if they can work with proton. etc. i do not need valve to coddle me like that.
"system requirements" is at the bottom of every listing.
Valve absolutely knows what platform you've logged into desktop Steam from even when you're on a mobile device, and can pop up a dialog during purchase saying "This game requires Microsoft Windows, and you have not been active on that platform in the past 30 days. This game will be supported by Steam Play, and developer support is not guaranteed."
That's a totally reasonable ask.
a totally reasonable ask is that people read the system requirements already visible on the store page of every game.
When the company running the store sells three hardware products where they say "ignore that, it'll work on our OS" they need to take responsibility.
the amount of hand-holding people seem to want is actually blowing my mind.
the developer says it is windows only. a 3rd party, not the developer, says the game can work on non-windows. who should you believe? a real mystery.
maybe the kids arent alright
The money was given to Ubisoft, it should be returned.
The money was given to Valve, which then gave money to Ubisoft. Valve sells the game and handles refunds.
So they should have to return the money you paid, to account for their mistake in selling you the game.
It'd actually be your mistake for buying a game for a platform that's not even supported. That they even allowed or spent resources for it to run on Linux initially is something to be grateful for.
>account for their mistake in selling you the game.
i hate ubisoft as much as the next person, but if they listed the game as only supporting windows when it launched, and someone bought it for linux despite it not being supported, ubisoft did not make a "mistake" in selling the game to them. the buyer made a decision to purchase the game for an unsupported system.
(the rule i follow, which hasn't gone wrong yet, is to avoid all ubisoft games like the plague)
edit: am i missing something here? those disagreeing, please let me know why you believe you deserve a refund in this situation, knowing that ubisoft only advertised support for windows.
I would deserve a refund because it doesn't work for me.
If I buy a shirt, all stores that I go to allow me to return the shirt, or exchange it for store credit.
If I go to a grocery store and get the wrong bag of granola, I able to return or exchange it.
The question is why Ubisoft deserves special treatment and gets to keep your money if you return it.
>I would deserve a refund because it doesn't work for me.
do you not believe in any sort of personal responsibility? on the same page as the "buy" button, it tells you that the game only supports windows.
>If I buy a shirt, all stores that I go to allow me to return the shirt, or exchange it for store credit.
if you wear it for 9 years, then try to return it, they will say no.
That's only because the shirt would be worn. Digital media doesn't wear out. If that shirt never wore out and it suddenly stopped working in a specific way I use it, it would be reasonable to me to return it.
if i manage to install a windows-only game onto my fridge, and then the game gets updated and doesn't work on my fridge anymore, it would be ridiculous to suggest i should get a refund.
this is getting silly though. i am saddened that the concept of personal responsibility has been so eroded. best of luck on your refund.
Doesn't sound ridiculous to me. If anything, companies should provide old versions of the game so the update doesn't affect you, so the problem doesn't happen in the first place. That way you can still play on your fridge with people using other fridges. You lose out on newer features, but you've still got access to what you paid for.
I've gotten refunds for less. If an update introduces a fault, that's on the company, no matter the fault. Compatibility with my fridge might be the reason I bought that game. An update removing that functionality leaves the game with a fault, for which I can get the game refunded (or fixed, but companies tend to go with refunds).
>Compatibility with my fridge might be the reason I bought that game
the game specifically said it only supported windows. that means it explicitly does not support other platforms. they waived their responsibility to cater to your unsupported use case. people who purchased it understood that when they bought it. caveat emptor.
if we carry this on much longer my comments are just going to be flagged, so, good luck with your refund.
> the game specifically said it only supported windows.
I don't see why this matters.
> they waived their responsibility to cater to your unsupported use case.
I don't see why they should have the right to do that. They could just give me access to the unmodified product they originally sold me, rather than the one they didn't actually sell me, and we'd have no issue. They did support my use case. The fact that they aren't now is their fault, and should thus be their problem to solve.
> people who purchased it understood that when they bought it. caveat emptor.
The Romans weren't familiar with products being able to change from under you. It's one thing to buy a product not knowing what it does support. It's another to buy it, knowing it does work for you, only for it to change due to the whims of the seller. Not to mention we can do better. Consumer protection is important. I don't want an economy based on caveat emptor being an unbreakable truth.
> good luck with your refund.
I've already had success. I live in a country with good consumer protection laws. I wish the rest of the world would catch up.
The case for a refund seems totally obvious. Why should you get to keep my money? I paid for a product and I did not get it. Selling it incurs no cost on you and I have received none of the benefit of the transaction. It's not like I ate a meal and then decided I wanted to order something else.
This all presumes of course that it is legitimate to ban people from using certain computing environments when running software for whatever reason you feel like. Lots of people don't think this is legitimate at all, which makes sense, because people don't really try to justify it. It's legitimate to want to ban cheaters, this is just not a reasonable means of enforcing that, because there are legitimate players who want to play the game and can't because of this policy.
>I paid for a product and I did not get it
you paid for a windows product. the product still works on windows, right?
if ubisoft advertised linux support for this game, i am 100% with you on the refund. as far as i can tell, they did not. they advertised the game as a windows product.
I don't need to claim false advertising to get a refund for literally any other product, so this argument doesn't hold any water.
like every other product you had a refund window.
you can't buy a shirt, wear it for 9 years, then return it.
> edit: am i missing something here? those disagreeing, please let me know why you believe you deserve a refund in this situation, knowing that ubisoft only advertised support for windows.
You're probably downvoted by people's emotions and feelings because they don't want to see any (even and especially if valid) defense of Ubisoft here. It's wrong and shouldn't happen, but it very much does.
I'm linux-only for 15+ years now and only buy games that run on Linux. I am filled with righteous rage when companies do what they are doing. But you're not wrong, this one is on the buyer not the seller, though everyone should remember this move and avoid buying Ubisoft games in the future because they have proven outwardly hostile.
A criticism I do give them (the seller) though, if you're going to block linux then it should be well-stated in the game description so people don't miss it. Not doing this is dishonest marketing IMHO.
Going forward, I simply will not be purchasing any game that does not work on Linux. I realize that I'll be missing out on some titles, but Windows simply isn't worth the headache. CachyOS has been working great for me. Proton has been amazing. I have had zero problems with the games I typically play -- some of which are multiplayer. Luckily, I have not run into anti-cheat issues yet.
Same.
There are obviously few or no hard technical blockers preventing Valve and the Linux community from supporting any game that runs on Windows, unless it's been specifically engineered to block Linux, and publishers of those games will simply not be getting my money anymore. If Windows was still as pleasant and non-invasive as eg KDE Plasma on Cachy, it would be a different story, but I haven't used it in months (previously I did my desktop gaming in a windows VM) and the feeling of relief is almost tangible. Windows 11 is _so fucking bad_.
I understand that there may be some semi-legitimate arguments around anticheat, but a) not my problem, and b) back in the day we dealt with cheaters by having a persistent dedicated server community with admins ready to kick or ban. The publishers took that away from us.
> There are obviously few or no hard technical blockers preventing Valve and the Linux community from supporting any game that runs on Windows
The announcement is a proof that your statement here is incorrect. Ubisoft is not banning Linux because they hate you and your money, but because there's a hard technical blocker to implementing an efficient anti-cheat system on Linux and the cost of overcoming this technical blocker is presumed to be higher than the loss of revenue they're incurring from losing your business.
So your claim is that it's actually impossible to implement "efficient" anticheat on Linux? That's interesting. But it's not the same thing as "the cost of overcoming this technical blocker is presumed to be higher than the loss of revenue they're incurring from losing your business", so I am not quite sure what point your comment is supposed to be making.
If your point is simply that the publishers think this is a good business decision for them, that's obvious, because they're a business and they aren't going to make decisions they think are bad. But I am not sure how your muddled logic about feasibility feeds into that point.
> So your claim is that it's actually impossible to implement "efficient" anticheat on Linux? That's interesting.
This is absolutely not my claim and it's a pretty absurd interpretation of what I wrote.
My claim is that there's ample evidence that anti-cheat on Linux happens to be a pretty hard technical blocker and multiple companies at this point have chosen to ban the platform outright and take a revenue loss over trying to overcome this blocker. This directly contradicts your claim of "obviously few or no hard technical blockers" existing.
This does not imply it's impossible to implement. It implies that at this point implementing it would not justify the cost. This pretty much 100% matches the any reasonable interpretation of the term "technical blocker"
You seem to be fixated on picking apart the wording of my original comment, so let me help you understand it:
> There are obviously few or no hard technical blockers preventing Valve and the Linux community from supporting any game that runs on Windows
'Few' there is doing a fair amount of work: it allows that some significant (or "hard" if you prefer) blockers may still exist (this is consistent with my own observations of game compatibility in aggregate). So your (implicit) insistence that I claimed there are no blockers is obviously nonsensical already. But, furthermore, I went on to say this:
> unless it's been specifically engineered to block Linux
Which precisely describes a game that previously worked on Linux, with anticheat even, but now has been updated to remove that compatibility! It also describes a game whose anticheat has been configured that way since launch.
Also, your implication that "hard technical blocker" and "not worth it to implement" are interchangeable is ridiculous in any scope, whether you're Valve deciding whether to commit tens or hundreds of man-years to Proton development or a one man shop considering a hacky workaround in a client's dated web framework.
You are just barking at the mailman. I'm done here unless you can respond to the actual substance and nuance of my comments rather than a strawman.
Except we already know the anti-cheat system they use works on Linux, because other products use it. Therefore we have no evidence that the blocker here is technical: it could be political, process-driven, simple incompetence, or anything else. In any of the latter cases, there can be no conclusion of correctness of the parent comment's claim.
I don't play For Honour, but I'm monitoring Apex Legends pro scene and I know that Respawn has banned Linux because none of the existing anti-cheat solutions were good enough and the cost of maintaining their own solution was not worth the revenue Linux support was bringing.
Before the ban the cheater population was disproportionally high on Linux.
It may run on Linux but it doesn't really do much in terms of stopping cheaters.
I'm pulling for Microsoft to create an XboxOS for PC you can just freely install on any machine, as that's about the only thing I care about regarding Windows. Then I could see myself dualbooting that when I want to play my Xbox collection. And it'd be nice to build a beefy machine to max them out on, once the PC component prices settle a bit.
They're playing with that with the Xbox Full Screen Experience on ROG Xbox Ally, but it's still running Windows 11 underneath. I just want the Xbox.
We should invest in solutions outside of Microsoft for games. Even if Microsoft comes out with XboxOS, and even if somehow it isn't terrible, it will eventually be terrible and will enable companies to continue to do anti-consumer B.S. like what Ubisoft is doing here.
Given how dogshit Windows 11 is, and how dogshit the Xbox-branded apps have consistently been in the last 10 years or so (it's genuinely impressive how bad they are), it's hard to see why a new Microsoft thing wouldn't have all the same problems. They just don't make software to serve the user anymore.
I like the software side on my Series X, so if they can bring that over to PC as an OS, that'd be great. I agree the Xbox on PC experience hasn't been stellar so far and I hope they ditch that app with the next generation, for the sake of current userbase. It was serviceable at best in my Windows 10 days.
For anything not gaming related, I have Linux or MacOS.
This might be what steamos becomes. Fully controlled and can only run games and some software like discord.
I've been in the same boat, but with mac. I'm tired of keeping a windows machine around just to play a few games.
Using a Windows 11 machine stirs up some old trauma I try to forget.
I recently moved to Linux for gaming. Last time I tried was around 2008 and I guess I was reluctant to move gaming to Linux because that experience was far from smooth.
Honestly, it's like magic that I can run "The Finals" on highest settings without any hiccup. It literally 'just works'. Happy that I could completely get rid of Windows (it was only there for gaming). It's still hard to believe, given back in 2008 when playing CS I had framerate bugs, text would not render properly (even after messing around with it for some days), and mouse input was.. not ideal. It's come a long way since the days of WINE.
FWIW, I moved from Debian to "Nobara Linux" for this. Mostly because I was in the mood for some distro hopping as well. Highly recommend the experience. (https://nobaraproject.org/). It was a smooth experience from the start, no issues installing it, drivers worked out-of-the-box, audio settings all worked fine, and Steam was pre-installed as well. Super cool.
Would not move back to Windows gaming for Ubisoft games lol.
I too have been distro hopping, loading up Claude has made it extremely easy to be comfortable in exploring other distros
Yeah, I hadn't used Fedora-based distros for over a decade. I haven't ran into issues with Nobara, but I'm sure that if I do any LLM can help me debug/resolve them.
Definitely lowers the barrier of entry for someone entirely new to Linux as well.
Which distro are you using? I'm currently on bazzite and it's merely an okay experience.
Nobara Linux, which is based on Fedora. I used the "Gnome" installer rather than "official" because I still want a regular desktop experience. I've been on Linux for development since 2008 as well so I wanted an "all in one" OS this time rather than dual-boot Linux/Windows.
I'm running this on AMD CPU & GPU (because AMD historically was always better supported than Nvidia). I've not run into any issues the past weeks. Discord and the game both run smoothly. Honestly hard to believe given how rough it was in the past.
That said, I don't play a wide variety of games, I tend to stick with a single game for years. So I'm happy just running "The Finals" and haven't tried other games lol.
What kind of issues are you running into with Bazzite?
>What kind of issues are you running into with Bazzite?
It's just a mess. There are three different ways to get software, so despite being a seasoned Linux user of 20+ years I'm never really sure if I'm installing something via the happy path or not.
I wanted to install Battle.net, for example, and the best/only way I could get it to work is by following some random forum post to run battle.net as a steam app, so if I want to play StarCraft 2 I need to launch Steam, launch bnet from within steam, then finally run sc from that.
Networking is kinda flaky, too. Sometimes games (incidentally, StarCraft, but also other battlenet games like HOTS) will simply refuse to connect to the master servers.
Controllers randomly don't work, etc.
I could go on. None of these are deal breakers in and of themselves, but I'm continually reminded why The Year of the Linux Desktop isn't happening. It's just generally janky.
If your sample set is Battle.net games, could be an issue with Battle.net. I've not tried any Battle.net games so can't compare with Nobara.
I think we might both be dealing with a skewed sample set haha, given I only really played 1 game and had no issues.
I recommend you Zorin OS it works perfect out of the box
I used both Bazzite and Debian, and, while the games do "just work", the problem with Bazzite was that the peripherals were fiddly. Getting the Xbox controllers to work needed some fiddling every time, streaming games from the desktop was hit and miss, and a few other small things like that.
It's still amazing how well gaming on Linux works, but the only reason why I wanted a Steam machine is becasue when a few friends are over, I don't want to spend twenty minutes fiddling with controllers, it kills the mood. I want to turn it on and game immediately.
That's the caveat of Proton. Running games on unsupported platforms they are not meant for. And if it doesn't work who's fault that? Valve? The dev? No one because it's open source so fix your own?
Honestly Valve should have a stricter warning if a game is Windows only
The situation here isn't that the game doesn't work. It does work, it's just the Ubisoft isn't happy with the quality of Easy Anti Cheat's (their third party anti cheat provider) Linux offering.
At Valve's scale, it becomes the publisher's problem. Which is, in this particular case, a good thing imo. I certainly don't mind the pressure on publishers to ensure basic compatibility with Linux
>Honestly Valve should have a stricter warning if a game is Windows only
the "system requirements" section is right there, with "OS" being the first line. i dont agree that this is a valve thing.
[dead]
There's a couple different ways to look at this. From a charitable point of view to ubisoft, they do not advertise support for Linux. Instead they openly state it's a window's only game. So when a third party (i.e. Valve) makes shim that grants linux functionality, it's not really on Ubisoft to maintain that.
However, from a consumer perspective, this is incredibly frustrating. The average person does not think of "linux vs. windows". They just bought the steam deck and when they bought For Honor it was sold on that "platform". Again, it's hard to blame Ubisoft for this conundrum since they were never necessarily trying to be steam deck compliant to begin with, but it definitely feels wrong to take the game away from a player in this perspective.
All that being said, historically across many games such as Rust, many are quick to blame linux for cheating, but pragmatically banning linux has yet to measurably reduce the amount of cheating that players report experiencing, so I don't agree with the decision at all. It's a footgun disguised as a band aid
> So when a third party (i.e. Valve) makes shim that grants linux functionality, it's not really on Ubisoft to maintain that.
I agree that it's not on them to maintain it, but that's different from intentionally breaking it.
When you though Ubisoft can't get any worse...
I bought Farcry 3 Blood Dragon some years ago. I seem to recall I had to install some kind of mod otherwise the game would hang on startup or had long delays because the installed version tried to communicate with some long dead Ubisoft gaming service that they'd shut down the servers for years ago. Funny they were still willing to collect the money for the game that they no longer supported.
I've gotten very comfortable not owning Ubisoft games[1].
[1] https://www.ign.com/articles/ubisoft-exec-says-gamers-need-t...
"Ubisoft Exec Says Gamers Need to Get 'Comfortable' Not Owning Their Games"
Nothing makes more comfortable than not playing Ubisoft games.
Actually, the intent was to preserve the sense of pride and accomplishment by motivating players to play through their purchases instead of hoarding them indefinitely. You think you want a permanent game library, but you don't. Do you guys not have free time? It shouldn't be that hard to finish a game well within its service life anyways.
Apparently so have other gamers considering that Ubisoft's stock price has fallen over 90% in the last five years.
Valve can't even make their own anti cheat system work (VAC) on Windows let alone on Linux so not surprised that 3rd party publishers with 3rd party anti cheat system is giving up. I mean they technically work as a software but they don't fullfil their purpose, to block cheaters.
I suppose the only good solution is like those "game streaming services": move all the logic to the server and use the client only as a rendering device.
Even sending metadata so the client can use local sprites to render the enemy is hackable, if the end-user knows the coordinates where to render the enemy, it can immediately tell the server that "user aimed at $COORDS and pulled the trigger"...
i find it quite amusing that some people forget that opensource software is a double edge sword in these cases.
> "why can we run windows games the way we want and often better than windows?"
its because we can fiddle with anything in the system, from even before the kernel boots up to the software itself.
> "why cant we stop people tampering with their own systems to stop cheating?"
its because we can fiddle with anything in the system, from even before the kernel boots up to the software itself.
but my addendum is:
> I suppose the only good solution is like those "game streaming services": move all the logic to the server and use the client only as a rendering device.
we are in the "dark ages" of AI/computer vision usage and this wouldn’t stop aimbots that are screen readers. Overall the proposal is the "lesser evil" but still quite fucking evil.
Doesn't easy anti cheat work on Linux / proton?
This is what I meant by my last sentence.
Easy Anti cheat works as a software but doesn't work as an anti cheat system.
Yeah I guess the confusion is the overloaded term "work". It _runs_ on Linux, but it's not effective on any system.
I stopped buying Ubisoft games a long time ago for several other reasons
Aren't there EU laws on modifying software for interoperability and whatnot being legal? This and right-to-repair should block any opportunity for companies to intentionally prevent users from using their software the way they want. I'm sure the laws aren't written to actually to ensure that, but they should be.
Client-side anti-cheat is a band-aid that will always punish legit players and merely hinder cheaters.
'The client cannot be trusted' applies to simple HTTP exchanges as well as to game state.
Of course, if the server has to track and validate everything, it would cost more to operate game servers....
I wonder how Valve will decide to handle the incoming wave of refund requests from well outside the normal 2h playtime window.
Looking at the Steam page for this game, there's a "year 10 roadmap" post.
It is advertised as a Windows only game so I doubt they'll honor them, but we'll see.
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/anticheat/
Wouldn't it be possible to have two tiers of servers here? Like have one that's accessible to everyone with a possibly increased risk of cheating and one restricted to Windows users.
I remember in the old days some games had optional anticheat and there were servers with and without it.
of course that would be possible, but i can't see ubisoft opting into that.
it'd be an additional expense for a very small % of the player base of a 9 year old game.
I expect competitive multiplayer to shift towards dedicated locked down gaming distros (such as steamos) that will offer fully signed hardware backed (tpm) remote attestable system for anti-cheats. Which will make casually playing such games pretty awkward.
I’d be interested in hearing why they can’t get decent anti-cheat on Linux. Are there technical barriers?
It’s extra hard on Linux because the amount of ways you can reconfigure a linux machine to work around boot- or root-kits, the ways you can modify a running process, and hide what is happening from an existing process.
Really, linux is meant to give you control over the software that runs in your computer. Anti-cheat is inherently about limiting what you can run on your computer. Windows is much more aimed at allowing you opt in to hard limitations.
Vote with your wallet on this one. It’s time gaming companies start supporting Linux.
The fact that the top comment is joking about how this juggernaut of a game is some unknown nobody is part of the problem
These are the same dicks that want my kids to create dedicated Ubisoft accounts just to be able to use the PS5 games they've paid for. Never buying anything from these scammers again.
Source: https://www.ubisoft.com/en-gb/game/for-honor/news-updates/4W...
If your game doesn't work on Linux I just won't buy it. I have a steam machine and a gaming pc, your game needs to work on Linux. This isn't 2008 anymore dude...
will never understand people who opt for a rootkit just for a 0,1% chance of a match without cheaters.
you're all the worse.
[disclaimer: I am not a competitive player nor will I ever install such a low level anticheat]
I think it's already more than 0,1% in most popular games online, but I am assuming it would be just unplayable without anticheat.
ok, 10%. but you're trading full root/admin access to game code on your pc... is it really really worth?
People are so brain washed that it is essential that here we are, sad companies won't take the option you giving them root access on linux too!
a much better solution would be absolutely no root kit, but players picking "never play with this player gain". done. boardgame.com does this and it is very much perfect and flawless.
I understand the logic, but I think most people don't realize the implication or don't care.
Not much difference when a user space program alredy can read all your files and memory of processes of your user. People just read big bad kernel or rootkit without considering what's alredy possible.
The Verdana font that your message is written with - how can you be sure that its TrueType bytecode hasn't escaped the sandbox and snuck into your ring0?
You either put some trust into the systems made by other people, or you don't touch computers at all.
trust is not binary. i trust my preinstalled system fonts more than i trust vanguard, as an example.
different goals, different people involved, different scope of access, different amount of review, different amount of use = different levels of trust
Absolutely, and we can discuss the amounts of this trust. Some people trust the anti-cheat devs. (I do too, on a PC that is used for almost nothing but gaming.)
okay, if you agree with that, i am confused about your initial comment comparing anti-cheat to a font.
it appears like you are saying "if you trust the font to be okay, you should trust anti-cheat". but we've just cleared up that they have wildly different levels of trust, due to their wildly different access, size, purpose, etc.
I mean - trust is subjective, right? Some people just don't care, some people are okay with the risk-reward tradeoff. I agree it's a bit absurd to compare vanguard to a font, but the parent comment was pretty unapologetic too.
do not engage this comment.
it's either completely and honestly someone not technical missing the point entirely, or more likely trolling.
[dead]
---I stopped buying Ubisoft games after CoD MW2 when they stopped allowing dedicated servers and switched to P2P. The gameplay was trash. Can't say I miss it.---
Nevermind, wrong company.
Ubisoft didn’t make either iteration of MW2. That was activision.
But a year after that bullshit, then Ubisoft started pushing the always-online requirement for even single player games like assassins creed. Maybe you were thinking of that?
Naw, I just haven't played either company's games for so long my brain mixed up the two. Sorry
CoD games come from Activision…
What does Ubisoft have to do with CoD MW2?
Woops, wrong bad gaming company. Derp.
What does CoD have to do with Ubisoft?