Sometimes you have to choose between what is convenient and what is right, and sometimes that means giving things up. But not everyone is willing or able to do that. It's fine, do what you feel you need to.
this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2023
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This. Use whatever is best for you and sometimes that just isn’t Linux. We don’t win people over by trying to force anything :)
Hopefully this issue will continue to get better over time, which it is slowly.
I refuse to buy a game that has DRM or anti cheat.
I would too, but it play it with firends and they couldn't care less about free software and linux. They just want to play no questions asked
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Do you use the Steam storefront at all then?
I prefer gog.com
Not every game on Steam has DRM. Lots will let you just copy your entire install directory to another machine and play without logging in to your account.
Yup. It's not obvious which those are, but with some digging you can find them. I wish Valve made those more obvious.
Which is fine, but it isn't a perfect strategy, because developers and publishers have complete control to replace the client at any time to add features you decline to use, and you are not automatically entitled to a refund if that happens.
Honestly, I'd rather the anti cheat be there. Playing a game with a bunch of cheaters ruins the game. Not wanting to play it is equal to not buying it in the first place in terms of enjoyment. So I'd rather have strong anti cheat on Linux. Anti cheat doesn't ruin the game, you are still able to enjoy it.
But this is also why I think supporting native Linux builds is better. If they are supporting native Linux builds they are supporting Linux as a platform. With proton the developers don't think about Linux. Proton overall has kind of hurt Linux support because it means no one thinks about the platform anymore.
Anti-cheat as a concept is fine but invasive client-side anti cheat just aren't it.
Client-side anti-cheat is the way to go for this. You need to, at some level, trust the client to get good feeling gameplay. Otherwise, you'll end up with the Counter-Strike style missing. Where bullets on the client hit the head, the head shows blood but the target doesn't get damaged. If you don't trust the client, you are going to get pop-tarting where someone jumps over a wall/hill/etc. and shoots, and because the only physics that matters is server side, they are already down under the thing they shot over. There are strong reasons why Six Siege, Valorant, Overwatch, Squad, and almost any modern shooter trust the client but put anti-cheat on it. Server-side checking can only do so much.
Overall what runs on the client is going to be 1 frame behind at least of what runs on the server. Usually far more due to latency. So the only answer is client-side anti-cheat. Now let's talk about the "invasive" part. The only way to securely ensure there are no third-party applications affecting your play is to tie into the kernel and a definitive process list. Otherwise, anyone could just prevent the process list from being accurate. So you then need kernel-level modules to report and secure the client.
There is another method that is rarely enacted. Hysterics, simply if you do too well on a game, you get banned. Have 99% Headshots? Banned. Have higher reaction times than most people? Banned. It's a real big brother solution. That's what you really should be fighting against. Banning people from games without solid proof but just statistical evidence that they shouldn't be that good. This is mainly been the focus on combating those controller automation cheat systems. It also means people who use macros can get banned.
All in all though, if you aren't doing client-side kernel-level anti-cheat then your game at this point is filled with cheaters. It's exactly why Counter-Strike has ESEA and Faceit which both require kernel-level anti-cheat to replace VAC which doesn't have kernel-level hooks and is easily by-passed. Thus CSGO's matchmaking is filled with cheaters where anyone using EAC has a relatively cheater-free game.
Most developers don't support their native Linux release at all. You'll download an automatic update, and suddenly the game doesn't even start; check the forum and find out, they never even tested the Linux build, it's just all automatic, and it's gonna take a couple of weeks before they get their linux box updated and working again so they can fix it because their one linux guy is working on something else. It's crap. Proton has been a massive improvement in game reliability.
Really? Do you have an example of this with non early access games? I've personally never seen this happen and I'm my experience when a studio supports a platform they buy a computer to run the game on for that platform. I can only assume this was an experience with some very indie game?
I don't have a recent example because Proton always works.
Native builds on steam are by default picked over proton. You might be playing great native builds without realizing. Although since 2016 native build support has gone way down. Even before proton came out.
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I play League of Legends via Proton. I assume it has an anti cheat and I never had issues with cheaters/hackers. I refuse to believe they need kernel level anti cheat for valorant. Not that I care about shooters.
NVMe drives have become to inexpensive recently I just bit the bullet and dual-boot windows from it's own drive. Takes less than ten seconds to switch.
Just make sure you physically disconnect all other storage devices while installing windows. The windows boot loader seems to make itself comfy on any drive it can find.
Same here. I’ve only a Linux machine for over a decade but I had to go out and buy Windows just so I could play on FaceIT. I’m praying that cs2 supports Linux and the MM experience is good enough to make FaceIT obsolete.
Cs2 is 100% getting Linux support. Wouldnt make sense for a company that heavily invested in Linux to not support it
Buy windows? 🤯🤯🤯
A Windows license is in the realm of $200
Why should he?
I hope they didn't actually buy it from M$ at least, but a third party reseller for five bucks
Personally never bought it. (Windows activation script ftw)
I did, it was £79 or £89 if I recall. Windows 10 home edition. Also I don’t get Windows 11 because my mobo/cpu don’t support it.
I just refuse to buy any games with client side anti cheat. It's just too much of a security and privacy risk to have those rootkits on my computers.
Don't be so spineless.
Plenty of games work without anti cheat on Linux and I only play them.
You just buckled under the tiniest amount of pressure, but you would have to pry Linux out of my cold dead hands.
Not sure why there are so many downvotes. Are there really that many people in here of all places who think gaming is just triple-A games from companies that don't respect their players and nothing else?
Edit: wording
I don't like it because that's the kind of elitist attitude that turns away new people from checking out Linux gaming. Imagine that as a response to "Hey I play these games and am interested in Linux". You're going to tell them: "switch to Linux and give up those games and if you don't you're not committed enough"?
It's gatekeeping "console-wars" fanboy mentality. Like a ~~Linux~~ Playstation fan attacking someone for playing an ~~Windows~~ Xbox Exclusive. As if that's supposed to be their whole identity, and not just a way to play video games.
There's nothing wrong with having multiple consoles; there's nothing wrong with dual-booting.
In my experience, most Windows-exclusive games work just fine under Wine. It's not that big a deal.
This thread isn't even about Windows games per se, but about a few games whose anti-cheats are screwing over Linux users.
It's actually pretty hard to fuck up your game that much that it doesn't work on Linux.
Many anti cheat even work under proton.
So yeah, just don't fucking buy shit games.
Those anti cheat games usually need to opt in to supporting Proton/WINE. For Easy Anti Cheat (perhaps the biggest one out there), devs just need to tick a build option to support it, but then they feel obligated to do QA for it, so the option stays off until the higher ups decide to formally support that configuration.
So it's not that it's hard to mess it up, it's just hard to convince higher ups to allow their game to work on Linux.
If a AAA MP game doesn't work on Linux, it's probably intentional.
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I could stop playing these games right now. As i said i'm don't use my computer for gaming that much. I could be perfectly satisfied with only minecraft. But i play them with the homies and i can't let them down
Honestly something I'm surprised no game is doing is embrace the hackers.
For example, create a HvH gamemode where users can use lua scripts to aid them. I bet this would turn a lot of people away from the actual cheating scene.
this might (barely) work for Source games like CS:GO, TF2, etc but on games like Overwatch, Valorant, Fortnite, etc there are a lot less exploits that would keep HvH actually interestering like fake angles, doubletap, etc like there are in the Source Engine (mind you this is because the engine is literally from 2003 and based on Goldsrc which is based on the damn Quake engine.)
also this did exist for a while in cs:go TECHNICALLY, wingman in CSGO had overwatch disabled (when they were collecting data for vac.net) for almost a year and was literally just used to hvh but it never stopped people from cheating in competitive.
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Cheaters are sociopaths. Most of them pretend to be good and post clips or try to get a following until they inevitably get banned.
Every script kiddie says this same thing. There are already HvH servers. Barely anyone plays them. If a company had official HvH it would encourage cheating. Fuck cheaters..
definitely not all cheaters are sociopaths, been in the cheating community since 2014-ish (starting to slowly back off and leave recently just due to the the obvious toxicity in it) and have made plenty of genuinely great friends there but ofc it is mostly horrible people, especially the people who closet and hide it from friends. do agree that this plan would never work though, but HvH was never really dead, it was at its peak in 2020 where there were probably 200+ people playing although it's really only active in EU now.
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Out of curiosity, which games are those?
Fall guys fortnite and apex (judge me if you want but my broke firend don't wanna try anything else)
I can confirm that both apex and fallguys are working just fine on Linux. Fortnite on the other hand does not.
With the exception of the false positive ban wave reported a few days ago, Apex Legends has played flawlessly on Linux for the last couple of years. According to comments on protondb, Fall Guys also appears to be working fine, including multiplayer with anti-cheat. I'm not trying to tell you that you shouldn't run Windows if you want to, but perhaps you didn't fully explore all options?
If you switch back to Linux you could suggest Shatterline to your broke friends. It's f2p and had no issues with anti-cheat last time I tried it. I think Overwatch 2 is also f2p.
I'm not judging, as I said I was curious. I get it though, Apex just had a Linux ban wave, Fortnite well, it's owned by Epic and Fall Guys to my knowledge requires editing AC files so Windows in your case is more convenient
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Dam. Sorry to hear.
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