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...

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altairprime 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

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.

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bigyabai 2 days ago | parent [-]

> 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.

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altairprime 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

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.

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)

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bigyabai 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

You're conceding my exact point back to me. Linux-compatible anticheat uses many of the same pre-TPM measures that Windows 10 used to combat software cheating, and prevents the 95% majority of software hacks and process injection. The remaining minority of cheaters cannot be stopped on Linux any easier than you can stop them on Windows. Both OSes have escape hatches that cannot be easily closed.

Which is why I said, even if Linux enforced TPMs, secure runtimes and signed kernels, you'd still be loading firmware blobs and trusting HID/PCI hardware just the same as Windows. Linux would still be attacked, singled-out and made a pariah regardless, so it's good that Valve and the kernel devs generally ignore these design suggestions.

	▲	altairprime 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Prediction duly recorded. I sure hope you’re right, but I’m too cynical after decades of ‘ignoring attestation makes the underlying problem go away’ from my Linux peers to consider a positive outcome likely.

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orwin 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Now I'm wondering if launching windows through a VM would allow me to play those games.

	▲	altairprime 16 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Look up a list of games that require secure boot; consider whether your VM has secure boot enabled or not (UTM on macOS has a pref for it inside the VM UEFI settings, for example) and consider whether the game(s) you're interested in require it (I believe there's maybe a dozen PvP games so far that do).
	▲	pocketarc 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		It does; I play games backed by Easy Anti Cheat on a VM Windows running on Nix. It does require fiddling with the settings to make it look like you’re not in a VM, but completely doable.

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Foreskin_Mafia 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]

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bigyabai 2 days ago | parent [-]

Opposing that logic, we should only support 1 or 2 GPUs (just like consoles) and lock down Windows to run nothing but games. Then the problem will actually be solved, like on PS5 and XBox!

Really, "stopping cheaters" is a slippery slope and it's worth pointing out that cheaters persist (on both OSes) regardless. Some measures have a negligible impact on the OS, others are a dealbreaker that would cause people to abandon the platform. In an age of realtime AI inference and sub-milisecond computer vision, all peripherals and apps are suspect. There are people cheating with unblockable methods right now, and those people will continue to exist for as long as Windows supports any degree of third-party software or hardware.

	▲	Foreskin_Mafia a day ago \| parent [-]
		[dead]

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surgical_fire 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I disagree.

Ubisoft respected my wishes to not play their shitty games by not even supporting my OS of choice.

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tapoxi 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

	▲	altairprime 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		> 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.

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roosterIllusi0n 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Microsoft is probably paying companies to not support linux. This looks no different than any other paid exclusivity.

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Hikikomori 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

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.