this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2024
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Very often, these days, this boils down to:
The game uses an anti cheat / anti piracy system which does support linux and proton, but the devs or management of the game decided against clicking a few boxes which would enable that support.
Ey, the linux kernel is open source. Perhaps support can be added by some third party?
But realistically, kernel level anti cheat doesn't really stop cheaters. But it grants third parties access to your pc's contents. Perhaps if more users switch to linux it might become a userbase worth marketing to. That is, if that's not users who run linux because they can't afford a windows license
See my other post: Linux supporting ACs have existed for 3 years.
The functionality to support them already exists, the market share is arguably already there, and the cost to game dev teams to enable these already existing linux AC functionality is in many cases literally 0. They're already paying to license Battleye or EAC or Denuvo, and all they have to do is request usage of a feature that already exists, that they are already paying for, but just not using.
Also, as you seem to agree, the vast, vast majority of cheats/hacks/trainers are made for and used by Windows users despite ACs having kernel level access in Windows.
Ye, some people just want to game and not care. Windows can do that, linux can't. And the market share is nowhere near what it needs to be to be a viable option.
Maybe for a small studio that can pick up the crumbs of the market, but no major studio benefits much from supporting linux
My out of the box set up process for getting a Steam Deck playing games was significantly simpler and less time consuming than with a Windows PC.
So linux absolutely can 'just game', even more straightforwardly than a Windows machine.
As for not being viable... you're saying that checking a few boxes in a your dev panel to make it so your next build supports approximately 5% of the market that you previously did not... that this has no major benefits ...
I mean... 5% more potential marketshare availability isn't major, but for approximately 0 additional cost seems, this seems like a no brainer, obvious benefit to me.
The ACs and Proton handle working on linux.
Proton is not paid for or developed by these studios.
Thats the magic of Proton, it functionally ports everything designed for Windows automatically, at no cost to the game studio.
The ACs already include linux/proton compatibility in their agreements with the game studios... they don't need to pay them more for supporting it.
This isn't like the game studios have to 'port' a game to linux, like the immense cost of porting a console game to PC, back before most game engines just had an 'export to whatever architecture' functionality.
This is 'We can choose to increase our potential player base by about 5%, for essentially 0 expenditure, but nah, fuck that, who wants a free buff to sales?'
If you can "just game" then you wouldn't need a database just to check if your game might run at all
The point I am making is not that linux can perfectly run every game. Obviously it cannot.
The point I am making is that for many popular online games, the only reason that this is the case is because many game studios just don't bother to click a few options, which would cost them basically nothing.
... Anyway on a Steam Deck its super simple, the compatibility grade is just right there in the screen for looking at and potentially buying the game, simple color codes.
... Compared to a Windows PC where you'll need to check your hardware specs against the min and optimal specs and basically just guess how well you can run it.
Steam Decks, like consoles, all have the same hardware, so its a unified experience, simplified.
Anyone who has played PC games on Windows knows that you're probably gonna have to do research to figure out how to build or upgrade your rig to be able to play any given game at the fidelity and frame rate you want, which is significantly more time consuming, complex and disparate than looking at a single, built-in-to-your-gaming-device color grade that lets you know what to expect in 2 seconds.
Personally, I can't tell you how many times I've bought a PC game for Windows and oh oops, turns out the min specs are functionally unplayable, turns out the advertised graphics at a stated hardware level was false advertising, etc, etc.
Meanwhile, almost everything in my Steam Library works on a Steam Deck, with the most major exceptions being online multiplayer games that just refuse to enable their Anti Cheat to allow the game to run.
I wish it was that simple. Checking that box does not alleviate the extra work supporting an entire extra platform. One of such is doing to testing to give you that ez pz steam deck stat.
Also, those pc specs not working for you? That's a you problem, learn how to use a pc or join the console peasants
... When a game dev team/studio licenses usage of EAC, Battleye, or Denuvo, they are provided access to dev tools.
In those dev tools, they just need to select a few options (click a few boxes) to enable their game build to be compatible with the linux/proton versions of those AC systems.
These 3 ACs are on record stating, 3 years ago, that they already developed support for this, and all that game devs have to do is indicate that they want to use these features that they have already developed, support, and are included when licensing their use for a game.
This is typically why a game studio, or any software developer really, works out some kind of licensed usage agreement for many elements of pre existing code: It does a thing they want to be able to do, and does it more cost effectively than said studio developing their own solution in house.
... But I've already explained most of this to you multiple times.
As for pc specs... I've been building custom PCs since before 9/11. I've been modding all kinds of Windows games since 2003. I've done contract work for MSFT for a few years after I graduated University.
I understand how PC specs work, how gaming, and coding, on Windows PCs works.
I am attempting to illustrate how the ability to 'just game', on a Windows PC, is nowhere near as straightforward as you are implying it is.
But anyways, your responses have become increasingly bad faith and/or indicative of poor reading comprehension, so you're either not interested in, or capable of meaningful discussion, so I won't be entertaining you any further.
You can grab standard libraries and turn on features in software products. That does not mean it's set-and-forget. If it was, it would make my job a lot easier.
Build yourself a decent pc then if you know how it works, and yours doesn't perform as it should. Hint hint, mine have always done their job great even below the minimum specs of most games. It just takes some fine tuning
Linux Copium, if it was like that go be Mr Hacker Man and toggle that undocumented switch so it works.
I mean, its not undocumented.
Easy Anti Cheat: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2021/09/epic-games-announce-full-easy-anti-cheat-for-linux-including-wine-a-proton/
Battleye: https://store.steampowered.com/news/group/4145017/view/3104663180636096966
Denuvo: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2021/01/steamworks-gets-denuvo-anti-cheat-heres-what-irdeto-say-about-linux-support/
All of these common anti cheat developers have stated, 3 years ago, that their systems work on linux/proton, and that all a game dev team has to do is ask them to enable such functionality.
Its just that the game devs/management, in many cases, do not do this.
...Even if one was capable of breaching a corporate network, compromising enough accounts or privilege escalating yourself to the point that you could remotely navigate through their intranet, build a version of the game, both server and client side, which supported linux/proton, test this, and then push it to release...
Well for starters you would almost certainly be caught and go to jail for 10 to 20 years, and also this patch would immediately be undone once discovered.
We're talking about online multiplayer games here.
It's not a single player game where you can almost always find some kind of cracked version and run it offline in a VM or through Wine or something... and usually you don't even need to resort to cracks for single player games anyway as legitimately purchased games now mostly work fine via proton.
Its when most of the game is reliant on a server architecture, you know, files not on your computer?
This is gonna sound like trolling but don’t let your dreams be dreams. You believe you can achieve parity were it not for the chains of existence. I literally want to see this
Its not that I believe I can achieve parity.
Its that giant corporations already have access to technical parity, and choose not to have it, use it, distribute it, despite this choice being essentially costless at worst, and profit improving at best, as it would expand their games to work in a small, but growing share of platforms.
We are, as ever, at their utterly spiteful and incompetent whim.
I don't really wanna be the next pompompurin
Because kernel level anti-cheat can be circumvented by modifying the kernel which Linux allows. -Kudos to the devs for not allowing cheaters. Also, these games have 'minimum spec' requirements where Linux is nowhere to be found on those specs. -They don't owe Linux users their support. And as you say 'Very often' - which implies there are still great games that simply don't work.
Dual booting is a bother, and an overhead on storage as well as a main tech support issue for Linux users. Gaming in Linux isn't so straight forward either.
The way popular anti cheats work on linux varies, and not much, afaik, is precisely known about them.
Regardless of that... see my other post for 3 very widely used, very popular ACs which themselves state that they work on linux, have worked on linux for 3 years, that the support exists and all that has to be done is the game dev/management team to just say 'hey please enable this extra option for our game'.
I say 'very often' because some games use their own proprietary, in house anti cheat which, yes, does not even claim to support linux.
...But the existence of major AC providers that do support linux means that it is not impossible to do this, in fact its been possible for years.
Anyway, sure, none of this ultimately changes the fact that many of the most popular online games don't work on linux.
But it also doesn't change that for many of such games, literally all they'd have to do is check some boxes, at either 0 or negligible increased cost to themselves, to make this work.
Anyway, if you think most linux users are cheaters, I don't know what to tell you.
Using linux to game is pretty easy, low barrier to entry. Steam Decks are basically ready to go right out of the box. Even desktop distros geared toward gaming on linux, but also work well as a general OS are not too difficult to set up. Nobara has come a long way, PopOS! is easier to set up than Windows.
The technical know how to find and install a custom kernel is a much, much more complex task... and why would you even bother, when the vast majority of cheats/hacks/trainers are made for Windows, require far less technical know-how than setting up a custom linux kernel to use, and these routinely circumvent Anti Cheats all the time?