I am not a huge gamer nor am I much into the world of competitive, first person shooters but these are an important part of gaming culture. There are some that are more interesting than others with varying degrees of popularity but for the most part, I largely don’t care, except that these games really are important in the gaming portfolio.
No matter what I personally think of these games and historically poor attitude that I have maintained where I turn my nose to these developers, really accomplishes nothing. I really believe I need to have a bit more compassion for those that want to play these games and hopefully add awareness, even if in a tiny way, to the challenges developers and gaming enthusiasts have to bringing the last few outliers to Linux.
That preamble to say, “did you know that there is a website that tracks whether or not a game’s Anit-Cheat works with Linux and Proton?”
I first became aware of this at the 2023 Ubuntu Summit when I was sitting in on a talk about the work being put into gaming on Linux by Arkadiusz Hiler who described the many obstacles that some of these software houses lay in front of Valve, Codeweavers, and the many Linux gamers to experience their games on our favorite operating system.
What is it, exactly?
Taken, right from the top of the website, it says:
A comprehensive and crowd-sourced list of games using anti-cheats and their compatibility with GNU/Linux or Wine/Proton.
Starz0r
This is a database of various games that uses some variety of anti-cheat system and whether or not it is working on Linux. Since Linux, at its core, is quite different than Windows, the way anti-cheat is implemented is inherently incompatible. Some might even say the way anti-cheat works is fundamentally a kind of malware and needs to be contained.
Anti-cheat encumbered games are the last hangup for Linux gaming. For the most part, games just work on Linux. That gap has stupendously closed on Linux gaming in the last few years that the argument for using Linux in gaming has all but disappeared.
This website tracks the status for various games that use some sort of anti-cheat technology. Truthfully, I am largely unfamiliar with most of these titles but there are a few that I do know.
The one that I have and do play on the occasion is Fortnite only because that is what my kids want to play today or whatever. As you can see on the chart, the current status is “Denied” and the Anti-Cheat malware being employed there is “BattlEye” and “Easy Anti-Cheat”
I did learn of many new Anti-Cheat systems by digging through this site. What does confuse me is when I see multiple Anti-Cheats beside a game, does that mean it requires all or one of them or a combination? Are there various bits of Anti-Cheat employed by the game studios? Is there some sort of Anti-Cheat à la carte going on here?
Whatever the situation is with that, I’m sure I’ll hear about it but I don’t mind exposing my ignorance on this. I think these are fair questions and probably questions I should have asked at some point.
Why do I care
Although I don’t do any sort of competitive gaming, nor do I find most of these games all that entertaining, I know a lot of people that do play these and a sub set of these would just run Linux on their hardware. I really think that Linux is, ultimately, the better platform for all eras of PC gaming. I especially believe that Linux is the better platform for modern gaming due to the many efficiencies gained in the Linux technology stack.
As of the writing of this article, the overall status of Anti-Cheat enabled games is that there are 153 Supported titles that have some sort of Anti-Cheat with 38 that are running. That accounts for 58.6% of the games on that list, which looks pretty good.
You may wonder what the differences are between “Supported” and “Running” and the others so I will add the information here.
Supported means that the games run on Linux due to the developers going out of their way to enable the anti-cheat to run on Linux or games that have anti-cheat which works perfectly fine out of the box under Wine/Proton. Supriseingly, it looks like much if not all of the “Call of Duty” franchise is supported.
Running means that the games will run on Linux without impact on online gameplay but may require you to perform certain tinkering steps. This does not include any means of explicitly bypassing the anti-cheat so you are still on the “up and up” and are unlikely to get banned or any other negative consequences.
Planned states that these games’ developers have explicitly stated that they plan to enable their anti-cheat to work on Linux or that they plan to support the game natively.
Broken games will not run online due to the deployed anti-cheat solution. In some cases the games may play but just not online. This is the second largest group of the list which makes up about 34.4% or 1/3rd of the total.
Denied games are when the developers have explicitly stated that they will not enable the anti-cheat solution to work on Linux or have denied the possibility of Linux support. About 6% of the listed games are in this category. These are the “meanies” and the enemies of operating system freedom. Although I have played Fortnite, I don’t intend on voting for their denial of Linux compatibility with my dollars. Not like they are going to miss it but it is at least one person.
By the numbers this really does look pretty great and having more than half in a supported or running state means that it’s very likely that you can just use Linux for gaming. It’s good to see that some progress is being made where some games have a situational improvement.
But also disappointing when some games go from a positive situation to a frustrating state.
Hopefully the situation with Rust will be reversed but this is the situation today.
Final Thoughts
This is a really great site to check if something is working and to get updates on various games. You can also use this to respectfully petition the game studios about your desire to run the game on your favorite operating system (Linux of course) in hopes that they may, change their mind. Certainly, this should never be used to express any hostility to anyone about the lack of support. Remember, this is gaming, gaming is entertainment and when you break it down, this is just a bunch of organized flashing lights.
I like gaming and I think gaming is important when in conjunction with shared hobbies amongst family and friends. I personally enjoy family gaming night a lot and it is even more enjoyable when I can find ways to play these games on the platform of my choice.
I often wonder if there will be a time when Linux is fully supported in the world of gaming or if it is always going to be a struggle. Sometimes, I sort of appreciate the struggle and often I am just annoyed by it but without some sort of challenge, I am not sure I would appreciate all the work required for making these fascinating things happen. My thanks goes out to all those involved in smoothing out the rough edges in Linux Gaming.
After all this, I sure wish people wouldn’t cheat.
References
https://areweanticheatyet.com
Attending Ubuntu Summit 2023 as an openSUSE User
https://www.valvesoftware.com/en
https://www.codeweavers.com/
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