Apparently Valve are working with Easy Anti-Cheat to get support in Steam Play (updated: yup)

I wonder why Valve is putting so much effort into supporting Linux. My theory is that, currently, Valve and Microsoft are in direct competition, since Microsoft also develops games and I guess they even have a digital storefront. They could really use their ownership of the primary platform to make things difficult for Valve, and really other developers like Epic.

So, to have Linux support seems like having an alternative in your back pocket, preventing Microsoft from overreach.

Just a theory.

I'm kind of baffled that Epic is allowing collaboration with Valve ^^
Glad to hear this though :D

I hope they don't give up on this, since EAC is developed by a company owned by Epic, and for then would be better to "not help the competitor".

Unless they're actually planing something with linux too, who knows...

I think Epic holding Valve back would be bad pr for them. They are already disliked for their anti consumer practices. If they work against Valve they will, hopefully, get much more backlash from PC community.
Valve could, and rightfully so, rub salt into wound that is Epic Store by pointing out how the company has ported Fortnite for so many platforms but neglected Linux, and now they are even stopping progress to make games available for the platform.
It would be disgusting if that actually happens.


Last edited by Linuxwarper on 16 Feb 2019 at 1:19 am UTC

This can explain the lack of PROTON updates.....
Two months since the last one... That is a lot of time!

ups! I have to correct myself...
There is a new PROTON version!!!

3.16-7:

Fix for fullscreen behavior in Into The Breach.
Fix for crashes in some d3d9 games on Mesa.
Fix for crash when launching certain games, including Path of Exile, the Bloons series, and the Naruto Shippuden series.
Fix for games with special characters in paths, including LEGO Harry Potter.
Improved controller behavior in some games, especially Unity-based games like Subnautica and INSIDE.
Update DXVK to v0.96.
Update FAudio to 19.02.
Restore previous functionality of the Uplay client.
New runtime option for old games that can't handle modern GL extension strings. Set PROTON_OLD_GL_STRING to limit the extension string length.
New runtime option to disable d3d10 support, PROTON_NO_D3D10.
Better support for games that use very old steamworks SDKs, including Lost Planet.
Fixed various problems with the build system, and added a new top-level Makefile to make simple builds much easier.

EAC already has (optional) wine support in, and the devs of Paladin were asked by someone to activate it so that people could play it again. They obliged and now paladin (a game that was unplayable due to EAC last year) is now playable.

It was more likely a universal test of wine64 EAC of some kind, considering Apex Legends also worked until the day after it came out, where both Paladins and Apex stopped working, which is not a coincidence.


Last edited by Dribbleondo on 16 Feb 2019 at 10:04 am UTC

I think Epic holding Valve back would be bad pr for them. They are already disliked for their anti consumer practices. If they work against Valve they will, hopefully, get much more backlash from PC community.
Valve could, and rightfully so, rub salt into wound that is Epic Store by pointing out how the company has ported Fortnite for so many platforms but neglected Linux, and now they are even stopping progress to make games available for the platform.
It would be disgusting if that actually happens.

it's not like EPIC cared to much about PR in the past weeks/months ;)
But let's hope their neglect of linux is just shortsighted and lazy instead of ill-minded

... so Proton 3-16.7 is supposed to "Restore previous functionality of the Uplay client."

I take it to mean that it still doesn't work. What else could that mean?

I wonder why Valve is putting so much effort into supporting Linux. My theory is that, currently, Valve and Microsoft are in direct competition, since Microsoft also develops games and I guess they even have a digital storefront. They could really use their ownership of the primary platform to make things difficult for Valve, and really other developers like Epic.

So, to have Linux support seems like having an alternative in your back pocket, preventing Microsoft from overreach.

Just a theory.

The bad news is, you're not the first to suggest this. The good news is, many people consider your theory pretty sound.

I can't imagine that Epic lets this happen.
They will not help Valve in any way. And if valve plans something like new Steammachines, it must work reliable.
If people buy a Valve product (game streaming or something like Steammachines) Epic can always kill it. They just need to let the multiplayer fail. Let people be kicked by Easy Anticheat - thats it!

So I don't think that will work reliable. Would be very nice, but I do not believe. May be with Battle Eye. But never with an Epic Company.

I can't imagine that Epic lets this happen.
They will not help Valve in any way. And if valve plans something like new Steammachines, it must work reliable.
If people buy a Valve product (game streaming or something like Steammachines) Epic can always kill it. They just need to let the multiplayer fail. Let people be kicked by Easy Anticheat - thats it!

So I don't think that will work reliable. Would be very nice, but I do not believe. May be with Battle Eye. But never with an Epic Company.

Problem with this mentality is that if EAC's parent company, Epic, is in direct competition with Valve, then why does EAC work on steam games on Windows and Mac, and Native Linux? The short answer is because the backlash that would cause would be so immense it'd discredit the entire company. Long-winded way of me saying; Be skeptical, just stop thinking that Epic's master plan is to kill steam (when that's clearly not the case).


Last edited by Dribbleondo on 17 Feb 2019 at 10:26 am UTC