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Just like what happened with Darwin Project only recently, it seems Paladins is no longer playable on Linux with Steam Play.

Late last month, I wrote an article and made a video showing off just how well Paladins was working on Linux thanks to Steam Play. Here we are again, only a couple weeks later and it's now a complete dud, with it almost instantly kicking me (and confirmed by others) out of games. You might get in for a few seconds, but with 100% reproduction it will kick you pretty quickly back to the main menu.

Back when previously writing about such an issue, I did make it clear with a note about how "with multiplayer titles and Steam Play there's nothing stopping the developer adjusting their anti-cheat which could end up locking-out Linux gamers".

It's a real shame, as both myself and my Son enjoyed playing Paladins and apart from a few issues which were also present on Windows, it worked beautifully with some really great performance.

While Steam Play has opened the door to a lot of titles not officially available on Linux, it's not quite the answer to everything as some like to repeatedly claim. This is obviously going to be a repeating problem with multiplayer games, so for now, I would honestly just keep away from any game using Easy Anti-Cheat with Steam Play. I will repeat what I said when I spoke about Darwin Project, I think Valve should really note on store pages what anti-cheat systems are used to help gamers make informed decisions.

What will be interesting, is that Valve said they will be rolling out "Steam Trust" in their post about some changes coming to Steam. Perhaps if more developers use Valve's own tools when they're available, this might not be such an issue since you would expect Valve's own tools to work with Steam Play.

I've reached out to Easy Anti-Cheat, again, to see if they would like a constructive chat about it. They didn't reply last time, so hopefully they will this time.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Faattori Feb 9, 2019
Everything started to consistently break after Epic bought EAC.
stretch611 Feb 9, 2019
Quoting: Guestvalve needs to fix this problem.make the games think it is running in windows or something because alot of games are broken because of this drm crap.i have to use windows due to games not working.when it gets fixed ill ditch it for good.
Valve does have a whitelist of games for SteamPlay. It is quite tiny compared to the actual games that do work with Proton.

I do not think Paladins was ever on that list.
Kristian Feb 9, 2019
Doesn't Valve already have their own anticheat solution, VAC?
Ehvis Feb 9, 2019
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Quoting: Guestvalve needs to fix this problem.make the games think it is running in windows or something because alot of games are broken because of this drm crap.

That's simply not possible. Even VMs running a legitimate copy of Windows can be detected. There is software on Windows that simply refuses to run in a VM.

The problem is basically that anti-cheat software is actually doing its job. It's supposed to detect things in the system that can change stuff in the game that give players an advantage. But Wine in itself is the biggest tamper you can imagine, it literally has access to everything the game does. If it would get unnoticed by an anti-cheat system, it would simply mean the system is broken.

The best fix would be if these systems would not be necessary at all. Unfortunately a small percentage manage to ruin that for everyone. Which leaves the second best option, have the anti-cheat code be aware of Wine and accept it. I think many actually are. It certainly looks like EAC can accept Wine just fine because most EAC protected games have had stretches where it worked. Which makes me think it is considered a "weaker" setting which is then changed at some point leaving non-functional on wine.

Anyway, enough speculation on my part.
kalin Feb 9, 2019
Who cares. That game is dumb as hell. I try it to check how well steamplay work and believe me that was the most boring experience.
Termy Feb 9, 2019
Quoting: EhvisThat's simply not possible. Even VMs running a legitimate copy of Windows can be detected. There is software on Windows that simply refuses to run in a VM.

As far as i know that is mainly down to Hardware-IDs.
I know of a few examples that check for the CPU-ID and block accordingly. If you "fake" your KVM to a "real" CPU-ID it works flawlessly.

For the rest, i completely agree with you. It is a real shame that some devs won't even go through the miniscule effort to make sure their DRM/AntiCheat won't block wine/proton after it is reported to them. Devs with this attitude don't deserve our money for sure.
Liam Dawe Feb 9, 2019
Quoting: kalinWho cares. That game is dumb as hell. I try it to check how well steamplay work and believe me that was the most boring experience.
Yeah, who cares about a popular game with currently over 16 thousand people playing no longer working for us.
Xpander Feb 9, 2019
Quoting: kalinWho cares. That game is dumb as hell. I try it to check how well steamplay work and believe me that was the most boring experience.

Yeah well thats your opinion. While it wasn't anything brilliant it was good fun and not boring at all for me. Quick to get in, have like half an hour to hour of fun and then close it.. simple. free, ran amazingly performance wise and was fun.


Last edited by Xpander on 9 February 2019 at 1:35 pm UTC
tmtvl Feb 9, 2019
Quoting: stretch611
Quoting: Guestvalve needs to fix this problem.make the games think it is running in windows or something because alot of games are broken because of this drm crap.i have to use windows due to games not working.when it gets fixed ill ditch it for good.
Valve does have a whitelist of games for SteamPlay. It is quite tiny compared to the actual games that do work with Proton.

I do not think Paladins was ever on that list.

Too bad Valve hasn't publicly released the whitelist. It would make it easy to point people to games that should work.
UltraAltesBrot Feb 9, 2019
Quoting: KristianDoesn't Valve already have their own anticheat solution, VAC?
Yes, but not all devs decide to use it: Using it binds your product to Steam and sometimes the principles of VAC (delayed bans to catch as many cheaters as possible at once, ..) don't suffice the devs/publishers goals of fighting cheaters.

Many players even demand BattlEye, EAC, PunkBuster or whatever, because they think it's more efficient. For example the Counter-Strike pro players community ESEA has their own seemingly rather invasive anti-cheat solution to combat cheaters.
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