Today, Easy Anti-Cheat from Epic Games / Epic Online Services has officially announced a full expansion for Linux including native builds and Wine + Proton. This is big for Linux Gaming and the Steam Deck.
For those who don't know, Epic Games owns Easy Anti-Cheat and earlier this year they made it free for all developers making Windows games. Today this has been expanded to fully support developers doing native Linux games (and macOS too).
Not only that, this is the big one we've been waiting for — they've also expanded Easy Anti-Cheat support officially for the Wine and Steam Play Proton compatibility layers.
Earlier this year, Easy Anti-Cheat for Windows games was made available to all developers, for free. Today, we extend support to Linux and Mac for developers who maintain full native builds of their games for these platforms.
To make it easy for developers to ship their games across PC platforms, support for the Wine and Proton compatibility layers on Linux is included. Starting with the latest SDK release, developers can activate anti-cheat support for Linux via Wine or Proton with just a few clicks in the Epic Online Services Developer Portal.
Sadly it's not an automatic thing for Wine and Proton, as developers do need to actively go and do those "few clicks" but it's a huge step. In the documentation, it says how developers need to "test and activate client module updates for Linux regularly in addition to Windows". Hopefully many developers will go and do it, since it sounds like very little effort on their part. Considering just how many of the most popular games use Easy Anti-Cheat, this is the start of something massive.
Have a favourite Windows game that doesn't work on Linux currently with Proton or Wine? Looks like it's time to politely ask them to hook it up. Just a few of those that would hopefully work if developers update include:
- Apex Legends
- Dead by Daylight
- Fall Guys
- Halo: The Master Chief Collection
- Rust
A good time to remind game developers and readers to ensure you email us news tips, especially if a game enables this to start working so we don't miss it.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Quoting: x4merYeah, it'll take a while. Good thing this announcement comes with still a couple months before Steam Deck launch. Should give them a bit of time to get ducks in row.Quoting: Rafii2198Do we know which games support it now or are going to support it?
How many (EAC using) games, have been recompiled using the required latest SDK, as well as having the Proton/Wine options enabled, and had that game update pushed via Steam, in the hours since this announcement?
I would guess ZERO.
Quoting: Purple Library GuyYeah, it'll take a while. Good thing this announcement comes with still a couple months before Steam Deck launch. Should give them a bit of time to get ducks in row.
There's also sure to be a fair few "hacks" by creative reverse engineers patching support in for their personal favorites where not otherwise supported, too. All just a matter of time…
Maybe they just checked the box and didn't see if it worked properly. (only seemed to work with staging builds of anything)
Its loads in some type of driver as well, if it can't load it's driver d at startup, had to logout of my linux user and log back in again, was doing a hard reset though to be sure. with non-staging the driver would never load.
Gonna wait this one out till next year, have a feeling there is going to be teething problems.
Last edited by RossBC on 24 September 2021 at 6:06 am UTC
I really hope Apex Legends adds this!
Once they do, adios Windows. =D
Quoting: MohandevirI look forward to see how SteamOS 3.0 will be usable on standard desktops... What if a Steam Deck fan decides to try SteamOS on his/her gaming PC and if there is something that makes it easy to install Nvidia drivers?
SteamOS 3 is Arch, Nvidia drivers are as simple as
sudo pacman -Syu nvidia and it just works
Quoting: wvstolzingSorry about the off-topic post, but ... does anyone else see 'EAC' and immediately think of 'Exact Audio Copy'?
In eons past, I ripped countless CDs with it.
You're not alone, ahaha.
Sometimes, I need to rewire my brain when reading Easy Anti Cheat-related news.
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