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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.
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114 comments
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slaapliedje Sep 24, 2021
Quoting: RossBCTo my understanding, you need to use the none eac executable and only get access to campaign and you need to use a external means to play on none official open servers.
Oh, I only ever play games like that single player. I don't like people enough to do it online.
nijiwar Sep 24, 2021
I don't want to be that person, but how many corporations have moved their ass to make their games even a little compatible with proton / wine .
It will be the same with this, none of the big ones in the game business will move ass
Fester_Mudd Sep 24, 2021
Quoting: nenoroBefore this news
EG: there's no player on linux

After this news
EG: let's support linux

What element has changed their mind ?

Everything is changing in rapid pace right now in our world. They can get on for a ride or stay with their old stance and wither out. What times being alive for Linux gaming and towards platform agnosticism
Mal Sep 24, 2021
  • Supporter
That's something I never thought I would read. I'm glad I have though.
nenoro Sep 24, 2021
Quoting: nijiwarI don't want to be that person, but how many corporations have moved their ass to make their games even a little compatible with proton / wine .
It will be the same with this, none of the big ones in the game business will move ass

Captain Tsubasa Rise of New Champions has EAC and you can launch the game

But yeah i agree the day Black Desert Online will work on linux... there's a little hope
Quoting: Fester_Mudd
Quoting: nenoroBefore this news
EG: there's no player on linux

After this news
EG: let's support linux

What element has changed their mind ?

Everything is changing in rapid pace right now in our world. They can get on for a ride or stay with their old stance and wither out. What times being alive for Linux gaming and towards platform agnosticism

exactly since the announcement of proton everything goes a bit fast which is cool
Liam Dawe Sep 24, 2021
Quoting: Guest
Quoting: TermyWhile this is really great news, the most relevant part of this in my opinion is: how is this done? I hope we don't need to install some kind of EAC kernel driver or shit like hat?

Afaik you will at least require Kernel 5.11 as it has some syscall firewall to route the EAC calls back into user space and therefore to Wine/Proton.
This needs to be done because AC does not use standard Win32 API calls but rather interact with the Kernel directly.

IF I am not mistaken. I remember reading something like this. But other than that, we'll see I guess :D
Nope, the previous kernel work was for DRM, nothing to do with anti-cheat. We even wrote about it as people (still it seems...) think otherwise.
Kuduzkehpan Sep 24, 2021
i hope thats not another marketing strategy as developers can stop eac to work under linux in anymeans and then stop support. So what about refund option for Linux users?
Mohandevir Sep 24, 2021
Quoting: Fuzz
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

Yeah but no. The Steam Deck will be targeted mainly at Windows users... Personnally, as a Linux user, I concede that a single command line in the terminal is quite simple, but it's still a no go for mainstream adoption... They've got to think about something similar to the additional driver UI that you may find in Debian distros; mainstream users love these shiny things. Even better would be to keep the auto detect and install feature from the previous SteamOS interations, imo.


Last edited by Mohandevir on 24 September 2021 at 12:42 pm UTC
gustavoyaraujo Sep 24, 2021
Do someone know if FIFA 21 or PES 21 are using ECA?
Mezron Sep 24, 2021
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  • Supporter
Quoting: TermyWhile this is really great news, the most relevant part of this in my opinion is: how is this done? I hope we don't need to install some kind of EAC kernel driver or shit like hat?

This is why I'm in the camp that is happy for everyone else that will get to play what they want but I'm going to stay out of this.

I just want to play games, not allow software I'm not comfortable with in my hardware and OS.
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