You can sign up to get a daily email of our articles, see the Mailing List page.
We do often include affiliate links to earn us some pennies. See more here.

Seems no hope for Insurgency: Sandstorm on Steam Deck / Linux

By - | Views: 39,758

Sadly it seems like Insurgency: Sandstorm is not one you'll be enjoying on the Linux desktop or Valve's Steam Deck any time soon, even with Epic Games supporting Easy Anti-Cheat with Wine / Proton.

A game that originally planned Linux support, which New World Interactive decided not to do while also cancelling the planned story campaign back in 2019. The last hope was Steam Play Proton but it appears the developer will not be enabling support for it in EAC.

Writing in their recent patch notes, the developer said this:

The Linux Situation

Hello penguin pals, this message is being written for you by someone who has in their lifetime been a self-described Linux-head. Yes, we are very much aware that EAC announced Proton and Wine compatibility. Please understand however that we would still need to do quite a bit of development work to properly support Linux, and at this point in time we do not have that capacity. Thank you for your understanding!

Perhaps they, like we expect others to, may change their mind once the Steam Deck is out and they might see more players asking them to support it. That, or people just go elsewhere and find a different game. I'm sure there will eventually be no shortage of first-person shooters that you will be able to play online.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
20 Likes
About the author -
author picture
I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
See more from me
The comments on this article are closed.
43 comments
Page: 1/5»
  Go to:

hardpenguin Dec 17, 2021
pb Dec 17, 2021
While I'd like to see all the games work on Linux, I don't think many people would actually play competitive shooters on Steam Deck, so things may not change that much in this genre.
TheRiddick Dec 17, 2021
Game ALREADY works under Proton from my testing. So they could JUST enable that EAC support unless their trying to argue they can't update EAC implementation (seen some devs use that excuse).

Unfortunate.

Luckily many competitors that are looking ALLOT better then Sandstorm are coming out these days so if the developer of IST insists on keep EAC disabled for Linux users then people will just move to other shooter games! and so they should!


Last edited by TheRiddick on 17 December 2021 at 11:23 am UTC
libgradev Dec 17, 2021
QuotePlease understand however that we would still need to do quite a bit of development work to properly support Linux

Not that I care for this game personally but what development work?! Isn't the whole point that devs don't have to do the heavy lifting Proton does... or are they just saying they cannot be bothered to toggle EAC support on
Liam Dawe Dec 17, 2021
Quoting: libgradevNot that I care for this game personally but what development work?! Isn't the whole point that devs don't have to do the heavy lifting Proton does... or are they just saying they cannot be bothered to toggle EAC support on
This has been discussed before, and it's just like telling developers to "export to Linux" without doing any testing, it's not going to be great. For EAC, developers first need to go and upgrade the Epic SDK used, which means it also then needs testing again on their main platform. Then it needs testing on Linux, to make sure it works and continues working with Proton.

Things are rarely a button to hit and be done with it.
Nitsuga Dec 17, 2021
Sad, but at least they are real and transparent with it! That I like. Hopefully we see more and more games coming and eventually we'll get those that we want..
TheRiddick Dec 17, 2021
Yeah so they don't want to update to the latest EAC SDK which would offer them better protection against cheaters.. Instead they prefer to use older versions which basically do nothing to stop cheating....
rustybroomhandle Dec 17, 2021
I don't think "we need to support it properly" is really valid. We've been playing Proton games for years now without any developer being required to "support" anything. If a game breaks under Proton, the troubleshooting/fixing/supporting happens on the Valve Github forums.

Feels more like developers just going "ew, Linux will give us cooties, avoid, avoid".
scaine Dec 17, 2021
View PC info
  • Contributing Editor
  • Mega Supporter
I've been waiting to buy this for... what... two/three years? Loved the first game and I think there were hints/hopes that they'd provide a native build. Now they can't even commit to the simplest change Valve can ask them to make, so I guess it's coming off my wishlist. Really sad. The first game had really fun PvE.
EduardoMedina Dec 17, 2021
From years ago I think that developers don't want Linux because of GPL license. Too many power for the user, and the most of big corporations and many developers don't want to give power to users, they want to use users while they take user's money.

Porting to Mac is much more expensive than adapt to Proton, but many developers prefer to port to Mac instead of supporting Linux through Proton. This is not an economic question, it's a political question.
While you're here, please consider supporting GamingOnLinux on:

Reward Tiers: Patreon. Plain Donations: PayPal.

This ensures all of our main content remains totally free for everyone! Patreon supporters can also remove all adverts and sponsors! Supporting us helps bring good, fresh content. Without your continued support, we simply could not continue!

You can find even more ways to support us on this dedicated page any time. If you already are, thank you!
The comments on this article are closed.