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STAR WARS: Squadrons looks to be preparing anti-cheat for the Steam Deck

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Red 5 standing by! How about a little more Star Wars on the go? It appears that MOTIVE and EA and getting ready for the Steam Deck release with tweaks to their anti-cheat.

We don't yet have confirmation of what's happening, and we don't know if it will be a success but they're definitely trying to get it ready. Over on SteamDB you can see there's an "eac_fix" branch, with a description of "EAC fix for steam deck test branch" - so work is clearly happening (EAC being Easy Anti-Cheat). Being able to play Squadrons on the Steam Deck and online against others sounds like it could be pretty awesome.

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Valve did say recently that beginning Monday, January 24 they would be sending out Deck Verified data, to those developers who use anti-cheat middleware so perhaps this is the start of more to come? Considering that Easy Anti-Cheat is now easier to support for Linux / Proton and the Steam Deck, and BattlEye is just an email away, we're hoping to see lots of titles get working in the next few months.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Spyker Jan 30, 2022
scaine Jan 30, 2022
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Goddamit. I'm definitely going to have to buy this if they enable EAC for Proton. Electronic Arts, eh? Whodhavethunkit.
jordicoma Jan 30, 2022
Just get rid off the anti-cheat systems, many (or all) are rootkits and worsens the performance.
Well or at least let play the game without anti-cheats if you don't care about multiplayer.
gustavoyaraujo Jan 30, 2022
I'm curious if they will also let us play FIFA online in the future.
sub Jan 30, 2022
It's sooooo good with the Index.

Only thing - as with all VR games for me - I have to stop after about 30 mins.
My brain is oviously unable to get used to it. What a shame. :(


Last edited by sub on 30 January 2022 at 9:50 pm UTC
whizse Jan 30, 2022
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Quoting: gustavoyaraujoI'm curious if they will also let us play FIFA online in the future.
Wait, they still release the FIFA games for Windows, but not the NHL series?
scaine Jan 30, 2022
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Quoting: jordicomaJust get rid off the anti-cheat systems, many (or all) are rootkits and worsens the performance.
Well or at least let play the game without anti-cheats if you don't care about multiplayer.

Well, sure, that would nice. I'd quite like bigger house while we're dreaming. But realistically, it's not going to happen, is it, sadly.

So I'm really pleased Valve is making some headway with the people who make these decisions to get some support in there.
Kithop Jan 31, 2022
I played a fair bit of Squadrons via the Xbox Game Pass on my Windows disk (gasp), in VR with HOTAS, and mechanically, the game is good fun. The ships feel good, the VR support mostly works, almost on-par with Elite: Dangerous aside from a couple left/right eye-swap bugs in in-game cutscenes.

However, I can't recommend people pick this up unless they're getting it for free as part of something like Game Pass / EA Play... (review follows in spoiler tag)
Spoiler, click me

Unfortunately, the backlash against EA's microtransaction policies was happening during the game's development, as I understand it, so when they said, 'Alright, fine - we're not putting MTX in', they also gave the game a very very short lifespan. A couple rounds of fixes + content patches, and then that's it. The game isn't making them money any more, so they've basically completely abandoned it save for keeping the matchmaking servers running.

There's really only two game modes - team deathmatch, and a 'push' style 'kill all their capital ships in sequence before they kill yours, but be nice and take turns being offense and defense', with no future plans for anything else. No co-op in the single player campaign. Everything is just geared around a ranked 5v5 PvP setup.

If you can find 4 friends to make a full team, you can have a decent enough time, either stomping the AI in the unranked mode, or maybe going against randoms in the ranked mode - at least until you get matched up with the level 100+ 5 person squad of hardcore players who play the heck out of the game and will wipe the floor with you. :p

If you don't have 4 friends to play with, honestly, don't even bother loading the game up. The matchmaking has been absolutely dead for so long - we've tried at least 3 separate times over a 3-6 month span to get matches with 2-4 people on our side, and you can end up sitting and waiting at the menu for it to try and look for a match for you for upwards of half an hour with no hits.

We thought it was just an off day, would try again next week - same issue. Sometimes even with an entire 5-person team ready to go. I think once we were restarting the matchmaking for an hour and a half total (granted, while we're all Alt-Tabbed out and doing other things waiting for the queue to pop) before we finally gave up and basically uninstalled the game.

It's frustrating, because I feel they actually did a great job with the art, assets, engine, etc., and I want to play the game with my friends, but EA has pretty much completely abandoned it since there's no MTX to grind our wallets with. It's like they're not even entertaining the idea of a season pass or expansion pack or sequel - I'd be down for paying $30 for an xpac or $60-90 for a proper sequel with a co-op campaign or larger scale Battlefield-style battles, but this really feels like something between a tech demo and a fully fleshed out game. It could've been so much more. :(
Purple Library Guy Jan 31, 2022
Say, talking of VR . . . does anyone happen to know how much of a difference it would be likely to make if you were using VR and had in effect just one eye?
Philadelphus Jan 31, 2022
Quoting: Purple Library GuySay, talking of VR . . . does anyone happen to know how much of a difference it would be likely to make if you were using VR and had in effect just one eye?
…difference in what? I suppose you wouldn't get any depth perception, for starters (just like in real life), and then the headset's basically just a very expensive flat screen that you've strapped to your head.
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