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While it's supposed to be relatively easy for games with anti-cheat like BattlEye and Easy Anti-Cheat to get working on Linux and Steam Deck, some developers are having issues like Fatshark with Warhammer: Vermintide 2.

This particular game uses Easy Anti-Cheat, which is supposed to be a case of ticking a few boxes and making sure things are in the right place to allow EAC to work with Steam Play Proton but it turns out it might not be that simple for every game. A shame, but not a big surprise, as if it was truly that simple for every game more would have done it by now, and considering how big game projects and code are, there's likely plenty of smaller gotchas developers need to deal with.

A rep from Fatshark posted on the Steam forum to give an update on the work to get Warhammer: Vermintide 2 playable and it's not good news. Despite chatting to Epic and Valve, they couldn't figure it out and now their team is working on the upcoming Warhammer 40,000: Darktide.

Here's what they said:

So we have performed all the requisite steps to have this work. We've ticked the boxes in the EAC portal, included the files in the appropriate places. Problem is, as you can see, it doesn't work in this scenario. We've been in touch with both third parties (in this case Epic and Valve), but we're at a bit of a roadblock truth be told. Those who would work on really digging in to the weeds on this are indeed digging in to Darktide weeds, so aren't able to spend sufficient time liaising with Valve and Epic to figure out what's causing the 'simple steps' to not be as simple as they sounded.

In short, work on this is on hold for now. We'll bark up this thread should things spin up again.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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TheSHEEEP Jun 30, 2022
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Well, it honestly wouldn't make much sense for them to focus on this.
I don't see much of a continued life for Vermintide I or II once Darktide is out. At least for quite a while.

I still hope that they can get it done for Darktide, but I won't be holding my breath.
Hard to say what the issue is, but Fatshark have proven time and time again that their coders might not be the very best.


Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 30 June 2022 at 12:36 pm UTC
itscalledreality Jun 30, 2022
As someone who works in software that message is that they don’t have enough experienced developers to do the debugging and figure out what is probably a few simple changes. Management is also probably grinding the employees as well. No problem! I will just not buy your game. That’s not me being facetious, they literally don’t want anyone to play it on Linux. The Steam Deck wasn’t a big change for Linux compatibility. These companies just chose to ignore it this long until their developers who could figure it out moved on to better things (great resignation).

Hopefully devs and their managers can see how dumb the marketshare argument was that led them here.
mr-victory Jun 30, 2022
Does this game have EAC files at multiple locations like Fall Guys?
TheSHEEEP Jun 30, 2022
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Quoting: GuestI feel obliged to go off-topic and say that it might not be the coders, it might be management pushing for continual rabbits out of hats instead. I've seen that so very much that it's actually the more likely scenario. The coders themselves have probably performed miracles to get anything running at all under such conditions.
Usually, I'd agree.
But with Fatshark you really have to look at the history.
They have been taking forever to make even simple changes (you know, reminds me of CA a little) in their previous games.

There's also the fact that lots of other devs have exactly the same thing working just fine now.
Only Fatshark and their custom engine can't do it right ... ???

Of course, it is entirely possible that they don't have the manpower in the software-side that they'd need and they are just crunching the few coders they do have.
And those then don't have the time to look into Linux properly - we've all done it, it takes a week or two to get acclimated development-wise if you come from the crutch-driven world of Windows.

In the end, though, even bad coders are a management fault for not detecting that, so you're definitely right in that sense, no matter the actual issue at hand here.


Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 30 June 2022 at 3:29 pm UTC
tfk Jun 30, 2022
Quoting: mr-victoryDoes this game have EAC files at multiple locations like Fall Guys?

With Fallguys I only had to copy the so file to another location and modify an ini file so it points to another executable and let both the Epic Games Store and its networking update.

Multi-played without problems.
scaine Jul 1, 2022
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Quoting: Guest
Quoting: TheSHEEEP
Quoting: GuestI feel obliged to go off-topic and say that it might not be the coders, it might be management pushing for continual rabbits out of hats instead. I've seen that so very much that it's actually the more likely scenario. The coders themselves have probably performed miracles to get anything running at all under such conditions.
Usually, I'd agree.
But with Fatshark you really have to look at the history.
They have been taking forever to make even simple changes (you know, reminds me of CA a little) in their previous games.

There's also the fact that lots of other devs have exactly the same thing working just fine now.
Only Fatshark and their custom engine can't do it right ... ???

Of course, it is entirely possible that they don't have the manpower in the software-side that they'd need and they are just crunching the few coders they do have.
And those then don't have the time to look into Linux properly - we've all done it, it takes a week or two to get acclimated development-wise if you come from the crutch-driven world of Windows.

In the end, though, even bad coders are a management fault for not detecting that, so you're definitely right in that sense, no matter the actual issue at hand here.

Well, all I can say is that from what I've seen (and personally experienced) really don't be so quick to judge the coders.
Also "a week or two" is really....intense, if someone is moving from Windows to GNU/Linux. Obviously depends on a lot of factors, but even counting coder reprioritisation in weeks can be something a manager will baulk at. Better ROI spending the time to improve something else. Which is exactly what's happening here.

It's been nearly 9 months. They started looking at this in October 2021.
mr-victory Jul 1, 2022
Quoting: tfkWith Fallguys I only had to copy the so file to another location and modify an ini file so it points to another executable and let both the Epic Games Store and its networking update.
Yes, I just wonder if something similar to this needs to be done for warhammer vermintide 2. I can't verify myself since I don't own the game and SteamDB is refusing to list files for me.
At least I know from SteamDB there are 2 precious .so files in "binaries" depot.
officernice Jul 1, 2022
Never understood why they implemented it in a co-op game... Was hoping to see it come to Linux soon to get some fresh co-op with the lads.
TheSHEEEP Jul 1, 2022
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Quoting: officerniceNever understood why they implemented it in a co-op game... Was hoping to see it come to Linux soon to get some fresh co-op with the lads.
One guess, and IMO the one that makes most sense:
They somehow implemented the cosmetics and character level stuff in the client instead of the servers.
Which is what they do to keep people playing -> earns them money.
Of course, all of that should be happening on their servers, not the client. But who knows.
Again, if true, hinting at a not-stellarly-competent software team (or a very small one crunched too hard by management)...

Because if this was really only about not cheating in the sense of wall-hack, hp, whatever during a mission - who cares? It's co-op! You can kick/ban people!
If it's really about this, yeah, I don't get it, either.


Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 1 July 2022 at 7:55 am UTC
scaine Jul 1, 2022
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Quoting: Guest
Quoting: scaine
Quoting: Guest
Quoting: TheSHEEEP
Quoting: GuestI feel obliged to go off-topic and say that it might not be the coders, it might be management pushing for continual rabbits out of hats instead. I've seen that so very much that it's actually the more likely scenario. The coders themselves have probably performed miracles to get anything running at all under such conditions.
Usually, I'd agree.
But with Fatshark you really have to look at the history.
They have been taking forever to make even simple changes (you know, reminds me of CA a little) in their previous games.

There's also the fact that lots of other devs have exactly the same thing working just fine now.
Only Fatshark and their custom engine can't do it right ... ???

Of course, it is entirely possible that they don't have the manpower in the software-side that they'd need and they are just crunching the few coders they do have.
And those then don't have the time to look into Linux properly - we've all done it, it takes a week or two to get acclimated development-wise if you come from the crutch-driven world of Windows.

In the end, though, even bad coders are a management fault for not detecting that, so you're definitely right in that sense, no matter the actual issue at hand here.

Well, all I can say is that from what I've seen (and personally experienced) really don't be so quick to judge the coders.
Also "a week or two" is really....intense, if someone is moving from Windows to GNU/Linux. Obviously depends on a lot of factors, but even counting coder reprioritisation in weeks can be something a manager will baulk at. Better ROI spending the time to improve something else. Which is exactly what's happening here.

It's been nearly 9 months. They started looking at this in October 2021.

And I doubt they continually looked at it all that time. There's nothing to suggest they only just handed it over to Epic and Valve to sort out now - it would've been done some time ago. Yet nobody seems to be suggesting Epic and Valve have bad coders because they haven't sorted it out yet either.

I'm not suggesting they're bad coders. I just don't think they care. They'd have known about, raised and fixed the issue within days or weeks if they did. It's been 9 months while many, many other games have easily and simply enabled EAC or BattlEye.
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