As a little PSA word of warning, it seems EA / Respawn have begun another little ban wave or they've tweaked something in their anti-cheat that Linux / Steam Deck players are getting caught in for Apex Legends.
This issue happened back in late February into early March this year, with a mixture of mostly desktop Linux players with a few who played on Steam Deck getting banned from Apex Legends. EA eventually overturned the bans, but it seems it has begun happening once again.
Various reports have begun appearing across Reddit and a fresh post on the EA Forum with users detailing their bans.
Apex Legends is currently Steam Deck Verified and their Easy Anti-Cheat is supposed to be supported on Linux, so hopefully the bans will once again be overturned.
When you play games with anti-cheat regardless of the support status on Steam Deck and desktop Linux, there's always the chance even if you're a legitimate player that you'll somehow get caught up in a ban wave after doing nothing wrong. False positives are a thing that just happens — sadly. Linux isn't alone is this, various games on Windows over the years have had the same issue it just comes with the territory of online gaming.
If we get any updates on this the article will be updated. Feel free to jump into our Discord to get regular updates.
Update: 21/08/23 10:54 UTC - EA support have been replying to lots of the people banned, simply stating the ban is sticking. The emails being sent seem to be pretty standard: "We got your note and did a full investigation of your account. After reviewing your case, we determined that we took the correct action in accordance with EA policies and procedures.".
They've also merged the original and new forum posts into one and the amount of people mentioning they've been banned continues to grow. I've reached out to EA Press for a statement and info on what's going on.
Update: 22/08/23 12:53 UTC - People have been asking EA to look again at their bans, and EA simply email back saying:
"We have received your most recent correspondence expressing concerns about the action that was taken on your account.
After thoroughly investigating your account and concern, we again found that we actioned your account correctly after it was found to have violated our User Agreement. We will also be unable to provide any details regarding our internal procedures.
Due to this violation, we will not remove the sanction that was applied to your account.
You can review the full User Agreement at http://tos.ea.com/legalapp/WEBTERMS/US/en/PC/
After completing two full investigations into your complaint, we consider this matter closed."
EA have not yet replied to my email for a statement on it and the bans continue happening. I've sent an email to a different EA contact today to try and pry a statement from EA on this.
Update: 23/08/23 11:04 UTC - A Respawn team member mentioned on Reddit that "The team is investigating this and we appreciate the continued reports in the forums as it gives us added details to work with.". EA still didn't reply to my emails.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
QuoteWhen you play games with anti-cheat regardless of the support status on Steam Deck and desktop Linux, there's always the chance even if you're a legitimate player that you'll somehow get caught up in a ban wave after doing nothing wrong. False positives are a thing that just happens — sadly. Linux isn't alone is this, various games on Windows over the years have had the same issue it just comes with the territory of online gaming.
Good thing I'm not playing that kinda game anymore.
Losing your account with all the things you spent time and maybe even real money on out of the blue without even doing anything wrong looks absolutely unacceptable to me.
Quoting: SakuretsuBasically... this.QuoteWhen you play games with anti-cheat regardless of the support status on Steam Deck and desktop Linux, there's always the chance even if you're a legitimate player that you'll somehow get caught up in a ban wave after doing nothing wrong. False positives are a thing that just happens — sadly. Linux isn't alone is this, various games on Windows over the years have had the same issue it just comes with the territory of online gaming.
Good thing I'm not playing that kinda game anymore.
Losing your account with all the things you spent time and maybe even real money on out of the blue without even doing anything wrong looks absolutely unacceptable to me.
In reality, VAC is even scarier because other than the VAC stain staying on the profile for 7 years (or forever, I don't remember) on the profile, the entire inventory for the game becomes untradable. However, it's a much weaker form of anticheat and I haven't heard false positives arising, like, ever.
However, peppering up existing anticheat like EA does is just absurd.
Last edited by artixbtw on 20 August 2023 at 12:43 am UTC
Quoting: artixbtwVAC can be so loose because Valve is adamant about reducing false positives.Quoting: SakuretsuBasically... this.QuoteWhen you play games with anti-cheat regardless of the support status on Steam Deck and desktop Linux, there's always the chance even if you're a legitimate player that you'll somehow get caught up in a ban wave after doing nothing wrong. False positives are a thing that just happens — sadly. Linux isn't alone is this, various games on Windows over the years have had the same issue it just comes with the territory of online gaming.
Good thing I'm not playing that kinda game anymore.
Losing your account with all the things you spent time and maybe even real money on out of the blue without even doing anything wrong looks absolutely unacceptable to me.
In reality, VAC is even scarier because other than the VAC stain staying on the profile for 7 years (or forever, I don't remember) on the profile, the entire inventory for the game becomes untradable. However, it's a much weaker form of anticheat and I haven't heard false positives arising, like, ever.
However, peppering up existing anticheat like EA does is just absurd.
ElectricPrism Aug 20, 2023
Quoting: SakuretsuLosing your account with all the things you spent time and maybe even real money on out of the blue without even doing anything wrong looks absolutely unacceptable to me.
Soo true. In the age of the internet as a "new normal" this is not okay.
That's why I reserve my money for games like -- Baldur's Gate 3 -- even bought a gift copy.
Ironic that a game with gate in the name is the opposite of gatekeepers having contempt for their customers.
There's a lot of fish in the steam.
aufkrawall Aug 20, 2023
*taking cover*
Last edited by aufkrawall on 20 August 2023 at 6:56 pm UTC
benstor214 Aug 21, 2023
I find it irresponsible from Valve to market this game towards Steam Deck users, practically exposing their own customers to the threat of having their account banned permanently.
On Apex, cheaters are clearly a plague: they appear massively every "scholar-holiday" periods: last week I saw so many players with speed and auto-aim hacks, and we can't any more report.
With a player reported x times in few minutes, and a handful of real human behind screens (one by worldwide area) to watch and ban cheaters, it should be fast for a real human to check by looking 1 minute this player if true or false positive.
The true point is that they are no human behind the screen, and counting on only-automated scripts can't be adapted to such a dynamical human process as cheating is.
Quoting: aufkrawallHonestly, duplicating kernel driver anti-cheat functionality in user-space is even dumber than invasive kernel-mode anti-cheat. Probably not very popular opinion on a site that's dedicated to Linux gaming, but I wonder why it even is semi-supported by some games at all. I really don's see why Windows users should be fine with a game dev making exceptions for less intrusive anti-cheat for a tiny minority of players.
I'd tend to agree with you. Although the functionality is very much questionable as can be seen by this:
Quoting: Geppeto35On Apex, cheaters are clearly a plague: they appear massively every "scholar-holiday" periods: last week I saw so many players with speed and auto-aim hacks, and we can't any more report.
With a player reported x times in few minutes, and a handful of real human behind screens (one by worldwide area) to watch and ban cheaters, it should be fast for a real human to check by looking 1 minute this player if true or false positive.
The true point is that they are no human behind the screen, and counting on only-automated scripts can't be adapted to such a dynamical human process as cheating is.
This clearly demonstrates that the idea of client side anti-cheat is a problem. It is used as a replacement for proper server side checking because it's a cheap solution. EAC only seems to catch the low hanging fruit with a bunch of false positives to go with it (not just the Linux players). Proper server support for cheat prevention is still essential. And actual humans to check behaviour is expensive, so I don't see that happening in the current corporate climate where "alternatives" are so much cheaper.
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