Linux players getting banned on Apex Legends again

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.