Rocket League adds Easy Anti-Cheat with Steam Deck / Linux still supported

Psyonix have updated Rocket League to add in Epic's Easy Anti-Cheat, but thankfully they've enabled support for Linux / Steam Deck with SteamOS.

Rocket League did previously have a Native Linux version, with support for that ending way back in 2020. It has continued working on Linux thanks to all the work Valve put into Proton to enable Windows games to run on Linux platforms. Anti-cheat is a special case though, because lots of games just block Linux / SteamOS. Thankfully it's not the case here.

In the official announcement they said "Rocket League is at its best when every goal feels earned and matches are fair. To help maintain competitive integrity, Epic Online Services’ Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC) is required for online play on PC starting today. Steam Deck and Linux are also supported, so you can keep playing on your preferred hardware".

Testing it using the Heroic Games Launcher, getting into matches after this update has been no problem at all on the latest Fedora KDE 44.

Modding also has some big changes because of this update, from the announcement:

Community mods will not run when EAC is enabled. To account for this, we're bringing several of the features those mods pioneered directly into the game like native MMR display, Custom Training Randomization, and Free Play Team Colors. This work builds on the foundation laid by our community modders, so thank you to Bakkes and all of the BakkesMod plugin volunteer developers who have shaped how people play.

If you choose to turn EAC off, you can still run third-party mods while training, playing offline and LAN matches, and viewing Replays with custom video editing tools. Steam Workshop maps are playable with or without EAC, but you'll want it off if you run mods on top of that content.

Side-note: Way back when Epic Games acquired Psyonix, I suggested on X/Twitter that they would eventually add in Easy Anti-Cheat to Rocket League because Epic would want all their online games using it. A certain someone, I won't say who, rather loudly derided me saying it would never happen because it wasn't needed. What a surprise - I was right.