Epic Games is hiring a Security Engineer to champion Linux anti-cheat

That EA job listing is still up. 🐧 I am curious if this is actually a move to adopt linux support or if they just fishing for techniques to try to force KLAC through some kernel modification enforcement or...something.

One of the surveys they did some time ago about Epic Games Store/Launcher, they asked what are your TOP3 features you would like to see and one of the options was Linux support. Maybe enough people voted for that option.

Steam Machine is probably going to me a niche, but they could be worried that it might start a trend of cheaper Linux gaming pre-builds. Would suck for them to miss a trend.

This shall be filed under 'Cautious (read; don't hold your breath) Optimism'

holy shit bare minimum might be happening no way

Quoting: seflasporinThat EA job listing is still up. 🐧 I am curious if this is actually a move to adopt linux support or if they just fishing for techniques to try to force KLAC through some kernel modification enforcement or...something.

Sooner or later I expect this to happen anyway. At least the serious try. We really should start to blame game companies that do not create a proper server side anti-cheat solution. Otherwise it will take the worst possible way in future, which affects mostly fair players.

Zero Trust Policy applies here.

i thought ai was the way to go

Quoting: StalePopcornThis shall be filed under 'Cautious (read; don't hold your breath) Optimism'

I would rather file it under "EAC DKMS incoming" - as this would be an absolute no-go for any sane person, this initiative could actually make things a lot worse for Linux, if EAC will require a rootkit on Linux as well in the future...

Last edited by Termy on 15 Jun 2026 at 7:18 am UTC

Too little, too late.

It's cool that more companies are trying to improve Linux support, but I really hope kernel-level anti-cheat never makes its way to Linux... kinda worried about that.

I suspect this is a case of a shareholder or 3 of a company that uses the tech, such as EA, noticing all the "so, I switched to Linux" content that's getting all the clicks these days, and asking "why we not on this train??".

Reading the "requirements" for this job... it doesn't sound like a 1 person job to me. These are multiple experts in one they want. Finding someone who fulfills all of these seems like impossible to me, or am I off with my impression?
Expert in software development, in reverse engineering, in security, deep knowledge of os internals, multiplayer architecture and more. Oof. Maybe LLMs can help here in some parts, yet I think this needs a team of experts.

Quoting: CorbenReading the "requirements" for this job... it doesn't sound like a 1 person job to me. These are multiple experts in one they want. Finding someone who fulfills all of these seems like impossible to me, or am I off with my impression?
Expert in software development, in reverse engineering, in security, deep knowledge of os internals, multiplayer architecture and more. Oof. Maybe LLMs can help here in some parts, yet I think this needs a team of experts.

More like a super specialized person for KLAC, because it requires to know how multiplayer games are working, it requires understanding of the deep OS internals and security etc. So they are looking for someone who already worked on any kind of KLAC and it is very unlikely someone who never did will get the job. At least it sounds this way to me.

But that is a lot, indeed!

Last edited by PlayingOnLinuxphone on 15 Jun 2026 at 9:35 am UTC

Even the wording sounds like corporate speech...

I want that job.
I won't be getting it, but boyy do I want it.

Last edited by LoudTechie on 15 Jun 2026 at 11:40 am UTC

Maybe there is a profit to be made when they are the first on the market with anti-cheat that works in Linux. I would think plenty of (other) dev studios will choose Epic's anti-cheat when they are the only ones that support Linux.

So, it's about being first (I would guess)

Quoting: spacemonkeyMaybe there is a profit to be made when they are the first on the market with anti-cheat that works in Linux. I would think plenty of (other) dev studios will choose Epic's anti-cheat when they are the only ones that support Linux.

So, it's about being first (I would guess)

There's technically already working anti-cheat on Linux, for so far anti-cheat works
Battle eye, VAC, Easy anti-cheat, etc.
It's just that its worse than Windows in its current form(this will be contentious).
This is, because the strengths of Linux aren't used.

If you ask me it's not only possible to build Windows exceeding anti-cheat on Linux, but platform-agnostic anti-cheat that can handle any attack except input based cheats.

True Homeomorphic signing schemes already hit the full requirement set as long one maintains the cryptographic model+the assumption that p!=np, just for such a gigantic performance cost in the generic case it's mostly useless.(×20000)
With weaker assumptions, stronger hardware, or more performant algorithms this should be possible.

I've written my own code that makes a beginning in platform-agnostic anti-cheat features.
I've made high-level designs for Linux strength exploiting anti-cheat.

Last edited by LoudTechie on 15 Jun 2026 at 12:32 pm UTC

Quoting: LoudTechieThere's technically already working anti-cheat on Linux, for so far anti-cheat works
Battle eye, VAC, Easy anti-cheat, etc.
It's just that its worse than Windows in its current form(this will be contentious).
This is, because the strengths of Linux aren't used.

It is more like it is not allowed to use for a good reason. KLAC runs in user space on Linux and is therefor kinda downgraded to an user space anti-cheat, which explains why it is not so powerful. And I am expecting a lot of issues those corps will try to push on us sooner or later which may even divide the supported distros in those who ship a KLAC downstream and those who do not or other even more ugly things. Theoretically possible, sure. But to what costs? That is the real question.

Sounds like to me, Secureboot + Signed Kernel&Modules + SELinux + Signed Proton + Wayland will be maybe the new requirement chain of trust.
I mean, even some Android apps manage to get a solid set of system integrity check like for some banking and government authentication apps.

If the tradeoff for running modern and mostly cheater-free online multiplayer games is just running the official distro kernel and secureboot + selinux, count me absolutely in!
If it's some systemd-gamingd thing.. I maybe need to think about it a bit..

Last edited by fschaupp on 15 Jun 2026 at 3:00 pm UTC

Quoting: PlayingOnLinuxphone

Quoting: LoudTechieThere's technically already working anti-cheat on Linux, for so far anti-cheat works
Battle eye, VAC, Easy anti-cheat, etc.
It's just that its worse than Windows in its current form(this will be contentious).
This is, because the strengths of Linux aren't used.

It is more like it is not allowed to use for a good reason. KLAC runs in user space on Linux and is therefor kinda downgraded to an user space anti-cheat, which explains why it is not so powerful. And I am expecting a lot of issues those corps will try to push on us sooner or later which may even divide the supported distros in those who ship a KLAC downstream and those who do not or other even more ugly things. Theoretically possible, sure. But to what costs? That is the real question.

As I said this will be contentious, although in this case you didn't actually content it, since you admitted that current anti-cheat is ineffective and I placed the "in current form" requirement.

Also on KLAC:
I tell you that KLAC and/or really all LAC works worse on Linux in its current design, because in its current form it relies on security through obscurity and Linux is open source.
Security through obscurity, becomes less effective the simpler the obscure body is and to the more people it's shipped, because there is a larger potential for an attacker to find the critical bits.
This is even visible from Windows to consoles and XBOX to Nintendo.
Each time we give the user more freedom over their own device their ability to circumvent anti-cheat increases.

This's a design fault, specifically this CWE-656.
Yet it's used by all anti-cheat providers.

Secure anti-cheat can be build in an open manner, but nobody has done it yet.

Spoiler, click me

This is, because to design anti-cheat you must first be arrogant enough to be convinced that you know better how the game must be played than all your customers together and thus arrogant enough to assume that you can make something, so complicated none of your customers or anybody they can afford will ever figure it out.

Last edited by LoudTechie on 15 Jun 2026 at 4:09 pm UTC