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Seems like there's no hope for BattlEye support within Steam Play

By - | Views: 31,580

With Valve and Easy Anti-Cheat in talks to get EAC supported within Steam Play, many readers asked about BattlEye as it's another anti-cheat solution blocking games actually working with Steam Play on Linux. I now have an answer on that.

I had a chat with the team at BattlEye and the result was basically this:

Unfortunately we can only support Linux if the respective game natively does so.

So there you have it. Titles like DayZ and PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS and many others are likely to never be fully playable on Linux with Steam Play. To be clear, I would love to be wrong of that of course. However, without the direct support of BattlEye, any progress towards it could be constantly broken any time it's tweaked and that's not a great situation to be in.

Since BattlEye does support Linux with native releases, if we want any title that makes use of it they're going to need to bring the game to Linux officially for now. For that to actually happen though, the elephant in the room is obviously the market share situation and how a lot of these developers don't see it as being worthwhile to do.

I've mentioned numerous times that such multiplayer titles will be a sore spot for Steam Play and it's likely to continue to be so for some time. At least, until we see the talks between Valve and EAC result in something.

There's also the new "Steam Trust" system Valve announced in January, as part of some changes coming to Steam. If developers end up using that (or EAC if it's eventually supported) then things for Steam Play may get better.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Steam Play, Misc
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26 comments
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rea987 Mar 13, 2019
That's odd, BattlEye previously supported Arma III which was an eON port. It looks like VP's ports are compatible with BattlEye than Proton.
Aimela Mar 13, 2019
QuoteTitles like DayZ, Conan Exiles, PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS and many others are likely to never be playable on Linux with Steam Play.

I'm not sure about the others, but Conan Exiles allows you to play the game without BattleEye through an option shown before the game is launched. You won't be able to get on most servers(particularly the official ones), but single-player and co-op with friends will still be available
Liam Dawe Mar 13, 2019
Quoting: rea987That's odd, BattlEye previously supported Arma III which was an eON port. It looks like VP's ports are compatible with BattlEye than Proton.
This is because VP used the native BattlEye.
Liam Dawe Mar 13, 2019
Quoting: Aimela
QuoteTitles like DayZ, Conan Exiles, PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS and many others are likely to never be playable on Linux with Steam Play.

I'm not sure about the others, but Conan Exiles allows you to play the game without BattleEye through an option shown before the game is launched. You won't be able to get on most servers(particularly the official ones), but single-player and co-op with friends will still be available
Ah, interesting, bad example in that case. Have done a slight adjustment on the text, good tip.
BielFPs Mar 13, 2019
Well, at least they have a linux version, so it's really up to the developers to port.
const Mar 13, 2019
If EAC successfully includes wine support, opinions may change. Or not. We'll see.
The most important thing is there are alternatives available for anyone and EAC integration alone would bring us very close to that goal :)
Hopfenmeister Mar 13, 2019
Sometimes, all it takes is somebody showing that it can be done. Ask them again when EAC works.
Shmerl Mar 13, 2019
Quoting: liamdawe
Quoting: rea987That's odd, BattlEye previously supported Arma III which was an eON port. It looks like VP's ports are compatible with BattlEye than Proton.
This is because VP used the native BattlEye.

Can't the same be done with Wine? I.e. create some library which interfaces with native one through Windows shim? Their answer doesn't make sense. If it works natively on Linux, it should be able to work in Wine as well in theory, as long as they implement what's needed.


Last edited by Shmerl on 13 March 2019 at 3:55 pm UTC
Gobo Mar 13, 2019
Quoting: Shmerl
Quoting: liamdawe
Quoting: rea987That's odd, BattlEye previously supported Arma III which was an eON port. It looks like VP's ports are compatible with BattlEye than Proton.
This is because VP used the native BattlEye.

Can't the same be done with Wine? I.e. create some library which interfaces with native one through Windows shim? Their answer doesn't make sense. If it works natively on Linux, it should be able to work in Wine as well in theory, as long as they implement what's needed.

Well, I guess the main point about BattleEye and other cheat protections is spotting and prohibiting the tinkering with the software. And running the software through a layer that does not want to be called emulation but essentially is doing exactly that is a whole lot of hackery that sets off a lot of alarms in BattleEye to flag your PC as an unsafe and compromised environment.
Purple Library Guy Mar 13, 2019
Quoting: Gobo
Quoting: Shmerl
Quoting: liamdawe
Quoting: rea987That's odd, BattlEye previously supported Arma III which was an eON port. It looks like VP's ports are compatible with BattlEye than Proton.
This is because VP used the native BattlEye.

Can't the same be done with Wine? I.e. create some library which interfaces with native one through Windows shim? Their answer doesn't make sense. If it works natively on Linux, it should be able to work in Wine as well in theory, as long as they implement what's needed.

Well, I guess the main point about BattleEye and other cheat protections is spotting and prohibiting the tinkering with the software. And running the software through a layer that does not want to be called emulation but essentially is doing exactly that is a whole lot of hackery that sets off a lot of alarms in BattleEye to flag your PC as an unsafe and compromised environment.
I think Shmerl meant the other way around. I was wondering the same thing. There's a Linux native version of BattlEye, right? Sooo, what if Proton included that, and then the Windows version of the game could talk to the native Linux BattlEye which in turn talked to the Linux you're running, with nothing unusual between it and the OS, and probably not much unusual between it and the game.
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