Anticheat check - which competitive games actually work on Linux?

Want to switch from Windows to Linux / SteamOS but concerned about games with anti-cheat on Linux? Here's all you need to know on what you can play.

Unlike most other games, anti-cheat is a special case when it comes to Linux / SteamOS gaming that comes with its own set of issues. Unfortunately, plenty of games do currently (at time of publishing) completely block Linux and prevent you from playing.

There's a lot of different anti-cheat systems out there to be aware of too. There's the likes of Easy Anti-Cheat, BattlEye, Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC), Anti-Cheat Expert (ACE), EA Javelin Anticheat, Nexon Game Security, RICOCHET Anti-Cheat, NetEase Game Security and a great many more. Quite a few developers also use their own specialised anti-cheat systems that don't have a specific name attached to them. And all of them work differently!

On Linux there's also multiple ways to play games - there's Native Linux games (those built for it) and then there's also Valve's Proton compatibility layer to run Windows games. Anti-cheat will work differently between those versions of games as well. You may find if a game has a Native Linux build, the anti-cheat might only work there (which is the case for some Valve games).

Some games that absolutely will not work (and likely never will) include some big hitters like Fortnite, Valorant and Warzone. But there's a number that do work great like Counter-Strike 2, ARC Raiders and Marvel Rivals.

You also have to take into account the way these anti-cheat systems interact with your system. Some are purely server-based so they don't touch your system. Some are installed into your local filesystem and others go hook directly into the kernel. On Linux though, kernel-level anti-cheat is not a thing (it's all user-based). This is part of why many games choose to block Linux, because they can't get into the kernel to provide the level of protection they specifically want.

Some games even allow SteamOS / Steam Deck, but block other forms of Linux (like Desktop Linux distributions including Fedora and Ubuntu).

In your Steam Library on Linux / SteamOS, you should ensure you have these installed:

• Proton EasyAntiCheat Runtime
• Proton BattlEye Runtime

Those will enable certain games to work that require them.

A word of warning as well - don't try to work around or bypass anti-cheat. This could lead to account-level bans and leave you without the game on any platform. We have also seen rare cases of Linux players being banned in certain games, but that doesn't happen often and is usually reversed when the players are found not to be cheating.

Rather than sending you off to hunt down each individual game - we run our own dedicated curated anti-cheat compatibility page for Linux / SteamOS, based on those we can directly verify to give you the most clear picture possible. Using this page it's easy to see at a glance what popular games you can expect to work without a bunch of workarounds being needed.

Valve (for Steam specifically) have their own direct rating system. If a game is Steam Deck Playable (or Verified) or SteamOS Compatible - the anti-cheat will be enabled.

ProtonDB is another website you can check, which has crowd-sourced reports across lots of different games run on Linux via Proton. And you can also try Are We Anti-Cheat Yet? as another option.

If you're completely stuck, want to use Linux for gaming but need specific games, another option to try is NVIDIA GeForce NOW which is supported on Steam Deck directly and has a Linux Desktop Beta.