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Denuvo will lock you out of games on Linux, SteamOS, Steam Deck if you keep changing Proton versions
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this post was submitted on 15 May 2025
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I actually doubt it’s an easy fix. The issue is that each version of proton looks like a different machine. So when Denuvo only allows you to boot on [x] machines in [y] days, it’s easy to get locked out of a game simply because it looks like you booted it on a bunch of different machines.
Some of the game streaming services have this same issue. Nvidia has that thing where you can boot it on Nvidia’s servers, then stream it. But the issue is that when you boot it, you don’t get the same server each time. So if you’re playing a game that is prone to crashing, you can easily eat through your [x] machines count quickly. Not because you were playing it on different machines, but because it was booted on a different server each time you launched it.
I would have thought it would be a client side patch rather than server side, but surely it's a case of taking whatever Proton is changing out of the machine "fingerprint" when generating it on a Steam Deck. There's plenty of other things they can use to identify a machine.