this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2023
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Linux Gaming

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[–] tabular@lemmy.world 79 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Talk is cheap. It's been "planned" for Tarkov since before I started using Linux.

[–] Puzzle_Sluts_4Ever@lemmy.world 19 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

I'll just add on that BSG are a horrible example when it comes to delivering on "promises" and plans.

If memory serves, the official plan is still to do a steam release when EFT is "out of beta". But they realized they make a LOT more money if they control the whole store so... Which is likely why they moved away from Steam Audio, continue to use their grossly incompetent anti-cheat solution, etc. Nikita et al will "heavily imply" they are doing stuff and then just ignore it because people keep buying top tier accounts so they can have maximum storage and so forth.

Also: SP Tarkov works REALLY well under Proton. Something about the new gui for the spt-installer needs more dependencies to work again, but the actual game runs great if you can be bothered to manually patch it.

[–] CoopaLoopa@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 11 months ago

I almost forgot this isn't the Tarkov subreddit where even mentioning SP Tarkov will get you a ban.

I was scared there for a moment.

[–] tabular@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Last time I played it offline it would crash after a min of playing Streets (the new map at the time). Might be stuff needed updating or my hardware.

[–] Puzzle_Sluts_4Ever@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

I haven't gotten around to trying Streets yet (lately I just do a few factory runs and that is it), but that map is already pushing the "limits" of Tarkov's use of Unity and is still new and prone to performance issues. So not surprised there would be problems with sptarkov.

[–] Sylvartas@lemmy.world 5 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Tbf most devs probably want to do it, they just can't justify it financially. Most games' programmers are computer nerds, and they would be the ones in charge of implementing that kind of stuff. They'd happily do it because obviously, as computer nerds they love Linux, but even if they accept to do some unpaid overtime just because they really want to implement this, it might get blocked by the publisher because they don't want that kind of stuff to bypass QA especially since it has a chance of affecting all users, and when looking at the numbers, it's just not profitable to them.

Now the steam deck could change that dynamic because it has a decent market share, and I would love to see the actual numbers but I'd be willing to bet that most deck owners buy more games than the average player.

Source: am games' programmer, computer nerd, and steam deck owner

[–] priapus@sh.itjust.works 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Tarkov is in a different much more complex situation. It uses some Battleye addons that are custom made for the game that Battleye will not port to work on Linux.

[–] tabular@lemmy.world 4 points 11 months ago

If it was an issue on the user's end then it's possible 3rd parties could fix it (as Wine/Proton has for every game not designed for GNU+Linux). BattleState Games have decided they don't want to host servers without BattlEye for us to play on and that we're not entitled to host our own servers.

I did consider installing Windows on a machine just for Tarkov but install and using modern Windows looks like hell. I'd rather install Windows XP than Windows .

[–] savvywolf@pawb.social 71 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I want to be optimistic, bit honestly this to me reads like the non-commital "thanks for your concern, we'll look into it" consumer service style non-answer.

I hope it ends up somewhere, but I can also see it remaining in their ticketing system for eternity.

[–] moody@lemmings.world 7 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I think the Steam Deck is a platform that devs are aware of, and I'm sure they don't want to alienate that segment of their sales. They also want to avoid negative reviews.BattlEye is also supported in other games on Linux, including native versions, so it shouldn't be a big deal to ensure its functionality.

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[–] dinckelman@lemmy.world 65 points 11 months ago (2 children)

The issue isn't even that BattlEye doesn't work under Linux, because it does. It's that a lot of studios that use it, namely Bungie and Ubisoft, explicitly refuse to enable support for it. Somehow they allowed Division 2 to run, but even then it only appears to be the Steam version, because my Uplay copy does not have the necessary files in the bundle

[–] Phanatik@kbin.social 18 points 11 months ago (1 children)

This might be a stupid question but is it possible to copy the files you need to your Uplay install? It doesn't guarantee that the game will use them but worth a try I suppose.

Also you have Division 2 on Uplay and Steam? Why?

[–] dinckelman@lemmy.world 18 points 11 months ago (2 children)

No, I don't. I got it on a whim through Epic, when it was on like a 90% sale, and that's the only game I own there, but it's installed through Uplay itself. The reason I know about the files, is because they appear in a steamdb manifest

Theoretically would you've said could work, but since we're talking about modifying critical files, they might just slap me with a ban, and I don't really feel like doing that. They probably check the hashes of the included bundle immediately

[–] Phanatik@kbin.social 3 points 11 months ago

Understandable. I'm not sure how strict Uplay is about the files but from my experience with the bot in R6 Siege, it probably hands out bans like chocolate in Halloween.

[–] mr_MADAFAKA@lemmy.ml 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I was in same situation with Star Wars: Squadrons i got it on Origin and some files for anti cheat were missing that steam version of game had... I found online missing files copy and paste and game worked

[–] Tywele@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

The Division 2 uses Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC) not BattleEye

[–] dinckelman@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

Yeah I'm aware. By they I meant Ubisoft, not the BattlEye dev

[–] Olmai@lemmy.world 25 points 11 months ago

I think we can thank the steam deck for that

[–] Astaroth@lemm.ee 20 points 11 months ago
[–] TigrisMorte@kbin.social 18 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Perhaps don't rely upon client side to do all the heavy lifting and problem solved without having to install malware?

[–] pineapplelover@lemm.ee 3 points 11 months ago (5 children)

I've seen this argument pop up but I'm confused with technical details on how it would work. Wouldn't the client still need to download the game? Modifying the game files is a vector for attack. If it's fully online on their servers then it would be pretty slow wouldn't it?

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[–] Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 18 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I am genuinely curious how anti-cheat works on an open source OS. I don't know a whole lot about how it works to be honest, but is there no problem with cheaters being able to manipulate the entire stack down to the kernel level?

Like I'm aware cheaters can decompile code so closed source isn't necessarily that much better. Did I just answer my own question or is there more to it?

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 41 points 11 months ago (2 children)

This is why client-side anti-cheat is a terrible idea. It gives you the illusion of control, but really it doesn't prevent a motivated party from cheating, and it opens up everyone else to kernel-level vulnerabilities when the anti-cheat software inevitably has a bug.

Client side anti-cheat should merely discourage low effort attacks, and the real cheat detection should always be server side looking at patterns of behavior. Unfortunately, it's a lot easier to reach for client side anti-cheat than build an effective server side anti-cheat.

[–] Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 9 points 11 months ago (1 children)

This is a really good answer, thanks! I like to imagine what a fully open-source future would look like and I imagine server-side anti cheat is the solution.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I don't think popular games will ever be fully open source, but our operating systems could be.

I have very little proprietary software on my system outside of games, and it's mostly limited to a handful of firmware blobs (e.g. GPU and WiFi firmware, CPU microcode, etc), with the clear exception bring browser DRM for streaming services. Everything proprietary on my system is sandboxed in some way, so I'm reasonably protected from most of that nonsense, but it's still there and probably always will be.

Having proprietary software isn't the issue IMO, as long as I can sandbox it. I can't sandbox kernel level anti-cheat, so I'm never going to install a game that requires it. That's my line in the sand.

[–] tabular@lemmy.world 5 points 11 months ago (5 children)

What makes games different to other types of software that it can't become the norm for them to be open source?

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[–] moody@lemmings.world 4 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Not all anti-cheats are kernel-level though, only the most invasive ones are. BattlEye, the one used in this game, is not one of them, though I don't know the specifics of how it works.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 3 points 11 months ago

Sure, and I don't have issues with those, provided they are happy living in a sandbox. I think clientside anti-cheat is stupid for other reasons, but I won't actively avoid a game just because it has it, provided I can separate it from the rest of my system.

[–] uis@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago

The important part is: Never Trust User Input!

[–] uis@lemmy.world 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I am geniunely curious how anti-cheat works on an PC with physical access, where user can plug their mouse loaded with cheats.

For every malware anti-cheat there will be sandboxing cheat.

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[–] Rayspekt@kbin.social 5 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Is this finally the beginning of anti-cheat games coming to linux? I'd love official ports for stuff like League or Honkai Star Rail.

[–] Phanatik@kbin.social 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

League of Legends does work but it's painful. I use an AUR package called leagueoflegends-git which was the only way I could get it to work on my setup.

https://leagueoflinux.org/ has been invaluable. It used to be a subreddit but it's been made private since the API debacle.

[–] Linus_Torvalds@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I disagree on the painful part. The lutris install is basically 1-click.

[–] Phanatik@kbin.social 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Well, painful for me. I tried Lutris, Bottles and native Wine and none worked. I played around with wine-lol for a bit too but the AUR package was the one that got it working.

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[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 3 points 11 months ago

Yeah, I used Lutris a couple years ago and it worked pretty well. I don't like League much, but it worked well enough for my friend to play a few games with me to show me how to play.

[–] ElectroLisa@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Honkai unofficially works on Linux, but it requires bypassing the anti-cheat, there are a few methods to do so

[–] Rayspekt@kbin.social 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Bypassing the anti-cheat will get you banned if it gets detected, wouldn't it?

[–] ElectroLisa@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 11 months ago

Yes, there was one ban wave for Honkai Star Rail, but Genshin and Honkai Impact didn't have any over a while

[–] TheCheddarCheese@lemmy.world 4 points 11 months ago (2 children)

why do so many anticheats not allow linux?

[–] SeekPie@lemmy.world 19 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

What I've heard is that they don't think that it's a big enough market to have to fix bugs that might happen only on linux and such, so they just don't allow us to play.

[–] sanpo@sopuli.xyz 13 points 11 months ago

It'd be nice, but from what I see most devs against this suggest Linux gamers are a bunch of dirty hackers and it's somehow much easier to cheat there.

They just conveniently forget that Valve offered to fix any bugs themselves that are specific to Linux/Proton...

[–] calzone_gigante@lemmy.eco.br 4 points 11 months ago

Some require kernel level access, which is a big security risk.

[–] Tywele@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 11 months ago

I didn't expect the dev to be Nexon

[–] raubarno@lemmy.ml 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

That profile pic looks cool, though

[–] ElectroLisa@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 11 months ago

Thanks, it's a modified VRChat avatar called Rindo

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