An article from this weekend that seemingly got buried by soundbites about the Steam Machine price in the same interview, but given that we have no information on price, this seems way more interesting to me. I mean…I basically self-select games that don’t use these kinds of anti-cheat at all, but this is important information for a lot of people, especially if you’re looking for an off-ramp from Windows and still want to play some of the most popular live service titles.
I don’t imagine the overlap of people interested in the steam machine and people playing games with invasive anti-cheat is very big.
Some of the biggest games on the planet use anti-cheat that just isn’t compatible with SteamOS or any Linux distro, but lots of those people are looking for a way to play the games they enjoy without Windows.
Often it could be compatible, but the developers just don’t bother. The anit-cheat that GTAO implemented works on Linux in other games, but not GTA, because they can’t be bothered to give a fuck.
The way that it was enabled under Proton was less secure than it was in Windows because it operated at a higher level; their inability to run it at that lower level is why they disabled it. This article means that Valve is looking at ways to grant them that lower level.
Interesting, thanks for clarifying.
I don’t disagree, but the only a suff that comes to mind is COD or some other EA shovelware.
Ultimately, if it gets more people on Linux, it’s a net positive.
Grand Theft Auto Online, Battlefield 6, Destiny 2, League of Legends, Valorant, Fortnite, and on and on.
Ah, so nothing I play. Sounds good.
I personally know a few people who are interested in buying the Steam Machine but are having doubts because some their regular games use anticheat that doesn’t work on Linux.
I imagine the amount of people is significantly higher than you might think because the vast majority of gamers don’t care about invasive anticheat. To them Steam machine is the equivalent of a console. They probably don’t even care it runs on Linux because all they care about is being able to play games.
The majority of gamers buy into the lie that kernel level anti-cheats are more effective, when they really aren’t.
Yeah, a lot of gamers know nothing about any of this conversation. I mean, my coworkers who game and mentioned the Stream Machine this weekend. Of course one was talking Fortnite. So that’s where we’re at. I didn’t even get into why this “console” won’t have one of the more popular games that’s literally free on every other machine including their phone. (I can already hear people saying “is a computer! It should run everything!” And then getting together when you explain how, and saying “it should be simple! It’s a console!”) It’s months away at best anyway. Who knows.