[dijit]

I work in AAA; more people using Linux means we'll actually get buy-in for working with Linux as a platform.

Right now Producers and HQ don't want to support it because "theres no money there" and they're bolstered by a crew of developers who have only ever touched Windows who will reinforce the notion that Windows is all you need (because they've sunk their entire career into the platform).

I remember bringing this topic up a decade ago and basically being laughed out of the room, slowly those laughs will become uncomfortable silences, then token support from the passionate, then proper initiatives.

It takes time, yeah, but we're so much further today already than we were 10+years ago.

[Atotalnoob]

Even if AAA supports Linux, it’s got to be without kernel anticheat. That’s a non starter for myself and many others

[justaregulanerd]

I don't think that will be the case sadly, just because the majority of gamers don't actually know or care about software having root or kernel level access. In a world where Linux becomes mainstream, AAA games will aim for those users, not hobbyists and enthusiasts like us.

[0x262d]

What is the downside of this if I trust the software provider (eg Riot Games or presumably Valve if this ever comes to Linux)? I have recently come around in support of Riot's anticheat because multiplayer competitive games are so damaged without it, even though I use Linux 95% of the time.

[frollogaston]

It's hard to trust. I have a spare Windows PC where I install whatever on it, and the EA Javelin anticheat has screwed things up before. Wouldn't be doing that on a computer I care about.

Could the kernel have something built in to help with this? Like it can tell a program that nothing else is looking at its memory. And then secure boot attests that the kernel isn't tampered with.

[seba_dos1]

> And then secure boot attests that the kernel isn't tampered with.

That's pretty much a dystopian scenario where you're unable to interact with any network services without using devices with software that's controlled and/or trusted by the service provider. Basically a grave threat to Free Software as a whole, the end of free reimplementations of things you rely on to connect with the society. We already have a glimpse of that on mobile phones controlled by Google and Apple, we don't need more.

There are kinds of games that actually rely on anticheats to be viable, but they're in the tiny minority and I don't think they're worth reorganizing the society over. Most just consider it a solution for problems caused by their incompetently designed netcode.

[frollogaston]

Linux and Windows both already support secure boot. Anyone is free to make a locked down version of Linux, and they have (game consoles, Android). Desktop Linux has way less market share than Windows. So what would you like SteamOS or the Linux kernel to do? I'm not fond of this stuff, but at least if people are using a partially locked down video game focused Linux, it's better than them going to Windows.

[dijit]

Attestation-gated anti-cheat is invasive, and the direction it points is grim.

But "covers for incompetently designed netcode" doesn't hold at all.

Netcode and cheat-resistance are mostly orthogonal. Netcode is latency-hiding — prediction, reconciliation, interpolation. Cheating is the client being an endpoint you don't control. You can have flawless netcode and still get wallhacked, because a wallhack touches the renderer, not the wire. You have to ship that data for the client to draw the level.

Server-side validation kills the cheats that surface as state: speedhacks, teleports, impossible positions; but it's blind to the ones that don't touch state at all. A wallhack reads memory the client holds. A vision aimbot runs on a second machine reading the screen- nothing crosses the network for the server to reject.[0]

That's why the kernel and attestation stuff exists. Not lazy devs papering over a bug: a class of cheat that server authority structurally can't reach, because the cheat never lies to the server.

I understand the dystopia argument, and it's a decent one. "Just write better netcode" isn't.

I'd humbly request that you spend time trying to actually grapple with the problem, there are some exceptionally well paid and talented programmers who are working on this non-stop in the large publishing houses (EA, Ubisoft, Tencent, Activision) who would do anything to avoid paying royalties to shitty software that breaks the performance and reliability of their games: yet for some reason year over year they can't seem to manage it.

Worth understanding why that is, instead of assuming incompetence or malice; perhaps its a harder problem than you think.

[0]: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.21377

[justaregulanerd]

My thinking would be that because the anticheat is closed source, it makes it a trust exercise in the developer where you've allowed them root access to your machine.

I'd also think outside of the developer's motives, and into any potential vulnerabilities that could use the anticheat as a privilege escalation point or the anticheat itself being given a bad / malicious update.

[aiisjustanif]

Thankfully that has been improving [1] and non-kernel is 100% possible today [2] with valve has so much on documentation and support for game and anti cheat developers to accomplish this.

[1]: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/anticheat/ [2]: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/steamdeck/proton

[zamalek]

Unfortunately many of these developers believe that kernel-level is mandatory (by virtue of believing that it actually works to prevent _all_ cheating, which we know it doesn't).

[Kuraj]

Kernel level anticheat doesn't make sense on Linux because the kernel is open. There's simply no incentive to do that

[debugnik]

An open source kernel doesn't prevent attestation mechanisms. Anticheats on Windows increasingly require Secure Boot, and all others drivers to be signed/whitelisted; they could try to put similar restrictions on supported distros.

[B-Con]

Yeah, I imagine Linux support would be more like a supported Linux distro rather than generic Linux support. Something like SteamOS but with kernel anti-cheat and secure boot from the start.

Big question is whether they can make craching the anti-cheat it hard/unpredictable enough that the publishers will trust it. If the publishers release such a platform and someone releases a live distro that can crack it with 3 mouse clicks, that's a lot of wasted effort.

I have no idea how effective the Windows anti-cheat is, but I imagine that Linux tooling in general is going to make it harder to lock a user out of controlling their own machine.

[cwillu]

Yeah, the nightmare scenario. I'm actually a little bit worried that we will look back on the last few years as the Golden Years of Gaming on Linux

[frollogaston]

In fact Android has secure boot plus its own stricter thing. Probably the most commonly running software based on the Linux kernel.

[grimleech]

it's a non starter to even have kernel level anticheat, it's the worst idea pushed on the consumers since browser level drms.

[Gareth321]

I strongly disagree. There have only ever been a handful of data exploits attributable to kernel-level anti-cheats. On the other hand, developers report that they significantly reduce cheating. As someone who plays online games, this is a tradeoff I gladly make.

I often feel these comments are made by people whose preferred games are not ruined by cheaters. This is happening right now in Arc Raiders, and it's really sad to watch. The developer, Embark, is now investigating using KLAC to reduce the number of cheaters.

[allarm]

As someone who doesn't play online games this is not a trade off I gladly make. Fortunately, however, KLAC will never become part of the Linux kernel, because adding it to an open-source system simply doesn't make sense.

[Gareth321]

If it doesn't, Linux will always be a second-class platform for gaming. Valve is currently working on solutions beyond user-space, and I hope they succeed. I would like to move to Linux but I'm not willing to give up online games, and I hate playing with cheater.

[allarm]

As I've already said, I don't play online games, and I'm not particularly concerned about all the fuss surrounding anti-cheat measures, so I don't think that suddenly makes Linux a "second-class gaming platform." For the games I do play, it's a first-class platform.

[eptcyka]

Sure, but maybe this is a different battle? First party Linux support is orthogonal to games not using kernel level anti-cheat solutions.

Tangentially, I wouldn't use kernel level anti-cheats, but if Valve's solution is indicative of the SotA in userspace anti-cheat solutions, there's a lot of room for improvement.

[Zetaphor]

Exactly, no game is worth installing a rootkit for

[DanielHB]

How much do you rely on Steam hardware survey? I am doing my part reporting my Linux usage.