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.
Currently kernel-level anti cheat isn’t available for Linux, so games that are released with multiplayer support don’t require it (e.g. games that enable Linux support in EAC).
If kernel-level anti cheat is supported by Valve, many of those games will start requiring it. So if you don’t want kernel stuff, there’s a real chance this development will reduce the number of available games in the future.
Yes but if linux gets popular those games will get linux cheaters and will be pressured to do something.
Not sure I understand - games with kernel-level anti cheat also still have cheaters.
I’m aware but games and players still want a strong anti cheating solution. There is no protection currently on linux for cheating.
First, it’s not true that there’s no protection - various anti-cheat solutions do support Linux.
Second, “strong” solutions still let through cheaters, because client-side anti cheat is an inherently unwinnable cat-and-mouse game. It’s better for everyone to block kernel-level AC and instead force better backend solutions.