The game, the movie, or the keyboard?

An increase of 172000 monthly active Linux users (based on this)

I think Microsoft and their partners have been dreaming about turning PCs into fully locked down platforms for a long time, completely unrelated to gaming. Hardware DRM including display devices and cables, and only running “trusted” software is the end goal.

I think the problem is that game publishers also want the cheapest and laziest solutions. What EA (and others) are doing now are basically “give us full control of your computer so we can do whatever we want” with their kernel level anti-cheats. Server side anti-cheat requires more processing that they have to pay for, and requires more work to develop heuristics and other algorithms to detect cheaters.

Would be interesting to know why some people downvoted this comment, if they think there’s some reason to not play The Finals on Linux. I’ve only done the tutorial so far, and the gameplay seems somewhat similar to Apex, it’s also f2p, and uses EAC so currently no issues with anti-cheat. Might not look like an indie game but it feels like a decent alternative to Apex.

Seems like my “fuck EA I’m not giving them money ever again” policy is beginning to pay off :)

I bought a Razer Basilisk 3 because it was the only mouse where I could reach both thumb buttons with the fingertip-ish grip I use. Wasn’t fully supported by Linux software at first, but worst case I could program it on Windows which I had on a dual boot at the time. Now that I can use it with Polychromatic and OpenRazer it even works better on Linux. On Windows the Razer software won’t let me save individual LED colours to the mouse, and needs to be running all the time in order to do that…

My guess is that Microsoft will provide their own kernel level anticheat to game developers, using a secure API which will be impossible to emulate with Wine etc.

It did alright, don’t think I saw that many obvious cheaters in BF1. BF5 would occasionally have obvious cheaters, but I would hope they get banned eventually just because it’s over the top (shooting people through walls, infinite ammo, perfect aim). Difficult to say with more subtle cheats, but I suppose if they’re indistinguishable from players who are just good at the game then I think most people won’t ever notice.

On the flip side I got permabanned from multiplayer in BF5 after EA falsely accused me of cheating, though I suppose that could’ve happened with any kind of anti-cheat, and could’ve been fixed by having half-competent support.

I think FairFight is the old anti-cheat, which at least used to be server side only.

Unfortunately most Battlefield games worked fine with Wine/Proton for years since EA used server side AC, so they already have our money.

I’ve never got my Vive to work well in Linux, even though I’m using X which supposedly still is better for gaming that Wayland.

What is the solution?

My guess is that Microsoft wants provide some kind of kernel level anti-cheat, possibly directly integrated with directx, and it will use cryptography which will make it impossible to emulate with Wine/Proton.

So sad that they didn’t fix the AC until the game had been around for years, I would’ve loved to play it in the beginning when the player skill was more varied. Tried to get into it when Linux was allowed but it seemed like mostly the try-hards were still playing. Had some good games but it was a bit too sweaty for my friends at times.

I tried playing it through Wine during season 2 or 3, the game worked flawlessly but you would get kicked after 1-5 minutes due to missing AC.

The first game was named Battlefield 1942, so technically there hasn’t been a “1” in the series before this :) It came out in 2016 so it’s not really new, but I bought it last year and played it on Linux for a few hours with friends, and it still has an active player base.

Have they stated that they’re going to support Linux or at least Proton/Wine? I did a quick search on the game’s Steam forum and it sounded like it doesn’t work currently.

Hopefully, yes. But I’m sure MS and some hardware manufacturers salivate at the thought of being able to create a completely locked down computer platform. I own neither, but aren’t both iPhone and Playstation users locked into the manufacturers’ respective stores? Those seems to be perfectly legal in the EU.

It’s a functional programming language, so you have to think quite differently when using it if you’re used to imperative programming languages (e.g. C++, Java, Python, Basic). I learned it at uni and it was quite fun, but I wouldn’t know how to write a larger project in it.

Nikki and the Robots, it’s written in Haskell

I initially wrote 100, but when starting to look through my Steam library I realized how few games had that few reviews. All the indie games I thought might be borderline unknown turned out to have 5k+ reviews.

It sucks when this happens, but the article also says:

Update 20/11/23 14:33 UTC — Crytek responded to note: “This is a known issue and we are working on it to fix it and apply the fix for the resolution as soon as possible.”

So not ideal but at least the devs want to support Linux.

And you’re 100% sure you installed it in the correct wine prefix? Because that’s the tricky part, and having it installed in a different wine prefix won’t work.

I had the same “unable to detect uplay” error except for a different Anno game. Here’s how I solved it, if you want to try:

• Install ProtonUp-Qt, then add SteamTinkerLaunch using it.
• In Steam, go to Properties… for the game that needs Ubisoft Connect. Then Compatibility tab, check “Force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool”, and select “Steam Tinker Launch” from the dropdown.
• Start the game, and quickly press the “MAIN MENU” button at the bottom of the window.
• Click “One time run”, choose the UbisoftConnectInstaller.exe that you downloaded and click “RUN COMMAND”

Unless it has been changed, I believe Valve described their algorithm along the lines of “7 days after your purchase it will count towards the OS you’ve used the most to play it. If you haven’t played the game at that point it will counts towards the OS you used to buy it”

With a previously installed client I was able to buy and download Diablo II: Ressurected, but after starting it it immediately stated that my setup was to outdated to run this game. I highly doubt that, since I have more than the minimum requirements.

Every time I launch Diablo 4 it says my GPU isn’t supported, but I just click “ok” and the game starts anyway.

Thank’s a lot mate! Assumed a bot would instantly grab all the keys, as usually happens on reddit, but it was still there after I checked my Steam account so I didn’t already have it (Disco Elysium)

edit: sorry @CAPSLOOKFTW@feddit.de ,your comment wasn’t there when I first loaded this page, it only showed up now when I reloaded it. Better luck next time.

I don’t want to encourage Windows usage, but if you really need it you can buy a grey market license for $10-20.

With the exception of the false positive ban wave reported a few days ago, Apex Legends has played flawlessly on Linux for the last couple of years. According to comments on protondb, Fall Guys also appears to be working fine, including multiplayer with anti-cheat. I’m not trying to tell you that you shouldn’t run Windows if you want to, but perhaps you didn’t fully explore all options?

If you switch back to Linux you could suggest Shatterline to your broke friends. It’s f2p and had no issues with anti-cheat last time I tried it. I think Overwatch 2 is also f2p.

Check https://www.protondb.com/ for the games you play. If some doesn’t work, ask yourself if you can live without them.

I’ve been full time Linux for quite a few years now, but I do have a dual boot mainly for VR. Other than that there haven’t been many games that I want to play that don’t work with Linux.

My wife is obsessed with this game, and she normally hates zombies. Personally I can play it for a couple of hours, but I think the early game is the most fun and I tend to lose interest. Looking forward to when they’ll flesh out late game and add stories/missions or whatever they were going to call it.

Running the Linux version of Steam allows you to have different Wine environments for each game. I don’t know how common it is, but it’s happened at least a few times that some game would require a specific version of Proton to run.

I see it somewhat differently, IMO the Linux gaming revolution is an ongoing process that multiple parties have contributed to for more than a decade, rather than a singular event. The Steam Desk is the latest product of the Linux gaming revolution, it builds on past achievements and paves the way for new ones in the future.

I’m no Linux historian so perhaps I’ve got something wrong, but this is my list of significant achievements that have contributed towards the Linux gaming revolution:

• Loki Entertainment (1998). This is actually something I learned today… I had previously seen LE’s ports of games to Linux as somewhat of a failed experiment, as the company went bankrupt in 2002 without any apparent long term effects on Linux gaming. However, their wiki page brought up that they developed several tools that have been useful for many other Linux game devs, and some of their former employees went on to work other Linux games.
• Ubuntu (2004). They made an effort to make desktop Linux more accessible, and by becoming the de-facto mainstream distro they gave game developers a single release target that covered the majority of Linux users. It might not be ideal from a Linux/FOSS perspective, but I think it would’ve been difficult to get a lot of game developers on board if they had to support multiple distros. They have since lost their importance for Linux gaming but at least they deserve a spot in this list.
• Wine (stable release in 2008). Not very usable for gaming at the time of their 1.0 release, and it might still not have been without Proton, but development of Wine began as early as 1993.
• Humble Indie Bundle (2010). IMO this pay-what-you-want bundle was the real beginning of playing games on Linux. There had been some attempts at releasing games for Linux before of course, but I think HIB showed that there was a demand for games on Linux and that Linux users were willing to pay for the games. Buying all the HIBs gave Linux users a decent library of quality indie games, and at least to me it seemed like indie devs became much more likely to support Linux and Mac after this.
• Steam for Linux (2013). Proprietary app stores and online DRM is another thing that doesn’t sit well with a lot of Linux/FOSS users, but it was definitely fundamental for AAA gaming on Linux. Valve also released the Linux version of The Orange Box in 2013.
• Steam Machines (2015). While failing to introduce Linux gaming to the masses, they brought SteamOS and other technologies that would later be used in the Steam Deck. One might even argue that the Deck is just the next iteration of Steam Machines.
• Proton (2018). A result of the work of Wine developers, Valve and CodeWeavers, this is of course what allows us to run Windows games, often as smoothly as if they were native.
• Steam Deck (2022). Leverages the previous achievements and packages them into a product that turned out to be attractive even to non-Linux users.

Valve (and others) have really put in a lot of effort to make Linux gaming happen, but my point is that the Steam Deck isn’t the one singular thing that we can thank for Linux gaming. It wouldn’t have brough any kind of revolution if released in 2016 (see Smach Z for example), and if the Steam Machines were released in 2022, perhaps they would’ve been just as successful.