Recent testing revealed that Arch Linux, Pop!_OS, and even Nobara Linux, which is maintained by a single developer, all outstripped Windows for the performance crown on Windows-native games. The testing was run at the high-end of quality settings, and Valve's Proton was used to run Windows games on Linux.
Not to mention the major hurdle for Linux gaming is anti cheat software being brought over. Too many games are 100% unplayable because the devs don’t allow their anticheat to be installed on Linux systems
As if the anti-cheat even worked.
Client-side anti-cheat has always been a scam to offload server processing onto client machines.
This results in worse cheat detection and wastes client resources, but companies like EA can spend less on servers.
It also doesn’t work. I know that’s what the parent comment said, but it’s a total scam at the company level too.
“Oh, server networking is hard to do right. Let’s do it client side”
“Oh, people are cheating. Let’s add anticheat”
I’ve developed games where the client is the source of truth, and games where it’s the server. It is almost always better to do anything that will be developed for more than a few weeks serverside.
Also from an engineering perspective it makes LOADS more sense as you can apply patches to the servers instantly vs. requiring the users patch the game themselves.
Also, you can control the variables of the system it’s running on.
Of course, it means when you fuck up, it affects everyone at once.
But with journaling file systems and kubernettes orchestration it’s SO easy to revert changes with modern day Linux.
Oh, absolutely. I can’t believe we deployed web apps on IIS for instance. What a shitshow that was. If you can run the important bits on something predictable like linux with all the serverside tools that gives you, why wouldn’t you.
>client is the source of truth
>company doesn’t like the clients truth
In the defence of client side AC; if the entire game runs on the server, then network delay makes FPS:es awful to play. Being able to trust clients and let them do hit detection is quite important in making online FPS:es responsive. In addition, cheats that remove walls/grass, highlight players or even autoaim are near impossible to detect server side. One could try to use heuristics and statistics but it would be difficult to tell the difference between cheaters and players who are just good at aiming and map awareness.
Doesn’t matter if it’s a prerequisite
I really wish valve would make this more clear on steam store pages. It says games are “unsupported” on steam deck due to anticheat when really it should say something like “The developer of this title does not allow players using the steam deck” so that people are more aware it’s not linux or valve’s fault
This is because most anti cheats for windows are kernel level rootkits that have full access to your entire system, and gamers just trust that known to be ineffective, scammy and profiteering, anti cheat companies software companies would /never/ do anything nefarious.
How can you trust them?
You can’t! Black boxed code, babyyyyyy.
Anyway yeah on linux systems basically the designs of all common anti cheat systems would be laughed at as hilariously insecure code that no sane person would allow on their computer because you would have to give it root level access.
This is basically insane as in the linux paradigm, root level access is reserved only for a bare minimum of system processes, whereas on Windows, well with the new Pluton tech in the latest lines of major CPUs, Windows has the ability to DRM literally anything you install on it and just get rid of your ability to run or install it, as they see fit, with a network enabled sub layer of the CPU that you as a user cannot override from within Windows.
The only hurdle for linux gaming is for more gamers and game developers to realize the truth of what I just said.
Its possible to do anti cheat in less invasive ways. But that requires more work from game development studios, and is costly.
Anyone else remember when servers had like actual human admins that would respond to player complaints, and would work on the backend of a server to come up with their own ways to detect cheating server side?