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.
Any idea or hints how Epic will handle this?
Sit back and let Valve sort it out.
Modern machines have TPM so we can do attested boot and validate a system hasn’t been tampered with. They don’t need third party kernel modules to test that.
I don’t imagine the overlap of people interested in the steam machine and people playing games with invasive anti-cheat is very big.
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.
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.
The majority of gamers buy into the lie that kernel level anti-cheats are more effective, when they really aren’t.
entire box dedicated to avoiding fuckery, gamers beg to install fuckery
stupid mofos
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.
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.
Lol, I was gonna say that. I’m the wrong demographic for the affected games, apparently.
Regardless, if Valve can work out a way for these games to be playable on Linux, I’m all for it.
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.
Are they working on giving the worst and most useless companies kernel level access to my pc?
I would doubt it. I don’t even know if that’s a reasonable thing to do on Linux. I don’t see how it could work. Presumably they’re trying to work on something like they did for Easy Anti Cheat. That has a kernel module on Windows, but it doesn’t on Linux. I would assume they’re trying to work with EA, Riot, and maybe some Chinese companies to have their AC option work with Linux.
Perhaps. Of course, if you were able to type that sentence out, it also means you know what to avoid if that’s important to you. I will be, because it’s important to me, too.
Can they address the price concerns?
They have:
If you’re trying to make a PC that has similar features and similar performance, I think the Steam Machine is going to be a really competitive price to that and provide really good value to it
I think they want to play this close to the vest because of potentially having to navigate tariffs.
I wonder how much money the Switch 2 lost on release due to tariff fuckery, at least in the US and Canada.
They said they aren’t going to announce the price until closer to launch, so just chill. They only announced the product so they could get developers working on game support early.
No ground pin? Is that power port DC?
Looks like a standard IEC C8 plug. That would make it standard mains AC.
It has the power supply internally so its definitely AC. It almost certainly just uses a galvanically isolated supply which is why it doesnt need a ground.
Neat. Thanks.
Still not going to convince some stubborn hold outs like the rust guy. Nothing will ever convince them.
The market will - and it’d be foolish to underestimate the forces valve will spark by making viable alternatives mass market.
I wouldn’t expect the Machine to be any more popular than the Deck, which already wasn’t enough to convince holdouts. In fact I would bet the Machine will sell much less than the Deck, since that had a more unique niche carved out for it.
I would not be surprised if the work they’re doing here would be compatible with the Deck. It was just less of a priority for a handheld than a living room machine.
If devs want to support one, it’ll be no problem to support the other. But I doubt devs who already refused to support one will suddenly change their minds.
They refused to support the user space anti cheat. The work they’re talking about doing here is aiming to be the same sort of security they get on Windows. Low level. I have no idea how that works with Linux’s software licenses, but they said in the interview that this might be an exception made only for SteamOS.
I think the hope isn’t that “maybe this will be big enough”, but “maybe together they’ll be big enough”. Who knows, though. It got a lot of hype on reveal but people are fickle sometimes.
When Linux market share hits 20% it would be a monumental achievement, and developers would probably still avoid it.
Don’t get me wrong, I moved to Linux this year. I want to see it gain traction in the gaming space.
It’s just not likely to happen any time soon. Loads of very basic use cases are a fucking shitshow because of a lot of reasons.
Just getting sunshine setup with a virtual display is a nightmare on Wayland without scripts to enable/disable displays and without being in front of the computer you want to remote to, because the simple logic of “if this display =off, then other display =on” is not a thing.
2 years ago, I would have agreed with you. But so much progress has been made and lots of devs have already enabled multiplayer support, it’s really just a handful that need to be convinced, so I don’t think 20% will be necessary to get there.
60% of anticheat implementations need to be fixed. 682 total titles. https://areweanticheatyet.com/
You just need to convince developers of a handful of titles, like fortnite, apex, valorant, BF2042, bf6, rust, R6 siege, league of legends, call of duty 2025… should be easy right?
It’ll never happen. The ones who are fanatical about it like the rust guy believe carte blanche that linux support will only make cheating worse and not positively improve the community. He doesn’t care about linux sales, the windows ones throw so much dosh at him that there’s no “market force” incentivizing him otherwise.
This could be huge. I hope they find a decent middle ground.
They’ve worked on anti cheat support before. It still depends on the devs actually activating that support. That will always be the case whatever they do.
It kind of bothers me that people are putting the responsibility on valve for this, when the companies themselves have purposefully not enabled compatibility in most cases.
They haven’t enabled it because they don’t get the same level of protection on Linux as they do on Windows, so Valve is trying to address that.
In case this is serious, kernel-level AC has been shown to not be particularly effective. There were people with hacks for BF6 before it released, for example. Them blocking an operating system doesn’t prevent cheaters. It only prevents consumers from having options.
Of course I’m serious. “Not 100% effective” is not the same as “not effective”. And to be clear, I hate it and do not endorse it. I will not buy any game that goes as far as to use that kind of anti-cheat. But developers use it because it’s more effective at catching cheaters than not using it. All downvoting me does is cover your ears to what’s actually going on. There are a number of big live service games that once enabled Proton and have now disabled it after cheaters took advantage of the more lax security. They would not cut off a portion of their customer base if they didn’t have to because user space in Linux was somehow just as effective as the Windows variant that lives at ring 0 in the OS kernel.
The reason they do it usually is because some executives hear the Linux is less secure and that it’s only a small segment of users. It isn’t because it’s effective. The games that blocked Linux are almost all some of the games with the worst hackers. Guess what happened when they blocked Linux? Nothing. The number of hackers that were on Linux were near zero.
The issue is they cant be bothered to put the actual money/work to create a solution that’s effective. Instead they signal to their audience that they’re doing something by removing Linux, which doesn’t cost them anything and makes a show that they’re actually trying. It doesn’t fix the problems, but they get to make a show out of it.
Please cite sources for any of that. Game companies aren’t in the business of losing money. If they could make more money by supporting Linux customers, they would do so, and I’ve never heard of a gaming company’s executive ever mentioning anything about Linux except for Gabe Newell, openly or behind closed doors. If they wanted to make a big show of getting rid of cheaters, they’d never have enabled cross play between consoles and PC in the first place. They openly tell you why they don’t enable anti-cheat on Linux, in a way that’s beyond just being plausible, and you refuse to believe them. You’re only going to be surprised when this continues to happen even though the answer is right there.
I have to cite sources but you don’t? One example is Rust, a notoriously hacker filled game.
Of course they’re trying to make money. I literally explained that. The executives see Linux as not providing value, and it’s extra effort to support it. They’d rather instead use it as a symbol of how they’re actually trying really hard to fight hackers, but it’s a lie. It’s just a convenient excuse.
You haven’t heard an executive say almost anything. They run companies. They don’t publish their every decision. They are the ones making the calls. They’re the ones responsible. They’re also largely technologically innept. They probably don’t even know what Linux is. They just know what they’ve been told.
You’re only going to be surprised when this continues to happen even though the answer is right there.
There are like two major companies doing this. There’s EA and Riot. There’s a tiny minority of minor players, like Rust. There’s also a lot of Chinese companies doing it. (China is infamous for having hackers, so yeah, didn’t solve that problem did it?)
I can’t tell you the last time I booted up a western game and it didn’t work on Linux. (I think it was Squad44, which then added support, and support in the main Squad game has been in for a long time.) Everyone is moving toward supporting it, not away. The only places it’s an issue are large slow companies where the executives have too much control.
Your explanation is bordering on conspiracy theory, so yes. Rust cited why they cut support, as did Apex Legends, as did GTA Online. The rest often don’t even bother with supporting it in the first place because of how it always plays out. The existence of hackers at all doesn’t mean that Linux anti-cheat is equally effective, and you’d know that if you read the write up from the Rust team.
In this instance not effective is 100% not effective.
Both kernel and non kernel anti cheat are equally effective in actual practice. In both cases your preventing kids, lazy and low knowledge users from cheating. But anyone who is willing to spend any amount of money to cheat can easily find someone who will provide them with a bypass.
In both cases the anti cheat is only as good as the on going support from the devs of both the anti cheat and the game.
You can’t control what a client does end of the day
I wish you the best in convincing devs with the data in front of them that there’s no difference between the two, but they seem to have data that indicates that they see fewer cheaters with ring 0 anti-cheat than when they let Linux players in with user space anti-cheat. If it were true that there’s no difference, surely Valve’s engineers could convince them of that, too, but that doesn’t seem to be happening.
you are mostly right. anti cheat is somewhat more effective with kernel level access. also, it is infinitely more dangerous and creepy to run on your machine.
however, if the devs can get rid of just a couple more cheaters - they will absolutely insist on the more intrusive versions. it is not their machine after all.
i see two variants on how to solve this issue:
- let your wallet speak. this failed long ago IMO
- remind the devs, that a client is never to be trusted. if i had the time, i would probably make a sport out of breaking kernel level anti cheat and distribute it for free 😈
guys this comment is clearly satire, why did yall downvote?
I’m not sure what there is to gain by pretending that downvoting me changes anything.
Poe’s law, maybe
30% cut from developers. Steam machine. Valve is working together with anticheat devs on this, not alone
Irrelevant to me personally but I’d like to see it cause more windows users to jump ship
TBH, I kinda get the feeling that’s what most of the hype surrounding the Machine is. People hoping it sells well, but not necessarily people planning to buy one for themselves.
I jokingly told a few redditors that they are doing A LOT of the marketing work for the Steam machine. They didn’t like that at all, lol.
lol, they should be proud to champion what valve is doing for the Linux world
That being said I actually don’t have a desktop and would totally buy a steam machine if the price is right
There’s definitely hope that it synergises with what’s going on due to the steam deck.
Personally, I can’t wait to buy two controllers and the machine. The flawless experience of the deck is amazing. And because it’s Linux, I’ll just install YouTube, jellyfin, any app as a non steam game and I’ll have the perfect smart tv appliance.
Stream games, play games, run any program I want through steam big picture - I can’t wait to bury my Shield.
I’ll never have to connect a tv to WiFi again. I’ll never see a fucking ad for anything on my TVs home screen again. With KDE connect my phone is a remote. I’m so fucking pumped.
If I didn’t already have a dedicated living room media machine I most certainly would buy this. The emulation potential while chilling on your couch without being at your desk is very appealing to me.
I have no need for Steam products. Gaming emulators have been all I needed for years now. I don’t play the latest games so it’s totally fine for me too.
Speaking of irrelevant
Oh. That’s smart. Basically if the TPM validates the integrity, cheats cannot be installed/run on a Steam Machine. Let’s hope devs all over the world integrate this Steam Machine exception.
This… doesnt make any sense… For so many reasons.
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What exactly do you think a TPM does because it certainly doesnt have the processing power to validate anything. It just stores keys, potentially without you being able to access them (which is a heinous abuse of your autonomy but we live in a dystopia where people just somehow don’t care).
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Steam machines aren’t unique in having TPM modules. Most computers do. Even Apple computers have their secure enclave.
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Cheats can always be ran on a second pc, and there isn’t a way to thwart this. The ever invasive anti cheat options all trying to avoid writing proper server side validation and fog of war schemes just lose you privacy while not working, but blood thirsty gamers will lose their minds and accept anything if they think it slows down cheaters.
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If Valve can make wireless vr AND fix windows only anticheat, both next year, I’m going to be 10 different kinds of happy. I would love to basically never need my W11 SSD ever again.
Here’s aiming to be hopeful…
I remember back when playing DRM video in a web browser on an open source operating system seemed like a worrying impossibility. Many sites stayed stuck on closed-source flash players for that reason alone. It was a while before we ended up with this solution I only partly understand - where the DRM decoding is handled through some kind of trusted block, that generally doesn’t have full OS control?
Do you get full HD video from streaming services these days? Last I checked, the best of them only top out at 720p without Windows.
Yeah I get 4k with Firefox on cachyOS
Interesting. Did this happen recently? When all of the streaming services starting raising prices, I started cancelling. Which ones give you full HD? Do you need to go out of your way to get there, or will regular old Firefox do the trick? Does it need TPM enabled or anything like that? I was looking to re-up Amazon Prime in the very near future, but when watching on my web browser, a show like Vox Machina was just a blur factory, and it was easier to pirate the show than it was to stream it legitimately.
I really hope it won’t be a case of requiring a Steam Machine with SteamOS on there for this to work.
This just reads like a bunch of nonsense. What are they actually doing?
