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.

Of course not. Go read the reports of any developer who once enabled Linux compatibility and then disabled it.

I’m with you, but you’ve got a lot of people to convince. A lot. The people playing those games make up the majority of the market.

I’m not sure what there is to gain by pretending that downvoting me changes anything.

People have all sorts of custom controllers with different button layouts. There are tournament legal requirements, but you’re unlikely to violate them if you don’t know what they are, and it hardly matters if you’re playing from home.

They’re not just making that up. Cheaters migrated to Linux because it was easier to bypass the anti-cheat protections there. If the anti-cheat is equally effective in both operating systems, they’ll have no reason to cut off a portion of their customer base.

I get what drove us here. When you find a game that speaks to you and it’s got a ranked mode with good matchmaking, it’s easy to get lost in match after match, and cheaters can take the wind out of your sails. My competitive games of choice are fighting games, which are mostly free of cheaters and this invasive anti-cheat, but I’ll be bummed if it becomes the norm, because I won’t participate in that.

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.

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.

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 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.

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. 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.

Grand Theft Auto Online, Battlefield 6, Destiny 2, League of Legends, Valorant, Fortnite, and on and on.

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.

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.

Hunting around a level for health packs before it wasn’t great either.

Have you played the Metal Gear Solid series? If not, don’t look them up beforehand. And this might seem strange, but for the optimal effect, don’t pirate them either.

I’ve heard High on Life is a metroidvania, but I haven’t played it myself. You’re right that 3D metroidvanias are exceptionally rare.

Batman: Arkham Asylum. It doesn’t come up a lot, because only that first game is a metroidvania and Arkham City might be most people’s favorite in the series, but it absolutely counts. I love Arkham combat. It’s better in the sequels due to some slight tweaks in game feel, but that combat in a metroidvania is just excellent, and the game is just so well paced. It’s a shame what WB did to that studio.