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Comment by marcodiego | Hacker News Reader

That means 10% of windows games use invasive anti-cheat?

According to ProtonDB[1], about 7-10% of the top 100 and top 1000 games are "borked", but the actual reason why can be nuanced. However, these days it is almost always anti-cheat.

[1] https://www.protondb.com/dashboard

Anti-cheat will be basically impossible to overcome until studios specifically cater to linux. I'm not sure to what extent this is even possible given how hackable linux is, and how many variants there are, but it's plausible a blessed distro with a signed kernel (somehow? Not sure if this is a thing) might support it.

With a signed kernel and secure boot it should in principle be similiar to Windows 11? But with DMA based hacks on the rise I'm not sure it matters either way.

Anywhere I could read more about the DMA attacks?

You can probably look up DMA cards. They plug into a PCIe slot and get full access to inspect and modify memory.

So, Game Genie for 2025?

Which is the same reason that we lock the data centers. If someone has physical access to the hardware, there are so many more breaching vectors.

Peripherals get IOMMU'd on Apple platforms

https://support.apple.com/guide/security/direct-memory-acces...

Not so on Linux?

Some anticheats like EAC, GameGuard, XingCode do have Linux support that the game has to opt-in. I believe it is not kernel-based and is not Linux-native. Many non-competitive games do allow them.

At least I know that Helldivers 2 (GameGuard), DJMax Respect V (XingCode), Fantasy Life I (EAC) do works on Linux.

I wish that if they're happy with non kernel mode anti cheat on Linux, just do the same in Windows... Or just disable them if I don't use public matchmaking

EAC is owned by Epic, but they won't enable it on their own games, because they don't want to make it easy for people to use Steam. They want Epic Games to used for more than collecting free games and launching Fortnite.

Kernel-based on Linux is pointless unless SacureBoot is used with fixed vendor certs (you can still SB custom kernels on most consumer mobos). I believe that only Microsoft exists in the default certs, so impossible for all intents and purposes. Otherwise you can modify the kernel (or Wine/Proton) and do what you want.

Windows has the same issue, but isn't open source and easy to modify. Still, EA are so paranoid that they require it there.

It will be easy to overcome once they realize how much money they are giving up. Easy solution with little investment would be to separate linux and windows users, just like with consoles, but the correct solution is to do things server side and that's what i am wondering about

Another way to look at this is that practically all games work well on Linux, unless the developers try very hard to make it not work on Linux.

Yea, all the really popular online games are gonna be in that 10%.

All i want is rocket league :(

At least tf2 works

Rocket League was native on Linux at one point.

Before Epic Games acquired it...

Does Rocket League no longer work with Proton? It used to work even better than both the native Linux and Windows versions for me back in the day. If not, what changed?

FWIW, Rocket League works just fine on Linux, but you need to set it to the Proton compatibility, not the native Linux client.

I too recall having issues with the anti-cheat last I tried (years ago at this point).

How did those issues get fixed? Did they abandon the anti cheat, or does the anti cheat now work under proton?

Rocket League never had issues with anti-cheat. I have been actively playing it since before they stopped shipping a native version.

What? They use Easy Anti Cheat, which is one of those nasty kernel level anti cheats. Even ignoring my personal experience with the issue, a kernel level anti cheat built for windows seems quite unlikely to not have any issues whatsoever on Linux...

Do you only play offline or something?

Rocket League literally has a platinum status on ProtonDB[0]. It works perfectly on Steam using Proton if you have it there, or Heroic[1] if you have it through EGL.

Rocket League has literally never been unable to run on GNU/Linux. The full game. Multiplayer, Steam workshop, everything.

I suspect you may be thinking of a different game honestly. Maybe League of Legends? I think they switched to an invasive anti cheat a few years ago that caused it to no longer work on GNU/Linux.

[0] https://www.protondb.com/app/252950

[1] https://heroicgameslauncher.com/

Rocket League works just fine for me, via Proton. I have over 4k hours in, each one of them done from Linux.

BakkesMod also works, thanks to https://github.com/CrumblyLiquid/BakkesLinux

Rocket League has a platinum rating on ProtonDB: https://www.protondb.com/app/252950

Does that include multiplayer? As far as i know, multiplayer was killed a couple years ago, which is actually what i meant by “works on Linux”

Yeah I have hundreds of hours or more in Rocket League on Linux, all competitive multiplayer. I use the Heroic launcher: https://heroicgameslauncher.com/

YES! Use the Proton version, not the native Linux version.

I was able to get a new install of Rocket League working recently using Heroic Launcher! https://heroicgameslauncher.com/

Perhaps there is an opportunity for an open source reimplementation like OpenMW or OpenRA?

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