I'm gonna give EA the benefit of the doubt right now, and hope, really hope, that this is just a mistake..
And that they didn't really go to the effort of getting Apex Legends playable on the Steam Deck, the device we're all excited about, that's sold out until the end of the year, working with Valve, fixing bugs, enabling EAC compatibility, adding the .so file, getting your game Verified, .... just to turn off EAC compatibility immediately a few days later.
Because that would be a really "EA 2013" thing to do.
EA, I haven't trusted ya in a long time, but when you enabled EAC compatibility for Apex Legends, you gave me a glimmer of hope they may be good in you.
UPDATE: My faith was not misplaced, the issue has been resolved! Thanks EA. <3
I just wish to add my support out there as someone gaming on Linux.
Since the support was added, I've racked up 76 hours of ingame time, purchased the season pass and some apex packs (to hopefully support that Linux will bring in some revenue, y'know?) and the game ran pretty flawlessly.
I'm aware that the game never 'officially' claimed Linux support, so I'm not criticising them for my expenditure, I knew the risk. But I can't deny how hopeful I am that this is just an oversight.
I've been playing this with my partner (Who plays on Windows) but she absolutely will not play if I'm not in the squad, so I know she's going to be gutted to hear about this.
I'm reserving judgement for now, hoping that this is just a mistake/oversight and the missing file will be returned with alacrity.
When Apex Legends released back in 2019, EA/Respawn hadn't enabled EAC at release or it was still propagating. It was in early days of WIne/DXVK (WIne 3 and DXVK 0.5b or 0.6v) but Apex ran out of the box, and for first few days it was bliss. Then EAC kicked in and started kicking me with the EAC error auth or client not running, dummy client.
Someone started a thread here in technical or feedback and it reached if I remember correctly 30 pages and had over 150 people using the "me too" button. To sum it up, it was in a kind way, practically asking and even begging EA/Respawn to add support for linux.
Not a single acknowledgment from EA Community/Support staff or any devs.
Basically shunned.
Fast forward to now...
Even though I had fun for a week, I do not expect anything from EA Community Staff or support or any dev replies or acknowledgement about the current issue.
This has been the way for many years with a lot of software development studios. I don't expect them to change because linux really does have image problem.
