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devel_origin's avatar
4 years ago
Solved

As we know, Valve is implying that Apex will run on Linux

Valve has announced Steam Deck. It's a handheld PC that's supposed to eventually run all games of the Steam library, and it uses Linux OS.

From Valve's FAQ (https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/steamdeck/faq):


My game uses anti-cheat, which currently doesn’t work with Proton - how do I get around this for Steam Deck?
We’re working with BattlEye and EAC to get support for Proton ahead of launch.


Apex Legends uses EAC, it's the sole barrier for Linux support. So Apex Legends should work on Linux soon. How's the progress? Any difficulties?

9 Replies

  • nixRidge's avatar
    nixRidge
    New Adventurer
    4 years ago

    Hopefully the work is coming along nicely; I've recently seen people being able to play Apex very briefly[1] under Wine and/or Proton, but it was a short lived victory, as it went back to not working anymore following a Wine update.

    However, as far as I understand, Valve isn't working with EA on this issue. Rather, they're working with EAC and BattlEye themselves directly to make these anti-cheats work. I also don't think EA is greenlighting native Linux ports of their games any time soon, sorry to say. Wine or Proton will be the way to run the game once it's working, unless a miracle happens and EA smiles upon us Linux users.

    So with that in mind this isn't quite the place to ask, but hopefully I managed to clear things up anyways =)

    [1]: Source: Lutris community Discord.


  • @nixRidge wrote:

    However, as far as I understand, Valve isn't working with EA on this issue. Rather, they're working with EAC and BattlEye themselves directly to make these anti-cheats work.

    So with that in mind this isn't quite the place to ask, but hopefully I managed to clear things up anyways =)


    It worked in 2019 (https://answers.ea.com/t5/Technical-Issues/Latest-update-breaks-game-through-Wine-Linux-compatibility-layer/m-p/7434487#M4026), and EAC works right now in Wine for some other games.

    So I'm pretty sure that the roadblocks are here.

  • The solution was available in WINE, but it was bannable for users to use EAC. I understand that it was EA servers that blocked these users due to anti cheat reasons.  Fast forward to this year. Linux kernel 5.11 added support to Syscall User Dispatch. This enabled Anti-cheat developers to implement a solution to safely add their software without the issue root could manipulate the application. This month Battleye en EAC officially supported Wine. Now its up to the game developers to activate this option.

    The question should be is EA supporting EAC using Wine in Apex? Of so, when is this story added from the backlog to a sprint and implemented? 

  • RovkirHexus's avatar
    RovkirHexus
    4 years ago

    From my understanding, it was a serverside EAC update that broke the wine compatibility back in mid 2020. Also, most of the devs/more knowledgeable users on the Lutris discord agreed that the syscall tools added to the kernel wouldn't immediately make kernel anticheat work in wine/proton, tho it may have helped lead up to what has been announced by both Battleye and EAC.

    As of right now, the game itself runs perfectly fine, however it will kick you to the login screen after about a minute due to EAC not currently working though proton. As long as Respawn enables the option for EAC to run in wine, the game itself should run perfectly fine. Whether or not the EAC compatibility holds up is more of a question, tho seeing as it's an officially supported solution rather than a reverse-engineered solution like the previous custom wine version, I'd say it'll probably be just fine.

    Given the popularity of Apex, I doubt EA/Respawn have much to lose by enabling wine support, but I'm not a Respawn dev. As someone who uses Linux on my home system and played Apex during the time it was playable on Linux last year, I'd love to see this enabled.

  • There is no Linux OS, Linux is a kernel, the distribution wraps around the kernel, that's effectively the OS you're talking about.

    Previous Steam OS was based on Debian and now it's based on Arch Linux utilizing the GNU / Linux user space. 

  • KelRiever's avatar
    KelRiever
    4 years ago

    Maybe the downloads won't take 40000 years per update?

    Probably not.  Respawn adds the chaff.

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