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Very interesting! The one killer issue that jumps to mind is anti-cheat. I switched away from gaming on Linux via Proton to gaming on Windows because Battlefiel

Very interesting! The one killer issue that jumps to mind is anti-cheat. I switched away from gaming on Linux via Proton to gaming on Windows because Battlefield 6's anti-cheat won't work under Proton. Many games are like this, particularly some of the most popular (Rainbow 6 Siege for instance). And BF6 made this decision only recently despite the growing number of Steam Deck players (and other players on linux - in fairness I don't think there would have been that many BF6 players on a handheld). Edit: I specifically use a gaming-only PC. The hardware is used for nothing else. Hence, discussions of rootkits don't really bother me personally much and on balance I'd really rather see fewer cheaters in my games. I think it would be the same with any of these machines - anything Steam-branded is likely to be a 99% gaming machine and their users will only care that their games work, not about the mechanisms of the anti-cheat software.

hananova 10mo ago
All Valve has to do is say “Your software cannot deliberately exclude linux support including kernel anti-cheat to be listed on Steam.” And that would be that, the few devs big enough to make it on their own would leave, and everyone else would adapt.
- superxpro12 10mo ago
  Ironically, this might create a perverse incentive to shift gamers to linux as all the hackers jump from windows to linux to take advantage of the lack of KMAC.
- pityJuke 10mo ago
  Worth noting: Valve’s own first party tournaments for their own game require kernel level anti-cheat (from a third party vendor). Valve themselves have given up on allowing players in their own title play competitively in a Valve sponsored event with a kernel level anti-cheat. I can’t imagine they’d ever be this brash. There is no adapting without a proper solution for securing game integrity.
  - wiredpancake 10mo ago
    You clearly are very misinformed on how Valve operates and runs the competitive CS2 environment. Valve does not require a Kernel Level Anti-Cheat for "first party" tournaments. It is not stipulated anywhere in the Major Rulebook: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/counter-strike_rules_and_regs/blob/main/major-supplemental-rulebook.md https://github.com/ValveSoftware/counter-strike_rules_and_re... The reason third-party anti-cheats are commonplace at these events is because most tournaments opt to use Faceit or similar for game scheduling. This was the case before VRS (with RMRs) and the TO could choose an anti-cheat of their choosing. This always ended up being Faceit AC or whatever platform the matches are scheduled via (For example, PGL used Challenger Mode, which used Akros Anti-Cheat). ESL of course uses Faceit because (ESL Faceit Group). You do not understand how Majors are run. It is very hands off from Valve. Only recently, with the introduction of VRS has Valve started controlling and implementing dedicated rules into the ecosystem for TOs.
    - pityJuke 10mo ago
      > The reason third-party anti-cheats are commonplace at these events is because most tournaments opt to use Faceit or similar for game scheduling. This was the case before VRS (with RMRs) and the TO could choose an anti-cheat of their choosing. This always ended up being Faceit AC or whatever platform the matches are scheduled via (For example, PGL used Challenger Mode, which used Akros Anti-Cheat). ESL of course uses Faceit because (ESL Faceit Group). No it isn't. They're not using it by happenstance, because it is a feature of the platform, they're using it because it would not be competitively viable without it. PGL caught major flak for using Akros [0] because the tool was not good enough at the time to handle a Major qualifier. Just because something is not specified in the rulebook does not mean it is not de facto. Not a single Valve-sponsored major has ever lacked a third-party kernel anti-cheats, from the qualifiers (when they existed), to the VRS eligible events. Yes, I am simplifying for the audience by calling them first-party. They're technically all contracted events on a tender process [1] (well, even TI is contracted out to PGL as of late). The point still stands: events on Counter-Strike, with sponsored by Valve and with tight in-game integrations in the form of stickers, blog posts[2], and other advertisements, all rely critically on kernel-level anti-cheat for game integrity purposes. Or to put it more succinctly: there is no viable pathway for a player to get their autograph into Counter-Strike 2 playing on Linux. [0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/19499bu/akros_anti_cheat_addresses_the_terrible_major_rmr/ https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/19499bu/ak... [1]: https://www.hltv.org/news/40764/valve-sets-start-of-march-as-deadline-for-2027-and-2028-major-proposals https://www.hltv.org/news/40764/valve-sets-start-of-march-as... [2]: Today's blog post for the Starladder Budapest Major: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/730/view/578276333072682039 https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/730/view/57827633307...
- Goronmon 10mo ago
  Is there an feasible alternative to "kernel anti-cheat" available on Linux?
  - Sohcahtoa82 10mo ago
    There isn't. When it comes to anti-cheat on Linux, it's basically an elephant in the room that nobody wants to address. Anti-cheat on Linux would need root access to have any effectiveness. Alternatively, you'd need to be running a custom kernel with anti-cheat built into it. This is the part of the conversation where someone says anti-cheat needs to be server-side, but that's an incredibly naive and poorly thought out idea. You can't prevent aim-bots server-side. You can't even detect aim-bots server-side. At best, you could come up with heuristics to determine if someone's possibly cheating, but you'd probably have a very hard time distinguishing between a cheater and a highly skilled player. Something I think the anti-anti-cheat people fail to recognize is that cheaters don't care about their cheats requiring root/admin, which makes it trivial to evade anti-cheat that only runs with user-level permissions. When it comes to cheating in games, there are two options: 1. Anti-cheat runs as admin/root/rootkit/SYSTEM/etc. 2. The games you play have tons of cheaters. You can't have it both ways: No cheaters and anti-cheat runs with user-level permissions.
    - likeclockwork 10mo ago
      I'm not letting a game company have root on my PC. How does that kind of exposure for something as frivolous as gaming even make sense?
      - 0x457 10mo ago
        That's how gaming on windows work. You're a minority with that opinion.
      - paxys 10mo ago
        Something that is "frivolous" to you is a passion or even a profession for others. Competitive gaming is a massive market worldwide, and it wouldn't exist without the ability to enforce a level playing field. Not everything has to be a holy FOSS war.
- brian-armstrong 10mo ago
  The games would just leave Steam. The big publishers want their own platforms and launchers anyway.
  - vkou 10mo ago
    That's not the trend that we're observing. As much as publishers and developers want to control their sales channels, the current trend is for them to move towards Steam, not away from it. The more likely outcome is that developers would segment matchmaking into people with kernel-level anti-cheat, and people without it. This seems fair to me.
    - jsheard 10mo ago
      Several big publishers did move away from Steam until Valve conceded some of their revenue, reducing their cut from 30% to 25/20% at certain revenue thresholds. That convinced the publishers to return to Steam, but it showed that Valve isn't immune to being flexed on by the bigger players.
  - conor- 10mo ago
    The big publishers already have their own launcher and platforms and are increasingly moving back onto Steam because they see higher PC player counts and sales when their games are there
  - 59nadir 10mo ago
    Games can leave Steam, but whenever they do they run into the awkward issue that gamers aren't usually coming with them, at least not in numbers that justify trying to create your own thing.
- Yokolos 10mo ago
  Yeah, I would hope not. Trying to impose your will on suppliers and b2b customers like this is how you get hit with an antitrust lawsuit.
aDyslecticCrow 10mo ago
This is a issue of critical mass. With the continued growth of steamos, steamdeck, and linux as a game platform, eventually it will pull over support.
- sodality2 10mo ago
  I have to wonder if it's possible to ever even guarantee something that can't be trivially bypassed on Linux - Windows, sure, it's possible with DMA, but it's damn hard. On Linux you could just compile a spoofed kernel or a DKMS module or something.
  - kykat 10mo ago
    Look at android, locked bootloader, no root, se linux, and voila
    - robotnikman 10mo ago
      It looks like Valve wants to avoid going down the road of an extremely locked down system like that. They even view the ability to load alternate OS's as a feature of their products.
      - lifty 10mo ago
        They could offer both locked down signed software on top of their hardware and allow for bypass when the user wants to install their own thing. I prefer by default to have locked down signed chain of software bootstrapping but I do want to also have the ability to use my own.
  - aDyslecticCrow 10mo ago
    you can make a signed readonly linux installation, and restrict your games to it. this would be like "support steamos but not linux". Or deliver the game as a container format, like snap or appimage to bypass most of the system. Or demand the installation of a kernel driver like they do on windows. or just give up on kernel level aticheat since they're been breached all the same, just as windows are restricting their power too. easy-anticheat has a linux version. Developers have to disable the support intentionally.
kyoji 10mo ago
It's worse than that, BF6's anticheat is kernel level and requires the Windows-only version secure boot to be enabled, at least on my motherboard. There is no way I'm going to faff about with my BIOS when rebooting just to play this game.
- Jnr 10mo ago
  I don't know how EFI boot works but I am running a gaming PC in dual boot and I have both Microsoft and my own personal secure boot keys loaded (for linux and grub) I boot my own signed bootloader (grub) from which I can also boot Windows. Windows shows it is in secure boot mode and it works fine with BF6 for me. But I have a feeling this allows users to run some bootkit/rootkit and bypass any of those kernel level anti-cheats. Maybe I'm wrong and EFI handover to Windows clears all the memory, but I somehow doubt it.
conor- 10mo ago
I view it as Valve is doing me a favor by adding friction towards me installing a rootkit to play video games. There's also been numerous userspace ACs that work well and also run in userspace (EAC, Battleye, etc.) that have been enabled for Linux/Proton users (including by EA with Apex Legends at one point). A lot of the support for Linux mostly comes down to the developer/publishers not wanting to and not because of technical reasons.
- superxpro12 10mo ago
  There are hacks these days that sniff the pcie bus with an FPGA to mitm the ram, render out the game state, and render an overlay on top of the monitor. It's a crazy arms race that IDK even kernel mode can compete with at the end of the day. I think this shift away from community-led multiplayer is approaching a dead-end with respect to this hacking arms race. Player bans and votekicks used to be so easy to do. And while there were some badmins, I argue it still resulted in an overall healthier multiplayer ecosystem. OF course we know this shift is so the developer can control the game more tightly for monetization purposes. But i think the end result of this is more harm than good.
- baby 10mo ago
  on the other hand you can't play any of the older battlefields due to cheating (not like "is he cheating?" more like blatant "this guy is speedhacking and heashotting everyone" cheating that the server could easily detect if they cared about it)
  - BlueTemplar 10mo ago
    Is that the same Battlefields that removed support for private servers ?
bob1029 10mo ago
Looking at the specs and marketing copy, it sounds to me like you could secure boot windows 11 on this machine. > ... a discrete semi-custom AMD desktop class CPU and GPU. > Yes, Steam Machine is optimized for gaming, but it's still your PC. Install your own apps, or even another operating system. Who are we to tell you how to use your computer?
butlike 10mo ago
Do we know what kernel SteamOS uses? Is it built on linux, or could it be some sort of kiosk'd mode Windows where this will be a non-issue? One could hope but I truly don't know.
- Jnr 10mo ago
  It is running Valve's immutable fork of Archlinux, you can find their source package mirror online.
  - butlike 10mo ago
    Awesome, thanks!
- pja 10mo ago
  SteamOS on the Deck is just a standard (tuned) Linux distribution under the hood. It would be very surprising to me if Valve shifted to an entirely different OS for the Cube.
  - butlike 10mo ago
    Ahh cool, thanks
Klaus23 10mo ago
Perhaps a trusted execution environment based anti-cheat system could be possible. I think Valve said something about working with anti-cheat developers to find a solution for the Steam Deck, but nothing happened. Perhaps they will do something this time. With a TEE, you could scan the system or even completely isolate your game, preventing even the OS from manipulating it. As a last resort, you could simply blacklist the machine if cheats are detected. There would probably still be some cheaters, but the numbers would be so low as to not be a problem.
- SchemaLoad 10mo ago
  Maybe the user friction would be too much, but I'd be happy for the system to just straight up reboot for games which require anti cheat. So while that game is running, the system is in a verified state. But once you close the game all of your mods and custom drivers can be loaded just fine.
AceJohnny2 10mo ago
Same. I mainline Destiny2 (well, a bit less these days), and Bungie won't support Linux/Steam Deck because they depend on BattlEye kernel anti-cheat. (and yet still have a problem with cheaters, see all the bans following the Desert Perpetual raid race)
- Jnr 10mo ago
  BattleEye is supported on Linux and Steam Deck, Bungie simply decided not to enable support for it. https://areweanticheatyet.com/?search=battleye&sortOrder=&sortBy= https://areweanticheatyet.com/?search=battleye&sortOrder=&so...
davikr 10mo ago
I'd have Secure Boot, and then one root for an user-modifiable regular Linux installation, and another root that is read-only, signed, custom kernel etc.
morshu9001 10mo ago
Even without anticheat, ProtonDB has a lot of "gold" ratings it really shouldn't; the comments explain the real experience. See BeamNG and AOE2:DE.

hananova 10mo ago

All Valve has to do is say “Your software cannot deliberately exclude linux support including kernel anti-cheat to be listed on Steam.” And that would be that, the few devs big enough to make it on their own would leave, and everyone else would adapt.

superxpro12 10mo ago
Ironically, this might create a perverse incentive to shift gamers to linux as all the hackers jump from windows to linux to take advantage of the lack of KMAC.
pityJuke 10mo ago
Worth noting: Valve’s own first party tournaments for their own game require kernel level anti-cheat (from a third party vendor). Valve themselves have given up on allowing players in their own title play competitively in a Valve sponsored event with a kernel level anti-cheat. I can’t imagine they’d ever be this brash. There is no adapting without a proper solution for securing game integrity.
- wiredpancake 10mo ago
  You clearly are very misinformed on how Valve operates and runs the competitive CS2 environment. Valve does not require a Kernel Level Anti-Cheat for "first party" tournaments. It is not stipulated anywhere in the Major Rulebook: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/counter-strike_rules_and_regs/blob/main/major-supplemental-rulebook.md https://github.com/ValveSoftware/counter-strike_rules_and_re... The reason third-party anti-cheats are commonplace at these events is because most tournaments opt to use Faceit or similar for game scheduling. This was the case before VRS (with RMRs) and the TO could choose an anti-cheat of their choosing. This always ended up being Faceit AC or whatever platform the matches are scheduled via (For example, PGL used Challenger Mode, which used Akros Anti-Cheat). ESL of course uses Faceit because (ESL Faceit Group). You do not understand how Majors are run. It is very hands off from Valve. Only recently, with the introduction of VRS has Valve started controlling and implementing dedicated rules into the ecosystem for TOs.
  - pityJuke 10mo ago
    > The reason third-party anti-cheats are commonplace at these events is because most tournaments opt to use Faceit or similar for game scheduling. This was the case before VRS (with RMRs) and the TO could choose an anti-cheat of their choosing. This always ended up being Faceit AC or whatever platform the matches are scheduled via (For example, PGL used Challenger Mode, which used Akros Anti-Cheat). ESL of course uses Faceit because (ESL Faceit Group). No it isn't. They're not using it by happenstance, because it is a feature of the platform, they're using it because it would not be competitively viable without it. PGL caught major flak for using Akros [0] because the tool was not good enough at the time to handle a Major qualifier. Just because something is not specified in the rulebook does not mean it is not de facto. Not a single Valve-sponsored major has ever lacked a third-party kernel anti-cheats, from the qualifiers (when they existed), to the VRS eligible events. Yes, I am simplifying for the audience by calling them first-party. They're technically all contracted events on a tender process [1] (well, even TI is contracted out to PGL as of late). The point still stands: events on Counter-Strike, with sponsored by Valve and with tight in-game integrations in the form of stickers, blog posts[2], and other advertisements, all rely critically on kernel-level anti-cheat for game integrity purposes. Or to put it more succinctly: there is no viable pathway for a player to get their autograph into Counter-Strike 2 playing on Linux. [0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/19499bu/akros_anti_cheat_addresses_the_terrible_major_rmr/ https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/19499bu/ak... [1]: https://www.hltv.org/news/40764/valve-sets-start-of-march-as-deadline-for-2027-and-2028-major-proposals https://www.hltv.org/news/40764/valve-sets-start-of-march-as... [2]: Today's blog post for the Starladder Budapest Major: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/730/view/578276333072682039 https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/730/view/57827633307...
Goronmon 10mo ago
Is there an feasible alternative to "kernel anti-cheat" available on Linux?
- Sohcahtoa82 10mo ago
  There isn't. When it comes to anti-cheat on Linux, it's basically an elephant in the room that nobody wants to address. Anti-cheat on Linux would need root access to have any effectiveness. Alternatively, you'd need to be running a custom kernel with anti-cheat built into it. This is the part of the conversation where someone says anti-cheat needs to be server-side, but that's an incredibly naive and poorly thought out idea. You can't prevent aim-bots server-side. You can't even detect aim-bots server-side. At best, you could come up with heuristics to determine if someone's possibly cheating, but you'd probably have a very hard time distinguishing between a cheater and a highly skilled player. Something I think the anti-anti-cheat people fail to recognize is that cheaters don't care about their cheats requiring root/admin, which makes it trivial to evade anti-cheat that only runs with user-level permissions. When it comes to cheating in games, there are two options: 1. Anti-cheat runs as admin/root/rootkit/SYSTEM/etc. 2. The games you play have tons of cheaters. You can't have it both ways: No cheaters and anti-cheat runs with user-level permissions.
  - likeclockwork 10mo ago
    I'm not letting a game company have root on my PC. How does that kind of exposure for something as frivolous as gaming even make sense?
    - 0x457 10mo ago
      That's how gaming on windows work. You're a minority with that opinion.
    - paxys 10mo ago
      Something that is "frivolous" to you is a passion or even a profession for others. Competitive gaming is a massive market worldwide, and it wouldn't exist without the ability to enforce a level playing field. Not everything has to be a holy FOSS war.
brian-armstrong 10mo ago
The games would just leave Steam. The big publishers want their own platforms and launchers anyway.
- vkou 10mo ago
  That's not the trend that we're observing. As much as publishers and developers want to control their sales channels, the current trend is for them to move towards Steam, not away from it. The more likely outcome is that developers would segment matchmaking into people with kernel-level anti-cheat, and people without it. This seems fair to me.
  - jsheard 10mo ago
    Several big publishers did move away from Steam until Valve conceded some of their revenue, reducing their cut from 30% to 25/20% at certain revenue thresholds. That convinced the publishers to return to Steam, but it showed that Valve isn't immune to being flexed on by the bigger players.
- conor- 10mo ago
  The big publishers already have their own launcher and platforms and are increasingly moving back onto Steam because they see higher PC player counts and sales when their games are there
- 59nadir 10mo ago
  Games can leave Steam, but whenever they do they run into the awkward issue that gamers aren't usually coming with them, at least not in numbers that justify trying to create your own thing.
Yokolos 10mo ago
Yeah, I would hope not. Trying to impose your will on suppliers and b2b customers like this is how you get hit with an antitrust lawsuit.

aDyslecticCrow 10mo ago

This is a issue of critical mass. With the continued growth of steamos, steamdeck, and linux as a game platform, eventually it will pull over support.

sodality2 10mo ago
I have to wonder if it's possible to ever even guarantee something that can't be trivially bypassed on Linux - Windows, sure, it's possible with DMA, but it's damn hard. On Linux you could just compile a spoofed kernel or a DKMS module or something.
- kykat 10mo ago
  Look at android, locked bootloader, no root, se linux, and voila
  - robotnikman 10mo ago
    It looks like Valve wants to avoid going down the road of an extremely locked down system like that. They even view the ability to load alternate OS's as a feature of their products.
    - lifty 10mo ago
      They could offer both locked down signed software on top of their hardware and allow for bypass when the user wants to install their own thing. I prefer by default to have locked down signed chain of software bootstrapping but I do want to also have the ability to use my own.
- aDyslecticCrow 10mo ago
  you can make a signed readonly linux installation, and restrict your games to it. this would be like "support steamos but not linux". Or deliver the game as a container format, like snap or appimage to bypass most of the system. Or demand the installation of a kernel driver like they do on windows. or just give up on kernel level aticheat since they're been breached all the same, just as windows are restricting their power too. easy-anticheat has a linux version. Developers have to disable the support intentionally.

kyoji 10mo ago

It's worse than that, BF6's anticheat is kernel level and requires the Windows-only version secure boot to be enabled, at least on my motherboard. There is no way I'm going to faff about with my BIOS when rebooting just to play this game.

Jnr 10mo ago
I don't know how EFI boot works but I am running a gaming PC in dual boot and I have both Microsoft and my own personal secure boot keys loaded (for linux and grub) I boot my own signed bootloader (grub) from which I can also boot Windows. Windows shows it is in secure boot mode and it works fine with BF6 for me. But I have a feeling this allows users to run some bootkit/rootkit and bypass any of those kernel level anti-cheats. Maybe I'm wrong and EFI handover to Windows clears all the memory, but I somehow doubt it.

conor- 10mo ago

I view it as Valve is doing me a favor by adding friction towards me installing a rootkit to play video games. There's also been numerous userspace ACs that work well and also run in userspace (EAC, Battleye, etc.) that have been enabled for Linux/Proton users (including by EA with Apex Legends at one point). A lot of the support for Linux mostly comes down to the developer/publishers not wanting to and not because of technical reasons.

superxpro12 10mo ago
There are hacks these days that sniff the pcie bus with an FPGA to mitm the ram, render out the game state, and render an overlay on top of the monitor. It's a crazy arms race that IDK even kernel mode can compete with at the end of the day. I think this shift away from community-led multiplayer is approaching a dead-end with respect to this hacking arms race. Player bans and votekicks used to be so easy to do. And while there were some badmins, I argue it still resulted in an overall healthier multiplayer ecosystem. OF course we know this shift is so the developer can control the game more tightly for monetization purposes. But i think the end result of this is more harm than good.
baby 10mo ago
on the other hand you can't play any of the older battlefields due to cheating (not like "is he cheating?" more like blatant "this guy is speedhacking and heashotting everyone" cheating that the server could easily detect if they cared about it)
- BlueTemplar 10mo ago
  Is that the same Battlefields that removed support for private servers ?

bob1029 10mo ago

Looking at the specs and marketing copy, it sounds to me like you could secure boot windows 11 on this machine. > ... a discrete semi-custom AMD desktop class CPU and GPU. > Yes, Steam Machine is optimized for gaming, but it's still your PC. Install your own apps, or even another operating system. Who are we to tell you how to use your computer?

butlike 10mo ago

Do we know what kernel SteamOS uses? Is it built on linux, or could it be some sort of kiosk'd mode Windows where this will be a non-issue? One could hope but I truly don't know.

Jnr 10mo ago
It is running Valve's immutable fork of Archlinux, you can find their source package mirror online.
- butlike 10mo ago
  Awesome, thanks!
pja 10mo ago
SteamOS on the Deck is just a standard (tuned) Linux distribution under the hood. It would be very surprising to me if Valve shifted to an entirely different OS for the Cube.
- butlike 10mo ago
  Ahh cool, thanks

Klaus23 10mo ago

Perhaps a trusted execution environment based anti-cheat system could be possible. I think Valve said something about working with anti-cheat developers to find a solution for the Steam Deck, but nothing happened. Perhaps they will do something this time. With a TEE, you could scan the system or even completely isolate your game, preventing even the OS from manipulating it. As a last resort, you could simply blacklist the machine if cheats are detected. There would probably still be some cheaters, but the numbers would be so low as to not be a problem.

SchemaLoad 10mo ago
Maybe the user friction would be too much, but I'd be happy for the system to just straight up reboot for games which require anti cheat. So while that game is running, the system is in a verified state. But once you close the game all of your mods and custom drivers can be loaded just fine.

AceJohnny2 10mo ago

Same. I mainline Destiny2 (well, a bit less these days), and Bungie won't support Linux/Steam Deck because they depend on BattlEye kernel anti-cheat. (and yet still have a problem with cheaters, see all the bans following the Desert Perpetual raid race)

Jnr 10mo ago
BattleEye is supported on Linux and Steam Deck, Bungie simply decided not to enable support for it. https://areweanticheatyet.com/?search=battleye&sortOrder=&sortBy= https://areweanticheatyet.com/?search=battleye&sortOrder=&so...

davikr 10mo ago

I'd have Secure Boot, and then one root for an user-modifiable regular Linux installation, and another root that is read-only, signed, custom kernel etc.

morshu9001 10mo ago

Even without anticheat, ProtonDB has a lot of "gold" ratings it really shouldn't; the comments explain the real experience. See BeamNG and AOE2:DE.