it’s happened.

anticheat developers have found ways to identify legitimate steamdeck builds, and prohibits usage on linux itself. steamdeck only.

even if you run a SteamOS image, it’s still broken which means it’s likely checking CPU and GPU topology. which means that if you do end up finding a spoof, you’re essentially emulating a steamdeck (along with it’s performance characteristics and resolution.)

@ada yayyyyyy /sarcastic

@ada aughhh i fucking had a bad feeling this would happen

i bet it'll be set off on different OSes too, which sucks cuz i run bazzite on my steam deck

ATM the only two anticheats where this is in use is Mihoyo/Cognosphere’s HoyoProtect (although it doesn’t actually change it’s behavior as of yet and remains to be inert on both the Deck and Linux proper) and Tencent’s ACE (which is a backdoor, but disables itself on SteamDeck environments, crashes in Linux environments.)

@ada are there any known examples of this in the wild?

@ada I wanna make a “at least nothing of value was lost” but this sets a precedent for other companies to do the same.

If EAC and BattlEye implement this same behavior then it’s quite doomed for multiplayer games on Linux because I don’t see Valve doing anything to change this as they’re the winner in the end.

@esm https://store.steampowered.com/app/1282270/Strinova/
https://www.protondb.com/app/1282270

I also don’t need to mention how bad this would be if Valve released their immutable SteamOS 3 builds and anticheats magically worked only on those images.

It would be the beginning of the “extinguish” part of EEE as Valve is currently extending the linux kernel.

@ada i don't think so, valve has to lose with this because they're now working on "powered by steamos" hardware with partners

so any check that fails in a pc running a steamos (but not on the deck itself) image would fail on official partners, valve has reason to not want this

@navi .

@navi my fear is that it will only work on official SteamOS images where the entire system is locked down and controlled by Valve.

That’s not Linux anymore at that point and Valve still win in the end.

@ada farfetched to be only on those images

because even if it is, once hardware specific checks are not a thing, spoofing anything else is really easy

it would suck still, yes

@ada @navi Valve joins the OS battle between MS and Apple by becoming MacOS 2: Electric boogaloo

@ada huh

@navi I don’t like valve getting even more control in the gaming sphere. I don’t want them to be the only reason gaming on linux is viable. And yet we’re in that reality.

If Valve decides to no longer play nice, it’s just over. There’s no alternative, go to jail do not pass go do not collect $200.

@ada @navi The day Gabe bites it could mark a turning point for gaming as a whole

@ada valve not playing nice is counter intuitive for them

not only is less market, but also at cw we're pushed to upstream game fixes in wine wherever possible, appid hacks in proton supposed to be temporary

@ada i mean as long as valve doesn’t drop support of steam on normal Linux i personally don’t care since i won’t play that type of game with rootkits in it anyways

@ada but if valve does stop caring about desktop Linux users I’m simply going to pirate video games instead. that’s who they’ve always been competing against

@ada this solves nothing lmao

@esm Infinity Nikki apparently does this as well.

Two games do this ATM, Strinova and Infinity Nikki. Both use Tencent ACE/Protect.

@ada ah Infinity Nikki was touted as “working on Deck” a few days ago, this must be the response

@gamer it is working on the Steam Deck

Problem is, now you can’t consider Steam Deck and Linux to be equivalent. Devs have shown that they only care about the deck and linux itself can go die.

Also it seems the devs aren’t even aware ACE has a SteamDeck shaped hole in it.

@ada wouldn't the resolution part break as soon as someone docks their steam deck? I guess unless they keep the resolution exactly the same

@ch0ccyra1n digging more into it, some people think that it checks CPU identifiers and performance since the steam deck has a custom APU. but I haven’t checked myself.

Three. Delta Force. Also another Tencent ACE game.

It’s safe to say Tencent Protect/Tencent ACE doesn’t work on Linux but makes an exception for the Steam Deck.

@ada Genshin please still work please only use it only for analytics or something, please don't make hoyoprotect broken on non-steam deck

@AmyIsCoolz Mihoyo seems to have no intention of breaking it in Linux, and from what I’ve seen so far they seem to be motivated to make it more stable. All of their games run on Linux at the moment.