Ubisoft's FOR HONOR will block SteamOS / Linux players starting September 10

haunter

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/anticheat/

vsviridov

When you though Ubisoft can't get any worse...

jorvi

This stuff should only be legal if companies are forced to return you the full purchase price of the game.

thrownawaysz

Valve can't even make their own anti cheat system work (VAC) on Windows let alone on Linux so not surprised that 3rd party publishers with 3rd party anti cheat system is giving up. I mean they technically work as a software but they don't fullfil their purpose, to block cheaters.

foxyv

---I stopped buying Ubisoft games after CoD MW2 when they stopped allowing dedicated servers and switched to P2P. The gameplay was trash. Can't say I miss it.--- Nevermind, wrong company.

Insanity

I recently moved to Linux for gaming. Last time I tried was around 2008 and I guess I was reluctant to move gaming to Linux because that experience was far from smooth. Honestly, it's like magic that I can run "The Finals" on highest settings without any hiccup. It literally 'just works'. Happy that I could completely get rid of Windows (it was only there for gaming). It's still hard to believe, given back in 2008 when playing CS I had framerate bugs, text would not render properly (even after messing around with it for some days), and mouse input was.. not ideal. It's come a long way since the days of WINE. FWIW, I moved from Debian to "Nobara Linux" for this. Mostly because I was in the mood for some distro hopping as well. Highly recommend the experience. ( https://nobaraproject.org/ ). It was a smooth experience from the start, no issues installing it, drivers worked out-of-the-box, audio settings all worked fine, and Steam was pre-installed as well. Super cool. Would not move back to Windows gaming for Ubisoft games lol.

unpopularopp

That's the caveat of Proton. Running games on unsupported platforms they are not meant for. And if it doesn't work who's fault that? Valve? The dev? No one because it's open source so fix your own? Honestly Valve should have a stricter warning if a game is Windows only

iririririr

will never understand people who opt for a rootkit just for a 0,1% chance of a match without cheaters. you're all the worse.

mysteria

Wouldn't it be possible to have two tiers of servers here? Like have one that's accessible to everyone with a possibly increased risk of cheating and one restricted to Windows users. I remember in the old days some games had optional anticheat and there were servers with and without it.

ChrisArchitect

Source: https://www.ubisoft.com/en-gb/game/for-honor/news-updates/4W...

Ithildin

Going forward, I simply will not be purchasing any game that does not work on Linux. I realize that I'll be missing out on some titles, but Windows simply isn't worth the headache. CachyOS has been working great for me. Proton has been amazing. I have had zero problems with the games I typically play -- some of which are multiplayer. Luckily, I have not run into anti-cheat issues yet.

trashb

This is funny since they are literally using "Easy Anti Cheat" and that fully supports Linux. From what I understand Easy Anti Cheat, makes it very easy for developers to run on Linux, basically it is a compile setting to support it. It is one of the anti-cheat providers that had decent Linux support since the beginning. Back before Proton and when it was new developers often denied requests for turning on Linux support, however this is the first time I head a developer actively turning it off. I think it speaks volumes of their intent that the game is to be "fully removed from the Linux platform", and they won't offer the single player experience or non competitive experience for Linux based customers. On top of that it seems to me they tried sneaking this statement in an announcement titled "Ranked FAQ". This shows they have no respect for their customers. https://dev.epicgames.com/docs/epic-online-services/platform...

bakies

I stopped buying Ubisoft games a long time ago for several other reasons

zokier

I expect competitive multiplayer to shift towards dedicated locked down gaming distros (such as steamos) that will offer fully signed hardware backed (tpm) remote attestable system for anti-cheats. Which will make casually playing such games pretty awkward.

scronkfinkle

There's a couple different ways to look at this. From a charitable point of view to ubisoft, they do not advertise support for Linux. Instead they openly state it's a window's only game. So when a third party (i.e. Valve) makes shim that grants linux functionality, it's not really on Ubisoft to maintain that. However, from a consumer perspective, this is incredibly frustrating. The average person does not think of "linux vs. windows". They just bought the steam deck and when they bought For Honor it was sold on that "platform". Again, it's hard to blame Ubisoft for this conundrum since they were never necessarily trying to be steam deck compliant to begin with, but it definitely feels wrong to take the game away from a player in this perspective. All that being said, historically across many games such as Rust, many are quick to blame linux for cheating, but pragmatically banning linux has yet to measurably reduce the amount of cheating that players report experiencing, so I don't agree with the decision at all. It's a footgun disguised as a band aid

dash2

I’d be interested in hearing why they can’t get decent anti-cheat on Linux. Are there technical barriers?

egypturnash

I wonder how Valve will decide to handle the incoming wave of refund requests from well outside the normal 2h playtime window. Looking at the Steam page for this game, there's a "year 10 roadmap" post.

einrealist

Client-side anti-cheat is a band-aid that will always punish legit players and merely hinder cheaters. 'The client cannot be trusted' applies to simple HTTP exchanges as well as to game state. Of course, if the server has to track and validate everything, it would cost more to operate game servers....

drcongo

These are the same dicks that want my kids to create dedicated Ubisoft accounts just to be able to use the PS5 games they've paid for. Never buying anything from these scammers again.

bbor

The fact that the top comment is joking about how this juggernaut of a game is some unknown nobody is part of the problem