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Steam Deck, Linux and Mac Get Easy Anti-Cheat Support

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More platforms will play more games.

Epic Games has just released an update to its Easy Anti-Cheat software that will add support for the Steam Deck, as well as Linux and macOS operating systems. According to an Epic blog post today, the new update is now available to developers for free and is designed to work with Wine and Steam's Proton compatibility layer to ensure all platforms under Linux get full anti-cheat support.

This is great news for Linux Gamers and for the new Steam Deck, since the anti-cheat services were previously locked to Windows operating systems. Even though the games could be fully functional in a compatibility environment such as Proton or Wine. Now, more platforms have the capability to run all multiplayer games  with Epic's popular anti-cheat software, as long as developers enable Linux and Mac support.

This is especially important for Valve's Steam Deck, which counts on its SteamOS being able to run the entire Steam library. Obviously, lacking anti-cheat support could have been a major problem for the new console.

But it appears Valve knew the anti-cheat SDKs were going to be a problem, and was working on a solution well before now. GamesRadar reported a month ago that Valve was focused on ensuring the Steam Deck would run every single game in the Steam library, so much so that Valve considered any game not compatible to be a bug. Steam developer Lawrence Yang specifically said "Something that we said earlier on is that we really want the entire library to work... If it doesn't work we see that as a bug and we want to fix it."

Thankfully Valve has now resolved this "bug", and the Steam deck will have Easy Anti-Cheat support before the consoles release in December.

Aaron Klotz
Aaron Klotz
Contributing Writer

Aaron Klotz is a contributing writer for Tom’s Hardware, covering news related to computer hardware such as CPUs, and graphics cards.

8 Comments Comment from the forums
  • ezst036
    Gamers are rapidly being released from the domineering clutches of Microsoft. Free at last! - if you so choose.

    Apple never appreciated gamers. But Linux is a good home for gamers and will likely be better in the long run than Windows.
    Reply
  • USAFRet
    Seeing as 'Easy AntiCheat' is the root cause of many system crashes, this is probably not a good thing.
    Reply
  • g-unit1111
    Oh man I want a Steam Deck very badly. I hope Steam will take measures to protect its' buyers from the bots.
    Reply
  • hotaru.hino
    ezst036 said:
    Gamers are rapidly being released from the domineering clutches of Microsoft. Free at last! - if you so choose.
    And yet we're still chained down to Valve and/or the publisher of the games.

    Where's the "freedom" if we're still using proprietary, DRM controlled software in the end?
    Reply
  • Sleepy_Hollowed
    hotaru.hino said:
    And yet we're still chained down to Valve and/or the publisher of the games.

    Where's the "freedom" if we're still using proprietary, DRM controlled software in the end?

    it’s not like the investors of those companies will allow releases in GOG for example.

    I mostly support GOG only for their DRM free policy.
    Reply
  • Sluggotg
    GOG is the best thing that ever happened for computer gaming in my opinion. I just wish they had more support for Games running on Emulators, (like Amiga games).
    Reply
  • hotaru.hino
    Sleepy_Hollowed said:
    it’s not like the investors of those companies will allow releases in GOG for example.
    Which again, depends on if the publisher wants to do that or not. And even then if you want to go to the far side of the FOSS movement, we're still using proprietary software that's hampered by copyright laws.
    Reply
  • husker
    "Obviously, lacking anti-cheat support could have been a major problem for the new console. "

    It would have been a major selling point for the console. It would have been a major problem for the game devs.
    Reply