I play games mostly on my Steam Deck after migrating from Xbox. Didn’t want to pay for Internet access to use the Internet I already pay for (Xbox Live).
Battlefield games like BF1 and BF4 used to run on the Deck about a year ago, but then EA toggled something and disallowed any and all Linux distros. Can’t remember their reasoning, but something something anti-cheat.
Now me, a paying customer, was fucking pissed. I purchased these games on my Steam Deck to avoid corporate wallets gardens like the Xbox, and then EA lock me out of my purchase after the refund period had elapsed. What the fuck???
So I started dual booting Windows 10 on the Deck to regain access to a product I had paid for. Fucking shit I had to do this in the first place.
But now I need to enable Secure Boot to play the new shit, and I have no clue how to do this without bricking my Deck. I’m an engineer, but not the software type. I don’t want to fuck around with my gear just to play games.
Client-side AC is a poor solution to cheating that can be solved with server-side AC.
Fuck EA. Fuck M$. Fuck all the corporations that want to run spyware on my devices
csolisr@hub.azkware.net 7 months ago
Back on Reddit, there were even complaints that EA's anticheat was conflicting with Riot's anticheat. Yep, now you potentially need two different installations of Windows to run each of your games. At this point, you would need to buy several SSDs and a SSD extension (or an external USB reader, since USB speeds nowadays are relatively fast enough to afford running those games from an external drive), then install each game (and operative system) in a different one, and swap between them before booting, just like a cartridge. Same would go, of course, for your actual main GNU/Linux drive that contains your actual personal data - that way, the anticheat can't even see your personal information, as it'd physically unplugged from your computer. And since Windows checks the license per motherboard, not per drive, you should be able to recycle the activation key between your Valorant "cartridge" and your Battlefield "cartridge". At this point, paying for a dedicated game console and the online pass starts becoming attractive...
...That, or just boycott multiplayer games altogether. If your group of friends doesn't mind, of course.
RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Didn’t this only happened if you tried to run both games at the same time, which realistically should never be happening. The only time this might trigger is if one anti-cheat misses or drops the command to close for whatever reason and keeps running while the game is closed and you go to play the other game instead.
Both anti-cheats could just whitelist each other. Anti-cheats already have software whitelists, there is no reason they can’t add each other and it automatically solves the problem without the consumer or developer needing to do anything other than update their software to the newest version.