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

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

#81

Post by tapoxi »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #10
thrownawaysz wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they are not selling the game for Linux. Only for Windows. It's another story that it works because of Proton but technically they don't support the platform at all. https://store.steampowered.com/app/304390/FOR_HONOR/ https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/help/for-honor/article/system-...

And that would be fine if they left it at "we don't support it, if you run into problems on your own". When they go so far as to actively block Linux users, then they are doing something wrong and should be required to refund those purchases.

Valve should. Valve is the one making these games available for purchase on non-Windows platforms. Ubisoft never supported this.

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

#82

Post by john_strinlai »

tempfile wrote: post #78
john_strinlai wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> account for their mistake in selling you the game. i hate ubisoft as much as the next person, but if they listed the game as only supporting windows when it launched, and someone bought it for linux despite it not being supported, ubisoft did not make a "mistake" in selling the game to them. the buyer made a decision to purchase the game for an unsupported system. (the rule i follow, which hasn't gone wrong yet, is…

The case for a refund seems totally obvious. Why should you get to keep my money? I paid for a product and I did not get it. Selling it incurs no cost on you and I have received none of the benefit of the transaction. It's not like I ate a meal and then decided I wanted to order something else. This all presumes of course that it is legitimate to ban people from using certain computing environments when running softw…

>I paid for a product and I did not get it

you paid for a windows product. the product still works on windows, right?

if ubisoft advertised linux support for this game, i am 100% with you on the refund. as far as i can tell, they did not. they advertised the game as a windows product.

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

#83

Post by altairprime »

trashb wrote: post #34

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 supp…

EAC is functionally useless on Linux and can be defeated by anyone with the ability to sudo or to boot a modified operating system. Steam Linux does not supported sealed/signed boot with secure attestation, and supporting 1% market share options that do (if any) is unrealistic for developers, so it’s perfectly sensible for PvP multiplayer games to ban Linux users. Not out of malice or disrespect but out of simple technical incapability to detect unskilled cheaters using purchased toolkits.

Removing the single player mode from Linux, however, suggests that they’re doing this because any platform without multiplayer is worthless to them, which suggests there must be a ‘skin shop’ in this game that is viewed as the primary revenue generator. That decision is extremely disrespectful — but it’s the same disrespect they might show by not selling the single player game in countries that disallowed predatory loot boxes, for example. I wholeheartedly support naming and shaming that disrespect; here, they’ve mixed it with complaints about cheating to (largely successfully) disguise a cost-benefit analysis as out of their control due to Linux.

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

#84

Post by stonogo »

rwz wrote: post #72
caconym_ wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. There are obviously few or no hard technical blockers preventing Valve and the Linux community from supporting any game that runs on Windows, unless it's been specifically engineered to block Linux, and publishers of those games will simply not be getting my money anymore. If Windows was still as pleasant and non-invasive as eg KDE Plasma on Cachy, it would be a different story, but I haven't used it in months…

> There are obviously few or no hard technical blockers preventing Valve and the Linux community from supporting any game that runs on Windows The announcement is a proof that your statement here is incorrect. Ubisoft is not banning Linux because they hate you and your money, but because there's a hard technical blocker to implementing an efficient anti-cheat system on Linux and the cost of overcoming this technical…

Except we already know the anti-cheat system they use works on Linux, because other products use it. Therefore we have no evidence that the blocker here is technical: it could be political, process-driven, simple incompetence, or anything else. In any of the latter cases, there can be no conclusion of correctness of the parent comment's claim.

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

#85

Post by caconym_ »

rwz wrote: post #72
caconym_ wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. There are obviously few or no hard technical blockers preventing Valve and the Linux community from supporting any game that runs on Windows, unless it's been specifically engineered to block Linux, and publishers of those games will simply not be getting my money anymore. If Windows was still as pleasant and non-invasive as eg KDE Plasma on Cachy, it would be a different story, but I haven't used it in months…

> There are obviously few or no hard technical blockers preventing Valve and the Linux community from supporting any game that runs on Windows The announcement is a proof that your statement here is incorrect. Ubisoft is not banning Linux because they hate you and your money, but because there's a hard technical blocker to implementing an efficient anti-cheat system on Linux and the cost of overcoming this technical…

So your claim is that it's actually impossible to implement "efficient" anticheat on Linux? That's interesting. But it's not the same thing as "the cost of overcoming this technical blocker is presumed to be higher than the loss of revenue they're incurring from losing your business", so I am not quite sure what point your comment is supposed to be making.

If your point is simply that the publishers think this is a good business decision for them, that's obvious, because they're a business and they aren't going to make decisions they think are bad. But I am not sure how your muddled logic about feasibility feeds into that point.

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

#86

Post by flaunf221 »

ben-schaaf wrote: post #61
thrownawaysz wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they are not selling the game for Linux. Only for Windows. It's another story that it works because of Proton but technically they don't support the platform at all. https://store.steampowered.com/app/304390/FOR_HONOR/ https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/help/for-honor/article/system-...

They've stated in their patch notes that they made a change specifically to run on the steam deck. Regardless of what they say now, they have actively supported linux in the past and so should be liable for breaking the game for those customers. https://www.ubisoft.com/en-gb/game/for-honor/news-updates/6j...

> made a change specifically to run on the steam deck

No, they didn't, you don't need to lie. From your url:

> EASY ANTI-CHEAT

> Updated Easy Anti-Cheat client module and library.

> Developer's Comment:* This update of Easy Anti-Cheat makes the game playable on Steam Deck.*

That is not "we made a change to specifically run on deck." Steam deck support might be accidental side effect of them getting newer anti-cheat tech.

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

#87

Post by iririririr »

AndriyKunitsyn wrote: post #54
iririririr wrote: post #17

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.

The Verdana font that your message is written with - how can you be sure that its TrueType bytecode hasn't escaped the sandbox and snuck into your ring0? You either put some trust into the systems made by other people, or you don't touch computers at all.

do not engage this comment.

it's either completely and honestly someone not technical missing the point entirely, or more likely trolling.

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

#88

Post by altairprime »

tapoxi wrote: post #80
trashb wrote: post #34

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 supp…

EAC supports Linux, but by doing so you're disabling a number of security features since you're making the anti-cheat run entirely in userspace. Remember these games aren't Linux native either, so it allows Windows-using cheaters to lie to the process that they're on Linux and to only use userspace protection. The cheat then runs in kernel space and remains invisible. The only realistic way to solve this on Linux is…

> The only realistic way to solve this on Linux is enforcing secure boot w/trusted kernels and then running the anti-cheat in sandboxed eBPF kernel space. Embark is looking at this approach.

Assuming secure boot, there’s another realistic way, which is to use vendor-signed readonly Linux OS images — not just kernels — that disallow process memory access to root, come with signed kernel drivers, and offer secure attestation support chained to secure boot. Steam Linux and Bazzite could both implement this easily; the former has a fixed hardware target list and the latter is already an ‘all in one’ solution. Since Linux users are generally competent at dual-booting, one would simply dual-boot into the sealed image to play PvP multiplayer games, no eBPF development or maintenance of anti-cheat required. Embark is within their rights to evaluate the workload of supporting DIY unsigned Linux instances through eBPF but doing so would create a viable competitor to an attestation-derived Valve Anti-Cheat for Steam Linux, and so likely inspire the giant in the room to step up and obsolete it.

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

#89

Post by toshinoriyagi »

flaunf221 wrote: post #86
ben-schaaf wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've stated in their patch notes that they made a change specifically to run on the steam deck. Regardless of what they say now, they have actively supported linux in the past and so should be liable for breaking the game for those customers. https://www.ubisoft.com/en-gb/game/for-honor/news-updates/6j...

> made a change specifically to run on the steam deck No, they didn't, you don't need to lie. From your url: > EASY ANTI-CHEAT > Updated Easy Anti-Cheat client module and library. > Developer's Comment:* This update of Easy Anti-Cheat makes the game playable on Steam Deck.* That is not "we made a change to specifically run on deck." Steam deck support might be accidental side effect of them getting newer anti-cheat t…

I don't think this is accurate. Easy Anti-Cheat has supported Linux for a long time, many years before this. I doubt they were years and years out of date, updated, and allowing Linux was turned on by default in the new version. What they likely mean is they ticked the box in this game update to let it run on Linux.

Why would they specifically mention the Steam Deck? EAC doesn't have separate flags for Linux and Steam Deck. It's almost certain they intentionally allowed it to run on Linux. They call out Steam Deck by name because it is a popular handheld that has greatly increased the # of Linux users, not because an EAC update allowed it to work by chance.

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

#90

Post by altairprime »

flaunf221 wrote: post #86
ben-schaaf wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've stated in their patch notes that they made a change specifically to run on the steam deck. Regardless of what they say now, they have actively supported linux in the past and so should be liable for breaking the game for those customers. https://www.ubisoft.com/en-gb/game/for-honor/news-updates/6j...

> made a change specifically to run on the steam deck No, they didn't, you don't need to lie. From your url: > EASY ANTI-CHEAT > Updated Easy Anti-Cheat client module and library. > Developer's Comment:* This update of Easy Anti-Cheat makes the game playable on Steam Deck.* That is not "we made a change to specifically run on deck." Steam deck support might be accidental side effect of them getting newer anti-cheat t…

“Steam Deck” here means Steam Deck booted into Windows but not Steam Deck booted into Linux, I thought?
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