Live data from Hacker News

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

gamingonlinux.com

161–165 of 165 posts

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

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

>> Selling it incurs no cost on you and I have received none of the benefit of the transaction. Do you have a reply for this part?

sure.

it's a lie to say you received no benefit from the transaction. you either played it for more than 2 hours (benefit) or you are allowed to refund it via steam's standard policy.

do you have a reply to this comment? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49524418

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

#162
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s nice, but 99% of cheaters (pre-Win11, anyways) were software-only because the software is $0 with free same-day delivery. Turning off the spigot of pure-software cheating almost entirely empties today’s cesspool, which is partly why Windows 11 requires an TPM, and it won’t refill rapidly due to the simple obstacles of hardware product businesses. I know that Nvidia’s been implementing attestation for the PCI l…

Now I'm wondering if launching windows through a VM would allow me to play those games.

Look up a list of games that require secure boot; consider whether your VM has secure boot enabled or not (UTM on macOS has a pref for it inside the VM UEFI settings, for example) and consider whether the game(s) you're interested in require it (I believe there's maybe a dozen PvP games so far that do).

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

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't need to claim false advertising to get a refund for literally any other product, so this argument doesn't hold any water.

like every other product you had a refund window . you can't buy a shirt, wear it for 9 years, then return it.

Shirts are consumed by use.

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

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Selling it incurs no cost on you and I have received none of the benefit of the transaction. Do you have a reply for this part?

sure. it's a lie to say you received no benefit from the transaction. you either played it for more than 2 hours (benefit) or you are allowed to refund it via steam's standard policy. do you have a reply to this comment? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49524418

Ok - I don't know about the steam refunds policy. So I received a partial benefit. Perhaps I should get a partial refund? btw I wasn't being facetious, I just thought you picked the easiest part to respond to so I wondered if you had one for the harder part.

I have to unpack a few things to answer the whole comment faithfully. First is the distinction between "we forbid linux users from running the software" and "we aren't going to invest any development work on making linux APIs work". The first one is in my view completely indefensible and should be illegal. The second one is basically fine even though I personally dislike it. I am mentioning this because companies use "support" as a euphemism for both. My understanding of the situation here is that the game runs fine on linux, ubisoft just isn't able to stop cheating as effectively. Note that both platforms have a nonzero rate of cheating and of valid play.

Companies have a right and an obligation to advertise how their products are designed to work and how they work best. If a shirt has a care label that says don't bleach, and I damage it by bleaching, that's on me. Adapting this analogy to software is dangerous and wrong, because software can be made to break for arbitrary reasons, some of which are my own stupid fault and some of which are just the vendor exercising power over me. If I manage to bleach my shirt without damaging it, the manufacturer has no right to set it on fire and say "well you bleached it, so what did you expect?". If they did, they would have to compensate me. I view what has happened much more like "they set my shirt on fire" than "I broke my own shirt".

Computer programs are also not really similar to physical products at all, since physical products degrade over time and programs do not. If I use a shirt for five years and then abruptly decide I didn't want it after all, then I've still damaged the thing and should not get the full amount of money back for it. The fact it's second hand also makes it harder to sell even if it isn't damaged. But again this is just fake when applied to software, so that tips the balance more towards refunding than normally. The situation as it currently is, means that while Ubisoft is allowed to take away my product by saying "you should never have been able to buy it", I cannot reciprocally take my money back by saying "I should never have been able to buy it". I don't think there is a good justification for that asymmetry.

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

#165
post #80
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…

> 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.

I see I was assuming EAC is EAC, but it seems there is a difference between the kernel mode version (windows) and the client mode version (linux). There are different assurances and therefore not the same security can be guaranteed.

In that case it can indeed be that the assurances on linux are not sufficient. However I think the EAC marketing or documentation is a bit unclear/misleading around this issue.

Still I think they should offer the game for the customers on linux, though maybe they are not allowed in the competitive lobbies?

Post reply on HN