Two moods

The Finals works on Linux!

In other news, I got a message saying I was banned from The Finals for playing on Linux.

That's gotta be rectifiable somehow. Did you contact some sort of support?
- It said I could reach out to support but I was hopping off and it didn't give me any links or anything actionable in the message. So I guess I can go hunt down the support info and complain.
  
  If I don't get unbanned, oh well. I guess I won't play that game anymore. Its not like I spent any money on it and my time invested in about an hour at this point.
  
  That ban also pop up on your steam account? Because if it does that can screw you in other games if they have community servers.
  
  Anti cheat and Linux is why I can't use Linux. I already have 2 games impossible to play on Linux.
  
  BDO,EFT FYI
I was banned from The Finals for playing on Linux

How is that not illegal?
- Well, civil rights lawyers have been pretty busy lately trying to stop the slide into facism, so they haven’t gotten around to making our choice of OS a protected class.
  
  Seriously though, why would it be illegal? It’s their game, so they get to be assholes and decide who gets to play it with them. I don’t think that’s ever going to change, and I’m not sure it should. We do the same thing in the Fediverse, deciding who gets to use the instances we control.
  
  I would say claiming that a game supports a certain operating system and then banning players for playing it on the system is false advertising, especially if the game is paid.
  
  The game is listed as not supporting SteamOS (Arguably the most popular linux distro for gaming right now) and incorporating drm that does not work on Linux, this is far from false advertising as I can see it. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2073850/THE_FINALS/
- I know that's a turn-of-phrase but it's their game so they can do what they want.
  
  It probably trips some EAC flag because it realizes something is "amiss". Id guess going through proton might behave a little differently and they think you are cheating or installing hacked dlls or something so they ban.
  
  I know when other games have caught a wave of Linux users in bans they reverse them in time.
  
  If someone buys a product from you, you shouln’t be able to deny them from using it based on arbitrary criteria without a refund.
  
  Don’t worry, they refunded his $0 for the free game.
  
  Oh, it’s free? Then never mind.

Most of the games not running today would run perfectly if they did not have some bullshit anti-cheat implemented (Easy Anti-Cheat is I think the worst offender here).

Source: personal experience checking ProtonDB for games I want to play

Huh? Easy Anti-Cheat is the one that actually works for me on Linux.
- see my reply to another comment here. I mentioned EAC simply because most games use it and don't enable the required flag for Linux support.
  
  Ah, TIL! Thanks :]
Battlebit Remastered ran fine with EZ anti-cheat through steam on Mint 21.3, with no exra steps required, just this week. Did something get fixed, or was I just lucky?
- iirc Easy-Anticheat has a sort of "Lite" mode that also runs on Linux, enabling it makes the games work with Proton but iirc degrades the Anticheat capabilities on those Systems. Because the Linux Anticheat isn't as effective (and because it's an Opt-In) most games don't use it.
  
  Talking a lot out of my ass here but I think that's how it was explained back when they made that change.

The only games that give me any trouble are some Japanese VNs, which can be absolutely cursed for some reason. Like, massive tech juggernauts like Cyberpunk are click and play, but I've spent hours getting books-with-PNGs working.

That's because their code quality is usually an absolute dumpster fire that only works if Wine exactly replicates obscure Windows bugs.

My problem is that I enjoy specific multiplayer games. League, Val, Finals. Those are the three right now and riot specifically seems a tad disinterested in Linux. Sadge.

League is owned by Tencent who is specifically interested in using the software for the benefit of the Chinese government as is mandatory for them. They don't want you using an OS with actual security. Heck, they don't even want you to see a skin or splash art that hasn't been approved by their government!
- The anti cheat in league is literally a rootkit.
  
  When it came out there was an outcry and their statement was basically "okay okay, so its a rootkit. But guys, you can trust us! We're totally not going to do anything nefarious with it!"
  
  I can't believe people still play that shit.
  
  You mean Vanguard, which was announced but isn't actually in the game yet. Their plan is to add it late February or early March. We don't actually know any details about the implementation except that it won't be used in the macOS version.
  
  I thought it was going to be added this 24th, I was playing this week a lot as a "last goodbye" for that reason

the one i am the most sad about is magicka 1 - great game but getting it to run on linux is (as far as i've found so far) pretty much impossible.

Won't claim that it runs all that great on windows either though - getting through a chapter without crashing is rarer than i'd like it to be...

I recently heard about this. I used to play it. I searched on the steam discussion page and there is a fan patch that fixes all the crashes. It is on github. I found it for you. Try this. https://github.com/pj1234678/MagickaFix
- was aware of it but it sadly doesn't run on linux (at least not after me doing trial and error for 4 hours) and i felt the comparison to the unmodded one on windows fairer under these circumstances - thanks for trying to help though :)

There are a couple, but I'm spoiled for choice with great games so the convenience of being able to run something on my Steam Deck means that the few that don't run just drop to the bottom of the backlog. Proton is really a brilliant feat of engineering.

Destiny 2 still won't work, and Simracing is still a no go.

The simracing part is a real bummer. That's the only reason I'm still on Win.
That just means you can't buy 12 dlc to unlock the seasons, dungeons, raids, and whatever the hell else they're paywalling. Destiny got enshittified.
- I recommend warframe as a destiny alternative. But Beware! if you like the game you may sink thousands of hours into it
  
  Ha, jokes on you, already Legend rank 3. ~I have no life.~

Genshin Impact, anticheat thibjs you're cheating, blocked until fixed. Happens every update.

I’ve run into many, the latest being Rising Storm 2. Its development has been suspended and the EAC is a version that doesn’t work with Linux, so you can’t play on any servers except the ones that allow hackers. There’s also the issues with performance in Squad on Linux. Starship Troopers: Extermination also runs better on Windows. That’s just the ones I’ve had an issue with in the past month.

That being said, I’m still not willing to go back to Windows, even to play these games.

As a novice, how does one use proton, and can I install StarCraft 2

You install it from within Steam, ~~or using flatpak if you're installing Steam via flatpak~~ [Proton on flatpak has reached EOL, try installing via Steam instead]. Then in settings you set it so every game uses the Proton compatibility layer, or whatever it's called. You don't have to do it per game, it's a global setting (as well as a setting for each game if you prefer).

I can't answer for a specific game though, you'd have to simply try it out or check a database which has info on games that can run using Proton. I don't know the site from memory.
- Thanks for the info!
  
  On Eindows, StarCraft 2 comes from the Blizzard battle.net launcher.
  
  I’m curious to know if I get a steam deck if I can play non steam games. I don’t really want to install windows on it.
  
  Let's hope someone who knows about Steam Deck can answer that for you. Otherwise I'd try to find a community dedicated to Steam Deck. 👍
  
  Ha yeah I’ll investigate. I believe it has a desktop you can get to with browser etc, and it’s based on Arch. So perhaps it’s possible somehow.
  
  Thanks anyway

For me it's mostly games that work for everyone else on Linux.

Are you saying you haven't been able to get it to work?
- GtaV on Steam just doesn't start since years and on multiple computers. Same for others who generally are considered good on proton.
  
  Online game... Hm, anti cheat kicking in? Any error messages, GUI or in console?
  
  Sadly no, offline games, steam only tells me on cli it shut them down

I pretty much only have issues with ea stuff. I was playing it takes two, and it was like 50/50 if it would work for me. It always worked for my friend on windows.

I mean, some games do not work. Because they do not work on Windows as well. Looking at you, ksp 2 🤦‍♂️

It's such a shame about KSP 2. I was so hyped when I saw it was announced, then it all turned to shiz.

Maybe i bricked something in my machine somewhere when messing with drivers for machine learning cuda support. But I often have games that are 'supported' through proton but fail to launch or even crash my PC. Metro exodus & deep rock to name a few. Other games do run great. But still things like steam big picture being laggy is annoying.

yeh that'll probably be it tbf... the cuda drivers are specifically for scientific computing and are pretty rubbish for anything else unfortunately... even amd ones are like that :(

however a way i found around it is to just push my gpu compute envs to docker and voila (also avoids the pain of installing the drivers cos nvidia actually provides a cuda docker image) :D
- That's actually a good tip. Even though I don't use CUDA and never have.

Haven't run into a game yet that doesn't run on Windows.

Without the need to fiddle with any settings. It is all just click and play.

Same experience on Linux for me. Install Steam, install Proton, set it to be default for all games. Click and play. 🙂👍 Not really "fiddling". It's a one-time thing that I equate to just installing Steam. Very good experience.