Going forward, I simply will not be purchasing any game that does not work on Linux. I realize that I'll be missing out on some titles, but Windows simply isn't worth the headache. CachyOS has been working great for me. Proton has been amazing. I have had zero problems with the games I typically play -- some of which are multiplayer. Luckily, I have not run into anti-cheat issues yet.
I'm pulling for Microsoft to create an XboxOS for PC you can just freely install on any machine, as that's about the only thing I care about regarding Windows. Then I could see myself dualbooting that when I want to play my Xbox collection. And it'd be nice to build a beefy machine to max them out on, once the PC component prices settle a bit.
They're playing with that with the Xbox Full Screen Experience on ROG Xbox Ally, but it's still running Windows 11 underneath. I just want the Xbox.
We should invest in solutions outside of Microsoft for games. Even if Microsoft comes out with XboxOS, and even if somehow it isn't terrible, it will eventually be terrible and will enable companies to continue to do anti-consumer B.S. like what Ubisoft is doing here.
I recently moved to Linux for gaming. Last time I tried was around 2008 and I guess I was reluctant to move gaming to Linux because that experience was far from smooth.
Honestly, it's like magic that I can run "The Finals" on highest settings without any hiccup. It literally 'just works'. Happy that I could completely get rid of Windows (it was only there for gaming). It's still hard to believe, given back in 2008 when playing CS I had framerate bugs, text would not render properly (even after messing around with it for some days), and mouse input was.. not ideal. It's come a long way since the days of WINE.
FWIW, I moved from Debian to "Nobara Linux" for this. Mostly because I was in the mood for some distro hopping as well. Highly recommend the experience. (https://nobaraproject.org/). It was a smooth experience from the start, no issues installing it, drivers worked out-of-the-box, audio settings all worked fine, and Steam was pre-installed as well. Super cool.
Would not move back to Windows gaming for Ubisoft games lol.
Yeah, I hadn't used Fedora-based distros for over a decade. I haven't ran into issues with Nobara, but I'm sure that if I do any LLM can help me debug/resolve them.
Definitely lowers the barrier of entry for someone entirely new to Linux as well.
Nobara Linux, which is based on Fedora. I used the "Gnome" installer rather than "official" because I still want a regular desktop experience. I've been on Linux for development since 2008 as well so I wanted an "all in one" OS this time rather than dual-boot Linux/Windows.
I'm running this on AMD CPU & GPU (because AMD historically was always better supported than Nvidia). I've not run into any issues the past weeks. Discord and the game both run smoothly. Honestly hard to believe given how rough it was in the past.
That said, I don't play a wide variety of games, I tend to stick with a single game for years. So I'm happy just running "The Finals" and haven't tried other games lol.
What kind of issues are you running into with Bazzite?
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.
It'd actually be your mistake for buying a game for a platform that's not even supported. That they even allowed or spent resources for it to run on Linux initially is something to be grateful for.
>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 to avoid all ubisoft games like the plague)
edit: am i missing something here? those disagreeing, please let me know why you believe you deserve a refund in this situation, knowing that ubisoft only advertised support for windows.
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.
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 support, however this is the first time I head a developer actively turning it off.
I think it speaks volumes of their intent that the game is to be "fully removed from the Linux platform", and they won't offer the single player experience or non competitive experience for Linux based customers.
On top of that it seems to me they tried sneaking this statement in an announcement titled "Ranked FAQ". This shows they have no respect for their customers.
There's a couple different ways to look at this. From a charitable point of view to ubisoft, they do not advertise support for Linux. Instead they openly state it's a window's only game. So when a third party (i.e. Valve) makes shim that grants linux functionality, it's not really on Ubisoft to maintain that.
However, from a consumer perspective, this is incredibly frustrating. The average person does not think of "linux vs. windows". They just bought the steam deck and when they bought For Honor it was sold on that "platform". Again, it's hard to blame Ubisoft for this conundrum since they were never necessarily trying to be steam deck compliant to begin with, but it definitely feels wrong to take the game away from a player in this perspective.
All that being said, historically across many games such as Rust, many are quick to blame linux for cheating, but pragmatically banning linux has yet to measurably reduce the amount of cheating that players report experiencing, so I don't agree with the decision at all. It's a footgun disguised as a band aid
I bought Farcry 3 Blood Dragon some years ago. I seem to recall I had to install some kind of mod otherwise the game would hang on startup or had long delays because the installed version tried to communicate with some long dead Ubisoft gaming service that they'd shut down the servers for years ago. Funny they were still willing to collect the money for the game that they no longer supported.
Actually, the intent was to preserve the sense of pride and accomplishment by motivating players to play through their purchases instead of hoarding them indefinitely. You think you want a permanent game library, but you don't. Do you guys not have free time? It shouldn't be that hard to finish a game well within its service life anyways.
Valve can't even make their own anti cheat system work (VAC) on Windows let alone on Linux so not surprised that 3rd party publishers with 3rd party anti cheat system is giving up. I mean they technically work as a software but they don't fullfil their purpose, to block cheaters.
I suppose the only good solution is like those "game streaming services": move all the logic to the server and use the client only as a rendering device.
Even sending metadata so the client can use local sprites to render the enemy is hackable, if the end-user knows the coordinates where to render the enemy, it can immediately tell the server that "user aimed at $COORDS and pulled the trigger"...
I expect competitive multiplayer to shift towards dedicated locked down gaming distros (such as steamos) that will offer fully signed hardware backed (tpm) remote attestable system for anti-cheats. Which will make casually playing such games pretty awkward.
That's the caveat of Proton. Running games on unsupported platforms they are not meant for. And if it doesn't work who's fault that? Valve? The dev? No one because it's open source so fix your own?
Honestly Valve should have a stricter warning if a game is Windows only
The situation here isn't that the game doesn't work. It does work, it's just the Ubisoft isn't happy with the quality of Easy Anti Cheat's (their third party anti cheat provider) Linux offering.
At Valve's scale, it becomes the publisher's problem. Which is, in this particular case, a good thing imo. I certainly don't mind the pressure on publishers to ensure basic compatibility with Linux
Wouldn't it be possible to have two tiers of servers here? Like have one that's accessible to everyone with a possibly increased risk of cheating and one restricted to Windows users.
I remember in the old days some games had optional anticheat and there were servers with and without it.
---I stopped buying Ubisoft games after CoD MW2 when they stopped allowing dedicated servers and switched to P2P. The gameplay was trash. Can't say I miss it.---
Ubisoft didn’t make either iteration of MW2. That was activision.
But a year after that bullshit, then Ubisoft started pushing the always-online requirement for even single player games like assassins creed. Maybe you were thinking of that?
They're playing with that with the Xbox Full Screen Experience on ROG Xbox Ally, but it's still running Windows 11 underneath. I just want the Xbox.
Honestly, it's like magic that I can run "The Finals" on highest settings without any hiccup. It literally 'just works'. Happy that I could completely get rid of Windows (it was only there for gaming). It's still hard to believe, given back in 2008 when playing CS I had framerate bugs, text would not render properly (even after messing around with it for some days), and mouse input was.. not ideal. It's come a long way since the days of WINE.
FWIW, I moved from Debian to "Nobara Linux" for this. Mostly because I was in the mood for some distro hopping as well. Highly recommend the experience. (https://nobaraproject.org/). It was a smooth experience from the start, no issues installing it, drivers worked out-of-the-box, audio settings all worked fine, and Steam was pre-installed as well. Super cool.
Would not move back to Windows gaming for Ubisoft games lol.
Definitely lowers the barrier of entry for someone entirely new to Linux as well.
I'm running this on AMD CPU & GPU (because AMD historically was always better supported than Nvidia). I've not run into any issues the past weeks. Discord and the game both run smoothly. Honestly hard to believe given how rough it was in the past.
That said, I don't play a wide variety of games, I tend to stick with a single game for years. So I'm happy just running "The Finals" and haven't tried other games lol.
What kind of issues are you running into with Bazzite?
https://store.steampowered.com/app/304390/FOR_HONOR/
https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/help/for-honor/article/system-...
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 to avoid all ubisoft games like the plague)
edit: am i missing something here? those disagreeing, please let me know why you believe you deserve a refund in this situation, knowing that ubisoft only advertised support for windows.
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 support, however this is the first time I head a developer actively turning it off.
I think it speaks volumes of their intent that the game is to be "fully removed from the Linux platform", and they won't offer the single player experience or non competitive experience for Linux based customers.
On top of that it seems to me they tried sneaking this statement in an announcement titled "Ranked FAQ". This shows they have no respect for their customers.
https://dev.epicgames.com/docs/epic-online-services/platform...
However, from a consumer perspective, this is incredibly frustrating. The average person does not think of "linux vs. windows". They just bought the steam deck and when they bought For Honor it was sold on that "platform". Again, it's hard to blame Ubisoft for this conundrum since they were never necessarily trying to be steam deck compliant to begin with, but it definitely feels wrong to take the game away from a player in this perspective.
All that being said, historically across many games such as Rust, many are quick to blame linux for cheating, but pragmatically banning linux has yet to measurably reduce the amount of cheating that players report experiencing, so I don't agree with the decision at all. It's a footgun disguised as a band aid
Looking at the Steam page for this game, there's a "year 10 roadmap" post.
[1] https://www.ign.com/articles/ubisoft-exec-says-gamers-need-t...
Nothing makes more comfortable than not playing Ubisoft games.
Even sending metadata so the client can use local sprites to render the enemy is hackable, if the end-user knows the coordinates where to render the enemy, it can immediately tell the server that "user aimed at $COORDS and pulled the trigger"...
Easy Anti cheat works as a software but doesn't work as an anti cheat system.
Honestly Valve should have a stricter warning if a game is Windows only
the "system requirements" section is right there, with "OS" being the first line. i dont agree that this is a valve thing.
I remember in the old days some games had optional anticheat and there were servers with and without it.
it'd be an additional expense for a very small % of the player base of a 9 year old game.
you're all the worse.
I think it's already more than 0,1% in most popular games online, but I am assuming it would be just unplayable without anticheat.
Nevermind, wrong company.
But a year after that bullshit, then Ubisoft started pushing the always-online requirement for even single player games like assassins creed. Maybe you were thinking of that?