Ey, the linux kernel is open source. Perhaps support can be added by some third party?
But realistically, kernel level anti cheat doesn’t really stop cheaters. But it grants third parties access to your pc’s contents. Perhaps if more users switch to linux it might become a userbase worth marketing to. That is, if that’s not users who run linux because they can’t afford a windows license
See my other post: Linux supporting ACs have existed for 3 years.
The functionality to support them already exists, the market share is arguably already there, and the cost to game dev teams to enable these already existing linux AC functionality is in many cases literally 0. They’re already paying to license Battleye or EAC or Denuvo, and all they have to do is request usage of a feature that already exists, that they are already paying for, but just not using.
Also, as you seem to agree, the vast, vast majority of cheats/hacks/trainers are made for and used by Windows users despite ACs having kernel level access in Windows.
Ye, some people just want to game and not care. Windows can do that, linux can’t. And the market share is nowhere near what it needs to be to be a viable option.
Maybe for a small studio that can pick up the crumbs of the market, but no major studio benefits much from supporting linux
My out of the box set up process for getting a Steam Deck playing games was significantly simpler and less time consuming than with a Windows PC.
So linux absolutely can ‘just game’, even more straightforwardly than a Windows machine.
As for not being viable… you’re saying that checking a few boxes in a your dev panel to make it so your next build supports approximately 5% of the market that you previously did not… that this has no major benefits …
I mean… 5% more potential marketshare availability isn’t major, but for approximately 0 additional cost seems, this seems like a no brainer, obvious benefit to me.
The ACs and Proton handle working on linux.
Proton is not paid for or developed by these studios.
Thats the magic of Proton, it functionally ports everything designed for Windows automatically, at no cost to the game studio.
The ACs already include linux/proton compatibility in their agreements with the game studios… they don’t need to pay them more for supporting it.
This isn’t like the game studios have to ‘port’ a game to linux, like the immense cost of porting a console game to PC, back before most game engines just had an ‘export to whatever architecture’ functionality.
This is ‘We can choose to increase our potential player base by about 5%, for essentially 0 expenditure, but nah, fuck that, who wants a free buff to sales?’