> Competent cheat makers don't have much difficulty in defeating in-kernel anticheats on Windows. With the amount of insight and control available on Linux anticheat makers stand little chance.
The issue isn’t binary, but a spectrum. Studios clearly believe that there is less cheating when using kernel level anti-cheats. They have the data so they would know. This is an existential threat to their profit so we can trust they use the most effective tool. Anecdotally, I and many others also experience less cheating in games using kernel level anti-cheat. I’m not saying no cheating. I’m saying less cheating. That’s very important for me and many others.
Valve has stated they are working on kernel level anti-cheat “tools”, but they haven’t yet revealed a method. The entire concept is antithetical to the Linux security model so it requires significant refactoring. That’s a huge investment in not just capex and opex because the fork becomes much more difficult to maintain over time. I think they’ll do their best to work in user space, but I don’t think they’ll succeed and will have to bite the bullet. SteamOS will become more and more its own fork, including consumer-friendly features which Linux fans typically don’t care about.
I think people might be equivocating over the word “ad.” Some people consider ads to be interstitial modals which steal focus and have nothing to do with current context. I am much more sensitive and consider any notification to buy or use a service to be an ad. Maybe not pre-installed games but I would prefer they not be there. Microsoft is about as bad as Apple is at suggesting we use their cloud services. I also consider these ads. Still, if I’m honest, they’re infrequent and hardly insurmountable. If one is sensitive to this, the Pro version of Windows makes it easy to disable almost all of this stuff.
I’m really glad Linux has improved so much but it’s still just not ready for prime time. A major issue is the lack of an enforced installation method. Competing distributions and installation methods means supporting Linux isn’t “supporting Linux.” It’s supporting 24 different distros and install methods. This is confusing for people who just want to download a file and double click it. I feel quite strongly that Linux won’t enter the mainstream consumer space until people can reliable double click files to install.
Further, because of Linux’s security model, kernel level anti-cheats are basically impossible. For those of us who hate cheating, I don’t play online games anymore without kernel level anti-cheats. They’re not perfect, but they’re much better than anything available on Linux.
Further, I use a Fanatec racing wheel. Most peripherals just aren’t supported on Linux. It’s chicken and egg, and hardware manufacturers aren’t going to bother until we teach critical mass. This is decades away still.
I don't think this is correct. Analysts believe Apple made more than $27.39 billion in commissions globally last year (https://techcrunch.com/2025/05/08/appfigures-apple-made-over...). That's around 7% of global revenue, and we should expect this ratio to be higher this year and next.
My search of 2024 numbers stated. $10bn from App Store out of approx $400bn revenue. Which seem to be what is stated in the first tables in that link.
I’m not sure who is right, Apple or these analysts, but either way: 2.5% or 7%, that revenue source isn’t large enough to be a corrupting incentive on Apple’s behavior.
Maximizing digital service revenue at the cost of user trust which drives their high margin hardware sales would be killing the golden goose.
I agree in theory but in practise, this just results in even more regulations. There are very few or no real world examples of stricter regulations being written in clearer terms. The reasons are numerous, but a big one is that people often have a financial incentive to circumvent these regulations. They attack the edge cases and the ambiguity between each word. If the regulations are not written sufficiently prescriptively, courts are swamped with cases and eventually a precedent is set which nullifies much or most of the intended purpose of the regulations. So regulators go to painstaking lengths to write clear and verbose regulations, but ensuring compliance with tens of thousands of pages of regulations are expensive, and this results in an economies of scale barrier for small businesses.
There are workarounds like exemptions for small businesses, but this creates all kinds of new issues like a regulatory ceiling, which results in enormous new costs on some arbitrary day for a business once it crosses some kind of user or revenue threshold. Ramp-ups are difficult or impossible to legislate in this context. Further, two or multi-tiered regulatory systems are highly inefficient and arguably unfair. They're very difficult for everyone to navigate. Generally speaking, from countless examples around the world, rules should apply to everyone.
Ultimately this means fewer regulations generally are good for startups - and larger businesses. But there are also social and consumer costs for this. There is no perfect balance to be found. Just competing ideological beliefs and positions.
> Ultimately this means fewer regulations generally are good for startups - and larger businesses.
Yeah, forcing companies to write food ingredients on the package is bad for business. And I don't care about business more than about the well-being of society and myself. Same with tracking.
I think that when I wrote that fewer regulations help small businesses, but that there are costs for this, you read, "all regulations are bad and I think they should all be removed." Since you didn't read my whole comment, I'm going to paste the important sentence again now:
> Ultimately this means fewer regulations generally are good for startups - and larger businesses. But there are also social and consumer costs for this. There is no perfect balance to be found. Just competing ideological beliefs and positions.
Apple has decided to take this paternal route as well, and it's quite frustrating. The good news is if you use the Pro version of Windows, you can disable that. Still crazy you can't fully disable it using standard setting on the consumer version, of course.
I tried to do this, but booting into a different OS depending on the task just turned into a chore. I tried going full Linux but despite the claims, many games don't "just work" out of the box. Many require tweaking, at minimum. Of the top 100 games in Proton, only 9% are "Tier 1," and reading reviews, even that doesn't guarantee a flawless experience. (https://www.protondb.com/dashboard) On top of this, kernel level anti-cheat games are not supported at all, and trying to run them in VMs result in permanent bans. Worse still, many peripherals have zero driver support. I have Fanatec wheels and pedals and could not get them to run in Linux.
I could live with using Linux for web browsing, but because it doesn't do the other stuff I like, I ended up just staying in Windows and eventually uninstalled Linux.
Mirrors my experience very closely. I really /want/ to use Linux since I really do like GNOME over the Windows Desktop, but if half my peripherals don't work (in this case an Elgato mic where my friends would say I'm either exploding their eardrums or too quiet, and my CREATIVE USB DAC) I'm just very demoralized when trying to use Linux to play games. I've tried the dual boot route, but a spontaneous Discord message of "hop in loser, we're going gaming!" turns into "let me reboot my machine and then Windows update and now my game has to update and it's now 10pm I have to go to bed" just makes me stick with Windows full time.
I'm still really rooting for the Year of the Linux Desktop, and it does continue to get better and better, but I'll keep rooting from the sidelines.
I very much agree. The driver support won't happen until Linux reaches a much larger install base, but that has some hurdles. First, unless Valve creates some kind of kernel-level anti-cheat for SteamOS, we'll never see some of the most popular online FPSs. Frequent cheating is a red line for most players.
Second, Linux needs a standardised *and enforced* application installation method like .exe. One should never, ever, for any reason, ever, need to use the CLI to install an application. Yet there are so many applications out there which require the use of guides/manuals and the CLI to install, configure, or use. This is partly a dev preference, partly to save time, and partly because it's difficult to build and maintain distinct UI for different distros which each have their own quirks. People often ask, "why don't they release this on Linux?" But that's not actually what they're asking. They're really asking, "why don't they release this software on 20 distinct operating systems?" Each distro might have 0.1% of their total addressable market. Unfortunately, even if SteamOS enforces some kind of package manager like flatpak, that's not going to force devs to use it. It would need to be Linux-wide, and that will never happen. So we're left with fragmented install methods across multiple package managers, and a huge headache for people who just want their OS to get out of the way.
I'm not worried. Strong API backwards compatibility is one of (if not the greatest) Windows moat. Microsoft risks their market dominance if they begin fucking with that. Especially with regards to business use cases.
Not really, otherwise Microsoft wouldn't keep pushing WinAppSDK and WinUI, however I do agree it doesn't get much love, after all the mess, including not taking backwards compatibility into account every single time they rebooted the developer experience since Windows 8.
In case you missed the memo, WinRT last reboot was to make it work on Win32 side, and more recent COM APIs are mostly WinRT variants.
Because it's intractable on Linux and advocates don't want to admit that. The entire security model on Linux is resistant to deeper levels of access and control for applications, which is required for kernel level anti-cheat. While these forms of anti-cheats can't stop cheating, they are clearly more effective than user-space anti-cheats. For 99% of users, we gladly accept these more "invasive" anti-cheats because it means less cheating in the games we enjoy. Linux developers will never allow this kind of access because it is antithetical to their ideological beliefs around security. They gladly exclude any kernel level cheats to maintain the security model. It is a permanent impasse. One which I believe will never be solved with user-space or server-side detection. This is why the most common retort is: "just play different games."
To be frank, the argument that kernel level anti-cheats are invasive has never been all that accurate or compelling. Any user-space application already has numerous privileges which could ruin your day. You trust a developer and application every time you run it, irrespective of its access level. Valve has an opportunity now with SteamOS to impose technologies like SecureBoot and "safe" deeper layer anti-cheats which actually work. Yes, Linux enthusiasts would be up in arms, but it would mean that the most popular online FPS games would be supported on Linux, and I think that's far more important.
Well, it's not intractable if it's pushed to the underlying hardware and signed drivers.
Valve could build something into their chipset and start signing the Steam Deck drivers, create secure boot etc and essentially create an Apple SIP equivalent. Wouldn't work for the rest of the Linux ecosystem or other devices, and people would absolutely howl about it, but they could do it.
The other side is linux totally permits you to do whatever you like to your system, and then it's similar discussion to DRM (digital rights management, not direct rendering manager). When you're trying to the user from doing things they're not allowed to and the same user can fiddle with the system, there's no starting point for trust.
The issue isn’t binary, but a spectrum. Studios clearly believe that there is less cheating when using kernel level anti-cheats. They have the data so they would know. This is an existential threat to their profit so we can trust they use the most effective tool. Anecdotally, I and many others also experience less cheating in games using kernel level anti-cheat. I’m not saying no cheating. I’m saying less cheating. That’s very important for me and many others.
Valve has stated they are working on kernel level anti-cheat “tools”, but they haven’t yet revealed a method. The entire concept is antithetical to the Linux security model so it requires significant refactoring. That’s a huge investment in not just capex and opex because the fork becomes much more difficult to maintain over time. I think they’ll do their best to work in user space, but I don’t think they’ll succeed and will have to bite the bullet. SteamOS will become more and more its own fork, including consumer-friendly features which Linux fans typically don’t care about.