Steam Machine is going to make SteamOS more popular, and devs should take notice. Kernel-level access is the biggest hurdle to overcome.

Steam Machine’s upcoming release means more people will be playing games on Linux, specifically SteamOS. The idea of ditching Windows for gaming is becoming more attractive, as the Steam Machine is first-party desktop-level hardware that’s optimized for Linux-based SteamOS. The biggest hurdle for Linux gamers right now is a lack of support for many anti-cheats – particular those that require kernel-level access. But with the release of the Machine, Valve hopes game devs take notice.

Steam Machine seems to getting the most attention out of Valve’s latest hardware launches. The Steam creators announced the new console-like mini PC alongside the Steam Frame VR headset and new Steam Controller. Even the Frame runs on SteamOS, which means Valve now has a trio of first-party hardware on Linux (including the Steam Deck handheld).

  • balsoft@lemmy.ml
    181·
    1 day ago

    How about this:

    1. Add ability to make custom “servers” (which can be just rooms on your proprietary server) with no anti-cheat at all, just fool around with your friends and do whatever you want, mods/hacks/cheats/etc.
    2. At least for casual play modes, make protocols that are less reliant on clients to do the right thing and instead only tell the clients more or less what the player should know already. This might leave some room for sweaty tryhard cheaters to consistently beat other people, but in a casual game which is mostly just for fun this doesn’t really matter.

    There may be some places where a protocol-level solution is not feasible. In that case yeah, require your anti-cheat, but only for competitive game modes. I wouldn’t even be pissed if they didn’t allow it to run on Linux, Linux makes it easy to do whatever the fuck you want with your computer and so a determined cheater will find a way to cheat. It sucks, but I feel like a lot of people don’t really care that much about sweaty competitive game modes anyway. Just give me a way to fool around with friends, it’s not that serious FFS.

    • teawrecks@sopuli.xyz
      6·
      19 hours ago

      Casuals stop playing games when cheaters prevent them having fun, and it’s the casuals they need to keep happy to keep their game alive.

      IMO the answer is to internally maintain a “fun to play with” metric. It would be specific to the game, but each player’s actions and interactions with other players would be evaluated to determine how “fun” they are to play with (might need to be multidimensional, since different players like having different types of interactions). It doesn’t matter if they’re cheating, or if they’re just really good, or if they use cheesy strategies, etc, if the person isn’t fun to play with, then match them with other people who are similarly unfun to play with.

      This would cover your point that, if there’s a cheater in the lobby, and their behavior somehow makes everyone have more fun, then who cares?

      • bookmeat@lemmynsfw.com
        1·
        11 hours ago

        There are multiplayer games that don’t operate this cleanly with your model. Cheaters in MMOs, for example, have bots that don’t interact with anyone. They just fuck the economy, etc.