Hi,
First off: Below is a TL;DR! So if you see this massive wall of text, just skip ahead below. Most titles here should also be descriptive enough to quickly find answers to questions after reading that.
I just noticed the new OW2 release date drop along with the nice trailer and announcement of going f2p. I’m super exited for it and can’t wait to see ow 2 being launched in an official capacity.
However as a Linux user I’m pretty concerned about being able to play the game in the future.
Disclaimer: This is and should not be about: “Why can’t blizzard hire linux engineers” or “No linux = no money” sh*t.
Personal backstory (feel free to skip ahead)
I’ve been using Linux for a really long time now. I’ve also been following OW since the coverage of the first closed beta on YT a long time ago. When the game released with a free weekend, I tested the game on WineHQ. Sadly it didn’t work then, but lots of games didn’t and DX11-Support was in its early infancy back then anyway.
About 2-3 years later, though OW started working. Ever since then I’ve been playing OW casually, but pretty regularly. The game always ran and performance was always good. Even for my pretty light Hardware back then (i5-4xxx and GTX 750 Ti). I already wrote a post, elaborating this here already. I’ve also been playing the recent OW 2 Beta and didn’t notice any Linux specific issues.
OW 2 going F2P might mean a new Anti Cheat solution
I’m pretty hyped as anyone for OW 2 to already have moved so far now. Frankly, while OW 1 was not moving at all for a few years, I didn’t mind it much since I only played it casually anyway. In that sense a game that didn’t move / change at all was even beneficial for me (even if boring to play at times).
Having OW 2 going F2P sounds amazing to me. But this is where my concern comes in: Because of that it’s save to assume, that OW 2 will revamp the Anti Cheat. I just did a search on the forum and a lots of people are complaining about it now and in the past. I personally like the current Anti Cheat, since it runs well on Wine (Linux runtime for windows apps).
With OW 2, Blizzard might decide to upgrade or outright replace their anti cheat with an existing solution to combat likely more hacking when the game goes F2P (seems only logical to me).
Linux and anti cheat
Anti cheat has been known for impacting performance for anyone, but this is a necessary evil it seems. What is problematic for me is, that Linux’s last challenge is Anti Cheat breaking windows support on linux. Graphics api’s have been translated efficiently into OpenGL and now Vulkan for a while now, and are near perfect imo. What breaks games today is only the Anti Cheat (aka DRM) built into games. These usually do weird stuff on windows, use windows api’s weirdly or rarely used APIs up to injecting kernel level “drivers” to aid cheat detection.
A list of the current state of linux games regarding anti cheat support can be found at a site called “arewanticheatyet” (just google it, I can’t include links).
If OW 2 would decide on Denuvo or any Anti Cheat that used Kernel Drivers, Linux support would probably be broken for a lot of years to come. Luckily, because of the Steam Deck, Valve actually got the developers of BattlEye and EAC to support Linux. They however require a recent or specific version of the Software and most important: The conscious decision of the developer to enable linux support. VAC always worked on linux afaik and in-house usually tend to not work at all.
A lot of companies have opted to not care, or simply not be capable to make their games that use BattlEye or EAC to become compatible on Linux. This is often not to blame on the companies relasing the game, but there also have been games that seem to ban players in multiplayer at some point for using Linux (which probably made their system look suspicous for their the anti cheat solution). One company even out-right refused to run on Linux.
Plea to Blizzard
I don’t have much or long experience regarding how Blizzard does games, since I only ever played OW with the Battle.net Launcher. Also seeing how much the tides of game development change, I doubt that “proven knowledge” might be useful in the future here.
I specifically want to know whether there are any plans to change the Anti Cheat and whether my concerns regarding the compatibility on Linux are correct or not. I understand that announcing the exact Anti Cheat might be problematic, but I still want to know if Blizzard happened to change it, would they consider at least doing a quick test / verification that it runs on Linux?
For BattlEye and EAC this should not even require a test. And with the teaming having expanded, I would bet someone in their would be willing to test the game quickly on the side if allocated a bit of time for it.
Even just testing the game once and maybe fixing 1 or 2 things that cause problems under Linux (or relaying the problems to Wine developers to make them fix it) could prevent years of Overwatch potentially not working under Linux anymore.
FAQ
Q: Linux if not officially supported.
A: I know, but I still want to know whether I can be hyped for OW 2 or whether this is the end for the gaming working on Linux at all.
Q: Why don’t use just use a Windows VM?
A: I would likely need a 2nd GPU, upgrade my PSU for that, get more Storage and figure out how to make this as frictionless as possible. I’m not willing to buy extra HW to run a game and invest literally days to get that to work properly. Also an anti cheat might just ban VMs as well, either increasing my hassle with spotty results or completely prevent me for getting it to work in the first place.
Q: Why don’t you dual boot Windows?
A: A have literally dozens of Linux specific things that would only work poorly on Windows if at all. Also rebooting my machine just for gaming is too much hassle for me.
Q: Why don’t you switch to Windows?
A: Like the above 2 Answers, but worse. For example I could also ask you to change and many of your reasons to not switch to Linux could be mine for not switching to Windows as well. On top of that I’m also using Linux for my professional work. I really love the ecosystem to work in and also rely on some Linux kernel specific features to test software on my pc, intended for other Linux-systems. Let alone the change in Software Ecosystem, slowed down workflow (at least for a good while). I don’t care about any of the “Linux is faster”, “privacy!”, “security!” or other points. Frankly it comes down to preference, experience and convenience. If I had to choose between OW and Linux, I’d choose Linux, but would be sad nonetheless.
TL;DR
In summary, the new game might have a new anti cheat due to the addition of F2P. This has a good chance of not working with Linux, making the game stop working after at lot of years of running wonderfully unofficially.
I would be please about some response regarding this, since I’m currently pretty torn whether I should be hyped for the release of OW 2 or concerned to not be able to play OW (2) anymore in the future.