Rockstar Games Adds Battle Eye and Breaks Linux Support
So recently Rockstar Games, the massive AAA studio, added BattleEye anti-cheat to GTA Online. BattleEye is one of those anti-cheats which works on the kernel level of your operating system. By adding this anti-cheat, Rockstar Games broke Linux support for GTA:O.
The thing is that GTA:O used to work well underneath Linux via Wine or Valve’s Proton. It was one of those few multiplayer games which actually worked under Linux.
Funny thing is that GTA 5 is one of the top 10 most played games on the SteamDeck and Valve proudly tells this to you whenever you visit GTA 5’s Steam page.
So before we begin this blog, you should know how the kernel level anti-cheats work. So there are different rings or levels to an Operating System, the top most ring/level is the user-space and the central most ring/level is the kernel or ring 0. These kernel level anti-cheats works on the ring 0 of the operating system which grants them the privileged access to your machine. You should never play a game which requires this much privilege, even on the platforms the anti-cheat works. This is just bad on the security point of view.
Besides BattleEye already supports Linux, on Linux this anti-cheat runs under the user-space and the Linux support is just a simple toggle. Yet Rockstar Games, by adding this locked out the part of its user base just for better protection against the “cheaters”. I can definitely bet that this wouldn’t do anything to stop those money dropping “gods” of GTA:O.
I think they are testing stuffs for GTA 6’s online mode, which makes me think that GTA 6’s online mode would not work underneath Linux when it’s out.
Time for me to uninstall this game, also I want you guys to do one thing for me. Few months from now, log back to GTA Online and tell me how is the cheater situation.