Got greeted with this message today. I’ve been playing Apex on linux for more than a year. Not sure if this could be related? Is this just me?
I’ve contested the ban and I’m currently waiting for a response from ea support.
UPDATE : Got an email response from EA today. It’s basically a generic message saying that my account was associated with “cheating practices” and so they will not remove the ban.
This is absolutely fucking ridiculous! I’ve been playing this game since 2020 and have 3K+ hours on record, now this shit happens and there’s no recourse ? Fuck this company.
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If I remember right, about a year ago they were banning a lot of Linux players. It might be happening again.
Interesting, thanks.
EDIT: A Respawn employee on reddit is now asking for the user ID/gamertag of those banned on linux: https://www.reddit.com/r/apexlegends/comments/1fi77vs/comment/lnh13kj/?context=8
— Original comment —
Looks like you’re not the only one:
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/1f5kyd1/psa_using_proton_experimental_or_at_least/
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/1ffxfjb/apex_legends_proton_epic_bug_that_do_that/
They’ve falsely banned linux players before, once in March 2023 and again in August 2023.
I got hit in the Aug 2023 ban, and had my permaban overturned after 1-2 weeks. Expect to have your appeal rejected, we had to make enough of a fuss about it to get a community manager to reach out to the development team to get people unbanned:
https://www.reddit.com/r/apexlegends/comments/15uqt7w/linux_users_getting_falsely_banned_again/
https://answers.ea.com/t5/Technical-Issues/Linux-players-getting-banned/td-p/12338557/page/50
I haven’t played in 9-10 months since the false positive put a really bad taste in my mouth, so I don’t have any datapoints to add for the current state of things, but I wish you the best of luck getting unbanned.
I see. Thanks. I’ll just wait and see then.
Why do they care what OS people use? Is it the anti-cheat software that needs Windows?
Yes, it’s invasive kernel-level anti-cheat common in competitive multiplayer games now, because cheaters will mod their system that much for the sake of getting around the anti-cheat. Annoying from all sides.
That, and despite many devs being Linux fans, there does seem to be a (false) perception that Linux is the OS of choice for cheaters.
EDIT: Just remember, can’t play a game on Linux? It’s ALWAYS either the DRM or anti-cheat. Either way, corporate BS that hinders honest paying customers more than the people it’s trying to stop.
This comment is full of win.
Exactly. It’s insane how moronic EA or other publishers are that think “oh they’re on Linux they must be hacking/cheating our game.”
I would wager they have never touched Linux in their life.
Its probably the fact a significant amount of cheaters use linux, but the overall market of players use linux… so nuking all linux players is harmless to their bottom line.
Market share is growing with the existence of Proton and the incoming presence of Microsoft Recall. I will be deleting my Windows OS when they do that. Dual booting the same files didn’t work so I never made the full switch but I only use Windows for gaming
Not sure on ApeLegs but they have increasingly been disabling linux “support” for the Battlefields because of their anti-cheat.
I don’t know how popular ApeLegs actually is. But for a lot of live games? Those are making MASSIVE bank and anything that can hurt the economy can kill the game. So a lot of studios actively just disable/block linux support because the added effort of making sure everything works in Proton is too big of a risk. Because nothing would increase Linux marketshare quite like free vdollars in Fortnite.
It really fucking sucks. But I find that many studios (like Digital Extremes) are really good about making it clear that even though they don’t officially support Linux, they are very much fans of Proton (and Warframe has had a lot of bugfixes specifically FOR Proton support). Whereas EA has spent the past few months systematically disabling Linux “support” for every game they develop.
I don’t know how popular ApeLegs actually is
13th7th most played game on Steam in the past 24 hours, and 13th at the moment https://steamdb.info/charts/
They don’t. I’ve been playing Apex on Linux for years now. Apex is doing ban waves for cheaters. OP likely did something that looked like or was cheating.
What he did was play on linux. You can have kernel level support for anti cheat on Linux so they look at that and see it as “suspicious” then ban.
Apex does not use kernel level anti cheat. It just uses normal easy anti cheat.
Are you aware that EAC is indeed a kernel level anticheat? Apex 100% does not use a user space anticheat, it is kernel level.
My response is getting downvoted. Even downvotes won’t give EAC kernel access on my computer 😂
I can’t tell you why, you are entirely correct. The EAC runtime used in Linux doesn’t have any kernel access, I misunderstood the context of the conversation when I made my first comment.
From two years ago, for time context, regarding EAC in Linux:
No. It has zero kernel access, and that’s not even possible.
EAC has (and has had for years) a native Linux client. That native Linux client is userspace only and has zero kernel access. Before, it was only for native Linux games that had EAC, like War Thunder, 7 Days to Die, Rust (before they abandoned Linux), etc. Epic refused to allow the Linux native EAC to work with Windows EAC games through Wine/Proton. That changed last fall, when Epic made the announcement.
Now, EAC games that work in Wine/Proton use the LINUX NATIVE EAC client, which communicates with a Linux EAC binary that each game that enables support ships, alongside their Windows EAC binary. The Steam Proton EasyAntiCheat Runtime is also required. This runtime allows the NATIVE Linux EAC client (which again, is 100% userspace only and has no kernel level access) to communicate with the Windows userspace EAC binary, to allow for a less-secure but still better than nothing EAC functionality for Windows games running in Wine/Proton.
The exact same situation is true for BattlEye. BattlEye has had a native Linux client for years, but it was userspace only, and didn’t work with Wine/Proton games. Now it does, in the same way EAC does.
This is also why so many games are refusing to enable it. Because it’s inherently less secure against cheaters than the kernel-level EAC/BattlEye Windows implementation. Just read 343’s Destiny 2 comments from the past week and you’ll see that exact reasoning. And I (and others) said from the beginning when it was announced last fall that many games would in fact refuse to enable EAC/BE support because of the less secure nature and increased risk of cheaters. And I was right.
Like I said in my previous comment. I also play on Linux and have been for years since season 12. I have not been banned. I also know people who have been banned on Windows who supposedly didn’t cheat. Maybe they did something toxic in game. We can’t really know what actually happened.
In the past I don’t think it was possible to even play on Linux because of the anti-cheat, but I think Proton worked out a way to emulate it. Maybe something to do with that if it’s not technically “official” support? It’s extra stupid if the emulated anti-cheat is working fine.
No. EAC and Battleye developed ways to explicitly support proton, which has to be explicitly enabled by the developer for the game to run.
Proton didn’t change, the popular AC options did. They’ve had proton support pretty much since the steamdeck launched, and it works great as long as the developer of a game bothers checking the checkbox for it.
EAC works on linux just fine, and the fact that Apex runs, means Respawn deliberately allows it.
Even worse!
There a free cheats for apex on Linux that are undetected by their shitty anti cheat. These Linux still eventually get caught manually so the anti cheat team just sees a lot of Linux users cheat and innocent players get caught in the crossfire b/c of their incompetence.
free cheats for apex on Linux
You gotta br kidding me. These people have no idea what kind of disservice they do to Linux.
I think it’s more like they don’t care.
Fuck this company.
You’re damn right.
I have them blocked on Steam. I don’t care what comes from them, it’s not worth it.
A year and a half back I was sent an email from Apex saying I was banned for hacking. I hadn’t played apex for a year and my account hadn’t been logged into during that whole time, so if they’re false flagging players that don’t even have the game installed then who knows that the fuck they’re doing in their anti cheat. They actually reversed the ban when I contested it though.
I really love how various services nowadays will just ban you without providing any context why you were banned.
Probably half of the time I am banned I have no idea which rule I violated, which makes me more likely to violate it again, when I wait till I am unbanned or create another account.
I did try to create a new account, but it’s really annoying because my original EA account is linked to my steam account, and cannot be unlinked. So I would need another steam account as well. Unless I can figure out a way to play without steam, which I’m not sure how to do because of… you guessed it, fucking anti-cheat.
At least when it comes to games, they likely don’t want to disclose to potential cheaters how they detected them.
It’s also a support burden to look into every case of automated bans.
Thay say it’s for security, but it’s to avoid accountability.
Yeah, I’m guessing there are many reasons that they don’t disclose that.
I got banned last year. It was for the best tbh
You filthy fuckin Linux casual!!!
…/s
Tbh I know this isn’t helpful, but I recommend take the L and find better games to play. Errantly perma banning users shows a lack of consumer consideration and does not deserve further energy to fix. They fucked up, take your business elsewhere.
Again, I know it’s not helpful but I think worth considering. Companies some decades ago used to be user experience as the top goal, but that has gone to the sidelines for many companies, and I don’t think it’s good to normalize. Hence, boycott when it happens.
I’m sorry to say it is extremely popular (for some good reasons imo) and my friends are playing it. Besides, not a lot of competitive games even support linux to begin with. I was grateful that Apex did until now.
Same thing happened to me, unfortunate for us…
Classic EA
Nah, they are doing you a favor.
<< If this Linux guy is so smart to use that OS…it shouldn’t play this shitty game. >> -EA staff, actually doing something good for the planet
They probably just flagged you for not being in the normal environment. For all their bravado their detection is dogshit. I’ve had issues with them just flagging something over a VM and… flagging a batch file closing their launcher. I wish I was joking.
Fuck this company.
They’ve been awful for many, many years at this point. I’ve no idea why people keep giving them money and expecting them to not be awful.
@helios@social.ggbox.fr @griefreeze@lemmy.world, a Respawn employee responded on reddit and wants a list of user IDs/gamertags for those banned on linux:
https://www.reddit.com/r/apexlegends/comments/1fi77vs/comment/lnh13kj/?context=8
You’re the goat! Thanks for sharing. I dropped a comment to the respawn employee and a comment on the EA thread linked in the reddit post.
Thanks for the heads-up. I messaged them my EA handle.
edit: wow it actually worked! My account is now unbanned!
Yes, please send EA ID and info ASAP!
