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.
If I remember right, about a year ago they were banning a lot of Linux players. It might be happening again.
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 got banned last year. It was for the best tbh
Why do they care what OS people use? Is it the anti-cheat software that needs Windows?
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.
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.
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.
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
13th 7th 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.
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.
Apex does not use kernel level anti cheat. It just uses normal easy anti cheat.
Nah, they are doing you a favor.
