Apex Legends Is The Next Multiplayer Game To Scrap Steam Deck Support To Fight Cheaters

Major changes have already been confirmed for Apex Legends. Earlier this year, Respawn Entertainment already restructured the game’s Battle Pass system offering more helpings of in-game rewards with two per season now. Additionally, Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson also expressed the live-service is looking to expand beyond battle royale as a new approach to bring a new wave of freshness to the 2019 release.

What’s more, there is plans for the game to return to mobile at some point. Although shuttering its initial mobile initiative back in February 2023, the firm is eager to explore new directions for players on that platform in the future. Not to mention that Apex Legends is also available on the Nintendo Switch as well which continues to face support as of writing.

However, those that play on the Steam Deck will not moving forward. In an effort to combat online cheaters – alike Rockstar Games demonstrated already – Respawn Entertainment shares its plans to remove Linux support for Apex Legends. Subsequently, this also negates compatibility with the Steam Deck.

In our efforts to combat cheating in Apex, we’ve identified Linux OS as being a path for a variety of impactful exploits and cheats. As a result, we’ve decided to block Linux OS access to the game. While this will impact a small number of Apex players, we believe the decision will meaningfully reduce instances of cheating in our game. Linux is used by default on the Steam Deck. There is currently no reliable way for us to differentiate a legitimate Steam Deck from a malicious cheat claiming to be a Steam Deck (via Linux).

“The openness of the Linux operating systems makes it an attractive one for cheaters and cheat developers. Linux cheats are indeed harder to detect and the data shows that they are growing at a rate that requires an outsized level of focus and attention from the team for a relatively small platform. There are also cases in which cheats for the Windows OS get emulated as if it’s on Linux in order to increase the difficulty of detection and prevention.

The team continues: “We had to weigh the decision on the number of players who were legitimately playing on Linux/the Steam Deck versus the greater health of the population of players for Apex. While the population of Linux users is small, their impact infected a fair amount of players’ games. This ultimately brought us to our decision today.”

Are you surprised by this decision from Respawn Entertainment?

Apex Legends is out now for Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC, and Nintendo Switch.

Source: Respawn Entertainment