We know many of you are eager to play Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut on handheld gaming devices like the Steam Deck. We’re happy to share that the single player experience, including the Iki Island expansion, can be enjoyed on Steam Deck and similar handheld gaming PCs as we’ve worked extensively to optimize performance and deliver the best possible experience on these devices.
You may notice that Steam marks the game as ‘Unsupported’ for Steam Deck. This is due to the Legends co-op multiplayer mode requiring Windows to access PlayStation Network integrated features.
On behalf of everyone at Nixxes and Sucker Punch, we can’t wait for PC players to start their adventure and fight for the freedom of Tsushima!
Source: https://steamcommunity.com/games/2215430/announcements/detail/4188987871078331986
They strictly say that unfortunately it requires Windows to access PSN integrated features, so the multiplayer will not work because it requires said features. The singleplayer should work though. Since Concord is completely multiplayer, it needs the PSN features that only work on Windows.
It is well known that many multiplayer games like Valorant do not work on Linux due to kernel anticheat. Unfortunately, this is a part of Linux gaming life.
The point here is that the anticheat solution needs to be written for a specific operating system because it runs “outside” the game in a privileged way to try and detect cheating.
So they have anticheat on Windows, and their own consoles will have a different anticheat system that is specific for the console OS.
Running games on Linux via Proton is effectively an emulation or translation layer, and the Windows-specific anticheat is not going to work with that.
If Sony wanted to provide multiplayer support on Linux they’d also have to provide a native Linux implementation of the whole game, rather than relying on Proton, which sadly not many publishers are doing at all. So its technically quite understandable why this isn’t possible.
Now, personally I think client anticheat is garbage and they should not be depending on that as a solution anyway, but that’s a separate argument!
Isn’t there some way to design the multiplayer to not trust the client? Assume the client has aimbot and all can see through walls, etc. Design it with those things being expected instead of all this draconian pwn the user’s system nonsense.
Server side anticheat is mostly implemented in all popular games. An aimbot however can’t be detected on the server side, it could just be a user moving their mouse perfectly. There’s lots of client cheats like that, which is why clientside detection still makes sense.
You should read about statistics. An aim-bot will be consistently accurate, humans are not consistently accurate. If your aim-bot is purposefully inaccurate then it’s useless. Long story short, your cheating has to be indistinguishable from human, which is HARD to accomplish, and if you do you’ll lose 50% of the matches against other humans.
Not to mention a game with server side anti-cheat could purposefully send fake data, e.g. send a position for an “invisible” enemy, if you aim/fire to it you get tagged. It can do lots of similar stuff that would make the aim-bot less accurate than a human, e.g. every time an enemy enters line of sight add another enemy just outside of the frustum culling, or send an enemy behind a wall that has no visible parts. Cheaters will act on that information, regular users won’t. At that point the only way to bypass that is with external hardware that acts on the same information an actual user does (which also bypasses client side anti-cheat anyways), at that point you have a robot playing the game for you and losing 50% of the battles…
Exactly, and that’s why I expressed the sentiment that client anticheat is a poor solution. If you really really want to stop cheating, you have to do it on the infrastructure that you as the game developer have guaranteed and trusted control over, and that is the server.
Primarily by not sending non-visible information and by detecting unrealistic/impossible motion. If the aimbot has to limit itself to what humans can do, it doesn’t really matter anymore.
It does matter though. If you program the aimbot to act as if they were the best human, the aimbot is still going to beat everyone else, same as if it was behaving unrealistically superhuman. But you can’t simply ban the best human from your game.
The issue isn’t that the ACs can’t work. It’s that they don’t run at the kernel level under linux and so some developers have concerns that the ACs wont be as secure.
Though given how things have been lately with MP games. You have to wonder if theyre even secure to begin with.
Mmn yeah. I described it as a translation layer also, which is more accutate, but I used The Bad Word because more people have an understanding of what an ‘emulator’ is in common usage and it felt appropriate in this context.
this is only mildly better then the conclusion jump. I am almost strictly single player, but the ideology of paying full price(which is becoming increasingly common to be 70$) for a game that I won’t actually be able to use all the features of… it’s not very appealing to me. Granted it isn’t fair of me to expect it since the company doesn’t advertise it as being non-windows friendly, but it still doesn’t mean I need to buy it. If they want my support, they will need to at bare minimum have it be proton/wine compatible, even if shitty support. If I can’t mark that box it’s a solid not buying. It’s a statistics case, if there are enough people like me, companies would change.
I’m not even asking that they make their games specifically linux-compatible. I’m just asking for them to not prevent compatibility.
I understand making games only for Windows because that’s where the market share is. But going out of your way to ensure they won’t run on Linux is a dick move.
People, read the developers comments:
They strictly say that unfortunately it requires Windows to access PSN integrated features, so the multiplayer will not work because it requires said features. The singleplayer should work though. Since Concord is completely multiplayer, it needs the PSN features that only work on Windows.
So did they code themselves into a corner because of malice or incompetence?
It is well known that many multiplayer games like Valorant do not work on Linux due to kernel anticheat. Unfortunately, this is a part of Linux gaming life.
What a perfect excuse to not pay for it!
So are PlayStation consoles running Windows? FFS this is short sighted tying yourself to your competitor like that.
The point here is that the anticheat solution needs to be written for a specific operating system because it runs “outside” the game in a privileged way to try and detect cheating.
So they have anticheat on Windows, and their own consoles will have a different anticheat system that is specific for the console OS.
Running games on Linux via Proton is effectively an emulation or translation layer, and the Windows-specific anticheat is not going to work with that.
If Sony wanted to provide multiplayer support on Linux they’d also have to provide a native Linux implementation of the whole game, rather than relying on Proton, which sadly not many publishers are doing at all. So its technically quite understandable why this isn’t possible.
Now, personally I think client anticheat is garbage and they should not be depending on that as a solution anyway, but that’s a separate argument!
Isn’t there some way to design the multiplayer to not trust the client? Assume the client has aimbot and all can see through walls, etc. Design it with those things being expected instead of all this draconian pwn the user’s system nonsense.
Server-side anticheat is more complicated to implement, so companies go with the lazy client-side rootkit instead
Server side anticheat also requires trusted servers.
A lot of games are mostly P2P with minimal stuff actually happening on their own hardware.
Good point, I hadn’t thought about that
Server side anticheat is mostly implemented in all popular games. An aimbot however can’t be detected on the server side, it could just be a user moving their mouse perfectly. There’s lots of client cheats like that, which is why clientside detection still makes sense.
You should read about statistics. An aim-bot will be consistently accurate, humans are not consistently accurate. If your aim-bot is purposefully inaccurate then it’s useless. Long story short, your cheating has to be indistinguishable from human, which is HARD to accomplish, and if you do you’ll lose 50% of the matches against other humans.
Not to mention a game with server side anti-cheat could purposefully send fake data, e.g. send a position for an “invisible” enemy, if you aim/fire to it you get tagged. It can do lots of similar stuff that would make the aim-bot less accurate than a human, e.g. every time an enemy enters line of sight add another enemy just outside of the frustum culling, or send an enemy behind a wall that has no visible parts. Cheaters will act on that information, regular users won’t. At that point the only way to bypass that is with external hardware that acts on the same information an actual user does (which also bypasses client side anti-cheat anyways), at that point you have a robot playing the game for you and losing 50% of the battles…
Exactly, and that’s why I expressed the sentiment that client anticheat is a poor solution. If you really really want to stop cheating, you have to do it on the infrastructure that you as the game developer have guaranteed and trusted control over, and that is the server.
How do you suppose to block an aimbot on the server side?
Primarily by not sending non-visible information and by detecting unrealistic/impossible motion. If the aimbot has to limit itself to what humans can do, it doesn’t really matter anymore.
It does matter though. If you program the aimbot to act as if they were the best human, the aimbot is still going to beat everyone else, same as if it was behaving unrealistically superhuman. But you can’t simply ban the best human from your game.
No human has perfect consistency, and it’s always an option to manually review data if it’s questionable.
What good is client-side scanning, when you can just run the aimbot outside the client and send the inputs directly through hardware?
Except we have a few ACs that work with proton. battleye and EAC being the notable examples.
https://areweanticheatyet.com/
The issue isn’t that the ACs can’t work. It’s that they don’t run at the kernel level under linux and so some developers have concerns that the ACs wont be as secure.
Though given how things have been lately with MP games. You have to wonder if theyre even secure to begin with.
Akshually, wine is not an emulator!
I’ll see myself out.
Mmn yeah. I described it as a translation layer also, which is more accutate, but I used The Bad Word because more people have an understanding of what an ‘emulator’ is in common usage and it felt appropriate in this context.
And… Wine stands for Wine Is Not an Emulator, too.
Ok but why does a game like Ghost of Tsushima need an anti-cheat to begin with?
They’re running FreeBSD (Heavily modified).
this is only mildly better then the conclusion jump. I am almost strictly single player, but the ideology of paying full price(which is becoming increasingly common to be 70$) for a game that I won’t actually be able to use all the features of… it’s not very appealing to me. Granted it isn’t fair of me to expect it since the company doesn’t advertise it as being non-windows friendly, but it still doesn’t mean I need to buy it. If they want my support, they will need to at bare minimum have it be proton/wine compatible, even if shitty support. If I can’t mark that box it’s a solid not buying. It’s a statistics case, if there are enough people like me, companies would change.
I’m not even asking that they make their games specifically linux-compatible. I’m just asking for them to not prevent compatibility.
I understand making games only for Windows because that’s where the market share is. But going out of your way to ensure they won’t run on Linux is a dick move.