One of the most common issues you’ll run into while trying to run windows games on linux is anti-cheat support. Many times you’ll find yourself installing a game without issue, even playing the single player, but when you try to join a multiplayer session you’ll be disappointed to find the games anti-cheat won’t even let you join a game.
EAC or Easy Anti-Cheat is (spoiler) anti-cheat software being used by many of today’s biggest multiplayer game titles. Battlefield 2042, Halo Master chief collection and Lost Ark, are just some of the titles using EAC to keep cheaters at bay. No one likes cheaters, and it seems like EAC is becoming the go to drop in solution for developers trying to offer players a secure multiplayer experience.
With how common EAC has become, you’ll run into it often. While trying to run Insurgency: Sandstorm for example, the game will launch perfectly, you can play solo games without issue, but if you try to play a multiplayer game you’ll see that it doesn’t work, and you’ll see your gaming hopes dashed against the hard reality of unsupported cross platform gaming reality.
With this being such a common issue, many gamers can be excused for ranting about EAC not respecting Linux. Saying things along the lines of “just because we’re trying to run your game on linux doesn’t mean we want to do bad things”. Why does EAC treat Linux gamers this way? If you cut us, do we not bleed? Etc etc. Okay that last one may be a bit of an exaggeration, but Linux gamers want to play games, and when we see the game running perfectly except for EAC, it’s an easy assumption to make that EAC just doesn’t support running games with WINE. This isn’t true. EAC fully supports running in a WINE environment.
Now the problem is getting developers to enable support. Valve has instructions for developers on how to do this. EAC instructions from Valve
Now more games than ever are running with enabled anti cheat, and more are being added frequently, but if your favorite game still isn’t working, it’s time to start reaching out to the developers directly. Send them an email. Link the instructions from Valve, and see what they do. No matter the game, every developer wants their games to be played.