The developers that go this route (for example, the makers of Infinity Nikki) explicitly check whether the hardware is a Steam Deck or compatible, and refuse to run if not. That way they can claim to support Steam Decks while blocking Linux players, which they still consider as too much of a cheating vector to allow at all.
Linux is a secure operating system, windows is not. Making kernel level anti-cheat for Linux is difficult, and should be functionally impossible; as kernel level anticheat is absolutely no different than malware in its attack vector on the kernel. This means, for lazy dev teams, they can’t implement the laziest possible method of anticheat, which they get upset about since they have lost all ability to actually have anti-cheat teams.
Linux makes a kernel-mode anti-cheat (that is, an application able to have above-administrator permissions and supervise all the device’s actions) more difficult to implement than on Windows.
How can some anticheats work only under SteamOS?
The developers that go this route (for example, the makers of Infinity Nikki) explicitly check whether the hardware is a Steam Deck or compatible, and refuse to run if not. That way they can claim to support Steam Decks while blocking Linux players, which they still consider as too much of a cheating vector to allow at all.
This still allows running linux cheats on Steam Deck.
Or even better, I’m sure it is possible to spoof hardware on Linux since it’s open.
You can absolutely configure Linux to spoof the hardware it reports to a program.
Cheaters will do anything but actually get good at the game.
But… why?
Linux is a secure operating system, windows is not. Making kernel level anti-cheat for Linux is difficult, and should be functionally impossible; as kernel level anticheat is absolutely no different than malware in its attack vector on the kernel. This means, for lazy dev teams, they can’t implement the laziest possible method of anticheat, which they get upset about since they have lost all ability to actually have anti-cheat teams.
Linux makes a kernel-mode anti-cheat (that is, an application able to have above-administrator permissions and supervise all the device’s actions) more difficult to implement than on Windows.