Well, shit. Unfortunate news from the Vinegar Discord: Roblox will block Wine in future releases.
This is going to end my “Steam Deck as a primary desktop PC for my kid” experiment.
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And nothing of value was lost
It’s an extremely popular platform for kids, and I think anything that will get kids trying Linux instead of windows is something we should want working.
It’s not hard to dual boot with Windows. I set it up with one of these:
https://shop.kingston.com/products/xs2000-external-ssd?variant=40686324940992
What if I don’t want to use windows? What if I find windows to be buggy and unstable and all around just unpleasant to use? What if I don’t want to have to reboot my PC or my deck every time I get the slightest urge to play shitty simulators or one of the millions of backrooms games?
I wonder if it’s possible to get running via waydroid, ofc, not really an option on SteamOS, but outside of that.
Why not realy an option on SteamOS?
You need the binder kernel modules such as
binder_linuxwhich aren’t included in the SteamOS kernel as well a needing to config up systemd services, etc.
Updating SteamOS will break all this do to it’s image based “immutable” nature.I see. I forgot that SteamOS would reset all that on updates
Then you won’t be able to play Roblox until the Wine devs add the missing functionality.
The beauty of the Steam Deck is that you can run almost any OS on it, including Windows if you want to play Windows exclusives. If you don’t want to use Windows, you’ll have to get your Roblox time in some other way, like through your phone.
Some applications just require Windows. You have to acknowledge that if you’re going to use a non-Windows device.
I have the same discussion with my wife every time some website doesn’t work. “Are you using a real browser or are you in Safari?”
I think you’re missing the point that it is working and they are intentionally breaking it.
Not unusual, Bungie does the same thing only actively banning non-Windows users.
Right, someone else does it too, so that obviously makes it OK right?
just because doom runs on everything not every software needs to run in any environment. it’s a shitty move to actively break working things but in the end they are not obligated to anyone but their shareholders. and if they think that is what they need to do then let them.
And apathy is why so many businesses are getting away with anti consumer practices.
Some people just hate fun, it seems.
Roblox kids are future Linux admins, anyway. May as well let them get started under Wine.
Why block Wine? It’s gotta be a tiny fraction of their user base.
There’s a gamingonlinux article which might explain a bit.
Very roughly, a few alterations to the anticheat to make it work on Wine made some of the anticheat’s workings apparent, which in turn allowed people to work out new exploits.
Wine is an excellent tool for reverse engineering. Additionally, we had to disable many antitamper checks to make Hyperion run on Wine. This has allowed interested parties to learn a lot about the internal workings of Hyperion, relevant to both Win32 and UWP. As the initial shock of Hyperion’s release started wearing off, many people have begun discovering the various angles through which one can learn more about the inner workings of Hyperion.
As to why all the anticheat stuff matters so much, I’m not quite sure.
As to why all the anticheat stuff matters so much, I’m not quite sure.
it’s probably not about anti-cheat but something with collecting data which is probably easier when you install a rootkit
2 big reasons I’ve seen.
First is idiot csuite/suits at the top who think linux = haxxing and they somehow lose business by supporting them.
Second is kind of true, that people have trouble running on linux and go to official forums asking for help, or leave negative reviews that they couldn’t get it to work, which isn’t fair to the developer.
Wasn’t it unofficial support? The kind of “at your own risk” stuff linux users get from everywhere.
How do you even block wine? It’s a compatibility layer? Even if you block it someone will just add a fix to get around it eventually won’t they?
I do not know, but the Vinegar people give it straight:
Also last time around Wine support was broken for like 6 months and no one found a workaround. It was Roblox devs who re-enabled it later.
God discord admins are horrible. Not even allowing discussion about it, what a coward.
Fact is if one of the fears is cheating, the best way to combat it is by releasing an official linux client. Otherwise you’re forever leaving an entire base of tinkerers a platform to try and get it to work
Why does that post sound like: "Fuck off! …and do nicely without causing a fuss…please.
Because it is. They are telling paying customers to get stuffed. I was planning on putting Linux on my daughter’s PC but with this she will never let me. Only computer left in the house with Windows on it. :(
Just in case there is any misconception: this particular post does not emanate from anyone at Roblox. This is the Vinegar team closing shop and giving context. Vinegar was an open source project which made it easy to run Roblox on Linux.
Roblox Corporation is the one telling a (likely very small) portion of their paying userbase to fuck off.
If you do it like some developers, you actually test and modify the code so that Wine is able to run it. Wine is far from perfect and only covers the APIs it needs to cover to get specific applications to work, so it’s not hard to write a program that doesn’t run on Wine.
The only way to block Wine would be to add some kind of DRM, like many other online games do. Wine doesn’t really try to defeat anticheat measures.
In practice, you could easily block Wine by distributing your application in a format that Wine doesn’t even begin to support (UWP applications for example) or by calling a few graphics APIs that are less than five years old.
Edit: looking into it, the only reason the game worked on Steam Deck was because there were certain versions of the client that didn’t include anti cheat. They seem to be enabling anti cheat everywhere now, and that’ll mess with Wine for sure. In theory, Wine can implement all the APIs anti cheat calls and pretend to be Windows, in practice I don’t think anyone from the Wine team is all that interested in this. Valve worked hard to get some anti cheat working, but they don’t have any incentive to make Roblox work.
