Steam Deck promises to run the entire Steam library which accounts for thousands of games, including popular multiplayer releases which heavily rely on a good anti-cheat system to clean out cheaters. Valve understands that and is confident of ensuring a similar, clean Steam-like online experience.
Speaking with PC Gamer magazine for the latest issue, product designer Greg Coomer admitted that it was challenging to integrate a number of elements such as “whole game technologies and media codecs” with Proton for Steam Deck. However, “those major hurdles have mostly been cleared.”
Proton is a Linux-based tool which Steam Deck uses to run Windows-based games on its SteamOS. However, not everything that the main Steam client uses on PC “plays nice” with Linux.
It was hence surely a challenge for Valve to take on during the early days of working on Steam Deck but the developer is confident that some areas which remain pending such as an anti-cheat support will be cleared in time for launch.
“There remain one-off problems that we still consider important… because people will want those games to function on Steam Deck,” said Coomer. “But we have managed to make our way through the largest category of those things and the ones that remain we have pretty good confidence that we are going to be able to solve, like anti-cheat.”
Easy Anti-Cheat and BattlEye are two anti-cheats which most of the popular online games such as Apex Legends, Rainbow Six Siege, Fall Guys, Ark: Survival Evolved, Dead by Daylight, Rust, War Thunder, among many others. They all will be playable on Steam Deck and as of now are being updated to be compatible with Proton on the Linux-based handheld.
The repeated assurance from Valve however should ease any concerns that players will have to deal with cheaters on Steam Deck at launch around the coming 2021 holiday season.
