Apex Legends has stopped supporting Linux and the Steam Deck due to issues with cheat developers. We spoke to an insider cheater source who provided exclusive insight into Respawn’s decision to stop support for linux.  

Tough decision but the right one. Some of the nastiest cheats were Linux based and I do believe this is a net positive in the long run to help curb cheating in Apex https://t.co/VbAuoj6piR

— Conor Ford / Hideouts (@RSPN_Hideouts) October 31, 2024

Background

 – The respawn developers had trouble telling the difference between legitimate players and cheaters, leading to a full stop support. Although there are only about 2,000 to 3,000 Linux users according to steam munbers

Some Apex Legends players who use Linux have jokingly said that in many ways, they are happy about the decision because they feel like they are finally free of the game’s addiction. However, for the cheaters, they see it differently

Interview with a Cheat Developer on Linux and Apex Legends

-What made things easier for cheating on Linux? Is it just the lack of anti-cheat measure?

Cheat Dev: Well, Linux has always had some form of anti-cheat, but it’s largely for show. It doesn’t effectively combat cheating. Many cheaters would emulate playing on Linux while actually being on Windows, which allowed them to bypass Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC) entirely.

-So, were many of the Linux users actually cheating?
Cheat Dev: everyone understands that like 90% of linux players are cheating, there were so many banwaves where shit ton of legits were banned and they just don’t want to spend time on finding that 10% of legit players there loool…they just hired an actual security team and instead of spending time to fix linux problems they just decided to drop the support.

-just to clarify, is there a cheat feature that wont work now that linux is out of the picture?
Cheat Dev: no particular features, but many people were abusing lack of anticheat for different purposes, I’m pretty sure most 20 lvl farms were linux based.

-Do you think they’ll ever bring back support for Linux?
Cheat Dev: no multiplayer games will ever support linux because it’s just physically impossible to make an anticheat there.