Valve Working With Rockstar to Fix GTA Online on Steam Deck

Fubarberry@sopuli.xyzmod to Steam Deck@sopuli.xyz – 238 points –
Valve Working With Rockstar to Fix GTA Online on Steam Deck - Steam Deck HQ
steamdeckhq.com
34

The Deck doing what I was hoping it'd do, light a fire under devs to get on board with Linux platforms

I love the deck just for that, im so happy valve is breaking the cycle of not enough pkayers not enough games

I agree w/ the sentiment but I haven’t heard of a dev that isn’t lit on fire from every direction at most of these companies.

It’s usually non-devs who require the encouragement. Although perhaps you meant developer more generally?

devs should be held accountable too sometimes

Watch it support the Steam Deck and only the steam deck with no other Linux supported

That may very well be the official stance, only officially supporting SteamOS in much the same way games used to only officially support a single major distro, often Ubuntu. However, I don't see it actually stopping you from playing on other Linux systems. The functionality is there at that point. It's just a matter of making sure you have whatever it depends on from the Deck.

I mean like valve provides some sort of hardware based attestion so gta v can verify its running on a steam deck.

I don't think Valve would help implement something like that. They've shown a lot of initiative in trying to push Linux into the mainstream for gaming, and a move like that would be counterproductive to that goal.

Plus, it ignores the fact that the Deck isn't trying to be the only piece of hardware in the space, just the first to prove it's commercially viable, and they succeeded in that. Competitive devices are coming to market, and when gamers start buying them, it's going to seem foolish to whitelist JUST the Deck.

Rockstar's only semi-viable play of that nature is to attempt to require SteamOS as your Linux distro, but I see no way to do that so you always and only block other Linux distros.

Not going to hold my breath after getting a 'fuck you very much' reply from their tech support.

To be fair, that was likely some first level support reacting to you trying something that is not supposed to work, as in not supported (playing on Linux).

How the strategy pans out after those talks we will see.

My gratitude goes first and foremost to Valve for trying.

See this going around and... that is a LOT of reaching from a random CSR trying to placate an angry user.

"We are currently working with Rockstar games to find a fix" followed by "You can buy the game you already have for cheap" just means that Valve sent an email saying "Bro, what the fuck?". And Rockstar will likely send a response of "Do you want GTA 6 or not?" and this will never come up again.

I would like to be proven wrong (GTA:O is trash but some people like it) but ... not optimistic. And we get these kind of "A random CSR said something to make me stop asking to speak to their manager!" level of "leaks" a few times a year. The vast majority go nowhere.

Why would Rockstar Games not have Deck players buy GTA6? In my opinion both entities have the same interest here.

Part of it is the same reason any live game would disable Linux. There is a LOT of money in premium currencies and RMTs but the game also needs to let players "earn everything" so that folk defend the design. And the studio (shareholders) just don't think they have enough resources to properly test the "proton version" of the game. So if an exploit is found? You can bet the market share of linux users would go up an order of magnitude or two over night as people want to get their exploit cash and break the economy.

And considering that Linux is still single digit percentages of the Steam userbase (and that that is insane considering where we were a decade ago) we just don't matter.

The other side of things is more tinfoil but I wouldn't be shocked if it comes out that one of the other platform holders paid for some form of pseudo-exclusivity. Because the Steam Deck is incredibly powerful in that people are quite likely to want to play the PC version "just in case" they want to play it on their steam deck during all the public transit they do in their every day life. Like, personally speaking, it killed Gamepass for me. Because while I love the idea of being able to just try a bunch of different games to see if I like them, I found myself buying too many games because I wanted to play them on my Deck on my deck (hee hee or to be able to continue my progress when I go on travel.

afaik the anti cheat they added is one that’s known to work with linux, but you do have to do some extra stuff… i think valve worked with them to ensure it works on deck, and are probably now working through the steps with rockstar to ensure it’s as easy as possible for them

Valbe should automatically stop sales of any game that dips from verified to unplayable over these shenanigans.

I don't think they should stop sales, but they should offer refunds at the publisher's expense if the issue isn't resolved within X number of days.

They are welcome to do both. Immediately stop selling and after a X number of days allow refunds at the publishers expense.

Oh HELL yeah. That means if we get some way to run Battleye on the Deck I can finally get Siege working both on the Deck and on my Linux partition and Windows can gtfo

Hate to break it to you, but Battleye already has proton support. Devs need to enable it. Ubisoft knows this and has done nothing.

And so does EA who hasn't done it either and keeps adding the anti cheat to older Battlefield titles. Fuck AAA publishers.

Funnily enough they were one of the first ones to enable Easy Anti Cheat with Star Wars Squadrons.

Of course Valve is. GTAO is the most successful online game ever.