The game developers could if they wanted to, but I hope they won't. I will not willingly install a rootkit on any of my computers. I wouldn't buy or pirate a game that requires one even if it could run on Linux. I don't even like running user level anti cheat, but at least that can be run in a sandbox.
this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2025
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Is it possible to have kernel-level anti-cheat in Linux?
Yes, Absolutely. But, people would throw a fit. There is probably no way to opensource it without also making it easier to bypass. There would be a concerted effort to reverse engineer it and remove it from the system while maintaining functionality
Maintainers of anti-cheat software are not volunteers. If there was an order from management to port the system to Linux, it would happen. It's just that with the Linux userbase as small as it is, it's simply not profitable to cater to them.
I think that if it ever happens, there will be a influx of people moving to linux, or abandoning their duelboots
I fully disagree. The thing keeping regular people away from Linux as an OS is not that they can't play some online game with Anti-cheat.
Linux is in a weird place right now. It's actually a perfect fit for non-technical users that use their computers for email, web browsing, and Netflix, but those users don't know what an operating system is, let alone that there are options. More technical users tend to require more specialized applications, and if there isn't a native linux port available, you have to do some research for alternatives, or to find a way to run it in wine.
Windows is shitty, but it's comfortable. And I know that it will run any software I throw at it with basically no research or troubleshooting.
There is probably no way to opensource it without also making it easier to bypass.
I want to highlight this in case OP missed it. Your point here is critical.
Now I'm going to nerd out a bit about it:
To expand on your points above (for OP), there's an impasse here between the anti-cheat developer and the distro developers.
The anti-cheat developer needs support from the distro developer to get their anti-cheat packages signed, to allow them to run in the kernel. Any package not signed by the distro developer that tries to run at kernel level will be treated by the OS as a virus. (Windows has this protection as well.)
Getting the code signed is pretty easy. The only requirement is sharing the source code, so the distro developers can make sure there's nothing nasty in it.
But the anti-cheat developers feel that they need to never share their source code, to prevent cheating. In some cases, they have even have contracts that prevent them from legally sharing parts of their source code (if licensed from a third party).
That's also not a problem. All they have to do is sign a binding contract for secrecy with every contributor to the distro, and then privately share their source code, and get it signed.
On Windows, that means signing a contract with Microsoft. On Mac, with Apple.
But on Linux, is just means tracking down and making separate agreements with a few thousand independent individuals...
So the technical solution is pretty simple: share code, get code signed, run in kernel.
But the contrasting needs of everyone involved make it unlikely on Linux.
Interestingly, an Anti-cheat developer who felt very confident that their code was unbeatable, could just publish it publicly, and get it signed and running quite quickly.
But uh... Most anti-cheat is also pretty low quality code, according to most estimations.
@Godort @SpiderUnderUrBed That's really the conundrum, in an open source kernel, where can you put anti-cheat that someone else can't readily pull out?
No.
I feel like bpf would be a decent solution for anticheat. I believe you can limit what an ebpf program can look at quite effectively.