LogInIt is "monitoring the trend."
Valve
You might have noticed that some popular multiplayer games are not available on Steam Deck. If you were wondering why, one of the reasons is they use Windows-specific kernel-level anti-cheats, which are not compatible with the device's Linux-based OS.
Kernel-level software can be quite dangerous as it has access to your system, but it allows developers to catch cheaters by detecting suspicious programs.
In a recent interview to AUTOMATON, Valve's Steam Deck designer Lawrence Yang and programmer Pierre-Loup Griffais confirmed that the company knows about the lack of support and is "monitoring the trend of games requiring kernel-level access" at the moment. Moreover, Valve has partnered with Easy Anti-Cheat and BattlEye in the past "to make it easy for developers to enable support for Steam Deck."
"We have been monitoring the trend of games requiring kernel-level access for their anti-cheat technologies and not supporting Steam Deck as a result. We are extremely aware of the critical need for countermeasures against cheating in online games, but are also considering options carefully. Some of the approaches popular now in the industry might present problematic trade-offs for the end-user in the longer term," Griffais said.
Respawn
Unfortunately, this means you can play some games there, including Apex Legends, which has recently dropped Steam Deck support because EA thinks Linux is "a path for a variety of impactful exploits and cheats."
Well, at least you know if the game you want will get access to your system: Steam now warns players about kernel-level anti-cheats.
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