Apex Legends' latest patch broke its anti-cheat tool, kicking all Steam Deck players out of the game
What you need to know
Developers Respawn released a new patch for its free-to-play title Apex Legends with release notes.
The only supposed change to anti-cheat was to notify the lobby when a player was banned for cheating.
It seems that any device running Linux is no longer able to play, including the Steam Deck.
This has happened before and should be fixed soon, if unintentional.
The curse of anti-cheat rears its head once more. Recently, we reported on AMD's anti-lag getting players banned in games like Counter-Strike 2 and other games. There seem to be constant reports of players being banned from games that, according to the player, weren't cheating.
Well, with the new update, Steam Deck users won't be able to play Apex Legends until they fix the issue with Linux-based devices in the patch.
What does this mean for Linux and Steam Deck players? Respawn is working on a fix, so sit tight and give it a few more days. But the underlying issue here is how anti-cheat continues to harm reputable players and doesn't seem to stop all cheaters.
Why won't Apex Legends work on Steam Deck?
The Apex Legends build for Linux and, in turn, Steam Deck was broken in the latest patch. It appears that the easyanticheat_x64.so file for Linux was removed, causing this issue. This doesn't seem to have been intentional by Respawn, and in fact, they have replied that a fix for the issue is currently in progress.
Anti-cheat has been a long-time issue for Steam Deck Players. Unfortunately, for a lot of games, anti-cheat isn't supported at all on Steam Deck, so the games aren't playable. Still, in the last year or so, many developers have found ways to get anti-cheat onto the Deck and now work such as Halo: MCC and Halo Infinite.
If you're a Steam Deck player itching to get into season 19, give it a few more days. Luckily, Apex Legends is playable on almost everything, so maybe give it a few more days, or it might be time to upgrade to a Windows 11-based ASUS ROG Ally or Lenovo Legion Go. Are you on the fence about upgrading? Check out our review for the ASUS ROG Ally, or look at the best places to buy the Lenovo Legion Go.
Are you being affected by the Apex Legends update? Do you think anti-cheat is effective in games? Let us know in the comments.
