this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2024
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I've got banned from Apex Legends (social.ggbox.fr)
submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by [email protected] to c/linux_gaming
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Got greeted with this message today. I've been playing Apex on linux for more than a year. Not sure if this could be related? Is this just me?

I've contested the ban and I'm currently waiting for a response from ea support.

UPDATE : Got an email response from EA today. It's basically a generic message saying that my account was associated with "cheating practices" and so they will not remove the ban.

This is absolutely fucking ridiculous! I've been playing this game since 2020 and have 3K+ hours on record, now this shit happens and there's no recourse ? Fuck this company.

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[–] [email protected] 159 points 2 months ago (1 children)

If I remember right, about a year ago they were banning a lot of Linux players. It might be happening again.

[–] sp6 112 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

EDIT: A Respawn employee on reddit is now asking for the user ID/gamertag of those banned on linux: https://www.reddit.com/r/apexlegends/comments/1fi77vs/comment/lnh13kj/?context=8

Original comment

Looks like you're not the only one:

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/1f5kyd1/psa_using_proton_experimental_or_at_least/

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/1ffxfjb/apex_legends_proton_epic_bug_that_do_that/

They've falsely banned linux players before, once in March 2023 and again in August 2023.

I got hit in the Aug 2023 ban, and had my permaban overturned after 1-2 weeks. Expect to have your appeal rejected, we had to make enough of a fuss about it to get a community manager to reach out to the development team to get people unbanned:

https://www.reddit.com/r/apexlegends/comments/15uqt7w/linux_users_getting_falsely_banned_again/

https://answers.ea.com/t5/Technical-Issues/Linux-players-getting-banned/td-p/12338557/page/50

I haven't played in 9-10 months since the false positive put a really bad taste in my mouth, so I don't have any datapoints to add for the current state of things, but I wish you the best of luck getting unbanned.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago

I see. Thanks. I'll just wait and see then.

[–] 20hzservers 48 points 2 months ago (2 children)

There a free cheats for apex on Linux that are undetected by their shitty anti cheat. These Linux still eventually get caught manually so the anti cheat team just sees a lot of Linux users cheat and innocent players get caught in the crossfire b/c of their incompetence.

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[–] jordanlund 47 points 2 months ago (4 children)

Why do they care what OS people use? Is it the anti-cheat software that needs Windows?

[–] [email protected] 92 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

Yes, it's invasive kernel-level anti-cheat common in competitive multiplayer games now, because cheaters will mod their system that much for the sake of getting around the anti-cheat. Annoying from all sides.

That, and despite many devs being Linux fans, there does seem to be a (false) perception that Linux is the OS of choice for cheaters.

EDIT: Just remember, can't play a game on Linux? It's ALWAYS either the DRM or anti-cheat. Either way, corporate BS that hinders honest paying customers more than the people it's trying to stop.

[–] bsides 10 points 2 months ago

This comment is full of win.

[–] ulkesh 5 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Exactly. It’s insane how moronic EA or other publishers are that think “oh they’re on Linux they must be hacking/cheating our game.”

I would wager they have never touched Linux in their life.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Not sure on ApeLegs but they have increasingly been disabling linux "support" for the Battlefields because of their anti-cheat.

I don't know how popular ApeLegs actually is. But for a lot of live games? Those are making MASSIVE bank and anything that can hurt the economy can kill the game. So a lot of studios actively just disable/block linux support because the added effort of making sure everything works in Proton is too big of a risk. Because nothing would increase Linux marketshare quite like free vdollars in Fortnite.

It really fucking sucks. But I find that many studios (like Digital Extremes) are really good about making it clear that even though they don't officially support Linux, they are very much fans of Proton (and Warframe has had a lot of bugfixes specifically FOR Proton support). Whereas EA has spent the past few months systematically disabling Linux "support" for every game they develop.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I don't know how popular ApeLegs actually is

~~13th~~ 7th most played game on Steam in the past 24 hours, and 13th at the moment https://steamdb.info/charts/

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

They don't. I've been playing Apex on Linux for years now. Apex is doing ban waves for cheaters. OP likely did something that looked like or was cheating.

[–] TrousersMcPants 4 points 2 months ago (2 children)

What he did was play on linux. You can have kernel level support for anti cheat on Linux so they look at that and see it as "suspicious" then ban.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (4 children)

Apex does not use kernel level anti cheat. It just uses normal easy anti cheat.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

In the past I don't think it was possible to even play on Linux because of the anti-cheat, but I think Proton worked out a way to emulate it. Maybe something to do with that if it's not technically "official" support? It's extra stupid if the emulated anti-cheat is working fine.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

No. EAC and Battleye developed ways to explicitly support proton, which has to be explicitly enabled by the developer for the game to run.

Proton didn't change, the popular AC options did. They've had proton support pretty much since the steamdeck launched, and it works great as long as the developer of a game bothers checking the checkbox for it.

EAC works on linux just fine, and the fact that Apex runs, means Respawn deliberately allows it.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Fuck this company.

You're damn right.

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[–] dubble_deee 26 points 2 months ago

A year and a half back I was sent an email from Apex saying I was banned for hacking. I hadn't played apex for a year and my account hadn't been logged into during that whole time, so if they're false flagging players that don't even have the game installed then who knows that the fuck they're doing in their anti cheat. They actually reversed the ban when I contested it though.

[–] Matriks404 24 points 2 months ago (5 children)

I really love how various services nowadays will just ban you without providing any context why you were banned.

Probably half of the time I am banned I have no idea which rule I violated, which makes me more likely to violate it again, when I wait till I am unbanned or create another account.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

I did try to create a new account, but it's really annoying because my original EA account is linked to my steam account, and cannot be unlinked. So I would need another steam account as well. Unless I can figure out a way to play without steam, which I'm not sure how to do because of... you guessed it, fucking anti-cheat.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

@Matriks404
So aggravating 😭 I hate this type of nonsense
@helios

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[–] soloner 20 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Tbh I know this isn't helpful, but I recommend take the L and find better games to play. Errantly perma banning users shows a lack of consumer consideration and does not deserve further energy to fix. They fucked up, take your business elsewhere.

Again, I know it's not helpful but I think worth considering. Companies some decades ago used to be user experience as the top goal, but that has gone to the sidelines for many companies, and I don't think it's good to normalize. Hence, boycott when it happens.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago

I'm sorry to say it is extremely popular (for some good reasons imo) and my friends are playing it. Besides, not a lot of competitive games even support linux to begin with. I was grateful that Apex did until now.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I got banned last year. It was for the best tbh

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[–] griefreeze 15 points 2 months ago

Same thing happened to me, unfortunate for us...

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago

Classic EA

[–] yggstyle 8 points 2 months ago

They probably just flagged you for not being in the normal environment. For all their bravado their detection is dogshit. I've had issues with them just flagging something over a VM and... flagging a batch file closing their launcher. I wish I was joking.

[–] GustavoM 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Nah, they are doing you a favor.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

Fuck this company.

They've been awful for many, many years at this point. I've no idea why people keep giving them money and expecting them to not be awful.

[–] sp6 4 points 2 months ago (3 children)

@[email protected] @[email protected], a Respawn employee responded on reddit and wants a list of user IDs/gamertags for those banned on linux:

https://www.reddit.com/r/apexlegends/comments/1fi77vs/comment/lnh13kj/?context=8

[–] griefreeze 3 points 2 months ago

You're the goat! Thanks for sharing. I dropped a comment to the respawn employee and a comment on the EA thread linked in the reddit post.

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