I built a PC for the family yesterday, and I’m hoping to get away with going 100% Linux. What makes me a little nervous is that Epic Games, GOG, battle.net, EA store, etc don’t officially support Linux. If I try using Lutris, or Heroic Games Launcher, or something similar to use those platforms, is there a chance my account will get banned? I’ve seen some stories about people getting banned from Apex Legends using Linux, but since I don’t play that one I’m not too concerned about it.
Has anyone had a bad experience?
Not at all, I don’t think anyone has ever gotten banned for using alternate launchers on Linux. I’ve been using Heroic for ~2 years now with no issues.
The only time you can get banned is if you try playing a multiplayer game that has anti-cheat that doesn’t support Linux. Just make sure when playing a multiplayer game that Linux is supported.
That makes me feel better. My son will be playing on this one a lot more often than me, and he’s too young for online games at the moment.
As far as I know, no one has ever gotten their account banned store-wide.
Like you mentioned, sometimes games with anti-cheats like Apex Legends or Overwatch will falsely ban linux users (from that specific game - not the whole Battle.net or EA store), but they usually undo those bans within a week or so for most users.
I was hit with one of the Apex bans, and it was overturned within a week or two. But there were a few people who I am pretty convinced did not cheat and are still banned, so maybe be cautious with that particular game.
Why should a store ban you from spending there your money?
I mean, that’s exactly what Nintendo did to me after modding my Switch to transfer save games between PC and Switch for games I’ve bought on both platforms.
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Stopping you from spending money is hardly a cash grab.
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Not here. I’ve been playing Ghostwire: Tokyo for a while now thanks to the Epic giveaway. The only issue I had was when I was setting up the wine prefix and the Denuvo DRM decided that I had installed the game enough times for today!
You’re never going to be banned from a store. Individual games with anticheat might however. Even then bans are pretty rare outside of games that are explicitly hostile towards Linux like destiny 2.
I have been using battlenet for a couple of years now without account issues. Blizzard has been pretty decent towards Linux users in the past, even fixing issues that broke functionality in wine (there is an example of this on the blizz forums somewhere). Can’t speak for the rest of the launchers since I do not use them.
I played through D2 Resurrected and D4 on Battle.net with no issues or bans. Play Apex via Steam and that was fine as well.
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fyi: Been using lutris/battle.net (on kubuntu) for wow and Diablo for a year and a month and no issues so far.
And also got battle.net setup on steam (running kubuntu too and want to play around with proton) as a non-steam game and still works
Been playing sc2 on Linux for 8 months. They won’t ban obvious and known cheaters, I’m not worried about playing in Linux.
No bad experiences here. Have played a bunch for the last 3 years on games like Diablo 4, Overwatch 1 and 2 (Battle.net) and Dark Souls 3, Elden Ring, and plenty of other EAC titles with no issues. Specifically Lutris and Heroic are just frontend launchers and game managers and don’t effect running the game.
Getting away with 100% Linux means accepting that there are some games you won’t be able to play and as long as you’re okay with that then go for it (Rust for example, is a game I wish they’d enable EAC Linux for but they never have).
While some people have been falsely banned on Apex in the past, it’s become much more rare and a lot of people were able to get unbanned by going through the proper channels.
A few years ago I was caught up in an Overwatch 1 ban wave. The ban happened while in a match and support didn’t help. After a few days Blizzard automatically reverted those false Linux bans without any public notice. Iirc this was the second ban wave where Linux were banned and later unbanned in Overwatch.
