Rockstar Destroys Steam Deck Support for GTA Online & Lying About It

[0:00] Rockstar has decided to add an anti-cheat for their Grand Theft Auto V or GTA Online game, and this is breaking online play for Steam Deck gamers and Linux gamers. But the biggest problem is that they are lying about it. They’re claiming that it’s the fault of the anti-cheat and the Steam Deck that causes the issue and not Rockstar themselves, when in reality, it’s Rockstar themselves.

[0:23] Let’s talk about it. So Rockstar has added an anti-cheat for GTA Online, and that anti-cheat is BattlEye. You’ll see you get a message that you were kicked from the session by BattlEye. Now, BattlEye is an anti-cheat that’s been around for a very long time. It’s used in a lot of games. And here’s the kicker. It supports Linux, even though they claim that it doesn’t. Here’s a message from 2021 when Steam announced that BattlEye is going to be added for support in Proton. And there’s no additional work that is required by the developers besides communication to BattlEye that they would like to enable it. It’s actually easier now, but back then it was just reach out to BattlEye and say, I would like to enable it. If you do it now, it’s basically a checkbox that says, yes, I want Linux support or Steam Deck support, and that’s all you got to do. For further evidence that BattlEye and Easy Anti-Cheat, for that matter, work on Linux through Steam Play slash Proton is the episode of 169 for This Week in Linux when I literally talked about those things.

[1:29] Easy Anti-Cheat support for Linux is there, and BattlEye confirms Linux support for the Steam Deck. The single-player story mode is still going to work for GTA 5, so you can still play the game on the Steam Deck when you want to play the single-player story mode. So there is some compatibility, it’s just GTA Online that’s no longer working. They didn’t tell BattlEye that they want to support Linux.

[1:55] For what reason who knows but that’s the cause it’s rockstar making the problem if you want to say like oh they’re just misinformed maybe they don’t know maybe it wasn’t on purpose or whatever i don’t know they have they have responded to emails even people saying that there is support and they’re just saying it’s not supported but in my opinion i feel like they’re lying because the way they answered the question is battle eye compatible with steam deck this is from the frequently asked questions for GTA Online and their new implementation of BattlEye. So they say Steam Deck does not support BattlEye for GTA Online. The reason why, they do say that you’ll be able to continue playing the story mode, but not GTA Online. Now the problem with this statement is the question isn’t, is GTA Online supported through BattlEye on the Steam Deck? It’s, is BattlEye compatible with the Steam Deck? The answer to that question is yes.

[2:56] Unequivocally, it is yes. We have proof from Steam and BattlEye having support. This is the question you chose to answer, and that is not correct. The answer is that yes. So Steam Deck does not support BattlEye for GTA Online. The way they’re wording it implies that it’s Steam Deck’s fault, rather than GTA or Rockstar’s fault. So it’s not because Steam Deck does not support BattlEye or that BattlEye does not support Steam Deck for GTA Online. It’s actually GTA Online does not support the Steam Deck. That’s what you should say. You know, just be open and honest about it. It’s really the fact that you’re lying about it is that annoys me. I mean, obviously it annoys me in general because you’re taking away support for no reason. Because if you were saying I’m adding anti-cheat and it just doesn’t work with your system. I go, well, that’s a bummer, but at least, you know, you’re upfront about it.

[3:55] But you’re saying this and it’s not true. The next thing it says is that GTA 5 and GTA Online are not officially supported on Steam Deck and all technical support questions should be directed to Valve’s Steam Deck support content and community. The saying that GTA 5 and GTA Online are not officially supported on the Steam Deck, that’s true. I’m pretty sure it’s always been true. They’ve never officially supported it, which doesn’t mean that it’s not supported on the system and you can’t play it. This is why sometimes terminology is annoying because supported means that they are officially like officially supporting means that they are saying that it will work and they will do fixes in case something happens and that sort of stuff. They are not doing that and never have. It has worked for a very long time just fine. And the only reason it’s not working now is because of the change that they’ve added battle eye and neglected to check a box to make it work. Now I get it. You want to stop cheaters, and it makes sense to add an anti-cheat. It doesn’t make sense to add an anti-cheat that supports Linux and then not support Linux because of the anti-cheat that supports Linux. That doesn’t make any sense, especially when it’s just a checkbox. But I understand why you’d want to stop cheaters. But at the same time, GTA is a game about breaking laws. So cheating in GTA Online kind of makes sense because it’s not like it’s a competition or anything. It’s like a playground of chaos. So.

[5:21] Is it really necessary to block cheaters from GTA Online or should you even do it considering the fact that it’s GTA? I don’t know. That’s just the thought I had. Maybe they shouldn’t block cheaters. Literally the name of your game is Grand Theft Auto. Think about it.

[5:39] Now, Steam has decided to change the classification for Steam Deck compatibility, understandably so, to unsupported. Now, unfortunately, this is a really popular game and I don’t necessarily think that it should be labeled as unsupported. There should be like an extra tier. There’s only four different classifications for compatibility with Steam Deck and I think that is really where the problem lies here. See, the four categories of Steam Deck compatibility are verified, which means the game works great on Steam Deck and they have verified fight it to do so there’s playable which the game may require some manual tweaking to be able to play and then there’s unsupported as well as unknown now unsupported is that it it’s not functional on the steam deck and unknown is that they just don’t have any idea i feel like there should be another one added for this kind of thing because it is technically playable on the story mode for single player, but it’s not multiplayer online playable.

[6:41] So saying it’s unsupported where it doesn’t have functionality at all is not correct. And it’s a bummer because that’s what people are going to be introduced to now when they look for it. They’re going to see that it’s not available or it’s not supported when it kind of is and kind of isn’t. And this matters because the popularity of GTA is enormous. Also, it’s popular on the Steam Deck because in the top 10 most played games on the Steam Deck, you can see that Grand Theft Auto is number six. It’s, that’s not a good thing because the number six of the top 10 is now classified as unsupported.

[7:17] Technically it’s true but also technically it’s not now this brings up a topic that’s a massive thing could be its own video and that is ownership versus licensing of games this is a licensing of a game so if they want to pull support they can pretty much do it anytime because you only have a license to access the game not ownership of the game yeah that’s a bummer especially considering if you wanted access to the online version,

[7:44] you still have to buy GTA 5. You can’t just buy directly GTA Online. And there’s a, I guess, a technicality there in terms of what you’re actually buying a license for anyway. Now the question is, should Steam and Valve refund gamers? And well, this is very complicated because I understand why you wouldn’t want to refund. But because of the licensing and ownership thing, it’s hard to justify a refund because because the thing you agreed to is not really ownership and et cetera, et cetera. And also there’s a very clear refund policy for Steam. And that is you have two hours or two weeks of playing it before you can get a refund. So if you play two hours or more, then you cannot get a refund. And if it’s been more than two hours or two weeks.

[8:32] Even if you have less than two hours, you still cannot get a refund. So most players of this game have had the ownership of this game for a very long time, as in years, probably. So it’s and also probably have, you know, hundreds, if not thousands of hours. Steam has responded to some request for refund. And they said, thanks for reaching out to Steam support. I realize you’re not satisfied in this moment with the current state of the game, but we have not found evidence of a major failure in this case. In addition, the amount of time you’ve spent with the product far exceeds our refund policy and suggests that the game is functioning as expected.

[9:09] For these reasons, we will not be issuing you a refund. Let’s break this down. They’ve not found any evidence of a major failure. Now, the problem with it is what they mean major failure as in it’s like it’s removing the ability to play the game in any way whatsoever. And also the amount of time you’ve spent, even mine, which is very small, is still more than the refund policy. It’s interesting because the major failure isn’t the game itself. If you buy GTA 5, you get GTA 5. You can play the story mode, which is really what GTA 5 is. GTA Online is a separate component that you can use through GTA 5, but you’re not purchasing GTA 5 or GTA Online itself, which is a technicality. Very annoying, but that’s how I interpret this. And unfortunately, this means that there’s really no way to complain about or to get a refund, even to Rockstar, because Rockstar is just going to say, go talk to Steam. It’s not our fault. It is their fault.

[10:12] But, you know, it feels like the refund policy kind of has this nuance here in this particular case. When it comes to major failure, Steam does actually.

[10:26] Institute refunds depending on the kind of failure that happens.

[10:31] Rocket League was one of those games where it had support for Linux for many years. It worked just fine. And then all of a sudden, Epic Games buys Psyonix, decides to remove it from Steam and well, actually remove Linux support first. They remove Linux support that eventually they removed it from Steam. Now they remove the ability to play online for Rocket League and left the local play available. Why is this different? Because it’s kind of the same thing. Rocket League is basically a multiplayer online only game. Yes, you can kind of play it locally with bots or whatever, but 99% of the game is online play.

[11:13] Removing online play for that game was a major failure. So Rocket League gamers were given refunds by steam the technicality for gta is that you don’t lose access to the game you purchased or the game you purchase a license for gta 5 and gta online is a separate thing now should rockstar give you refunds yes absolutely they won’t because i mean they’re doing this for no reason at all so i doubt they’re going to give a refund to anyone but yes they should if they want to be jerks about removing support for Linux, at least don’t be jerks about making it where the gamers who are on Linux can’t play their game anymore and also can’t get a refund. If you want to remove the support, then so be it, but give a refund. And if you don’t want to give a refund, then just check the box that lets us play the game. It’s just a box.

[12:09] Now, what can you do about it? Well, there are a couple options that you have. You can leave a negative review or you can send feedback. You can leave a review on Steam. And as you can see, the most recent ones are not positive and are mostly related to the Steam Deck issues and the Linux gaming issues. And you could add to that if you would like. Another option is to use their feedback form that is on the GTA Online website. You will need a Rockstar Games account. But if you’re mad about this, you probably have one already. so you can leave your feedback here and maybe they’ll change their mind and just check the box maybe at least it’s not as bad as riot games because riot decided to make their own bespoke anti-cheat which is just terrible and as ridiculous and how it works and at the very least rockstar did not do that they are using a pre-made a tried and tested and all that kind of stuff stuff, anti-cheat.

[13:08] And theoretically, Rockstar, with enough people yelling at them, maybe they’ll check the box. So Rockstar, you’re not going to win any fans with this decision, and you’re just going to annoy people. And it’s really weird because all you had to do is check a box. Whatever. At least be honest about it. Tell us that you don’t care about us, about Linux gamers. Just tell us, you know? It would be better to say that than saying that it doesn’t

[13:35] support it, because it does. And we know this because clearly we are Linux gamers. We would know whether or not something supports Linux gaming because that’s the thing that we care about, right? So don’t tell us, don’t lie to us and say it doesn’t work. It does work. You just don’t want it to work. And that’s okay because it is your game. You choose that. If you don’t want customers, you choose, but at least be upfront about it. Okay. You know, it’s funny.

[14:02] Tim Sweeney of Epic Games is kind of in a similar position where he’s done some jerky things and he refuses to support Linux for most of their games. And he’s even said so on Twitter and other places. So there’s that. He’s definitely annoying, but he’s upfront about it. So at least I can respect that. I mean, Fortnite, for example, uses Easy Anti-Cheat and BattlEye to fight off cheaters, and both of those support Linux through Proton. EAC, or Easy Anti-Cheat, is made by Epic Games, and they made it to support Linux, but not for Fortnite for some reason. I mean, he claimed that when Linux gets tens of millions of users, he would make it supported, and Linux already has tens of millions of users, but I can respect the fact that they’re at least upfront about their opinions rather than claiming they can’t do it. They know they can, they just choose not to.

[14:55] Rockstar is doing something that is just silly because the support is so easy, their reasoning is so wrong, and it’s just a nonsense thing. But at least it’s not Riot Games because with Rockstar, they could figure it out, realize that it’s a super easy fix, and just go fix it. And with Riot Games, well, it’s a lot, a lot worse. And if you want to know more about that, you can check out this video where I talk about Riot Games and the rootkit that you have to install that is just atrocious. Most of these anti-cheats are pretty bad, but this one, they decided we’re going to make it even worse.