BattleEye Fails startup on Linux using latest Proton

[DGxInfinitY]

BattleEye for PlayerUnknowns BattleGrounds won't start on Elementary OS(Ubuntu Based)
As far as I know, this is a wine definitions problem that might require a little deep searching to fix.

[smurfhunter]

This should also affect Planetside 2, and I'd really love to see it working

[ghost]

BattlEye currently doesn't function at all on wine, however there is someone on reddit working on fixing that.

[linkjay]

I understand this isn't Proton's problem, but I think this is actually a crucial thing that should be fixed with Proton. This has been an issue with Wine for a long time and it seems like no one has really developed a fix for battleye. Considering how many games run the anticheat, I think it would be necessary for the project to have this fixed one way or another.

[adds68]

Also seeing this issue!

[jarrard]

I believe this might also be a issue for ARMA3, it does have BattleEye for Linux with a test build of the game but they lack a few features such as launcher options and MP compat with Windows users.

[ghost]

It was stated in the steam announcement post that some anticheats would render impossible the compatibility. BattleEye is so aggressive that they even blocked reshade a few months back. Doubt we will ever see those titles work with wine.

[mkljczk]

Maybe some guys (pun unintended) from Valve or CodeWeavers could help Guy1524 in making BattlEye work on wine, maybe they would work together?

[radude]

Same for DayZ standalone.

[oleksandrzelentsov]

This is the same for the PUBG.
I think Battleye should open up a little bit since it's a big problem for a lot of games, which makes it impossible to play them.

[Guy1524]

Hello, I would like to mention a few things:

Right now I am focused on submitting my current Battleye work to wine before I proceed. Also, now that school is started progress will generally be slower, as I am only working on the weekends.

@oleksandrzelentsov People have tried contacting Battleye about this issue before, and their position is that they will only support native linux games.

@m4sk1n Plagman (valve dev) has expressed interest in working with anticheat developers to get it working under proton. This solution would probably be more sustainable in the long term.

[Lyle-Tafoya]

Given that Battleye has native support on Linux, maybe the wizards over at Valve can find a way to do some kind of Battleye passthrough for Steam Play games to connect it with the native version of Battleye. Running Battleye in Wine would be nice, but I am afraid that could also lead to people being banned without cheating.

[linkjay]

@Lyle-Tafoya Hmm, that's actually pretty interesting. I think it would also be worthy to reach out to the Battleye team and see if they will make room for Wine in their support so we can officially have support for the anticheat on their side.

This way, we can avoid false-positives, and have good support in Wine. Now, we just have to convince them to actually go through with that...

[h8672]

Planetside 2 gets to the launcher now, battleye though... tries for an undetermined long time to launch it and the log file has various dlls showing there. I added some through winetricks and those dlls dont really show at the end of log file anymore. Can't find all dlls that show there in winecfg.
env WINEPREFIX="/mnt/tera/Games/SteamLibrary/steamapps/compatdata/218230/pfx" WINEPATH="/mnt/tera/Games/SteamLibrary/steamapps/common/Proton 3.7/dist/bin" winetricks

[dreamer]

I understand the sentiment in this issue (I would love to play Planetside 2 again), but trying to work around anti-cheat system is pointless - they will be updated faster than workarounds for Linux will appear. The only way forward would be to start a conversation with Battleye devs about supporting Proton officially. They already can detect, that game is running inside Wine.

[HonkingGoose]

Implementation of some kind of whitelist/integration of anti-cheat systems into Proton is tracked here: #1468

[Guy1524]

I'd like to provide an update on the state of my battleye work. A month ago, I got the battleye driver's anticheat loop running. Once the game client attempts to connect with the driver and submits an interupt, there is an internal error, and the game I am testing refuses to proceed. I am currently taking a break, but if anyone else experienced wants to pick up where I left off, my work is here: https://github.com/Guy1524/wine/tree/battleye-work

[ghost]

No news on it ? would like to see player unknow battelground but battleye is a pain in the ass

[Guy1524]

@edneyhelene FWIW even when battleye starts to work, PUBG has another preventing it from launching.

[elevenpassin]

I am really missing out playing Planetside 2. The battleeye anticheat starts but keeps on loading and the game never launches :(

[JanGalek]

Now cant play ATLAS on official servers.

Tested on Proton 3.7-8, 3.7-8 Beta, 3.16-4, 3.16-6 Beta, 4.2-9, 4.11-2.

[kisak-valve]

Merge with battleye patches that are being worked on in a separate repo

Issue transferred from #2278.
@redpiller posted on 2019-01-28T17:36:04:

Feature Request

https://github.com/Guy1524/wine/commits/battleye-work-stable
this repo contains wine patches that enables the use of battleye anticheat in games like
Arma2, Arma3, Fortnite, Planetside 2 ... and so on...
take a look, maybe you could establish a cross repo patching pipeline

I confirm:

• [ x ] that I haven't found another request for this feature.
• [ x ] that I have checked whether there are updates for my system available that
  contain this feature already.

Description

Battleye support

Justification [optional]

Battleye is broken in proton

Risks [optional]

Not every game will be supported at first

References [optional]

https://github.com/Guy1524/wine/commits/battleye-work-stable

[mkljczk]

@redpiller, these patches don’t make BattlEye work, they just make it fail in further steps…

[philipjohnbarlow]

Person here claims to have gotten PUBG to work by running it via the windows version of steam.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aa_TwN-daEA

[Rosalie241]

@philipjohnbarlow I'm sorry to uh, reply

but,

that video shows 0 proof that it's actually running on linux
and if it was real, it'd be pretty big news already.

so I'm sure it's fake and you shouldn't trust a video like that which doesn't show ANY evidence that it's actually what it claims to be.

[philipjohnbarlow]

Yup my thoughts as well, theres no pre-start up footage. Thought I'd share anyway just in case there was even remotely any validity in the claim.

[physios]

Doesn't battleeye work with ark?

[r4jk3]

I have created a steam support ticket and got redirected to this page. @Storm-Engineer said all what i had to say actually. We need fix for this BatteEye thing i sense its the only thing blocking Linux community to prosper in gaming industry. Proton is a mayor thing that happened to us and because of it i finally got rid of Windows ( i will not return to it even at this stage ). I have yesterday sent a email to BattleEye support team about it but unfortunately still no response.

[linuxergr]

BattleEye should be installed by default, when games are installed on Linux, ever since it concerns paid games (not free of charge) like Insurgency and Day of Infamy

[RevoluPowered]

Perhaps valve should look into banning new game releases which contain battle eye and release a formal statement about it. This will kill Battle Eye's new market opportunities.

Treat them the way they treat other platforms which are blocked by their software.

It's clear they're not invested in a developer solution or even offering a branch which could be pursued by bigger companies if they need Linux support even if they offer financial incentives.

[mkljczk]

@RevoluPowered that would only make other stores more competitive

[Spartan322]

Perhaps valve should look into banning new game releases which contain battle eye and release a formal statement about it. This will kill Battle Eye's new market opportunities.

Treat them the way they treat other platforms which are blocked by their software.

It's clear they're not invested in a developer solution or even offering a branch which could be pursued by bigger companies if they need Linux support even if they offer financial incentives.
@RevoluPowered

That's not only a horrible business strategy, but that harms Valve's economic model. Its also horribly anti-consumer, direct opposition to Linux methodology, (being foremost volunteerism) and a vengeful solution would make them just as ethically and morally repugnant as every single big name publisher that everyone hates. Going down that road is a slippery slope especially in business and after you open that can of worms once, you can almost never close it.

[RevoluPowered]

That's not only a horrible business strategy, but that harms Valve's economic model. Its also horribly anti-consumer, direct opposition to Linux methodology, (being foremost volunteerism) and a vengeful solution would make them just as ethically and morally repugnant as every single big name publisher that everyone hates. Going down that road is a slippery slope especially in business and after you open that can of worms once, you can almost never close it.

Good point I agree, but for now what are the alternatives?

[RevoluPowered]

I toyed with making an executable tool to strip / jump across battle eye entirely so people could actually run the game on linux.

I think for games like Arma 3 you could do this without problems because battle eye can be disabled as a requirement on servers, but some other games which rely on their servers it wouldn't work / fortnite.

[Storm-Engineer]

Is anyone actually working on this?

[xznhj8129]

THREE GOD DAMN YEARS

[Spartan322]

Is anyone actually working on this?

Really no reason to ask this, this issue is clearly not dead, the problem has mostly been a Linux kernel problem before anything else, which is starting to make it more feasible to work on this with the latest experimental kernel version, but that just got released about a week ago, and running experimental kernel versions is not practical, most especially to dev on or play a game with, we have to wait until 5.11 is stable at least, shouldn't be long but its still going to take a bit, you gotta be patient man. (even then we probably won't see a change in Proton or Wine for a little while on this front until mainstream distros start defaulting to 5.11, or at least a while after its stable, kinda pointless to dev a feature heavily when you have nobody to test it and use it, especially when its bleeding edge)

[mirh]

Syscall User Dispatch has nothing to do with anticheat.
And it's not a kernel problem before anything else. That's also a biggie to be sure, but first of all wine's ntoskrnl has to gain support for a lot of functions.
And then maybe you can start poking at BE.

[TheAifam5]

Valve can't do anything much about it even if they somehow manage, there may be a great risk to be flagged/banned. As stated (i think), Valve will/work with BE but is up to BE to support such case. I feel that because it's opensource, and you can modify WINE as you like, that is a big concern for the BE.

[Spartan322]

Syscall User Dispatch has nothing to do with anticheat.
And it's not a kernel problem before anything else. That's also a biggie to be sure, but first of all wine's ntoskrnl has to gain support for a lot of functions.
And then maybe you can start poking at BE.

While its not a specific target, its likely part of a puzzle piece solution, some anticheats operate on a similar level as DRM in this specific instance, (and I'm pretty sure BattleEye was one of the ones where this applied, though correct me if I'm wrong) and they've been hampered just as badly, (not to mention most mainstream invasive anticheat games also incorporate some kind of DRM anyway, or the anticheat is basically the DRM) so I think its worth mentioning.

[Storm-Engineer]

Is anyone actually working on this?

Really no reason to ask this, this issue is clearly not dead

I respectfully disagree. The issue is pretty old, has no assignee, and the last response from a Valve dev was 2019 January. As such, I have no way of knowing if this is being actively worked on, or it is being set aside because other issues are deemed a higher priority. And thus, I asked, hoping that if it is being worked on, a dev may reply to let us know.

The comments here are definitely active but that does not tell anything about if it is being worked on by the developers or not.

[Storm-Engineer]

Valve can't do anything much about it even if they somehow manage, there may be a great risk to be flagged/banned. As stated (i think), Valve will/work with BE but is up to BE to support such case. I feel that because it's opensource, and you can modify WINE as you like, that is a big concern for the BE.

Other companies and anti-cheat systems have absolutely no problem with Wine players, and this includes both Valve Anti-Cheat and Blizzard Anti-Cheat. The whole notion that it would somehow be easier to cheat with Wine, is just not true - unless we are talking about some extremely bad and shitty anti-cheat. If it is well written - and given BE is widely used I assume that for the most part it is, or at least adequately written - then Wine should pose no threat.

And I mean, BE is not trying to block Wine users from playing, they just doN't care to put effort into supporting it. (The only anti-cheat I personally know of that purposefully blocks Wine users is Epic Anti-Cheat... but then Epic is an asshole company as we all know.)

And Wine is not trying to trick anyone, while it mimics the Windows environment for programs to work, it does not try to pretend to be real Windows. Programs can easily see that they are being run under Wine, and behave accordingly.

[mirh]

EAC doesn't block wine. They just have a check to load their special gimped wine-specific version that some games have opted into (which of course fails when instead the developer didn't).
And just like BE they do support native linux anyway.

It's just that the authentication/integrity infrastructure windows has is nowhere to be seen. Wine by itself runs entirely in userspace, making bypass super easy, and you can't blame anyone here.
It's not impossible to solve this, but it's super complex and not even worth discussing when anyway wine is so much broken in supporting the windows kernel apis.
So please, just stop spamming. And wait.

[jarrard]

SQUAD and MORTAL2ONLINE with EAC work with Proton, but you may need to download the verification files yourself as there is a bug in proton where EAC tool fails to fetch the verification files, and can even delete them for some reason.

As for BE, yep its a BIG BIG issue, I want to play games like Tarkov and ARMA3 but can't because I cannot figure out how BE works.

EAC FYI has OS flags on their server which devs can enable. Linux is WINE64, Windows is WIN64, and MacOS is probably OSX or something... I guess there is ARM ones and others also. The EAC files of WINE64 and WIN64 are identical btw, you can grab them from your windows EAC folders and copy them right over.

PS. None of these Anti Cheat methods seem to fully stop hackers/cheaters, I've talk to these people on Discord and its still very easy to work around these anticheat methods as many have probably suspected. Sure it can require the simpletons from cheating, but as hack/cheat tools (all on windows btw, Linux is not source of hackers/cheaters) advance they also make it easier for people to do.

[RealJTG]

Vote with your money, don't buy games that requires BE.
Kernel level anti-cheats/DRM shouldn't be used on any OS (they don't work anyway, I'm talking about you Valorant).

[jarrard]

Vote with your money, don't buy games that requires BE.
Kernel level anti-cheats/DRM shouldn't be used on any OS (they don't work anyway, I'm talking about you Valorant).

This statement is not helpful. A huge number of people already own these games long before moving to Linux. Also EAC has taken steps to help devs support wine/proton/linux (optional) and there is a Linux based BE client with hopefully more support down the line for proton.

[Lamdarer]

https://www.protondb.com/app/218230 #5295
Even though no official statement of the developers, the game currently runs fine using the latest Proton-GE version with Proton BattlEye Runtime installed.

[Atemu]

@jarrard would be better to put discussion about PS2-specific issues in the dedicated issue #5295.

[csedesio]

hey guys i am trying to run the epic's version of ark on wine 7.0 but it says this Failed to initialize BattlEye Service: Driver Load Error (1053). As far as i know ark should work with battleye

[HolimaX]

... still not fixed .. holy crap.

BTW, Destiny 2 via Steam on FC37 also affected.

[Atemu]

This issue is as much fixed as it can be. It's up to the individual game devs to enable Linux support. Destiny's developer explicitly decided against supporting Linux/the Steam Deck. If you want to complain, direct your anger towards them.

Planetside 2's developer did enable it for example and BattleEye works flawlessly. Better than on windows actually.

[Faalagorn]

There's still some games, like Escape from Tarkov, that lacks the required function to get everything working (in case of Tarkov it's playing online), but yeah.

[landjalan]

for me this issue is pretty easy. just don´t buy/play a game which does support linux one way or another :) there is literally 10 thousands of games out there that all run on linux... if a specific title of a specific genre does not work, just take a competitor... EASY

[nipnipj]

Does battleeye runtime allows you to play PUBG these days?

[Atemu]

PUBG doesn't allow Battleye and its two other anticheats to run on Linux.

[HolimaX]

for me this issue is pretty easy. just don´t buy/play a game which does support linux one way or another :) there is literally 10 thousands of games out there that all run on linux... if a specific title of a specific genre does not work, just take a competitor... EASY

Yes, all or nothing approach is legit, but ... still .. it is in humans nature to desire for things :)