Ubisoft cut off For Honor for every Linux and Steam Deck player on September 10, 2026, the same day the medieval melee brawler launched its biggest ranked overhaul in years. The company says it can no longer “meaningfully deploy protection” against cheaters on Linux, so it switched off the Linux runtime for Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC), the middleware the game has used since 2023. The result: any copy of For Honor running through Proton, whether on a Steam Deck, a Linux desktop, or a rival handheld running SteamOS, now fails its anti-cheat handshake before a match can even start.
The shutdown lands at an odd moment. Ubisoft had actively supported Linux play for roughly three years, and Valve’s own Proton documentation lists Easy Anti-Cheat as one of the two anti-cheat systems (alongside BattlEye) built to work on Steam Deck out of the box. For Honor is now one more name on a growing list of multiplayer games where anti-cheat requirements, not hardware limits, decide who gets to play on Linux.
What Ubisoft Actually Announced
Ubisoft confirmed the change through a short statement posted around September 2, 2026, and reported by outlets including It’s FOSS and CQ-Esports. The company framed it as a player-safety move tied to the arrival of new ranked modes rather than a routine platform cut. For Honor’s Linux runtime, which routes through the EAC library on Proton, gets disabled on September 10, and from that date the game refuses to boot on SteamOS, desktop Linux distributions, or any third-party Linux-based handheld.
Nothing changes for Windows players. The shutdown is scoped specifically to the Linux build of the EAC client, and Ubisoft has not announced any changes to the game on PlayStation, Xbox, or Windows PC. Steam Deck owners who want to keep playing have exactly one workaround available today: install Windows on the device and run For Honor outside SteamOS entirely, which defeats much of the point of owning a Deck in the first place.
The Official Reason: “We Cannot Meaningfully Deploy Protection”
Ubisoft’s public explanation, reproduced across several outlets including Notebookcheck, reads in part:
“To reinforce a fair competitive environment, the team is introducing additional player safety measures. We are removing For Honor from the Linux platform to ensure a safer environment for our players as we cannot meaningfully deploy protection on this platform. This means that For Honor will no longer be playable on Steam Deck starting September 10th. We will continue to investigate different ways to improve our anti-cheat with the possibility of reopening the platform in the future.”
Ubisoft, game publisher
That statement leaves the technical detail vague on purpose. Ubisoft does not name a new anti-cheat vendor, and the reporting agrees the game is still running Easy Anti-Cheat, the same middleware it has used for years. What changed is not the product but the configuration: Ubisoft is disabling the Linux client module inside EAC rather than swapping in something new. The company also left the door open to restoring Linux support later, though it gave no timeline.
Why September 10 Is Not a Random Date
The Linux shutdown ships on the exact day For Honor launches Ranked Season 0, which adds a new Ranked Dominion mode and a reworked Ranked Duel format, according to AndroidHire’s coverage of the patch notes. Ubisoft is tying the anti-cheat tightening directly to the start of a competitive season, arguing that ranked play raises the stakes for cheating and therefore the bar for what counts as adequate protection.
That framing matters for how the decision reads. Ubisoft isn’t saying Linux support broke or became technically unworkable, it’s saying the anti-cheat guarantees it wants for ranked matches can’t currently be met on that platform. Whether that’s a genuine security gap in EAC’s Linux implementation or a business decision to avoid supporting a smaller platform through a higher-stakes competitive mode is something Ubisoft has not spelled out, and the company has not published technical details to back up the claim either way.
Inside Easy Anti-Cheat’s Linux Runtime
Valve’s own developer documentation explains how EAC is supposed to work on Steam Deck. Under Proton, EAC runs as a Linux shared library, easyanticheat_x64.so, shipped alongside the existing Windows DLL. Getting a game onto that path is opt-in: a developer has to enable Linux as a client platform inside the EAC partner configuration and publish a build that includes the Linux module, as laid out in Valve’s Proton anti-cheat guide.
Ubisoft did that work for For Honor back in July 2023, per reporting cited by It’s FOSS. That’s the detail that makes this shutdown different from titles that never supported Linux in the first place. Ubisoft isn’t declining to build something new, it’s actively turning off a runtime that has been shipping and working for three years. The distinction is why Linux outlets have reacted with more frustration than they typically show toward games that were simply never made compatible.
Who Actually Loses Access on September 10
The cutoff hits every device running For Honor through Proton, not just Valve’s own hardware. That includes Steam Deck LCD and OLED models, desktop Linux installs running the Windows build through Proton or Wine, and third-party handhelds that ship SteamOS or a SteamOS-like distribution. Reporting from Gigamaus lists the same scope: once the EAC handshake fails, it fails identically across every Linux-based device, regardless of manufacturer.
None of the coverage gathered for this story includes an official breakdown of how many For Honor players actually run the game on Linux or Steam Deck specifically. Ubisoft has not published that figure, and no analyst estimate has surfaced publicly as of this writing. What’s clear is qualitative rather than quantitative: the ProtonDB page for the game is already filling with warnings telling new installers not to bother after September 10.
Not the First: Anti-Cheat’s Long Fight With Linux Gaming
For Honor joins a list of major multiplayer titles where anti-cheat, not raw compatibility, decides Linux access. This site has covered the most aggressive example in detail: Riot Games’ Vanguard driver, the kernel-mode anti-cheat behind Valorant, which has no Linux support path at all and has forced administrators to build dedicated fleet management routines just to track where the driver is installed across a network.
Valorant and Riot Vanguard
Vanguard runs at kernel level on Windows and loads before the operating system finishes booting, a design Riot has defended publicly as the only way to catch driver-level cheats. There is no Proton path for it, which is why Valorant simply does not run on Steam Deck through official channels, full stop, regardless of a player’s Proton or driver configuration.
Destiny 2, Fortnite, and Apex Legends
Bungie has long discouraged running Destiny 2 through Proton, citing anti-cheat risk in its own support guidance, even though the game isn’t blocked at a technical level the way Valorant is. Epic owns Easy Anti-Cheat and actively promotes its Linux compatibility to other developers, yet Fortnite itself has never shipped with the Linux runtime enabled for its own anti-cheat stack. Apex Legends sits in the same category: EAC-protected, technically capable of a Linux client, but never turned on for Steam Deck by Respawn or EA. For Honor is the unusual case in this group because Ubisoft built the Linux path, shipped it, and is now the one pulling it back down.
The Security Argument For Locking Down Linux
Anti-cheat vendors have a real technical problem on Linux. Kernel-mode protection on Windows works by embedding a driver deep enough in the OS that user-space cheat tools and memory editors can’t easily hide from it. Replicating that model on Linux is harder: the kernel is open source, distributions vary widely, and a driver built for one distro’s kernel version can break on another. EAC’s Linux support has always run in user space through Proton rather than as a true kernel module, which by design gives it less visibility into what’s happening on the system than its Windows counterpart.
That gap is a legitimate reason a publisher might decide a platform doesn’t meet its bar for ranked, money-adjacent competitive play, where a wave of cheaters can do real damage to leaderboards and matchmaking integrity in a way that’s hard to reverse after the fact.
The Security Argument Against Kernel-Level Anti-Cheat
The counterargument, made loudly by Linux advocates for years, is that the industry’s answer to weaker Linux protection has increasingly been kernel-mode drivers on Windows that themselves carry security risk. A driver running at ring 0 has full access to memory and can, if poorly written, become a target for privilege escalation attacks rather than a defense against them. That tradeoff is exactly why this site has published step-by-step guides for administrators who want to confirm Vanguard is fully removed from a machine after uninstalling Valorant, and separate guidance on auditing for leftover kernel drivers with PowerShell after uninstalling anti-cheat software entirely.
From that angle, For Honor’s shutdown looks less like Ubisoft closing a security hole and more like the industry defaulting to the platform where the riskiest anti-cheat model already has the most vendor support: Windows. Critics argue that punishes the platform with the more conservative, user-space security model rather than rewarding it.
How the Linux and Steam Deck Community Is Reacting
The reaction from Linux-focused outlets has been sharply negative. It’s FOSS titled its coverage “An Honorless Move,” arguing Ubisoft is choosing not to invest in a platform it had already gotten working. Linux news aggregator TuxMachines made a similar point, emphasizing that EAC’s Linux support is already enabled and functioning, which makes this a deliberate rollback rather than a case of Linux never being supported.
On ProtonDB, the community-run compatibility database for Steam’s Linux users, contributors have already started updating the game’s page with warnings dated to the announcement, telling prospective installers the game will stop working entirely once September 10 arrives and advising against bothering with a fresh install. That kind of pre-emptive warning is typical of how the ProtonDB community handles anti-cheat-driven platform exits: once a title is flagged, its practical rating collapses regardless of how well it ran beforehand.
Valve’s Position: Proton Supports EAC, the Publisher Decides the Rest
Valve has not issued any statement specific to Ubisoft’s decision. What exists is Valve’s standing developer documentation, which lays out exactly how a studio enables EAC or BattlEye for Linux clients and frames Proton compatibility as something publishers opt into rather than something Valve controls unilaterally. That policy has not changed with this announcement, and it’s the same framework that let Ubisoft enable Linux support for For Honor in 2023 in the first place.
In practice, that puts Valve in a position it has occupied for years with anti-cheat: it builds and maintains the technical bridge, but every publisher decides independently whether to walk across it, and can just as easily walk back. For Steam Deck owners, that means Linux compatibility for any online multiplayer game remains conditional on a publisher’s ongoing goodwill rather than a guarantee tied to the hardware itself.
For Honor’s Linux Timeline
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| July 2023 | Ubisoft enables the Easy Anti-Cheat Linux runtime for For Honor, unlocking Proton and Steam Deck compatibility |
| 2023–2026 | For Honor runs on Steam Deck and desktop Linux via Proton with the EAC Linux module active |
| September 2, 2026 | Ubisoft announces it will disable Linux support, citing an inability to “meaningfully deploy protection” on the platform |
| September 10, 2026 | Ranked Season 0 launches with Ranked Dominion and a reworked Ranked Duel mode; the EAC Linux runtime is switched off the same day |
| After September 10, 2026 | For Honor fails its anti-cheat handshake on Linux and SteamOS; ProtonDB flags the game as unplayable on the platform |
How Major Multiplayer Games Handle Linux Anti-Cheat
Set against the rest of the market, For Honor’s situation stands out because it is a reversal rather than an absence. The table below summarizes public reporting on Linux and Steam Deck access across several high-profile multiplayer titles as of September 2026.
| Game | Anti-cheat system | Linux / Steam Deck status |
|---|---|---|
| For Honor (Ubisoft) | Easy Anti-Cheat | Blocked starting September 10, 2026, after being supported since July 2023 |
| Valorant (Riot Games) | Vanguard (kernel-mode) | Never supported; Vanguard has no Linux/Proton path |
| Destiny 2 (Bungie) | Proprietary anti-cheat | Unofficial/unsupported configuration; Bungie discourages Proton play |
| Fortnite (Epic Games) | Easy Anti-Cheat | Linux runtime not enabled; unavailable on Steam Deck |
| Apex Legends (Respawn/EA) | Easy Anti-Cheat | Linux runtime not enabled; unavailable on Steam Deck |
Four of the five games in that table were never available on Linux to begin with, which is a familiar and largely accepted limitation for Steam Deck owners — the kind of gap that made single-player titles hitting full Steam Deck parity stand out as good news this year. For Honor is the outlier: it worked, it was marketed as working, and now it doesn’t, which is precisely why the reaction has run hotter than a routine “not supported” announcement would.
What This Costs Ubisoft, and What It Signals to Valve
Ubisoft has not disclosed how the Linux and Steam Deck player base for For Honor compares to its Windows, PlayStation, and Xbox numbers, so it’s difficult to size the direct commercial hit. What’s easier to measure is the reputational cost inside a community that pays close attention to which publishers treat Linux as a first-class platform. For Honor briefly stood as one of the more visible proof points that EAC-protected competitive games could work on Steam Deck without compromise; losing that status removes a reference case that Linux advocates had been pointing to.
For Valve, the episode is a reminder that Steam Deck’s software compatibility layer is only as strong as publishers’ willingness to keep supporting it, season after season. Valve can keep improving Proton and publishing clearer anti-cheat integration guides, but it has no mechanism to stop a publisher from switching a working runtime off, and Ubisoft’s decision shows that even multi-year support commitments aren’t permanent.
From Denuvo to Kernel Drivers: The Pattern Behind PC Anti-Cheat Friction
PC gaming has cycled through several generations of protection technology that each drew backlash for reasons beyond simple annoyance. DRM tools like Denuvo drew criticism over performance overhead years ago. The current generation, kernel-level anti-cheat, draws criticism over privilege and platform lock-in instead. Riot’s Vanguard is the most extreme version of that model, running before Windows itself finishes loading. For Honor’s EAC rollback belongs to a gentler but related trend: publishers narrowing which platforms get the full anti-cheat treatment, and treating Linux as the platform most likely to be cut when the bar gets raised.
What makes 2026 different from earlier anti-cheat controversies is the size of the Linux gaming audience it now affects. Steam Deck sales built a real, non-trivial base of Linux gamers who expect major releases to work out of the box, which is part of why a rollback like this one generates more attention than it would have in 2019, before Deck existed.
What Happens Next: Five Predictions
- Ubisoft won’t restore Linux support quickly. The company left the door open in its statement but gave no timeline, and anti-cheat vendors rarely reverse a platform decision inside the same competitive season it was made for.
- Other EAC-protected competitive titles will face similar scrutiny. Once one publisher frames Linux as a protection gap for ranked play, expect other studios running ranked or paid competitive modes to review their own Linux runtimes rather than risk being the next target of a cheating controversy.
- Valve will keep pushing Proton improvements without changing publisher incentives. Better technical documentation doesn’t solve a business decision, and Valve has no lever to make a publisher keep a runtime switched on.
- Steam Deck 2 rumors will amplify the debate. With SteamOS updates already preparing for next-generation Deck hardware, any high-profile Linux compatibility loss becomes a bigger story simply because more eyes are on the platform’s long-term viability.
- Expect louder calls for anti-cheat transparency. Linux advocacy outlets are likely to keep pressing publishers to publish concrete technical reasoning, rather than a general statement like “cannot meaningfully deploy protection,” the next time a working Linux runtime gets pulled.
Frequently Asked Questions
When does For Honor stop working on Steam Deck?
September 10, 2026. Ubisoft disables the Easy Anti-Cheat Linux runtime that day, which means the game fails its anti-cheat check and won’t launch on Steam Deck, SteamOS, or any Linux-based system from that point forward.
Why is Ubisoft blocking For Honor on Linux?
Ubisoft says it “cannot meaningfully deploy protection” against cheaters on Linux and is disabling the platform to keep the new ranked modes fair. The company has not published technical details supporting the claim, and it left open the possibility of reopening the platform later.
Can I still play For Honor on Steam Deck after September 10?
Not through SteamOS. The only workaround reported so far is installing Windows on the Deck and running the game outside of SteamOS, which removes most of the convenience of the handheld’s default operating system.
Is this the same anti-cheat system as Riot Vanguard?
No. For Honor uses Easy Anti-Cheat, which runs in user space on Proton rather than as a kernel-mode driver. Vanguard, used by Valorant, runs at kernel level on Windows and has never had a Linux path at all, making it a stricter case than For Honor’s rollback.
Did Ubisoft ever officially support Steam Deck for For Honor?
Yes. Reporting indicates Ubisoft enabled the Easy Anti-Cheat Linux runtime for the game back in July 2023, meaning the September 2026 change is a rollback of existing support rather than a decision to never support the platform.
Are other games at risk of dropping Linux support the same way?
There’s no announced list of other titles following For Honor’s lead as of this writing. But the pattern of publishers narrowing anti-cheat support around competitive or ranked modes suggests any EAC- or BattlEye-protected game with an active ranked mode could face the same review.
Does Valve plan to respond to Ubisoft’s decision?
Valve has not issued a statement specific to For Honor. Its existing Proton documentation for Easy Anti-Cheat and BattlEye integration remains unchanged, and compatibility continues to depend on each publisher’s own configuration choices rather than a Valve-side policy.
What should Steam Deck owners do with For Honor right now?
If you plan to keep playing after September 10, back up any local save data before the cutoff and expect to either switch to a different platform or, if you’re willing, install Windows on the device. ProtonDB contributors are already advising against fresh installs on SteamOS given the imminent shutdown.
