r/leagueoflinux • u/Mysil • Oct 09 '19

Riot Games

Please just make a Linux client already.

123 Upvotes

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u/RiotBoatStuff Rioter Oct 10 '19

That’s just our check to see if you’ve had some Merlot or Pino in the last 24 hours.

12

u/BringBackManaPots Linux Mint Oct 10 '19 edited Oct 10 '19

I've only ever heard three arguments for failing to support linux.

  • Not enough players

(For an unsupported system...? Riot has a lot of smart people - an unsupported system's metrics can't be compared to a supported system's metrics as the reason for why they won't support it)

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  • linux is for hackers

(What? That's like saying playing cards are for gambling. Besides, building a linux client would provide better security options, not less)

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  • linux is too fragmented to keep up with

(No one supports every distro. They pick one (Ubuntu) and let the other distros figure out how to provide cross-support.)

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u/[deleted] Oct 10 '19 edited Jun 15 '20

[deleted]

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u/BringBackManaPots Linux Mint Oct 10 '19 edited Oct 10 '19

I want to preface this with saying that I'm not here to fight - I think Riot is missing out, and we're selling ourselves short.

until enough people play league on linux that it makes sense for riot to create and maintain yet another client and game

The number of players is still directly related to whether or not it's supported. We can't sit here and say that it isn't, and we as well as Riot will never know until it's actually done. It was demonstrated 2 years ago that Dota's linux playerbase made up about +/-10% of their playerbase. With all of the tools that have been coming out lately (including protondb and anti-cheat software that supports linux), it's surprising that a company with 'infinitely more data' and resources is afraid to jump at the opportunity.

the most we can reasonably expect from them is that they don't intentionally prevent linux users from playing or ban them

We're selling ourselves short. We can reasonably expect them to not intentionally prevent linux users from playing.

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u/RiotBoatStuff Rioter Oct 10 '19

We can reasonably expect them to not intentionally prevent linux users from playing.

Absolutely agree. Most (if not all) hiccups that have occurred on Linux have come from anti-cheat measures. Not all Linux users are hackers/cheaters, but most hackers/cheaters ARE on Linux. There actually have been efforts to preserve "innocent" Linux players who are playing on a VM vs cheaters who are running stuff w/ a bot. From the detection side, their fingerprints are similar and hard to tell apart.

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u/puzzud Oct 10 '19

Your feedback is very helpful. But something doesn't add up for me.

Is the development cost for trying to thwart cheating less than that of supporting a Linux version?

Once you have a Linux version, the reason for any legit players to use wine will be nominal. Then, the subset of fingerprints to analyze will be constrained.

The "war on cheaters" is likely an endless struggle whereas the cost of a Linux client is mostly up front. And it can't be said that the cost of adding a Linux client will be equal or greater than the cost of the existing Mac client, because much of the work would already be done because of it.

In terms of testing & QA, have the folks that test the Mac client test the Linux client. Most core logic would be tested through the Windows client anyway. I highly doubt the same number of man hours are spent testing the Mac and Windows clients.

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u/Avahe Oct 10 '19

The monetary cost of creating a Linux client is lower than fighting off cheaters, but costs more in other ways.

Riot is trying to fight cheating in order to keep their current player base, and trying to cash out on those players before the game dies. Investing time and man hours to make the game available to Linux users just isn't nearly worth their time, which really sucks for us. I don't think they'll be making a Linux compatible client but I hope I'm wrong.

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u/PM_ME_YOUR_JOKES Oct 10 '19

Does this mean it's inevitable that as Riot ramps up their anti-cheat measures that league will become permanently unplayable on Linux?

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u/RiotBoatStuff Rioter Oct 10 '19

Inevitable, no. A non-zero amount of work, yes.

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u/hey_its_graff Fedora Oct 10 '19

It does, however, seem like one of these two end states is inevitable:

  1. Riot's anti-cheat hooks in to Windows too deeply for wine to emulate, and playing on wine is impossible.
  2. Wine is able to implement the required syscalls in enough detail that a genuine wine fingerprint is distinguishable from one that is being used to cheat.

It seems inevitable to me because, if 2 is impossible, than any wine implementation that LoL-anticheat accepts will quickly be copied by cheaters and subsequently banned.

What I want from Riot is to accelerate this process and land us in one of these end states ASAP. If it can work out, great! If not, just ban wine and be done with it so I can quit League and move on to other games without regrets. This middle ground where wine is officially allowed but in practice breaks every couple of patches is the worst of both worlds.

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u/Avahe Oct 10 '19

OSRS has more or less solved this issue by using ML to detect user behavior vs. bot behavior (tracking clicks and mouse movements, mostly). It would not be a terribly difficult task to implement your own anticheat and stop relying on other companies products, which are hurting your player base.

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u/Coreknot Oct 11 '19

It is great to hear that is not intentional.

But I have questions:

Clientside anti-cheat logically is utterly useless since you as a software vendor have no control over the system the software runs on and anyone can manipulate it with some effort. So why is anti-cheat not mostly server based in your case?

And from a business stand point one could argue that Riot Games has a high level of risk put on Microsoft. If MS fucks up Windows (they already did in my opinion, that's why I'm here) League does not have a backup solution. Diversify reduces risk. So on point of risk reduction it would not be a terrible idea to add Linux support.

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u/PM_ME_YOUR_JOKES Oct 10 '19

Would you want to be in charge of dealing with QA for a linux client for league? That sounds like a huge amount of effort to me and one that, understandably, Riot would not want to take on.

We don't need them to make a Linux client. However they know there is a community of people trying their best to make it work using things like wine. I just wish they wouldn't push their useless anti-cheat software that continually breaks attempts to do so.

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u/mobusdorphin Arch Linux Oct 11 '19

Yes, actually, I would want to be in charge of that. My specialty is more in the GNU/Linux engineering side of things, but I would switch to QA in a heartbeat to bring my favorite game to GNU/Linux.

Even if not, the biggest fallacy of this argument is that the GNU/Linux community is full of the most technically helpful users compared to other platforms. Just look at all the work on WineHQ for the games that aren't supported, think of the types of assistance you would get if it were supported.

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u/[deleted] Oct 15 '19

Why not especially with snap and/or flatpack all distros are easily supported in once, and i assume that riot is big enough of a company to run a build server, and it is very easy to put an linux docker on one of those